Star Wars: The Force Awakens concept art reveals how different it nearly was

Legendary visual effects company ILM has released a whole host of pre-preproduction images for the film

Industrial Light & Magic, or ILM, has revealed a huge amount of concept art created for Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Posted on their official site, the pieces reveal points from across the film's development; from recognisable renditions of Kylo Ren and the desert planet of Jakku, to early pieces which reveal how radically different the film so easily could have been.

"Each artist began to explore his individual response, and collectively, we began to answer, with our words and art," explains co-production designer Rick Carter. "Out of our brainstorming sessions emerged visual imagery of where we might want to go and what it would look like when we got there. We were not merely illustrating scenes that already existed: we were initiating storytelling concepts through the visual images themselves."

The most intriguing piece (via ComicBook.com), sees a man dressed in traditional Jedi garb put under torture, with the cloaked figure standing over him presumably Kylo Ren. Was the film's lead originally meant to a male Jedi character? And is that unhelmeted stormtrooper an early version of Finn? Elsewhere, renditions of Kylo Ren's helmet, and their extreme similarity to Darth Vader's, may hark back to a time when Ren was conceived as deliberately dressed as the villain to taunt Luke Skywalker.

Vsit ILM's site to see more concept art for the film. Star Wars: The Force Awakens will be available on Blu-Ray and DVD on 18 April.