I think there's a interplay
with storytellers and the people
you're telling the story to.
Does this look Jedi to you?
You find that the emotions
run deep with Star Wars.
And peoples' relationship,
who grew up with it from a young age,
feel a lot of connection to it.
I think a consistent thing I'm feeling
is that people care deeply
that it's being handled correctly
and that it's being handled respectfully.
It meant so much and they wanna
see it continue into the future
and feel like it's all connected
with consistency.
We're very lucky that
between Lucasfilm and Kathy,
the whole group that we have
are incredibly supportive and encouraging.
Incoming craft, identify yourself.
Jon gave me the script
for the season finale.
I read it and loved it.
It had a lot of action.
It had a lot of great character stuff
and a lot of emotion.
But there was a character
that came in at the end of it,
and in the script it was written
as a character called Plo Koon.
And I knew Plo Koon was a Jedi,
I think, from the prequel trilogy.
I was, "How are we visualizing this?"
He's like, "Come here,
I wanna talk to you."
And he gave me the real news
that it was, in fact, not Plo Koon,
but it was gonna be Luke.
And I needed a moment.
I needed to know, 'cause I've had
a long relationship with Jon
and I said, "Are you being serious? Is this real?
"You're bringing the guy back?"
He said, "We're bringing the guy back."
Jon sanctioned this, I'll say this for
the first time in 15 months to two years.
"Luke Skywalker."
We were never allowed to say it.
We'll get the performance out of Plo Koon,
and in post, we can
get a bunch of options.
When we refer back to what we did,
we talk about the code names.
We simply do not utter those two words.
If there's one person in the
galaxy that you'd be okay
taking this kid from The Mandalorian,
it's gotta be Luke.
You know, usually,
Jon and I tend to think
If he and I are aligned
on something like that,
it's probably gonna, I like
to think, turn out good.
But if I had been like, "No way. Luke"
Jon would respect that,
"Okay, let's figure it out."
But it just felt right to both of us.
Even the Force that's just moving around him.
So, every move you're making
is one step ahead.
I instantly went from being
thrilled to feeling the weight
of responsibility of this character.
Because outside of all
the technical considerations
of how we were gonna bring
Luke Skywalker of that period to life,
there was a real responsibility
in the storytelling
to have it feel organic in the
context of The Mandalorian.
Because it's very easy to see a version
where you bring Luke into The Mandalorian,
and it completely usurps all the drama.
We had a lot of conversations
in the writing, in the sh**ting, in editorial,
about how much Luke was enough,
how much was too much,
finding that balance.
Weirdly, he's a device.
I mean, he comes in,
it's not like he's the delivery guy.
You know, none of the characters
are sitting there in awe of,
"It's Luke Skywalker. He's the guy
who blew up those Death Stars."
That's not where they're coming from.
He is a Jedi. He's this mythical figure,
because none of them have
ever really encountered a Jedi.
That was interesting to me.
I felt like, as I think Jon and Dave felt,
that this is a balancing act
that we can figure out,
and we can make it feel
still like The Mandalorian,
while broadening the palette a bit.
It was this carefully-laid discussion.
You know, the stages of,
"Is it gonna be him?"
"How could it be him?"
Because we realized, watching it,
that you're kind of in denial,
no matter how obvious we made it.
You do not think it's gonna be him
when that hood comes off.
Like, that shot, it was the one
of all the shots that had to work,
because it was gonna be the
completion of this wish fulfillment,
"Is it really Luke?"
We knew we wanted
Mark Hamill front and center,
because you can't
bring back Luke Skywalker
without Mark Hamill.
I suppose technologically-speaking, you could.
But we didn't want to.
We wanted to have the real guy.
We wanted Mark here.
'Cause he is Luke Skywalker.
I was contacted by Jon and Dave,
inviting me to come over and
take a look at The Mandalorian.
They said they'd love my opinion.
That should've been a giveaway right away.
So I went over and they
asked me to do a voice
for a character that was in the cantina.
I'm a hunter.
I'm lookin' for some work.
Unfortunately, the Bounty Guild
no longer operates from Tatooine.
He often will do unbilled cameos
as voice talent for other Star Wars projects.
-How do we thank you?
-Win the w*r!
So it made perfect sense
that we'd bring him in.
But we started showing
him a lot of the stuff,
and this is before anything had aired.
We showed him that first
episode with the reveal.
And he was really captivated
by it, he really liked it.
He liked where we were going with it.
So we told him what we were thinking of doing.
It is pointless to resist, my son.
When they went from the
original trilogy to the sequels,
obviously there was this huge gap in time,
where there's all these untold stories.
But I just assumed they'd get
an age-appropriate actor, you know?
And I didn't really think about it all that much.
I just thought, "If they wanna tell stories
"of Luke post-Return of The Jedi,
I wonder who they'll get."
When they said they were
gonna use the de-aging process
they used in the Marvel movies,
I was just gobsmacked!
I didn't answer right away,
I had to think about it.
But the more I thought about it,
"This is really an opportunity
"that was completely unexpected,
"but something that almost
was a responsibility."
In other words, if they're saying
they want me to do this,
how can I say no?
Over the holidays, this
would've been December 2019,
Jon and I drove up together
to Mark's house.
And we brought the script.
And we brought Luke Skywalker's wardrobe.
And we brought Grogu with us.
Mark was so gracious, we came in.
Jon and I sat with Mark's wife
as he was in his office,
reading the script in real time,
so we were on pins and needles,
'cause it was not necessarily a given
that he was gonna be interested.
I think he's very protective
of this character, and rightfully so.
Peyton and I were just trying
not to jump through our skin.
We get into this 'cause we're fans,
so there are moments like this
Even when you get used
to making this stuff,
there are certain moments
where you just It's so surreal.
He came out and he was thrilled.
And I think a huge weight
was lifted off of Jon's shoulders
when that happened.
When you have those feelings
where it feels compelling, you
know that you're onto something.
We knew if we could pull this off,
it would represent so
much to so many people.
Especially to Mark.
To let him come in there
and show Luke at this moment,
and let it be a celebration, and also
a culmination of a two-season arc
about the journey of this little child.
I'll see you again.
I promise.
Mark was excited, and he was
in, and he got ready to see,
"How were we gonna make the magic happen?"
Which is good, 'cause we
had to figure it out yet.
Kathy Kennedy we brought in
very early on this conversation.
And Kathy, first and foremost,
is a great producer.
And producers figure out ways
to make things happen
that are creatively exciting
to the storytellers.
Not only does she understand
how to create an environment
where we can have all
the tools that we need
to explore and experiment and be creative,
but also knows what it
takes to incubate ideas
and understands the significance
of when you do it right,
what that can represent.
One of the big challenges on this show
is the work is very ambitious.
The expectation is the polish level to be
as high as what's done on the features.
So, some of this is working
with the very talented and
experienced artists that we have,
giving them a meaningful turnover
where they really understand
what success means on the shots.
The unique thing about
visual effects technology
or technology that can
be used in visual effects,
is that it can come from
so many different places.
It can come from the tech realm,
it could come from a basement.
And I think being open
to getting inspiration
for bleeding-edge technology from anywhere
is a big part of what we do on this show.
When we realized that we wanted
to show a younger Luke Skywalker,
we looked at all the techniques available.
There's a few basic paths
you could go at this level.
They're overlapping a bit,
but for simplicity's sake,
you have a completely
computer-generated version of a character
based on scans and based
on research and old footage,
and that's like what they used
for Grand Moff Tarkin.
Your work exceeds all expectations.
It's pretty easy to see what that is,
but all these new render tools
and processing power
is making that get better very rapidly.
There's another technique for de-aging,
which is actually like an
airbrush artist doing fixes,
painting out wrinkles and things.
And then there's Deepfake, which
is where you use machine learning
to extrapolate from a tremendous amount of
Ingestion of images.
You feed images, either from the Internet,
or, in our case, you feed it
from all of the existing footage
that we have of that
character at that time,
and it creates a library of expressions,
faces, looks, lighting scenarios.
And then, when you have
your performer perform it,
the AI starts to figure out
what expression would correspond
to one that exists from the library of faces.
And so it's actually replacing
the face that you photographed
with a photoreal image that it's
picking out and matching up.
And so, by matching all those things up,
it creates the illusion that you're seeing
this younger version moving around,
but you're seeing photographs
that are cherry-picked by
this incredibly robust algorithm
that's pulling in the proper eyeline or expression
from the library of faces.
So we were looking at all
three of these techniques.
Jon was really interested in,
"Where is the technology right now?"
And so he had Landis Fields
locked away in my office,
like his own skunkworks,
kicking the tires on Deepfake.
"Let's see how far we can push this."
"Is there a version of Deepfake
that makes it into the show?"
"Is that how we find the likeness?"
Landis is a brilliant art director,
designer, modeler,
and a kind of mad scientist.
He's exactly the kind of person
that we love at ILM.
We locked him in a room, I'm serious.
We locked him in a room for
privacy and secrecy reasons
and he just sat at his machine, Landis,
and just doing this, literally,
all day long. All day long.
And he's got like a command center setup,
running Deepfake tests over and
over and over and over again.
Anybody can download this software
and anybody can have a go at making
these kind of Deepfake images.
Once you have the software,
you have to provide it the information
it needs to rebuild the face.
So, in the instance of Mark Hamill,
we put in a lot of footage
from the original movies.
We obviously have access
to the 4K version of the show,
so we fed it as much information as we can.
Because it was the first time
we used this particular technique,
we also went online and
found interviews that Mark gave.
Anything we could find
to build up the data
that was gonna be used to provide a face.
We can't go back in time and
reshoot Luke the way we want,
so we were having to pull
very specific source footage.
There was a moment I
even scoured the Internet
and found older interviews
and that of Mark Hamill,
that were lit really well.
So, you know, there was a lot of things
that we were paying attention to.
You have to have a lot of
trust in all the technicians
that they're gonna
make you look all right.
With what Deepfake technology
was at that point,
it was felt as though
we really needed to rely
a bit more on the tried and true techniques
rather than Deepfake.
So we wanted to really kinda focus in
on the de-ageing process.
I had had some experience
with de-ageing technology
on the Ant-Man movies.
In the first Ant-Man, we
de-aged Michael Douglas
from basically 70 to 40 years old.
And in the second one, we did Michael,
Michelle Pfeiffer and Laurence Fishburne.
There was a company called Lola
who had done most of this de-ageing technology,
so we reached out to Lola
and talked to them about it
and had them on stage
supervising all of this.
We had two actors.
We had Mark Hamill,
and we also had a picture double named Max.
And we shot both on set,
and we had also shot Max previously
with all of the cast.
Casting him was a whole thing too
because we had to work
with Sarah Finn and say,
"Look, we want to find somebody
"who physically resembles
what Mark looked like
"right after Return of the Jedi."
You couldn't just put out a casting call,
so we created a whole list of people
that she knew of that could be right,
and we ended up reading
him for a different role
and then telling him what it was,
and he was a great partner in that.
I think, on that rehearsal,
you were a bit to the right.
-I'd love to get you in the center.
-Dead center.
We'd watch each other do the scenes,
so we tried to match each other.
I would look at the monitor
and, of course, the image is small,
but I thought, "Oh, my gosh,
he looks more like me than me."
It was just uncanny, this guy.
And he's a good actor.
What I think is more magical than the tech
is seeing Mark trying to teach someone
to be a younger version of himself.
If you really remove all of the tools
and all of the processes away from that,
it's a very beautiful, endearing thing.
Come, little one.
I desperately wanted to have
a conversation with myself,
a seven-year-old boy
that I think is still inside me,
to remind myself, just think about
where you are right now,
what you're seeing.
Maybe it's the English person inside me,
which is that professionalism was still there.
I didn't have my photograph
taken with him or go over and say
"I was the biggest fan", but
Deep down in everybody
that's what we were all feeling.
Okay. Look who returns and
they're headed down the corridor.
So, when we shot Mark,
we shot him on the set
of the bridge of the Imperial
light cruiser in the Volume
and let him drive that performance.
And immediately following that,
we walked him over to our lighting
rig, which we call the Egg,
and basically recreated
everything that he had just done
But doing that separately allows us to get
ultra-high resolution textures of his face
and have ultimate control
over very technical things
involved with lighting
and positioning and timing.
So then we can take
both of those performances,
the one on set and the one in the Egg,
and use both of them
to achieve the final result.
The Egg itself is a assemblage
of thousands of little LED lights
that we have control over and can animate.
We can set lighting to match on set.
We can add interactive lighting,
so it's not that dissimilar
from the Volume itself.
We would do a take,
we would do a line.
And then we would go through the dailies
and actually live cut it into an edit
where Jon and Dave and Peyton
could make a select on a line delivery.
And then from that, we would start
giving it over to Lola and Trent at Lola.
And they would program it into the Egg,
so as we were sh**ting,
they were doing circle-takes
and feeding the Egg at the same time.
We had to do this whole thing in one day.
One day with Mark, one day with the Egg,
was a very long day as
you can probably imagine.
Part of the secrecy too, right?
Anybody that doesn't need to be up here?
If we could clear, thank you.
Even when we'd be sh**ting
with these characters on set,
most of the company would
be on location at Simi Valley
for Robert Rodriguez's episode.
And so, the sh**ting crew that was
gonna be kept behind for the moment
when Mark Hamill walked on set
was gonna be the smallest possible team
we needed to get the work done.
To give us the best chance
possible to keep this secret.
I said to the guys, "You don't
have any worries from me.
"I've learned a long time ago
how to keep a secret.
"That Empire secret, I had to
keep it for a year and a half."
But that's before social media.
I said, "All it takes is one person
in a lab, treating the film,
"color correction, there's just
so many variables and so many unknowns.
"One person who sees that
and goes on social media, goes,
"'Guess what I saw today.'"
It was one of those times
when everybody was biting their
nails right to the bitter end.
Every day, to be honest,
before the episode aired,
folks would kinda google online,
"The Mandalorian,"
just to see whatever the
latest information was out there.
Double checking that the one character
that we knew we had to keep secret
was not gonna get leaked.
Everybody knew that Rosario
was gonna be Ahsoka.
Everybody knew that Temuera
was gonna be Boba.
Everything leaked, we
didn't announce anything.
But little by little, leaks spring,
and you want the ship to get back to
the harbor before the whole thing is done.
We had to keep Mark a secret.
That went from creating misleads in the script,
creating art work that was not Luke,
creating some temporary visual effects
that were the character of Plo Koon.
It's fairly well known by deep core fans
that Plo Koon's my favorite Jedi.
And a lot of people, if
Plo Koon from the script got out,
would assume, "Well, of course,
'cause Dave likes Plo Koon."
So there's these layers of
intrigue that we try to weave.
We had a digital Plo Koon head
placed on the actor in dailies.
So it looked like Plo Koon.
In the first season, Jon
was able to successfully
keep Grogu a secret, but was revealed
at the end of the first episode.
Second season, we had to make it
through the entire season
to the end of the last episode
and not have this spoiled.
In hindsight, it's a bit of a
miracle that it remained a secret,
and I'm thrilled
because for people to be able to
discover that in real time was magical.
I remember the first time
we all crowded into the editing room
once Peyton had a rough cut.
There was about seven of us
and six folks had tears in their eyes.
It was spectacular.
And then, the realization was,
"Oh, boy, this really works.
We've now gotta change his face."
Only now would we realize what it is
The responsibility we have
to make this moment work,
once we do the visual effects.
It was frightening.
This is a character that people have
over a 40-year relationship with, right?
There is an emotion that just comes
out of seeing that character again.
Certainly seeing that character
show up in this show.
And also for fans
You know, I was 13 when
the original Star Wars opened,
so I grew up with Star Wars.
And there was always that fanboy
part of me that wanted to see,
"What's he like in full, peak-Jedi mode
post-Return of the Jedi?"
We had a chance to do that.
There should be some injury,
and then it's the Force
I remember joking with George, I said,
"You know, when Return of The Jedi
ends, it's all over for me."
And that would almost be like
taking three movies to tell you
how James Bond earned his license to k*ll.
And then it's over.
No Dr. No, no Goldfinger,
no From Russia with Love.
And I was joking, really,
but it did occur to me that
he went from a farm boy,
then to a trainee to a Jedi.
And yet, then it's over, and there's no
tales of his exploits as a Jedi.
So, it was nice to have a rare look
at what he would be doing prior
to establishing the Jedi Academy,
but post Jedi.
This last hallway, it's the crescendo, right?
So, we've now seen on every
deck, him moving through.
We had a discussion
about it would be very easy to just
make him so over-the-top skilled,
but I was like, "You know, what's
interesting is, he's had training,
"but I don't know who's been
teaching him sword-fight training."
So, he had to have a style that was better
than what we saw in Jedi,
but fundamentally still of the same tree
of sword-fighting technique.
And his technique and Ahsoka's
technique should be very different.
And technically, she's had vastly
more training than he ever has.
She's his senior, which is
difficult for people to remember
'cause of when these
characters were created.
So, a lot of consideration
given to every detail.
We decided to have him look
like he did in Return of the Jedi.
I knew it as I was an usher in the movie
theater when it was playing.
I saw it a lot.
Interestingly, the Luke costume from
Jedi is not the color you think it is.
We have to make decisions like,
"It's really brown, but it looks black."
There's something very dramatic about this.
Part of it was, "Well, it should look black."
The reason they went with that costume
was to create some moral ambiguity
whether he had turned to the dark side,
with him doing a bit of a
Force choke on the Gamorreans.
That's a part of the story of Luke,
which isn't part of the story for us.
But if we didn't have that look,
it would deviate from
people's collective memory
of what Luke Skywalker
looks like at that moment.
So, there's a million little
conversations we had.
And fortunately, Peyton Reed's
a huge fan, Dave's a huge fan,
and so we all kind of look at photos,
and then we make decisions together.
And go down. Is it like a downward
motion or just that fist?
-I think it's just the fist. Yeah.
-Okay.
What makes Luke, Luke?
What expressions make Luke, Luke?
What lighting scenarios make Luke, Luke?
It's really interesting
if you look at the footage.
In every scene, in every shot,
he looks a little bit different.
And when you start getting down to it
and you analyze his cheek
shape or his nose shape,
he's the same person, but in
different lighting scenarios,
it can definitely read differently.
In Jabba's palace,
with some very stark lighting on him,
he looks a particular way.
And then he's on Endor and
he's hanging upside down
when the Ewoks have captured
him, he looks very different.
So, if you line up all the likeness
of Luke across all those movies,
people will point to different images
as to what their version of Luke
in their mind looks like.
That was the same when
we were doing the work.
We would look at something,
whether it was a haircut,
whether it was a pose,
whether it was a smile,
or a glint in his character's eye.
And people had a different impression of,
"Is the likeness on-target?"
And so, we would experiment
with different things.
We would change the hair,
we would put it over the ears,
we would have it fall
further behind his neck.
We would change his neck size,
bring his collar up, his shoulders down.
And all of this is to test.
To see when do we go too far.
When does the likeness stop?
Digital faces are the most difficult
visual effect in the entire world.
And it's not just because it's technically hard
or the technology is still emerging.
It's because every human
is an expert in faces.
There's something so magical
and innate about the human face.
And everybody has a point of view
on how to read a human face.
And then you add on top of it,
such a recognizable human face
that means so much to so many people.
May the Force be with you.
Every aspect of this is important.
The build-up of X-wing, to lightsaber,
to lightsaber color, to fighting style,
to outside the door with
the cloak, to reveal,
builds the anticipation
that says, "I want this."
When you want this 'cause
you're bought in as the audience,
then the face and the voice
are gonna work better, right?
And suddenly you have this fusion moment
where the wish fulfillment meets
the expectation of the story,
what it's telling, and it's just
ballistic and it all happens.
But if any one of those things fails,
it's gonna derail the rest of it.
You know, I think people focus
on one thing and say, "Well, the face"
Okay, but it's probably
a lot of other things
that are making the buy-in work or not.
That's the first time in that last episode
that we actually hear any music
that's from the original trilogy.
Are you a Jedi?
I am.
Everything up to that point
had been original music by Ludwig.
And that's the first time you
could hear any John Williams music.
And that also Let's never underestimate
the importance of John Williams.
Because that's part of what
makes Star Wars, Star Wars.
And so, for us to not use any of
those themes for any of the show
and then to use it at this point,
it's saving a very powerful tool
that I think all those things
help to sell the visual effect.
He doesn't want to go with you.
He wants your permission.
You know, many years
ago, I think it was 1993,
I was directing a making-of documentary
for Forrest Gump with Robert Zemeckis.
ILM at that time was doing
stuff where they made JFK talk
and President Johnson, and people
Forrest Gump meets along the way.
I remember, Ken Ralston and Bob Zemeckis,
all the visual effects people
who were working on that movie
having that very conversation in the early '90s,
about, like, this is really, you know
"We're just sort of starting
to crack this technology
"in a kind of remedial way."
But there's gonna come a point
where it'll be so sophisticated
that, you know, it could certainly
be used in really bad ways.
Well, a tool is neither
good nor bad in and of itself.
It's kind of how the artist wields the tool
and, you know, we try to
apply ethics to what we do,
where we're only using these tools for good.
Much like in The Sorcerer's Apprentice in Fantasia,
you have a new technology available to you,
just as Mickey had the magic book.
That magic book allowed him
to have the mops carry the buckets
and do the work for him.
And every technology is like that,
and there are unintended consequences
with new innovations
if you don't fully appreciate
what these things are capable of.
I think in the case of Deepfake,
you know, as we're exploring
these different technologies
to make Luke Skywalker
look young for a story
we couldn't tell any other way,
and we're telling you how we do it,
showing you this is stuff
we didn't develop,
this is stuff that's available, readily,
it sort of is a reminder that
it might be used for purposes
that are more misleading
and more detrimental.
And what's nice about doing this
is we could point to it and say,
"Well, we still have a few years
before it really gets indistinguishable."
But it will get to a point
where you can't tell them apart.
And it made us think about it,
because when you know it's there,
it's kind of fun and a point of discussion.
But something people didn't realize
is that his voice isn't real.
His voice, the young Luke Skywalker voice,
is completely synthesized using
an application called Respeecher.
It's a neural network you feed
information into and it learns.
So I had archival material
from Mark in that era.
We had clean recorded ADR
from the original films,
a book on tape he'd done from those eras,
and then also Star Wars radio plays
he had done back in that time.
I was able to get clean recordings
of that, feed it into the system,
they were able to slice it up and feed
their neural network to learn this data.
The computer is sampling sounds and
tones from younger Mark Hamill
and creating a performance
that sounds like that Luke Skywalker.
He is strong with the Force.
But talent without training is nothing.
You know, it makes you realize
that it becomes harder
to trust your eyes and ears
when it comes to this stuff.
And, so I mean, the good news
is that technology is probably
You know, technology is not
going away, in any event.
But other people who understand technology,
if we can anticipate these things
Even now, there's blockchain technology,
like we talk about chain codes.
My chain code has been encoded
in this armor for 25 years.
You see, this is me. Boba Fett.
We were alluding to that there's
a blockchain identification
that everybody has.
I wonder if certain images or videos
that are released in official capacity
could have some kind of a stamp with it.
Something When you see something,
that you know it's real.
Because it's becoming harder
to tell fake from real.
And if we know that, we have
the technology that could address that.
Now, having tokens that are associated,
that have, "Where does this image
come from?" Built into the blockchain.
"How has it been edited or changed?
When was it created?"
Those are identifiers that don't require
a database or a central governing body.
However, if the big tech companies
got together and say,
"Come up with a standard of verification,"
they do it in social media.
I know if somebody's giving a real quote
as they're verified with a blue checkmark,
if they're somebody who's
of social consequence,
that they've deemed
somebody they would verify.
And like in Fantasia,
when the wizard comes in
and he's able to undo the things
that Mickey did in his haste.
And because he was
engaging with technologies,
or, in this case, magic, that he didn't
understand the full ramifications of.
The good news is
we have all these wonderful technologies
available to us to tell stories.
Only gonna get better.
Part of our responsibility,
you guys and me,
is to keep an eye on that
and see how we can help
maximize the benefit while diminishing
or eliminating the downside.
Growing up with Star Wars,
you never think you'd be a part of making it.
For Jon, I think it's so special
to have a character like Grogu
that can stand right next to R2-D2
in the same frame and talk to him.
You don't ever imagine that.
And it's a huge responsibility to put
that character next to those characters.
I remember the look on Jon's face.
We were talking about
the scene, getting into it,
and I said, "Well, if we bring
Luke in, you get Artoo."
And Jon was like, "Artoo."
My favorite character when I was little.
Oh, my God They didn't even have
toys of him. Had the little figures.
If I could have a radio-control one
like they have now,
I would've lost my mind.
You know that you see
someone's inner child,
and I saw in Jon, I saw in him that
young person that first saw Star Wars.
It was right there in front of me
when I mentioned Artoo.
And so I immediately did a sketch
of Artoo talking to Grogu.
And I was like, "The moment we want
"is the one that's like
when Wicket meets Artoo."
In post, we reanimated his little lights.
That was a lot of fun, actually.
For his lens that's right in
front that moves around,
gives you an indication of his
mood and what he's thinking,
we took an animation
directly from Return of the Jedi
and reanimated it for the scene
and got to put it in there.
So we got to use some Return of the Jedi
directly on Artoo.
And action!
It was already intense because
My God, here's Mark Hamill
dressed as Luke Skywalker,
on our set in a starship hallway.
It was just It felt like a dream.
It was very strange.
And I was fine. And then R2-D2 rolled on.
And I just had a moment
where R2-D2 was there
and I That's when I broke down.
And it felt I didn't understand
why it felt silly, you know?
But I started tearing up.
And I was like,
"Let me remember this moment."
Uh, even now, I'm sort of moved.
But I don't understand why,
I really don't.
I don't understand why.
But it just shows you
how deep that stuff goes,
and what it touches from your
childhood and how you felt then.
For a generation of kids now,
Grogu represents something
that Artoo represented to me,
that Yoda represented to me.
It's a magic, special character
that we take very good care of, I hope.
The Grogu puppet is so believable.
Déjà vu with Yoda, you know?
I mean, Yoda was so real to me.
I just thought, when I
was watching the episodes,
I said, "I've got to meet the Child,"
and it's justified
because I'm the only one
that has any experience
with the species.
Hey, go on.
That's who you belong with.
He's one of your kind.
It was important that the end of that show
have a really strong, slow build,
and build in emotion
about how the audience was responding
to the appearance of that character
and to the separation of Mando and Grogu.
I talked to Jon a lot
about the ending of E.T.
The way that you spend
a whole movie with E.T. and Elliott.
And then, there's a certain point
where E.T. has to go.
And that whole ending
where Spielberg goes around
and you're just witnessing
the emotion between E.T. and Elliott.
The emotion of E.T.'s mom and brother,
everybody in that scene,
and it is all through
this amazing John Williams score.
I said, "We want to introduce a bit
of that into the Star Wars universe."
Let's not be afraid of that
emotion at the end of the thing,
'cause that's
To me, that was the win of that episode.
And it felt like it merited it, because
to split up those two characters
at the end of that season
broke a lot of hearts.
All right, pal. It's time to go.
Don't be afraid.
What was interesting about
watching Peyton's episode, 208,
I was watching it with my family,
and so there was a little bit of a gap
in your muscle memory
of how the episode played out.
I got pretty choked up watching it.
And not only seeing the character
and emotion come though
and, of course, the spectacular music,
but I think it was the finally
letting go of the emotion of,
"Now the world knows.
"Now we can let go of some of
what's been inside this whole time."
And maybe I can say "Luke Skywalker"?
Maybe not. I'm not sure.
To see the reactions, that was
a high point of my whole career.
That was definitely on those moments
you could count on one hand,
of what makes you grateful
that you're doing what you're doing,
and to hear Peyton react and Dave
react and especially Mark.
When Mark was seeing the stuff
And we live in an interesting time.
We live in a time when people
make their feelings known.
And if you choose to,
you could dip into that river
of information, of feedback.
Jon sent me links to reaction videos,
which were just, you know
'Cause I don't get to see
these things in the audience.
To see grown men cry.
And just those people
screaming their heads off.
It was really, really thrilling for me
to see them enjoying it so much.
We love the fans. If it weren't for them,
I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you.
They are the most loyal,
passionate group of people
that I've ever encountered.
I just have a deep gratitude
to their enthusiasm over the years.
I never expected that, and it's just
been something that I really cherish.
This job is great in so many ways,
and I think people think the job is great,
'cause we get to tell the story,
because we do these effects,
because we get these experiences,
because we go to Celebration, right?
But also great is just standing on the side
and watching somebody
Like I said, I saw the child inside Jon,
that he experienced Star Wars.
I sit there with Peyton, you see
your crew just staring at Mark
and you realize they're remembering
what it meant to them.
And you realize that you've been
a part of constructing something
that's giving that experience to people.
This good feeling, which, fundamentally,
Star Wars should deliver a good feeling.
An uplifting feeling in you and
your family, your kids, whatever.
A lot of Star Wars fans are of this age
where they're not the
Luke Skywalkers anymore.
They're the parents now, and
they're saying goodbye to their kids
as they go off to school or off to college.
And I think that what's nice
about a good myth and a good story
and the world that George created
is that there's room for all
the archetypes of every age,
and I think that's part of why it becomes
an intergenerational experience.
And just as my father brought
me to the first Star Wars,
there's a lot of people sitting
on the couch with their kids.
They may be watching for
different reasons, like different things.
But I like, you know, in this
atomized entertainment economy
where everybody is looking at things
that are bespoke for them
and everybody has their own log-in
and everybody has their own platform
that they like to look at,
to have a moment where you could have
several members of a family together,
watching the same thing and
sharing the same experience.
That's what good television
and good movies are all about
and I really I'm very proud of that,
The Mandalorian has that element to it.
And it's a great way to introduce
the next generation to Star Wars.
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