So, here we are in a train yard in Los Angeles.
We got our whole cast here, and we're having a good time.
We're trying to draw from, uh, all over from Star Wars.
It's really helpful for authenticity.
And the enthusiasm is infectious.
I'm a fan since I was little.
And now I'm surrounded by other fans, too.
And it's been a real treat.
There's a whole generation, that was the age I was
when I saw the original trilogy that were that age...
Sure, for the prequels.
When they saw the prequels.
And you were around for the prequels. You were doing it...
I was.
That was super cutting-edge stuff,
just like the motion control stuff was cutting-edge then.
Now it feels like that's nostalgic, in a way,
compared to what we're able to do now.
Yeah.
You had to reengage with Star Wars
after people hadn't seen it for how long since the original trilogy?
Return of the Jedi was, what, 1983?
And then we're '99.
I was in high school.
I was an usher at the RKO Keith's in Flushing when that movie was playing.
I went from being a kid for the first one,
by the last one I was with the Ewoks and everything,
I was sort of, uh, It was no longer my main focus, you know?
I sort of moved on to the Mad Max movies
and The Road Warrior, that kind of stuff.
So, what was it like to...
Did you ever talk about these things while working on that?
What was Star Wars?
Or was it always George's vision, and he knew exactly what he wanted to do?
I was very inspired to enter the industry because of Star Wars.
In fact, I was 14 when Star Wars came out
and started to think a little bit about what am I gonna do with my career?
And, um, there was mechanical engineering or maybe architecture and...
But then Star Wars came out,
and suddenly there was all this exciting new stuff happening in entertainment.
And it was really energizing and inspiring.
And that really pushed me over the edge to want to go into the industry.
And so...
Then, all the steps that I took that landed me at ILM were with the hope that,
"I want to work on something as big and ambitious as a Star Wars movie someday".
And I just happened to be in the right place at the right time
when George was starting to ramp up new Star Wars films.
Were you at ILM at the time?
Yeah.
You were already there, and then, "Everybody, we're gonna make Star Wars"?
That's kinda what happened?
Yes, in a way and...
Everybody who was working at ILM loved Star Wars,
not thinking you're gonna do it again and George enters and says,
"We'll make three more Star Wars movies".
We had company meetings annually and, uh...
George would address everybody and take questions,
and inevitably, every year someone would ask...
"What about Star Wars?"
"Are you gonna do more Star Wars movies?"
And...
The first few years I was there, he was always noncommittal,
"Yeah, I don't know. Maybe someday".
And then I remember that one year, somebody asked that same question,
and he went, "Hmm, yeah, maybe".
Well, I can speak to that,
'cause I was around with the movies that were in between, which is the Indiana Jones movies.
And I don't think he ever stopped thinking about whether he would do more Star Wars,
and I think what happened during Indy was that he was not on the floor directing.
He was not necessarily, you know, "in it" making...
Which was Steven.
'Cause it's primarily Steven.
He was producing.
Exactly.
I think with anybody like George, and anyone who's a filmmaker,
they get antsy after a while
at not being able to be on that floor telling stories, making movies.
And his love of pushing the technology,
obviously, we were doing a certain amount of that
with each of the Indiana Jones movies.
But it wasn't like Star Wars.
And I think that each time we would push the technology
in making those movies,
he got the bug to start thinking about what that might mean for Star Wars.
I think Star Wars is such a part of people's lives,
and it's something they see now on a regular basis
that when you say "George Lucas, he created it",
I don't think people give enough full value to what that means.
I like to think I do, but I work with him, so I've seen him create it.
I've seen the person that comes up with the lines and the dialogue
and understands Anakin Skywalker and Luke Skywalker in a very deep level,
because those characters are a part of him.
And for my part, joining Lucasfilm, I always respected that.
I never felt that Star Wars is something that was mine.
I felt privileged to be a part of telling the story.
I felt grateful that I got to do it with George
and that I would write stories and try and tell stories, and he would say,
"Okay, well, that's not what I meant", or "that's not how that works".
and he would course-correct it, because he should. It's his story.
He created the universe, the Millennium Falcon, Chewbacca, Yoda.
I mean, all these things, Darth Vader...all came out of his brain,
and you just need to tap into that to stay true to kind of what this is
and do what George did,
which is constantly find new ways to tell these stories.
I've always been in awe
of Star Wars and the magic of that.
What George has always done is bring collaborators in
and see where you might go or take this.
He really understood that the characters
are meant to expand in ways that George might not even predict.
And he's always been inclusive in that way.
He's always wanted to really push the story
in directions that includes other storytellers.
That's good.
I really love Star Wars and obsessed over it in many different ways.
And what was always cool about Star Wars was that it was a galaxy,
and therefore as a kid growing up,
I always felt that there were stories within that galaxy
that I could be a part of and was a part of telling,
even if it was just me and my friends,
or me by myself with my action figures.
Okay, laugh.
And flames!
Whoa. Easy, easy.
It's fascinating to experience that as a child.
You know, to have your imagination so enriched by these stories.
There are such universal themes in the Star Wars stories,
and ironically, I think people feel that despite being fantasy,
it reflects the world we actually live in,
in its inclusiveness and diversity and conflict.
Wars not make one great.
The spirit of Star Wars,
it's always been about these young dreamers and hot rods
and everything else, and so...
What I feel is so great about the team that's come together
is that everyone is coming with their own experiences
to a universe and a galaxy that can support it.
And I think Jon wants to see that,
and everyone's gonna have their own different point of view
of what makes Star Wars special to them.
But I think that's exactly why this show is so exciting,
because it can hold all of that,
because the galaxy has always been that big.
Just like the good old days.
Yeah, just like the good old days.
Let's talk about George and all of...because I don't think people understand...
Let's rattle off all the breakthroughs...
Jeez.
That he had, starting...
I'll start...
We'll go around. Let's do a party game.
Everybody say one.
When I came in the company, I was astounded to find out
that there were over 126 patents
literally new technology that he had created.
- Astounding. - Like Edison Lab.
So, let's start. Here, I'll do one. First CG character.
EditDroid.
EditDroid was turned into Avid.
Motion control.
For the miniatures at Kerner?
Yeah. Well, first motion control system on Star Wars, first film.
A good question that you know the answer to is,
which Star Wars film has the most practical miniatures in it of all the films. Including the new ones?
Episode I.
Phantom Menace.
That's all miniature work.
Everybody's like, "That's CG". No, that's real miniatures.
Models.
Yeah, models. Beautiful and big models.
What else we got?
It's not a single type of thing,
but Jurassic Park was a massive sea change for visual effects.
That was the tipping point.
Before that, you'd had the chrome T-1000.
People thought,
"Okay, that's suitable for computer graphics, it's a chrome dude".
It doesn't look like a real person.
There were other things that were kind of...
The Abyss really started that, and that was also ILM, right?
Abyss, then T2, and then Jurassic,
and that was when people saw for the first time it was flesh and blood.
Not like someone else was doing Abyss
and ILM jumped in to do Jurassic.
Back then, there were very few places.
When the dinosaurs come onto the screen for the first time,
I sat up in my seat and I thought, "I have to know how they did this",
because I understand that the computer, there's computer graphic involved.
I could learn how to do this.
I'll never be the world's greatest artist at painting or drawing,
but I feel like I can learn how to do this on the computer.
I can get a book, I can find people, 'cause this is gonna absolutely explode.
And that's how I started on my journey.
It was that moment, seeing that movie, and seeing things I need to know.
It makes me think, hearing you talk about this...
I'd be curious from all of you guys because of what we all do
and what we all get excited about.
What your movie experience was, when that light bulb went off,
and you're like, "I'm doing this"?
For me, it was the original King Kong. I saw it on TV when I was six or seven,
and I was really unhappy with the treatment of Kong
at the end, so my mom helped me draft a letter
to the local TV station who I held responsible, and...
Wow!
But it got me interested in stop motion,
so I was doing stop motion when Star Wars came out.
I was 13, and shooting stop motion stuff with a Super 8 camera.
Star Wars came out and that broadened
my whole interest in visual effects.
Like, how Luke's speeder was done, how the lightsabers were done,
the spaceships and everything else. And so that kind of sealed the deal.
For over a thousand generations,
the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic
before the dark times.
Star Wars was a big influence on me,
'cause it came out in '77. I was born in '66,
so I was right at the right age for that thing to hit.
I don't remember a commercial,
I remember seeing a picture in the newspaper,
like The New York Post, about the movie.
And I saw the picture of Chewbacca and Han Solo.
Whatever the headline was, I was intrigued.
And I went to see it, and then it was just, like...
It just pinned my ears back just looking at that thing.
And I was just mouth agape.
So my tastes formed around George Lucas's Star Wars.
I remember, very vividly,
scoring tickets to Return of the Jedi.
It felt like the golden ticket
for getting into Willy Wonka's chocolate factory.
That's right, R2. We're going to the Dagobah system.
I have a promise to keep,
to an old friend.
It's so funny the way a child's imagination works,
because I remember, so specifically,
knowing we had tickets to the 3:00 p.m. showing
and staring at the poster,
and I'm pretty sure it was Luke Skywalker's hand
holding the lightsaber.
It felt like a movie moment, like the camera should have been there,
close on my face, on the hand and everything with Star Wars music,
and I went, "I'm finally going to see this movie".
Welcome, young Skywalker.
I have been expecting you.
So, when these kinds of movies come into your imagination as a child,
it really shapes a lot
and sets a certain standard of entertainment
that is hard to match.
He's all yours, bounty hunter.
As I became more of a student of filmmaking
I really began to appreciate the brilliance of Star Wars,
and what Lucas had created.
And then I, of course, started to read more.
And the hero's journey and all those kinds of books
and began to really appreciate Joe Campbell
and what he was saying, and understand a lot more.
Luke,
you do not yet realize your importance.
You have only begun to discover your power.
Join me, and I will complete your training.
It was beyond being groundbreaking, Star Wars was.
It was, in its own way, like a crack into some other universe
that I hadn't been exposed to.
The Force is what gives a Jedi his power.
It's an energy field created by all living things.
It surrounds us and penetrates us.
It binds the galaxy together.
So it was pretty phenomenal.
Not only what it was at the time, but what it has become.
I, for one, I celebrate your success.
Because it is my success as well.
And something that I didn't really appreciate till later in life,
was in Empire Strikes Back, and that's Luke's training.
Like, I think that all of that stuff with Yoda,
it went over my head when I was a kid
And it freaked me out when he goes into that cave
and he sees his face in the mask, and I was like, "What is this movie?
"It isn't like the last".
Yeah.
But that darkness and all of the messages,
and I think my favorite of all of the lines...
And definitely in that film was when, um, you know,
when he's trying to get the ship out of the swamp.
And he can't do it, and then...
Then Yoda brings the ship out,
all the way out, floats it over and then puts it down,
and Luke says, "I don't believe it".
And he goes, "That's why you fail".
That's so good.
I just got chills when you said that.
That, that's really...
Yeah, totally.
You're right, you appreciate that scene when you go back to it.
You go back to it and you go,
oh, there's so many deep themes...
Especially in terms of spirituality and...
Even just how he introduced himself.
Luke thinks he's looking for this great Jedi, and it's...
"Wars don't make one great".
Yeah.
I thought it was special the way they mixed creatures
and the Henson stuff with live action.
And I don't think anyone's done it quite like that.
Um, so, like, the training scene for that,
when I was trying to do the montage
with the Ugnaught trying to teach IG to walk,
that tone was actually really difficult to find,
'cause it...in three, it had been very clear
it was very clear it was a Western, it was Yojimbo.
So it was a very clear tone, and that was lyrical and poetic.
And it was mixing, and trying to actually deliver something quite with a lot of gravitas...
Yes.
With a droid and an animatronic, you know, Ugnaught, which is...
That's teaching him.
- That's... - It's great...
But that's what's special. Nothing else...
There's no other series or world that does that.
And we talked about this.
It's hard to do that.
Like the Pietà of him holding the droid.
'Cause what we had to do was take the droid that was just terrible,
and was gonna actually shoot the bounty.
And he took him out.
And he wasn't...he didn't really have a personality.
And Mando hated droids because of what he had experienced.
And then this specific droid is really bad.
And then, what could you do to redeem that thing?
And part of it was set up by this beautiful, lyrical prologue of...
And it's sort of silly, but it's also,
that kinda makes it, to me, when it's right on that edge,
I find it really compelling.
And I love how he's cradling it...
Yeah.
And the speech that Nick Nolte gives about how he found him
and he nursed him back to health, and taught him the ways of this and that.
And you see all the things you shot that...
And the camera's flowing
from one to the next...
Very poetic and different.
His animation's great. We've been working so long on that stuff,
just to get it right to fit that tone.
And then finally he comes out of it,
and everybody's won over, but Mando doesn't know what to think.
And it's not till the end when you, you know,
make that act of self-sacrifice. He doesn't want you to go.
So that whole flip, to earn that over the course of two episodes,
and take that character, it gives Mando an arc.
And it also gives IG an arc.
So you're taking all these characters that are fun and cool,
and, you know, action movie, shoot-'em-up,
and then it turns into something with a heart to it.
That's part of what makes a Western also,
that there's a deep emotion running through it,
even though you think it's about the shootouts in the O.K. Corral,
and jumping from the horse to the wagon,
but really it's about humanity.
And you capture it with two not-human characters.
Yeah.
And you kill 'em both, Jon.
Yeah.
That's very true.
That's true.
Poor Ugnaught.
That's part of it, too.
That's part of it. If you don't, that doesn't matter.
This is an extension of what mythology is,
which is you're telling stories to the generation that's coming of age,
to teach them the lessons of life through entertainment.
In our culture, you do it through movies.
Size matters not. Look at me.
Judge me by my size, do you?
At first, you kind of say it
'cause that's what the filmmakers you look up to say.
But the more you learn about them, you realize that it's really powerful.
Story is still important, and story with progression,
and the idea of sacrifice and perseverance and evolution through challenge.
And all of the little specificities that come along with it.
When one chooses to walk the Way of the Mandalore,
you are both hunter and prey.
I guess inside of all of us, there's that hero that's on that journey.
And in search of and the connection to father,
and to the father at large, the greater father, you know.
The connection to all that is and how we access that
and how we utilize that,
and ultimately how that informs us in how we continue our journey
as a result of that information, and sometimes how we fight against it.
And that very fight is the thing that creates a kind of conflict in us
that doesn't allow us to continue the journey.
I can't kill my own father.
Then the Emperor has already won.
You were our only hope.
It's kind of remarkable that a creative force
has the foresight and the understanding of something that I didn't quite get,
you know, when I was in my early 20s.
I think I was in search of something that already existed,
but for many of us, I guess, the more we studied or grew,
or became maybe a little more evolved,
we could then relate to what George Lucas was saying in a movie.
That was about so much more than what that movie appeared to be about.
I'll not leave you here. I've got to save you.
You already have.
Prequels were almost an impossible task.
How do you tell a story we've all grown up with, imagining who Anakin Skywalker was?
You saw things in Phantom Menace that you just imagined, like the Jedi council,
and none of it really was what I had expected,
but I know now that that's just how creative George is.
He just sees it differently, and he's laying it down.
I love the fight with Darth Maul,
not because it's a lightsaber fight, but because George is so good
at crafting why that fight's important...
- Mmm. - Every time.
Like, the Obi-Wan-Darth Vader fight
isn't the most wonderfully staged combat that you're ever going to see,
but there's so much at stake. It's so meaningful when Obi-Wan dies,
that we all feel like Luke.
In Phantom Menace,
you see these two Jedi in their prime fight this evil villain.
Maul couldn't be more obviously the villain. He's designed to look evil.
And he is evil, and he expresses that from his face to the type of lightsaber he fights with.
What's at stake is how Anakin is gonna turn out
'cause Qui-Gon is different from other Jedi,
you get that in the movie.
Qui-Gon is fighting because he knows he's the father that Anakin needs.
Qui-Gon hasn't given up on the fact that Jedi are supposed to actually care
and love, and that that's not a bad thing.
The rest of the Jedi are so detached and they've become so political
that they've lost their way.
And Yoda starts to see that in the second film.
But Qui-Gon is ahead of them all.
That's why he's not part of the council, so he's fighting for Anakin.
So it's the Duel of the Fates. The fate of this child.
And depending on how this fight goes, Anakin is gonna...
His life will be dramatically different. So Qui-Gon loses, of course.
The father figure...
'Cause he knew what it meant
to take this kid away from his mother when he had an attachment,
and he's left with Obi-Wan.
Obi-Wan trains Anakin at first out of a promise he makes to Qui-Gon,
not because he cares about him.
When they find Anakin on Tatooine, he says,
"I feel like we've found another useless lifeform".
He's comparing Anakin to Jar Jar.
And he's saying, "This is a waste of time. Why are we doing this"?
Why do you see importance in these creatures like Jar Jar Binks
and this 10-year-old boy? This is useless.
So he's a brother to Anakin, eventually, but he's not a father figure.
That's a failing for Anakin. He doesn't have the family that he needs.
He loses his mother in the next film.
He fails on this promise he made, "Mother, I will come back and save you".
So he's left completely vulnerable.
And Star Wars ultimately is about family.
So that moment in that movie, which a lot of people diminish as,
"Oh, this is a cool lightsaber fight".
But it's everything that the entire three films of the prequels hangs on,
is that one particular fight. And Maul serves his purpose,
and, at that point, died before George made me bring him back.
But he died, showing you how the Emperor is completely self-serving.
He doesn't care, he's using people, and now he's gonna use this child.
That falls all the way through to the line which terrified me as a kid,
when the Emperor tells Luke, "You, like your father, are now mine".
And the idea, when I was a little kid,
watching that movie of some evil person possessing my father,
making him do things or making him be evil was terrifying.
That was like a thought that was horrible.
It's amazing when you watch Return of the Jedi
that Luke has never done anything that indicates bad character.
He has a tendency to be dark and people wanted Anakin,
"He should have been darker as a character".
It's not true at all. I believed Luke would turn to the dark side
in Return of the Jedi, I believe that was on the table.
I believed that he would kill the Emperor.
The way George arranges the story, I knew that was the wrong thing to do.
When he's saying, you know, "You want your weapon",
"Strike me down. I am defenseless",
he wants him to give in to his anger and his hate,
and the fear, the structure George laid out in all the movies,
is coming to fruition now,
and the only thing that's gonna save him is not his connection to the Force,
it's not the powers he's learned.
It's not all these things that are an advantage,
that's gotten him to the table.
But what saves Luke is his ability to look at all that
and look at his father and say, "No,
"I'm gonna throw away this weapon. I'm not gonna do that.
"I'm gonna let that go and be selfless".
And he says, "I am a Jedi like my father before me".
But what he's really saying, and why we connect...
I connect to it 'cause he's saying, "I love my father
"and there's nothing you can do that's gonna change that".
The Emperor can't understand that connection.
"Why won't you take from the power of the galaxy?
"Why won't you take this?"
And Anakin, in that moment, has to be the father that he's never had.
He has to give up all the power in the galaxy and save his son.
And that's the selfless act that he does in return for his son.
And that's what saves him in turn...
Son saves the father, the father saves the son
and it works out perfectly,
and I draw that line all the way from The Phantom Menace to Jedi.
That's the story of Star Wars.
So when he pops the helmet...
When he pops the helmet off, and that moment was part of the...
- Yeah... - Fated arc?
It's all part of the fated arc and why it works and why we care.
It's not about X-wings, it's not all about all these...
The things we we decorate Star Wars in. It's important, it's part of the genius.
But we soulfully react, like...
We don't just want an action movie, we want to feel uplifted.
And Star Wars is an adventure that makes you feel good, you know?
It makes me feel like, "Wow, I want to be a part of that".
So that's what I always go back to with Star Wars,
is this selfless act and this family dynamic,
which is so important to George,
so important to the foundation of Star Wars.
That's in us, and what I like about it is,
it is saying there's a lot of hope out there,
that we fundamentally want to be good people,
that we can be driven to do terrible things,
but that we can persevere through selfless action.
So George has this hopeful story,
and it's something that he's reiterated most times I've seen him,
you know, after we've been making things without him is,
"Remember to make these stories hopeful.
"Remember to give that to kids because they really need it".
And so that's just something to keep in mind.
Did I bring us down? Or did I lift us up?
Yeah.
Beautiful, that was beautiful.
I think we're done.
It's hopeful for me.
Yeah.