JON FAVREAU: I think there's a interplay
with storytellers and the people you're telling the story to.
THE MANDALORIAN: 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.
(COOS)
BO-KATAN: 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." (CHUCKLES)
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.
REED: We had a lot of conversations
in the writing, in the shooting, 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.
FILONI: 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.
THE MANDALORIAN: 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.
-FINN: How do we thank you? -Win the war!
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.
DARTH VADER: It is pointless to resist, my son.
HAMILL: 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?
REED: 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.
FAVREAU: 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.
REED: He came out and he was thrilled.
And I think a huge weight was lifted off of Jon's shoulders
when that happened. (CHUCKLES)
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.
THE MANDALORIAN: 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.
FAVREAU: 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.
JOHN KNOLL: 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.
KELLER: 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.
BLUFF: 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.
TRENT CLAUS: 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.
FAVREAU: 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.
LUKE: Come, little one.
BLUFF: 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.
CLAUS: 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.
KELLER: 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 shooting, 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.
BLUFF: Even when we'd be shooting with these characters on set,
most of the company would be on location at Simi Valley
for Robert Rodriguez's episode.
And so, the shooting 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.
HAMILL: 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.'"
BLUFF: 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.
FAVREAU: 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.
REED: 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.
(CLEARS THROAT) 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.
BLUFF: 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.
(LAUGHS)
REED: 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...
(IMITATING CRACKLING NOISES)
HAMILL: 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 kill. 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.
FILONI: 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.
FAVREAU: 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.
FAVREAU: 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?
-MAN: 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.
BLUFF: 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.
FAVREAU: That's the first time in that last episode
that we actually hear any music
that's from the original trilogy.
(BINARY SUNSET PLAYING)
THE MANDALORIAN: 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.
(CHUCKLES)
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.
THE MANDALORIAN: 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.
KNOLL: 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.
FAVREAU: 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.
LUKE: 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.
FAVREAU: 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.
FILONI: 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.
(R2-D2 BLEEPING)
FILONI: 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.
FILONI: 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."
(R2-D2 BLEEPING)
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.
(R2-D2 BLEEPING)
MAN: And action!
FAVREAU: 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.
(COOS)
HAMILL: 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.
THE MANDALORIAN: 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.
BLUFF: 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. (CHUCKLES)
FAVREAU: 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. (LAUGHS)
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.
FILONI: 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.