Oh hey! Another made-for-TV Star Wars documentary directed by Mr. Robert Guenette coming out almost immediately after one of the main films! I had planned on covering documentaries at some point when I dreamed up 20XX: A Star Wars Event, but it was only after watching The Making of Star Wars and finding out the director did two more–SP FX: Special Effects – The Empire Strikes Back and this one–that I decided to follow each of the original trilogy films with their corresponding doc. And I–a former die hard Star Wars nerd–actually learned a fair amount watching these, so I can’t complain.
This documentary is co-hosted by Carrie Fisher and Billy Dee Williams, each swapping to cover the creation process behind the aliens in Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi. I mean, it is the title, so that makes sense. Carrie starts with the teddy bear-like ewoks and we learn that originally they were supposed to be wookiees–like Chewbacca–who turned the tide against the Empire. But as Chewie became more of a technologically-adept person, the idea that his race would all be primitive went out the window. So ewoks are little wookies! Even have mostly the same letters… The fuzzballs were designed by Joe Johnston, Phil Tippet (his name is everywhere in this doc), Nilo Rodis-Jamero, and Stuart Freeborn, with Ben Burtt (another reoccurring name) designing their language. The behind-the-scenes footage in the California forest doesn’t mention Warwick Davis by name until the very end, but you see his 13-year-old self throughout the clips. For reference, he played Wicket, the ewok that discovers Leia.
Fisher also talks about the rancor, the monster Luke fights in the dungeon of Jabba’s palace. It was a hand puppet only 18″ tall and appeared huge through trick photography and blue screen editing. It was again designed by Phil Tippet and had three operators: one for the head, another controlling the hands through cables, and a third moving the legs through metal rods.
Williams gets to talk about Admiral Ackbar, the fish-headed commander of the Rebel fleet, when he’s not paling around with Salacious Crumb, Jabba’s cackling little… thing. Ackbar was both a full body suit as well as a puppet’s head, both controlled by Tim Rose. Williams also talks about Jim Henson and The Dark Crystal, seemingly only so he can say one of the best lines in this doc:
“Frank Oz is Yoda, but he’s also the persona of the most nubile, the most sensuous, the most well rounded performer ever to grace the silver screen.”
– Billy Dee Williams
He’s talking, of course, about Miss Piggy. It’s all to talk about how the various hand puppets in the movie actually require some skill to give the illusion that they’re alive, but that line made me laugh so I’m including it.
As for the various aliens in Jabba’s palace, Fisher names several of them, reminding the audience that not only do each of these background characters have names and backstories, but that Star Wars as a whole has some of the stupidest names in moviedom. For example, she name drops the Nikto, which reminds me that two background characters are Klaatu and Barada, because sure, let’s have an unspoken The Day the Earth Stood Still reference! Anyway, they talk about the Max Rebo Band and the song Sy Snootles sings which, as I talked about in the Return of the Jedi post, was cut from the movie in 2004 and replaced with bad computer effects. But we learn that the original song, Lapti Nek, was composed by John Williams, had English lyrics written by his son, Joseph Williams, and was translated into the fake language Huttese. Phil Tippet reveals that George Lucas was very passionate, despite the band being unnamed background characters, and that tracks.
Speaking of Lucas, he talks about how his inspiration for Jabba came from a “rotund, evil sultan” archetype, name dropping Sydney Greenstreet and Marlon Brando. Rude, but whatever. Stuart Freeborn predominantly worked on Jabba, who was made of 2 tons of clay and 600 pounds of latex. They also mention that an earlier version of Jabba was cut from Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope for not being bad enough, and yet he still included it in the special editions with some truly ugly CG. They also briefly touch on the sarlacc, but since it originally was just a pit with teeth they really only say that it had a cushion at the bottom for stuntmen to break their fall.
Out of the trilogy of documentary made by Robert Guenette, I thought this was the best. Each one got more and more focused, and giving more time to background aliens you only see briefly in the movies was a good choice for Return of the Jedi. And he apparently had an affinity for monsters and the supernatural, which I base on three of his other documentaries he wrote and directed: The Mysterious Monsters, The Amazing World of Psychic Phenomena, and Monsters! Mysteries or Myths?. So don’t be surprised if I look into those in the future.
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