Rian Johnson Shares Amazing 'The Last Jedi' SFX Videos
May the Fourth is considered Star Wars Day, and this year, we celebrated with the premiere of Disney+’s exclusive Star Wars animated series, The Bad Batch. Every May the Fourth, we get many surprises from the Lucasfilm team. This year we also got some of the filmmakers' favorite moments from behind the scenes. Robert Rodriguez revealed a wonderful selfie he took with the Grogu puppet during the filming of the episode he directed for The Mandalorian season 2. One other filmmaker who decided to share his favorite Star Wars moment was Rian Johnson, director of Episode VIII - The Last Jedi.
On his social media, Johnson shared a video from one of the special effects tests while prepping to shoot the scene where Luke destroys his home in the island of Ach-To. A scene that many thought was nothing more than computer generated effects turned out to be an amazing practical effect. Although Episode VIII happens to be the most controversial Star Wars film from the Skywalker saga, the film has many amazing wowing worthy visuals.
Episode VIII, like many of the Star Wars films, managed to wow audiences with practical effects that everyone thought was purely CGI. One of the most wowing practical effects from the sequel trilogy was that of BB-8. Like his predecessor R2-D2, BB-8 was mostly a practical puppet in most of the close up shots for all the films in the sequel trilogy. Many people, when they saw the first images of BB-8 in the first trailer for The Force Awakens, expected a fully computer generated droid, but the Star Wars special effects team surprised us all with a completely real droid puppet that ran alongside Daisy Ridley and John Boyega.
Director Rian Johnson blew our minds with the test footage of the house’s explosion. The short video shows us how much work, time, and dedication went into pulling off a stunt that would only be seen for mere seconds in the film. Just like the red mineral explosions on the planet Crait, which we all expected to be CGI, the Lucasfilm special effects team fooled us all yet again, giving us a full practical explosion.
May the Fourth is always a special day for all Star Wars fans, not only to celebrate a whole day dedicated to their favorite franchise, but also to see the many amazing reveals. This May the Fourth, for example, we not only got the premiere of The Bad Batch, but also got many amazing shorts on Disney+ like Star Wars Biomes, and Vehicle Flythroughs, which lets us all have a look at the Millennium Falcon, and a First Order Star Destroyer.
As we talk about amazing Star Wars special effects, we also got an amazing reveal from the Disney Imagineering team that will be shown in the upcoming Star Wars hotel, Galactic Starcruiser. This of course was a realized working lightsaber. There had been talks about this amazing achievement, as many reporters had a special look at this amazing new achievement by the Disney Imagineering team. Fans didn’t think they would see this until probably teasers of the hotel itself, but Lucasfilm and Disney surprised us all, by revealing the lightsaber on May the Fourth.
Star Wars is not just about the story, the films, and its characters, but also about the filmmakers who got the opportunity to develop new technologies that make special effects look like they are computer generated. The Last Jedi might be the most controversial film from the sequel trilogy, and of the Skywalker saga, but it keeps surprising us with it is visuals and amazing practical effects.
Source(s): The Direct