With Star Wars: The Last Jedi just released, and making a whole lot of money, we took a look at a few fun facts from the set of the movie.
* Some of the films writer/director Rian Johnson looked at for inspiration while developing Star Wars: The Last Jedi include 12 O’Clock High (1949), To Catch a Thief (1955) and Three Outlaw Samurai (1964).
* Johnson had his own personal 35mm camera around his neck constantly during the The Last Jedi shoot and enjoyed taking impromptu photos of anything he found interesting. Johnson also signed his name on the Millennium Falcon and, of course, recorded the moment with a photo!
* Johnson had a brief cameo in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story aboard the Death Star as an Imperial gunnery technician.
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* Academy Award-winning production designer Rick Heinrichs was tasked with designing and creating The Last Jedi environments. Construction was on a massive scale, with 120 sets utilising all stages and backlots at Pinewood, as well as stages at Longcross Studios and two foreign filming locations, Dubrovnik, Croatia, and the Wild Atlantic Way, Ireland.
* Familiar sets include the Millennium Falcon, the Resistance Cruiser, the Fighter Hangar, the Mine Control Center, the First Order sets, the Star Destroyer, the Mega Destroyer and Kylo’s Chambers. New environments and worlds created include the expanded Jedi Island Ahch-To, Canto Bight, the planet Crait and Snoke’s Throne Room.
* Prior to production, Heinrichs was able to immerse himself in the spectacular library of visual reference at the Skywalker Ranch. He then set about creating a huge reference library of his own to share with his team, giving them both the opportunity to research and respect the original aesthetic created
by George Lucas, while exploring new concepts and imagining the new worlds
and environments envisaged by writer/director Johnson.
* The Jedi Village was designed to be built on a cliff top on the West Coast of Ireland, but practical reasons made some filming impossible there, so the set, a series of beehive huts, based on the island huts where the monks had lived, were first constructed on the Pinewood Backlot. Once the scenes had been completed at Pinewood, the set was taken down, shipped and rebuilt in Ireland.
Rey (Daisy Ridley) seen in still training.
* The Last Jedi team reconstructed the interior of the Millennium Falcon - impeccably put together for The Force Awakens by art director Mark Harris - on a Pinewood Stage. This allowed The Last Jedi filmmakers to put the entire exterior of the Millennium Falcon, on its Landing Pad, at the base of the Longcross Studios’ incline, beneath the 19-ton Jedi Tree.
* The Canto Bight Casino build was so large, it had to be split across two stages at Pinewood, with the exterior built at Longcross, and the medieval city of Dubrovnik standing in for the planet Canto Bight, where the Casino is situated.
* Costumes for the Casino scenes were a massive undertaking for costume designer Michael Kaplan and his team.
* New worlds and new environments meant creating new creatures for creative supervisor Neal Scanlan. Tasked with making 130 creatures, the team had their work cut out for them. Scanlan and his team also created Porgs, which inhabit Ahch-To, the isolated island home of Luke Skywalker. The Porgs are an adorable mix of puffin, owl and a baby seal.
