Robot Chicken Star Wars
more information about Green and Senreich's parody of sci-fi saga
(Source: starwars.com)
The Adult Swim show Robot Chicken (now entering its 3rd season) definitely has its moments, and many of them have to do with Star Wars. It's clear that Robot Chicken creators Seth Green and Matthew Senreich are huge fans of the six-part saga. That fandom has provided their stop-motion show with some of its best moments: whether it's George W. Bush suddenly developing Jedi powers, an exasperated Emperor getting the news that the Death Star has been destroyed ("That thing wasn't even fully paid off yet!"), or Darth Vader giving plot spoilers to an increasingly bored Luke Skywalker during The Empire Strikes Back.
That last skit actually featured a special cameo.
"Mark Hamill came in and reprised his role as Luke Skywalker," said Matthew Senreich. "It was a shot in the dark but we wanted to get him anyway."
Thanks to the three skits getting replayed all over the Net, they finally made their way to the folks at Lucasfilm. Senreich and Green weren't sure about how Lucas was going to react to them mocking his space saga.
"To be blatantly honest, we were scared we were going to get sued right after (the 'Emperor's Phone Call') skit," admits Senreich. Instead, Lucasfilm wanted to place the skit on starwars.com.
"When the phone rang and it said 'Lucasfilm' on the Caller ID, my heart stopped for a moment," Senreich says. "I stood there and paced myself then answered the call sounding all business like and pretending it wasn't me at first. And they asked if there was any way to get a copy of the 'Emperor's Phone Call' skit for starwars.com? At that moment, we got excited."
Senreich needn't have worried. Lucas has taken a relaxed attitude towards Star Wars spoofs over the years. He has said in numerous interviews that 1977's Hardware Wars was his favourite parody, he sent a fan letter to the creators of the 1999 short George Lucas in Love, and the 1997 short Troops (which set "reality" TV show Cops in the Star Wars universe) won the inaugural Pioneer Award at the Lucasfilm-sponsored Official Star Wars Fan Film Awards.
So it's no surprise that Lucasfilm would have wanted to help with Robot Chicken's parodies. After all, it's the spoofs that keep Star Wars in the public consciousness. That's when Robot Chicken: Star Wars was born.
Once Lucasfilm gave the go-ahead, the entire special took 14 weeks to complete.
"The first three weeks was all writing where we had to finalize the script," Senreich said. "We had 60 pages of script; we recorded the voices and storyboarded it. From that we put together an animatic and then Seth and I cut 50 percent of what we had."
"For puppets, just the sheer volume of characters associated with the special and the problems we had to solve working on all these different scales, trying to utilize 3 and 3 1/4-inch characters, heads from pez dispensers or plush toys – everyone had different challenges," said Seth Green.
"As far as the set builders were concerned it's hard to say which was the most challenging to design. We had skits that take place in the Death Star in the Emperor's Throne Room, and that set was gorgeous. The thing is that everyone who worked on the show – building the sets, making puppets, working in the lighting department, cinematography, and so on – really loves Star Wars and they wanted to replicate it as identically as possible. So people put a ton of extra labour into it just to make sure it was picture perfect."
Green and Senreich contracted Plastic Earth to make a doll that looked like George Lucas, and the Robot Chicken costuming department replicated his clothing - right down to his signature flannel shirt. Lucas lends his voice to his puppet clone, joining other celebrity voices like Mark Hamill, Conan O'Brien, Seth MacFarlane, Malcolm McDowell, Hulk Hogan, James Van Der Beek, Donald Faison, Abraham Benrubi, Breckin Meyer and Joey Fatone.
"(George Lucas is) an artist who really appreciates the creative process," said Green. "He gave us an unbelievable freedom in playing with what is seemingly his most-prized possession."
Robot Chicken Star Wars airs on Adult Swim on June 17th.
Fun Fact: Mark Hamill is an acclaimed voice actor, having voiced The Joker in Batman: The Animated Series (among others: he is the most popular voice actor to perform The Joker), Gargoyle in The Incredible Hulk, Hobgoblin in Spider-Man: The Animated Series, and Commander Taylor in Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles. He has also voiced roles in the English dub of two Hayao Miyazaki films: Col. Muska in Castle in the Sky and the Mayor of Pejite in Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.
