The Mandalorian and Grogu is packed with incredible visual effects, but what makes this movie especially exciting is how it embraces the filmmaking techniques that helped make Star Wars so iconic in the first place.
From the return of AT-AT walkers to a beautifully realised Razor Crest miniature and an ambitious stop-motion battle, the movie—now available on Digital and coming to Disney+ on September 2—finds new ways to blend cutting-edge VFX with old-school techniques.
Earlier this week, we spoke with VFX Supervisor John Knoll, who's been an integral part of the Star Wars franchise for decades, to discuss the challenges of bringing those iconic elements back to the big screen.
Knoll takes us behind the scenes of the AT-AT sequence, explains why the Razor Crest was recreated as a 48-inch miniature, reveals how Grogu's puppet performance was preserved when CG was required, and details the huge undertaking behind the film's Tippett Studios-crafted stop-motion battle.
In The Mandalorian and Grogu, the evil Empire has fallen, and Imperial warlords remain scattered throughout the galaxy. As the fledgling New Republic works to protect everything the Rebellion fought for, they have enlisted the help of legendary Mandalorian bounty hunter Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and his young apprentice Grogu.
"The Mandalorian and Grogu is a fun, pulpy reminder that Star Wars doesn’t need to grow up; it just needs to be entertaining," we said in our review of the movie. "Jon Favreau's action-packed love letter delivers exactly the crowd-pleasing adventure fans have been craving."
Check out our full interview with John below, and stay tuned for more on The Mandalorian and Grogu in the coming days.
I've got to start talking about the AT-ATs. You had a hard act to follow with The Empire Strikes Back, so what was it like putting that sequence together?
Well, Hal and I both had a little taste of it in Rogue One, so we had some walkers there. So it was kind of carrying on some of the things that we learned from that. You know, it's interesting. I think that the work in Empire Strikes Back is spectacular and groundbreaking and iconic. And your first thought when you try to depict new media of a walker is, well, just match what we did in *Empire*. But one of the things we learned during *Rogue One* was that the walk cycle on the walker looks too fast by today's standards. It kind of doesn't look like they're big enough. So I think we ended up slowing it down to about half of its speed in *Empire* to get it to have that sort of big, lumbering thing. And then, because of the limited space that these walkers are in and limited visibility, we tried to include atmospherics so that we weren't necessarily seeing for miles there. We framed a lot of shots very close to them to help make them look enormous. And you know, I think the walkers are cool designs. It was a really good idea, and I thought it was kind of fun to be able to play in that arena again.
Later in the film, we see Mando on a STAP and those battle droids. It's a bit of a full-circle moment for you as you started your career on the prequels. Was it special to revisit those characters and those weapons and put a little bit of a new spin on them in the palace?
Yeah. You know, part of Jon’s ambition from the beginning of The Mandalorian is to try to take things that we may have seen in the past but upgrade them in some way. And when there's something that was maybe a little unloved or underutilised in its first appearance, it's 'Hey, how can we upgrade these things to make the really cool version of something?' And maybe an example of that is the Amanaman in the film. You know, they were a pretty minor background creature that you saw in Jabba's Palace. It's a cool idea, but the design's a little goofy. And the challenge here was, all right, we're going to put them front and centre. We're going to make them close-up characters, and they've got to be intimidating and scary. And how do you do that with a design like that? And you know, we enjoy those sorts of challenges, and that was a lot of fun. And I'm happy with the way that those characters turned out. As silly as the design might be, I think they come off as being kind of fearsome and scary. And yeah, I do enjoy the challenge there.
The Razor Crest looks stunning in this film, and I've read that you shot that with miniatures on a mini version of the Volume. So what was the thought process behind that and bringing that ship to life in such a specific way in this film?
Well, back in season one, Jon wanted to explore doing miniature work with a miniature Razor Crest, and that was super fun. I started my career as a model maker and motion-control cameraman, and I used to build some of my own motion-control equipment. And at that time, I think that was in 2018, we didn't have a motion-control stage anymore. It was all gone. And if we wanted to do that sort of thing, we were going to have to build something or contract with another company. But we didn't have the funds to really consider jobbing that out to another company because it's a very tightly constrained budget, and the budget had already been approved based on doing all the stuff with computer graphics. And part of the reason why we don't do a lot of miniature work anymore is that it's generally a little bit more expensive than doing it in computer graphics, and clients have gotten used to being able to change things up until the last minute. But we got a buy-in from a director who really wanted to see some of this stuff. And with 3D printing and CNC routers and that kind of thing, some of the bits and pieces have become commoditised and relatively inexpensive. And I have a little shop in my garage where I can fabricate things. And the challenge of building a motion-control system seemed like, 'Oh, this would actually be really fun to do,' and I know how to do that stuff. That's kind of how I began my career. So let's dive in and do it.
So that was tremendous fun. We did a bunch of shots throughout the streaming series with it. And then we wanted to continue that for the feature film, continue using the miniatures, but in this case talked to John Goodson about 'Let's do an upgrade. Let's build a 48-inch model of the Razor Crest with a great deal more detail so we can get in tighter and get better shots with it.'
And then I upgraded the motion-control system. I'd always wanted to have a crane to do more elaborate shot designs, and so I built a boom arm and had all the same degrees of freedom that the Dykstraflex had originally. Hal really appreciated that because some of the limits of what we were able to do with the cam-pan-tilt head on a slider kind of style of motion were lifted, and we could do more elaborate shot designs. And yeah, then the Razor Crest being this bare-metal spacecraft, it's all about reflections in the same way that Mando and his helmet are. And the best way to do that in arbitrary environments is to have something where you can control what it is reflecting. And having that miniature LED volume was something I couldn't afford to do on the streaming series, but on a feature budget we kind of worked it into the budget and the schedule. And yeah, that was a real game-changer. We were able to do these, I think, really beautiful shots with the arbitrary synthetic environments reflected inside of the ship, and I'm really happy with how those shots turned out.
With Grogu, a big part of what makes him so charming is that puppeteering aspect, but obviously VFX do have to step in now and again. So how challenging is it to step in when needed, but to also still allow that puppet's performance to really shine through and to keep that charm of the character?
Well, the methodology was always: use the puppet wherever you can. Even in cases where something was on the cusp, where the Legacy puppeteer folks would say, 'I don't know, this one's kind of on the cusp. It might work, it might not work,' it's like, well, let's try it, let's try it, because the worst case is you've got something that's really good reference for us. And there were times where we had to use the CG version of Grogu because there just wasn't a good way of shooting something with the puppet. But most of the time when you're seeing him, that's the puppet, and the CG is for things that just weren't able to get with the puppet. And then we're going to put a lot of effort into making sure that everything that we're doing feels like the puppet, even things like the wiggly ears and the way he walks, trying to make that so it doesn't feel like you're suddenly looking at something different.
The film culminates with that amazing battle between Mando and the massive guard droids. From a viewer's perspective, it seemed to almost be a blend of stop-motion and VFX. What was the balance between the practical and visual effects there? And how challenging was it to make it look the way it does, with that kind of old-school filmmaking?
Well, Jon was definitely interested in keeping some of the retro techniques going, and we talked about wanting to do a stop-motion sequence and the one that immediately suggested itself was the battle with the big droids. And from the very beginning, as soon as we decided that, yeah, we want to try and see if we can do this sequence—it's going to be about two minutes long, going to end up being 30-something shots—that's a pretty substantial undertaking for stop-motion.
We got Tippett and their crew involved very early on, even in the ideation stage of what the battle looks like and what some of the gags we're going to do. Phil Tippett himself was directly involved in planning some of the choreography there. And then the designs on the droids—we didn't make it easy on them. There are a massive number of articulated pieces on them. Besides that, they've got three arms, but all these armour plates that move and all have to be animated. The guys at Tippett said that was one of the most complicated things they've ever done.
You mentioned Rogue One. That finished with a great aerial battle with X-wings, as this film does. Obviously, George Lucas was the master at putting together those kinds of amazing aerial battles, but to be working on them now, what's the secret of crafting these great X-wing fights?
Some of it is trying not to repeat yourself. It's like, how can we add a new twist to this that's something that we haven't really seen before. And then do good flight dynamics, good execution on the shots. Try to make them look good and clear. Clear storytelling is important so that you always kind of know who's where and what's going on, so that it's never just a confusing mass. You know, it's good, clear storytelling.
The Mandalorian and Grogu is now available on Digital and coming to Disney+ on September 2.