The creature designer who worked on the wildlife of Star Wars: The Last Jedi has opened up about that weird green milk.
Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) is seen harvesting the milk from the udders of walrus-like creatures (known as Thala-Sirens) on the island planet of Ahch-to as Rey (Daisy Ridley) follows him in search of help.
Creature designer Neal Scanlan has now revealed to Collider that the effect was created by building a giant animatronic puppet in Pinewood studios which was then transported to the filming location in Ireland.
My favorite creature has got to be this luscious beauty — the Thala-Siren pic.twitter.com/aeFyn073JY
— Katie Clary (@waywardgeek922) December 23, 2017
“Once it was in the location, we locked two puppeteers inside there. The head opened a little bit, two puppeteers got inside, we put the head back up, and we sealed it with a prosthetic band that went around the side,” he explained.
Other puppeteers were brought in to operate the flippers and background puppets, whilst those inside the creature worked an internal milk delivery system.
“The guys on the inside could see what was happening on the outside, through monitors and a walkie system that we had, and Mark literally walked up, bent down, and milked his sea-sow. It made a lovely tasting drink, by the way. It wasn’t as disgusting as it looked.”
rian johnson built a functional thala siren (teet and all!!) that weight 3/4th of a ton and helicoptered it into ireland just so mark hamill could do this pic.twitter.com/ag8NYvDd2C
— Joon Lee (@joonlee) December 29, 2017
Scanlan also explained why the drink was green.
“They CG-ed a tint on it, in the end, to make it look even more disgusting. It was wonderful to be there and to do it for real, amongst the elements.”
Star Wars: The Last Jedi saw the introduction of multiple new creatures, including ‘porgs’, which were edited into the film to fix the abundance of puffins in the Irish filming location.
The eighth film was recently revealed to have the second highest box office opening figures of all time, beaten only by predecessor The Force Awakens, in spite of strong fan criticism.