Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian

I think there's a interplay

with storytellers and the people you're telling the story to.

Does this look Jedi to you?

You find that the emotions run deep with Star Wars.

And peoples' relationship, who grew up with it from a young age,

feel a lot of connection to it.

I think a consistent thing I'm feeling is that people care deeply

that it's being handled correctly and that it's being handled respectfully.

It meant so much and they wanna see it continue into the future

and feel like it's all connected with consistency.

We're very lucky that between Lucasfilm and Kathy,

the whole group that we have

are incredibly supportive and encouraging.

Incoming craft, identify yourself.

Jon gave me the script for the season finale.

I read it and loved it.

It had a lot of action.

It had a lot of great character stuff and a lot of emotion.

But there was a character that came in at the end of it,

and in the script it was written as a character called Plo Koon.

And I knew Plo Koon was a Jedi, I think, from the prequel trilogy.

I was, "How are we visualizing this?"

He's like, "Come here, I wanna talk to you."

And he gave me the real news that it was, in fact, not Plo Koon,

but it was gonna be Luke. And I needed a moment.

I needed to know, 'cause I've had a long relationship with Jon

and I said, "Are you being serious? Is this real?

"You're bringing the guy back?"

He said, "We're bringing the guy back."

Jon sanctioned this, I'll say this for the first time in 15 months to two years.

"Luke Skywalker."

We were never allowed to say it.

We'll get the performance out of Plo Koon,

and in post, we can get a bunch of options.

When we refer back to what we did, we talk about the code names.

We simply do not utter those two words.

If there's one person in the galaxy that you'd be okay

taking this kid from The Mandalorian,

it's gotta be Luke.

You know, usually, Jon and I tend to think...

If he and I are aligned on something like that,

it's probably gonna, I like to think, turn out good.

But if I had been like, "No way. Luke..."

Jon would respect that, "Okay, let's figure it out."

But it just felt right to both of us.

Even the Force that's just moving around him.

So, every move you're making is one step ahead.

I instantly went from being thrilled to feeling the weight

of responsibility of this character.

Because outside of all the technical considerations

of how we were gonna bring Luke Skywalker of that period to life,

there was a real responsibility in the storytelling

to have it feel organic in the context of The Mandalorian.

Because it's very easy to see a version where you bring Luke into The Mandalorian,

and it completely usurps all the drama.

We had a lot of conversations

in the writing, in the shooting, in editorial,

about how much Luke was enough, how much was too much,

finding that balance.

Weirdly, he's a device.

I mean, he comes in, it's not like he's the delivery guy.

You know, none of the characters are sitting there in awe of,

"It's Luke Skywalker. He's the guy who blew up those Death Stars."

That's not where they're coming from. He is a Jedi. He's this mythical figure,

because none of them have ever really encountered a Jedi.

That was interesting to me. I felt like, as I think Jon and Dave felt,

that this is a balancing act that we can figure out,

and we can make it feel still like The Mandalorian,

while broadening the palette a bit.

It was this carefully-laid discussion.

You know, the stages of, "Is it gonna be him?"

"How could it be him?"

Because we realized, watching it, that you're kind of in denial,

no matter how obvious we made it.

You do not think it's gonna be him when that hood comes off.

Like, that shot, it was the one of all the shots that had to work,

because it was gonna be the completion of this wish fulfillment,

"Is it really Luke?"

We knew we wanted Mark Hamill front and center,

because you can't bring back Luke Skywalker

without Mark Hamill.

I suppose technologically-speaking, you could.

But we didn't want to. We wanted to have the real guy.

We wanted Mark here. 'Cause he is Luke Skywalker.

I was contacted by Jon and Dave,

inviting me to come over and take a look at The Mandalorian.

They said they'd love my opinion.

That should've been a giveaway right away.

So I went over and they asked me to do a voice

for a character that was in the cantina.

I'm a hunter. I'm lookin' for some work.

Unfortunately, the Bounty Guild no longer operates from Tatooine.

He often will do unbilled cameos

as voice talent for other Star Wars projects.

-How do we thank you? -Win the war!

So it made perfect sense that we'd bring him in.

But we started showing him a lot of the stuff,

and this is before anything had aired.

We showed him that first episode with the reveal.

And he was really captivated by it, he really liked it.

He liked where we were going with it.

So we told him what we were thinking of doing.

It is pointless to resist, my son.

When they went from the original trilogy to the sequels,

obviously there was this huge gap in time,

where there's all these untold stories.

But I just assumed they'd get an age-appropriate actor, you know?

And I didn't really think about it all that much.

I just thought, "If they wanna tell stories

"of Luke post-Return of The Jedi, I wonder who they'll get."

When they said they were gonna use the de-aging process

they used in the Marvel movies,

I was just gobsmacked!

I didn't answer right away, I had to think about it.

But the more I thought about it, "This is really an opportunity

"that was completely unexpected,

"but something that almost was a responsibility."

In other words, if they're saying they want me to do this,

how can I say no?

Over the holidays, this would've been December 2019,

Jon and I drove up together to Mark's house.

And we brought the script. And we brought Luke Skywalker's wardrobe.

And we brought Grogu with us.

Mark was so gracious, we came in.

Jon and I sat with Mark's wife

as he was in his office, reading the script in real time,

so we were on pins and needles,

'cause it was not necessarily a given that he was gonna be interested.

I think he's very protective of this character, and rightfully so.

Peyton and I were just trying not to jump through our skin.

We get into this 'cause we're fans, so there are moments like this...

Even when you get used to making this stuff,

there are certain moments where you just... It's so surreal.

He came out and he was thrilled.

And I think a huge weight was lifted off of Jon's shoulders

when that happened.

When you have those feelings

where it feels compelling, you know that you're onto something.

We knew if we could pull this off,

it would represent so much to so many people.

Especially to Mark.

To let him come in there and show Luke at this moment,

and let it be a celebration, and also a culmination of a two-season arc

about the journey of this little child.

I'll see you again.

I promise.

Mark was excited, and he was in, and he got ready to see,

"How were we gonna make the magic happen?"

Which is good, 'cause we had to figure it out yet.

Kathy Kennedy we brought in very early on this conversation.

And Kathy, first and foremost, is a great producer.

And producers figure out ways to make things happen

that are creatively exciting to the storytellers.

Not only does she understand how to create an environment

where we can have all the tools that we need

to explore and experiment and be creative,

but also knows what it takes to incubate ideas

and understands the significance of when you do it right,

what that can represent.

One of the big challenges on this show

is the work is very ambitious.

The expectation is the polish level to be

as high as what's done on the features.

So, some of this is working

with the very talented and experienced artists that we have,

giving them a meaningful turnover where they really understand

what success means on the shots.

The unique thing about visual effects technology

or technology that can be used in visual effects,

is that it can come from so many different places.

It can come from the tech realm, it could come from a basement.

And I think being open to getting inspiration

for bleeding-edge technology from anywhere

is a big part of what we do on this show.

When we realized that we wanted to show a younger Luke Skywalker,

we looked at all the techniques available.

There's a few basic paths you could go at this level.

They're overlapping a bit, but for simplicity's sake,

you have a completely computer-generated version of a character

based on scans and based on research and old footage,

and that's like what they used for Grand Moff Tarkin.

Your work exceeds all expectations.

It's pretty easy to see what that is,

but all these new render tools and processing power

is making that get better very rapidly.

There's another technique for de-aging,

which is actually like an airbrush artist doing fixes,

painting out wrinkles and things.

And then there's Deepfake, which is where you use machine learning

to extrapolate from a tremendous amount of...

Ingestion of images.

You feed images, either from the Internet,

or, in our case, you feed it from all of the existing footage

that we have of that character at that time,

and it creates a library of expressions, faces, looks, lighting scenarios.

And then, when you have your performer perform it,

the AI starts to figure out what expression would correspond

to one that exists from the library of faces.

And so it's actually replacing the face that you photographed

with a photoreal image that it's picking out and matching up.