‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’ VFX Breakdowns Reveal Snoke, The Battle of Crait & More Movie Magic

February 28, 2018

Star Wars The Last Jedi Visual Effects Featurettes

Most of the hype for the Oscars, as usual, surrounds the nominees for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Actress, but the technical awards deserve some attention too. Case in point: Industrial Light and Magic has been showing off all the hard work they put into Star Wars: The Last Jedi with its impressive array of visual effects.

A few new Star Wars The Last Jedi VFX featurettes have surfaced online showing how Andy Serkis was turned into Supreme Leader Snoke, how the climactic Battle of Crait was created, and the immense amount of detail that went into one massive digital set extension.

Andy Serkis Becomes Supreme Leader Snoke

First up, get a look at some of Andy Serkis’ motion capture performance as Supreme Leader Snoke. As you can see, he wears a full motion capture suit, complete with a head rig, and for some scenes he even stands on a raised platform so he towers over Adam Driver as Kylo Ren and Daisy Ridley as Rey. Interestingly enough, he also uses an artificial prop limb for the sequence when he grabs Rey’s face.

The level of detail on Snoke’s face is incredible, and the lighting is even more impressive. If we didn’t know any better, we might just think it was a fantastic make-up job. However, at the same time, there are some instances when the facial expression on Andy Serkis’ face is even more terrifying than the horrifically scarred face of Snoke.

The First Order Mega Star Destroyer Hangar

Next up, check out the almost entirely digital set of the Snoke’s Mega Star Destroyer, The Supremacy. This is the sequence when Finn and Rose are being led into the First Order hangar to be executed after being captured trying to stop the active tracking device on board the ship. As you can see, the entire background of this sequence was created digitally, and that’s a massive space to fill. Even more crazy is the number of layers and the level of detail that goes into making you think that this ship really is that enormous.

The Battle of Crait

Finally, this featurette dives into the digital effects that created the Battle of Crait. It’s not quite as revealing, though it’s cool seeing how much of the speeders they built practically for the attack sequence, not to mention the fact that they had various trucks tear through the open desert and spray red smoke around to get the visuals of the red soil blasting into the air.

Be sure to check out another previously released visual effects breakdown from the opening space battle over here.

This weekend brings the 90th Academy Awards to ABC, and hopefully there will be an award handed out to Industrial Light and Magic for their work on Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Or maybe it’ll be given to someone else and then taken away. After last year, you never know.

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