Star Wars

Upon its release in 1977, Star Wars (later Episode IV: A New Hope) quickly became a worldwide sensation. It received critical acclaim and grossed $410 million worldwide during its initial run, surpassing Jaws (1975) to become the highest-grossing film of all time (at least until the release of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial in 1982). George Lucas soon began working on a sequel, Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back. The second film in the franchise would feature more elaborate special effects, new worlds, and a host of new creatures, including the towering wampa and dinosaur-like tauntaun. We’ll be looking at both of those and more in this article.

The snow creatures called tauntauns are one of the few forms of life that thrive in the frozen conditions of the ice planet Hoth, thanks to thick fur-covered skin and a layer of fatty blubber. Several different breeds of tauntaun exist; some form herds that move across the moss-covered equatorial tundra, others live in small packs that dwell deep within ice caves and subsist on lichen, and some are solitary, living in the mountains. They can survive the intensely cold Hoth night by slowing their metabolism almost to a standstill, and can die if forced into activity once the night chill descends. The creatures’ four wide toes are connected by a webbed layer of furred skin, which prevents them from slipping on the ice planet’s unsteady surface.

Tamed, trained tauntauns serve the Rebel troops of Hoth’s Echo Base more reliably than patrol vehicles, which are often halted by the winds and cold. They make hardy, obedient mounts, but they secrete thick oils and have an unpleasant odour, which is used to communicate with others of its species and attract a mate.

The tauntauns were initially designed as a cross between a Tyrannosaurus and a Triceratops. To bring the furry creatures – with their powerful legs and short arms – to life, George Lucas employed a variety of methods, from puppetry to stop-motion animation. For scenes in which the beast is ridden, creature designer Stuart Freeborn and special effects supervisor Brian Johnson built an eight-foot-tall animatronic tauntaun for the actors to sit on. For close-up shots, they created a series of tauntaun heads: one with rigid skin and moving mouth and eyes, and another with a soft foam latex face and additional cable mechanisms for a greater range of expression. Both heads had tubes that pumped gas from the nostrils to simulate breathing.

Running across the icy wastes of Hoth, the tauntaun ridden by Luke Skywalker in the opening scenes of The Empire Strikes Back would be the first new Star Wars creature to be seen on theatre screens since the release of A New Hope, so George Lucas knew it had to be totally believable. Industrial Light & Magic’s fledgling stop-motion animation department, led by Phil Tippett, was charged with creating the incredibly realistic creature, and they turned to techniques pioneered in the 1933 masterpiece King Kong.

For shots of Han and Luke riding a full-length tauntaun, ILM built a series of foot-high stop-motion puppets from foam latex and calf fur, which were animated against a tabletop snowscape. To move the puppets, the animators had to reach up through a trapdoor in the set’s floor. A motorised brace was used to move the puppets fractionally as each frame of film was shot. This helped simulate ‘motion blur,’ so their movements would appear more realistic to the human eye. The tauntaun’s voice, meanwhile, was concocted from a recording of an Asian sea otter that was pitched down slightly.

Standing three metres tall, the powerful bipedal wampas dwell in the snowy wastes of Hoth, where their howling blends in with the icy winds at night. These hulking predators have razor-sharp fangs and claws, yet move with surprising stealth, relying on their thick white fur for warmth and camouflage as they hunt prey such as tauntauns. Wampas often drag living prey back to their lairs in caverns beneath the surface of the planet to devour them later. Wampas are normally solitary beasts, but they have been known to band together with uncanny intelligence in the face of threats like human settlements.

The wampa may have been based on the cryptozoological creature known as the Yeti, or Abominable Snowman, a humanoid beast believed by some to live in the Himalayan Mountains. It was designed by Joe Johnston and built as a full-size suit by Stuart Freeborn. The suit was made from a patchwork of sheep and goat skins, and it included a pair of giant boots attached to two-and-a-half-foot stilts. Worn by seven-foot-four actor Des Webb, the suit increased Webb’s height to eleven feet. It was intended that Webb would wear the giant suit in Norway, where the Hoth scenes were shot. Unfortunately, the suit was cumbersome, hot, and heavy, and Webb could only manage a few steps at a time before falling over in the snow. All of the shots of the life-size wampa were eventually cut from the film.

Back in England, Freeborn revamped the suit, making slight changes to the head and eyes. But George Lucas decided he wasn’t happy with Freeborn’s ‘cute’ wampa, and he asked Phil Tippett to create another, more ferocious version. Tippett and his team also built a small wampa hand puppet with a mechanical mouth for two quick close-ups – when the beast attacks Luke on the tauntaun¹ – and a large wampa arm for on-set and location work. The wampa’s roar was pieced together from the noises made by an elephant at Oakland Zoo mixed with the cries of a sea lion recorded at Marineland of the Pacific.

Ultimately, however, despite everyone’s efforts, the limitations of the costume made for a less-than-inspiring on-screen monster, so in the original release of The Empire Strikes Back, the wampa was glimpsed only briefly. In fact, an entire sequence of wampas invading Echo Base was cut from the film. But for the updated Special Edition of the film, released in 1997, George Lucas wanted to improve and expand the wampa scenes. To do so, Industrial Light & Magic artist Howie Weed constructed a more mobile version of the costume, without the stilts, which he wore in the film. The new shots were filmed within a scaled-down replica of a cave to create the illusion that the wampa was much larger than a normal human, adding a greater sense of peril to Luke Skywalker’s predicament.

When TIE fighters pursue the Millennium Falcon later in the film, Han Solo and Chewbacca land on an asteroid to escape. It turns out that what they thought was a cave is actually the belly of an enormous exogorth, or space slug! These silicon-based creatures can survive in the vacuum of space, making their homes in the hollows of asteroids, digesting minerals, space debris, and stellar energy emissions with a uranium-based metabolism. This scene was drawn from the mythological motif of Jonah and the Whale, an archetypal story of journeying into the belly of the beast.

The space slug’s scenes were shot in several different ways. Scenes inside the creature, in which Han, Leia, and Chewie are attacked by the parasitic mynocks (see below), were shot on a soundstage. Black plastic sheeting was laid on the floor, and black curtains were draped around the Millennium Falcon. Dry ice was used to create fog. Visual effects supervisor John Knoll called it ‘undoubtedly the least expensive set built’ for the film. For shots of the Falcon escaping from inside the space slug, ILM’s chief model maker, Lorne Peterson, built a four-and-a-half-foot-long model of the exogorth’s jaw and teeth. The teeth were about five inches tall and crafted from plastic urethane, giving them a translucent, ivory appearance. Lastly, for the final chomp (as seen in the image above), Phil Tippett built a small (but heavy) hand puppet so the space slug could be revealed in all its monstrous glory. The puppet measured approximately 30 inches long by 11 inches wide, and featured jaws that closed using a spring mechanism. To create the sound and feeling of slime when the film’s characters were walking on the space slug’s tongue, Foley editors used nearly 25 pounds of pure beef fat in large slabs, as well as dozens of raw eggs, which they then walked on with various pieces of footwear to create the sounds of the characters’ footsteps. When the scenes – and sounds – were all edited together, the result showed one giant creature – and one of the most iconic scenes in The Empire Strikes Back.

Space-faring silicon-based parasites called mynocks attach themselves to the Millennium Falcon when the ship unknowingly takes shelter inside an exogorth. Despised by starship captains, mynocks are leathery-winged creatures that roost in asteroid fields and occasionally lurk in the innards of space slugs. They attack starship signal emitters and power cables, draining their energy reserves. Wise captains check for power fluctuations and other signs of infestations, cleaning off mynocks in port before taking off.

On-set, the mynocks were rubber puppets with articulated components, and their movements were achieved through physical manipulation using rods, rigs, or internal supports. The eerie, high-pitched cries of the mynocks were crafted by sound designer Ben Burtt. He described the sound as a ‘horse whinny at half speed and [mixed in] with itself,’ producing a chilling, otherworldly screech.

Luke travels to an eerie, misty bog planet called Dagobah to learn more about the Force from an old Jedi Master, Yoda. Winged, bat-like creatures called bogwings can be seen flying over the swamp (they’ll be seen in more detail in a later film), while large, serpentine aquatic beasts called dragonsnakes glide through the murky waters of the primaeval bogs. One particular dragonsnake was hungry enough to devour R2-D2 when the droid was swimming to the shore. Luckily, the Astromech didn’t taste very well, and the creature spat the droid out.

Lots of strange, alien creatures were designed to populate Dagobah, but none of them actually made it into the final movie. Instead, Earth animals were primarily used to make the swamp planet seem more alive. When Luke enters the Cave of Evil to begin his Jedi training, a green-skinned lizard called a nudj (top left) can be seen scurrying out of the entrance, portrayed by a green iguana on the set. In the top right, we can see Luke passing what Star Wars canon simply calls a Dabobah python, which was, of course, played by an Earth python. Another snake – apparently called a vine snake in-universe – can be seen in Yoda’s hut in the bottom left, played by a South American king snake. One of these snakes can also be glimpsed in Luke’s X-wing when he is about to leave Dagobah. Finally, at the bottom-right, a water monitor is used to impersonate a sleen, another Dagobah reptile, a slow, omnivorous swamp forager.

Dagobah also features some creatures that, as far as I can tell, have never been named in Star Wars canon. After being spat out by the dragonsnake, R2-D2 comes to rest against the partial skeleton of a large animal. Sections of its spine and several ribs are visible. In another scene, a reptile rests on a second big, unidentified skeleton. The animals from which these bones came still remain a mystery.

Next time, we look at the creatures seen in the third Star Wars film, Return of the Jedi, which features some of the most well-known and iconic monsters in the franchise.

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1. In the winter of 1977, Mark Hamill was in a serious car accident that left him in need of reconstructive facial surgery. Many believe that the wampa attack on Luke Skywalker was included in The Empire Strikes Back to explain Hamill’s residual scarring and slightly altered facial features. ↩︎