Star Wars

Welcome back to the Star Wars galaxy to look at some of the creatures that inhabit it. Previously, we’ve looked at the animals in A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, so it should come as no surprise to discover that it’s now time to trawl through the third movie in the franchise, Return of the Jedi. There are several iconic creatures in this film, such as the rancor and the sarlacc, as well as a few more obscure ones. So let’s get to it.

First up, we have a frog-dog, which, despite its name, is apparently a species of lizard. Although usually considered simple beings and often mistaken for pests, frog-dogs are actually quite intelligent. They use this fact to their advantage, allowing prosperous masters to keep them as pets to secure themselves shelter and a constant supply of food. They are often ignored, and can therefore sneak unnoticed into palaces or ships and complete secretive tasks. Jabba the Hutt kept a frog-dog as a pet and used him to spy on his many courtiers.

Note: Some sources seem to indicate that the frog-dog is a sentient race, but others suggest that it’s a more simple-minded creature. Since it is mentioned in the video Every Creature in the Star Wars Movies, I have decided to include it in the latter category. The same is true of the Kowakian monkey-lizard, which we’ll be looking at shortly.

The prototype maquette for the frog-dog in Return of the Jedi had a more upright stance than the final version, standing on its two legs rather than dragging the ground. The final character was a suit worn on the upper half of an actor’s body, while the performer’s legs were hidden in a false floor.

The worrt inhabits the wastelands of Tatooine, attacking almost any moving object with its long, purple, lightning-fast tongue. These stout, sturdy creatures are covered in warts and spikes, adaptations designed to help the animal blend in to its rocky surroundings. Females lay significant quantities of tiny eggs, which locals gather and use to flavour soup and garnish beverages. Jabba the Hutt keeps worrts in the grounds outside his palace. Like many of the creatures seen at Jabba’s Palace in the movie, the worrt was portrayed by a puppet. Its production nickname was simply ‘road creature.’ In this scene, the worrt uses its tongue to capture a small, brown-furred creature called a sand skitter.

The Klatooine paddy frog was one of Jabba the Hutt’s favourite snacks. In his palace, Jabba kept a special aquarium to the left of his dais, where the paddy frogs were kept, along with other amphibious delicacies. Although made out of rubber in the scene where Jabba ate one, the Klatooine paddy frog was portrayed by a real frog in other appearances.

Toby Philpott, one of Jabba the Hutt’s main puppeteers, still remembers a few things about the animal used in the bowl. ‘It was an exotic giant [amphibian] from the zoo, possibly African,’ he says. ‘I think it was a toad (but I am not sure). It had a handler. The one Jabba eats is rubber, of course.’ The real one, however, did jump out once and caused a commotion that Philpott deduced from hearing the panic, but he did not actually witness the event since he was inside the Jabba costume at the time.

Jabba’s Palace on Tatooine was visited by the strangest species from around the galaxy. But its dungeons were ideal for housing one of Earth’s most infamous mammals: the rat. When C-3PO ventures through the dungeon, we see a few of these rodents in the background. In the Star Wars Universe, these particular rats are referred to as Tatoo-rats. In Return of the Jedi, they were, of course, played by real Earth rats.

Kowakian monkey-lizards are a race of playful, impish creatures often kept as pets by members of the underworld. Although they have no established culture, they are quite intelligent, and despite their silly, cruel nature, they are considered sentient (or at least semi-sentient) by many in the Galaxy. They have developed the ability to mimic most languages, from Huttese to Galactic Basic, but their most common form of communication is their wild, jubilant laughter. They are known for their sense of humour and will sometimes steal objects and taunt passers-by. Salacious B. Crumb, the monkey-lizard seen in Return of the Jedi, serves as a court jester in Jabba’s Palace. This beak-nosed, pot-bellied miscreant had a habit of breaking into a nerve-wracking cackle whenever the mood struck his little brain. Like others of his kind, he had a knack for mimicry, and he would pester others by constantly repeating what was said to him.

Salacious Crumb was portrayed in the film by a rod-and-hand puppet operated by Tim Rose. His species was not revealed in the film; he was first identified as a Kowakian Lizard-Monkey in the 1990 reference book Galaxy Guide 5: Return of the Jedi. Later works changed the word order to ‘Kowakian monkey-lizard.’ To allow Rose access to work Salacious Crumb, a hole was cut into Jabba’s throne to accommodate the puppeteer. Crumb was originally intended to be a background character, but Rose’s antics with the puppet quickly made him a favourite on the set. This earned Crumb several close-ups and a gradually expanding role.

During Luke Skywalker’s attempted rescue of Han Solo from Jabba the Hutt’s castle, Luke tumbles through a trapdoor and into the home of the hideous rancor. Standing five metres tall, this terrifying creature possesses vicious claws and colossal strength, not to mention armoured skin that can absorb blaster bolts. Jabba keeps it in a pit beneath his palace court, feeding it a live diet of unfortunate victims.

This huge creature – one of the most recognisable in the Star Wars franchise, which has been described as ‘a cross between a bear and a potato’ – was designed by Phil Tippett. According to Tippett, George Lucas’s original instructions for the rancor were, ‘Do whatever you want, but I want a big monster in a pit.’ After Lucas rejected the first few designs, Tippett gave Industrial Light & Magic’s (ILM) art director Joe Johnston a crack at designing the rancor. But, again, Lucas said no. ‘Finally, Joe came up with a design based around a man in a suit,’ Tippett explains. ‘I took that and refined it into something a human could never fit into: long, spidery arms, little ape-like legs, and a head that wouldn’t allow a human head to go inside. Naturally, George loved it.’

Tippett, however, begged Lucas to try something else. He didn’t think the person-in-a-suit approach was the best way to go; he thought either stop-motion animation or go-motion, which he had developed for the tauntauns and AT-ATs in The Empire Strikes Back, would work better. But Lucas insisted they try the suit idea, feeling that both stop-motion and go-motion animation could look fake on-screen. In addition, they were more costly and much more time-consuming than a person-in-a-suit monster.

Lucas didn’t just want a man in a suit – he wanted ‘the most elaborate man-in-a-suit monster ever,’ recalls Dennis Muren, visual effects supervisor. With that in mind, he and Tippett began brainstorming ideas and came up with a large, lizard-like creature that required three people to operate, with elaborate arm extensions and a complex face-moving mechanism. When the rancor suit was almost finished, ILM shot two videos of the creature to get an idea of how everything was going to look. ‘The suit was pretty limited, but it was starting to work,’ notes Muren.

But when Lucas saw the footage, he didn’t think the suit worked at all, and he told Tippett to go ahead and try it any other way he wanted. Unfortunately, Tippett’s crew had spent so long developing the unsuccessful person-in-a-suit idea that there wasn’t enough time left in the schedule to film the rancor using go-motion. Instead, Tippett opted for a less cutting-edge, more traditional approach. ‘We went back to Phil’s original design – which couldn’t be a man in a suit – and came up with the idea of trying something like a Japanese Bunraku-style rod puppet,’ explains Muren. ‘A hand puppet [with] rods coming out of the arms and legs so they could be operated externally.’

Tippett built an 18-inch rod puppet using a stop-motion armature as the skeleton and covered it with foam rubber. To bring it to life, Tippett wore the puppet like a glove, animating its head and mouth with his hand. Another member of the crew worked the arms using black rods that extended from the puppet’s elbows, while a third person operated the rancor’s feet. A set of hinged mechanical hands was created, controlled by pulling wires, which allowed the rancor’s claws to close just like human fingers.

The puppet was filmed in a 30-inch cave set that was an exact replica of the full-sized set on which Mark Hamill acted opposite a cardboard rancor. Hamill was filmed against a blue screen, which enabled ILM to add him seamlessly into their rancor footage for a number of shots. A large-scale rancor hand was created for close-ups of the creature picking Luke up. Muren filmed the rancor with wide lenses and from a lower angle to make it appear bigger – turning an 18-inch puppet into a ferocious 16-foot monster. In addition, Muren shot the rancor at a fast film speed to give it the illusion of having real size and weight. The puppet footage was eventually edited together with the live-action footage of Mark Hamill. The result of all their hard work, skill, creativity, and ingenuity is not only one of the Star Wars saga’s greatest-ever creatures but one of cinema’s most memorable monsters.

The beast’s guttural noise has an unlikely source: a tiny dachshund. Sound designer Ben Burtt turned to his neighbour’s dog, Max, to record the rancor. ‘I recorded Max as he growled and hissed,’ explains Burtt, ‘and then I pitched that down much lower for the roars and howls of the lumbering rancor.’

Despite their brutish appearance – and ability to cause excessive destruction – rancors (which are native to the plains of Dathomir) are believed to be an innately benign species that give in to violence only when provoked. However, because of their significant strength, propensity to pummel perceived threats, and ability to eat just about anything, rancors have been shipped across the galaxy and employed as executioners, sentries, and combatants.

Lying in wait in a mucus-lined hole at the bottom of the Great Pit of Carkoon in Tatooine’s Dune Sea, the sarlacc remains buried in the sand except for its massive, teeth-lined mouth, grasping tentacles, and beaked tongue. If anyone falls into the pit (or is pushed in), the sarlacc seizes its prey with its deft tentacles and then swallows them. It slowly digests its victims over hundreds of years, merging with their metabolism and keeping them alive to feed off their tortured consciousness. This strange beast’s lair was the site of many spectacles for Jabba the Hutt, who entertained himself by forcing prisoners into the creature’s gaping tentacled maw.

Sarlaccs can live for an immense time – up to 50,000 years. Thei mobility is limited due to their substantial size – the average sarlacc measures three metres wide and may extend 100 metres down into the sand. Although young members of the species travel to capture food, fully grown adults must wait for prey to come to them. Because of the highly dangerous nature of the species – and the extremely low survival rate of those unwise (or unlucky) enough to approach its maw – little research has been performed on the sarlacc.

The sarlacc’s design developed over time, beginning with Ralph McQuarrie’s early concept drawings of a creature with moving tentacles and a pronounced beak. Eventually, due to technological and financial issues, it became little more than a gaping mouth with jagged teeth and a few tentacles.

Built in the desert in Buttercup Valley, California, the Sarlacc Pit featured a three-metre-wide mouth – the only part of the enormous creature visible above ground; the rest was concealed beneath the sand. Six men were hidden beneath the set, armed with ten-foot poles and wires to make the mouth pulsate and the tentacles move. The creature’s teeth were 12 to 14 inches long, carved from foam rubber and brushed with latex to create a durable skin. The teeth were soft to ensure the safety of the stuntmen who had to dive into the pit during filming.

For the tentacle that grabs Lando Calrissian by the leg and tries to pull him in, mechanical effects supervisor Kit West built an elaborate piece of equipment with wires and radio control. But when West brought it to the set, George Lucas took one look at the complicated mechanism and said, ‘No.’ He suggested they wrap the tentacle around the leg of Billy Dee Williams (Lando’s actor), then film it being pulled away. When played in reverse – as the scene appears in the final cut of the film – it looks like the tentacle is grabbing Lando’s leg, rather than releasing it. The sound of the sarlacc was created by combining alligator hisses with the sounds of some of the crew’s stomachs after eating pizza.

Lucas had ILM enhance the creature for the 1997 Special Edition of Return of the Jedi, adding a beak-like tongue and extra tentacles, because he didn’t feel the Sarlacc was sufficiently ‘alive.’

On the forest moon of Endor, we don’t see many living creatures, but we do see the remains of them. Logray, the shaman of the Ewok Bright Tree Village, wore a headdress made from the skull of a large bird called the churi. Another Ewok, Teebo, wore the skull of a large tusked, fanged creature called the gurreck on his head.

The white things in the red circle in the image above are chickens. They can be briefly spotted in a scene in the Ewok village on Endor. Unsurprisingly, they were portrayed by real chickens in the movie, but in Star Wars lore, they are called Endorian chickens or tip-yips. They are presumably kept by the Ewoks primarily as a source of food, for their eggs and/or meat.

The Ewoks use the carcass of a furry, tusked animal called a verkle as bait. The scent of the verkle’s raw meat was very appealing to a hungry Chewbacca, who was unable to resist and rushed to the stake where the bait had been hung. The moment Chewbacca tried to remove a piece of flesh from the carcass, a huge net sprang up all around Chewie and his friends, instantly scooping them up high above the ground.

Earlier in the film, we see the remains of yet another creature. Lando Calrissian, using the alias Tamtel Skreej, enters Jabba’s Palace wearing a helmet with curved, white tusks protruding from it. Although Return of the Jedi was released in 1983, the tusks were not identified until a short story called Taster’s Choice: The Tale of Jabba’s Chef, published in Tales from Jabba’s Palace in January 1996. They are from a creature called the gondar. Very little else is known about them, and, as far as I can tell, they have only been referenced in Legends canon.

Next time, we’ll be moving on to the first film in the prequel trilogy, The Phantom Menace, which introduced a lot of new creatures into the Star Wars lore.