In addition to Anakin's tragic transformation into Darth Vader and the unveiling of the Emperor, a certain rampage of Wookiees kept Elsey on his toes.
"The difficult part with the Wookiees, is that they have a much bigger role in this movie than they've ever had before," Elsey explains. "We've basically body-casted every single actor who is playing a Wookiee; which means not only full body-cast, but full head-cast, hand-cast and feet-casts. Then we've had to produce fiberglass versions of those so that we can build up the muscle structure, and then build all the hair suits and everything that sort of goes on top of that as well as the mechanical heads. That's been quite difficult because I don't think anybody's ever attempted to do this many mechanical masks on screen before. This is quite a big thing."
Even though Elsey and his team had to come up with more than one Wookiee, the designs for the group of Walking Carpets don't stray too far from the original sidekick Chewbacca.
"They're basically being built exactly the same as the original Chewie, so the actors have control of their own mouths," Elsey explains. "So when they open their jaws the lips move and the eyes are theirs, so you're basically looking into the eyes of the actors who are inside the Wookiees."
However, Elsey wanted to make sure that each Wookiee still maintained his own personality and slightly different appearance to avoid any confusion on screen.
"With the other Wookiees, we wanted to make them as individual and striking as we possibly could," Elsey says. "George had already collected a whole bunch of fur samples together and colors that he had approved and he knew exactly what these things were going to look like. It then became a sort of jigsaw puzzle for us to put together." Piecing together the Wookiee puzzle was an extension of a childhood hobby for Elsey. When I was a kid, I did it all the time," he recalls. "I'd see a creature from Star Wars that Stuart Freeborn did and I'd try to sculpt it. In fact, one of the very first masks that I ever made as a kid was a Wookiee mask. And it's quite nice to be able to do it again, and with much better results this time, actually."
Making sure Chewbacca could still be spotted in a crowd of Wookiees became a personal quest for Elsey, who's favorite character has always been the furry warrior of few words.
"Chewbacca has to look like Chewbacca," Elsey explains. "Nobody wants to do a character from Star Wars and get it wrong, especially one that's so cherished by so many people -- myself included. We had the original mask here as well as the whole original suit so we were able to work out what the fur looks like and what the colors of the fur look like. But the face was covered in fur. It's covered in like an inch of fur or more over a great majority of it. We didn't really have much reference of what it looked like without the fur. I found a couple of very, very rare pictures, in fact Peter [Mayhew] brought in one of those pictures. It gave us some idea of what it looks like, but it's quite difficult to gauge how to sculpt a Wookiee without the fur."
The original Chewbacca costume, though in excellent archival condition, was in no condition to undergo the rigors of filmmaking. In order to recreate and revamp Chewbacca's suit, the Creature Shop took extensive measurements of everything -- including his teeth, and the shape of his mouth, and measurements from the sides of his head -- to translate it into a new sculpture.
"We're doing all sorts of things to Chewie. The head was in good condition but we added extra hair to that and then combed and curled the hair -- trying to get everything as perfect as we can so that when everyone sees him, there can be no doubt who it is. Because there's going to be a lot of other Wookiees about, we don't want anybody to be confused which one is Chewbacca."
Once Elsey and his team finished all the adjustments on Chewbacca, Peter Mayhew donned the outfit that made him a fan favorite. "Peter kind of is Chewbacca without the suit and the makeup, actually," Elsey says. "It's just the way he moves, he's got long hair and you can see the silhouette. If you squint your eyes a bit you can still see Chewbacca standing there. It was an amazing moment to be a part of. Since the Droid Department is in the same building, at one point R2-D2 trundled on and met him, and he was really pleased to see the little droid. It was a fantastic fanboy moment," beams Elsey.
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