Chapter 894: Its Main Job Is to Act Cute

Hardcore fans of Star Wars and Star Trek had always been sworn enemies. Moreover, unlike the permanently masked role Duke had prepared for Simon Pegg, Benedict Cumberbatch was gunning for the male lead. Duke definitely wouldn't casually do something that ran so completely contrary to the core audience's preferences without a massive payoff.

Besides, he planned to use a Chinese-American actor like Daniel Wu for the second lead and a Latino actor for the third. Benedict Cumberbatch didn't fit these requirements at all.

Even though Benedict Cumberbatch showed a strong desire to aggressively pursue the role, and possessed higher popularity and fame, Duke still chose to reject him.

Duke wasn't particularly familiar with the Star Trek series. During his downtime in the preparation phase, he watched a few of the most classic Star Trek films. After all, a series that had endured for so long and garnered so much fan support had to have its merits; perhaps he could even learn something from it.

However, after finishing a few Star Trek movies, Duke realized this offered no help to Star Wars at all.

Although both Star Wars and Star Trek were sci-fi films depicting cosmic wars, they were fundamentally different. The two franchises emphasized completely different things.

In Star Wars, as with other typical Hollywood blockbusters, the most important thing was punishing evil and promoting good. Everything else took a backseat. The forces of evil could not defeat the forces of light, or it would be politically incorrect. In Star Trek, the most important thing was technological development and the spirit of exploration. Good and evil didn't matter; strength was the foundation for survival in the universe.

Therefore, Star Wars was pseudo-sci-fi—just a drama blockbuster draped in a sci-fi coat.

In Star Wars, it didn't matter whether the technology was advanced. As long as one had The Force, they could conquer anything. The Force could transcend the laws of physics and produce supernatural phenomena. This setting drastically reduced the sci-fi attributes of Star Wars, making it more like a fantasy tale.

To a certain extent, the Star Wars Series belonged to the space opera genre—highly epic, incredibly grand in scale, and driven by a very clear plotline. Star Trek leaned more toward the space cowboy genre; the films frequently highlighted its core narrative theme: exploring the unknown and boldly going forward.

While Duke was prepping the film, Lucasfilm also signed promotional partnership agreements with several companies.

In February, virtual reality enthusiasts and Star Wars fans received the news they had been waiting for: Star Wars was about to fully enter the virtual reality experience. Lucasfilm and Google entered a strategic partnership for its development, and production on a complete virtual reality experience officially began. It would open up a brand new Star Wars universe.

This complete virtual reality experience would include a compelling story and exclusive, never-before-seen content directly tied to the opening of the new Star Wars series. Fans would be able to experience it by accessing the official Star Wars app on iOS and Android.

Google wasn't just making the VR for Star Wars 7; they had tied it into every related app, prompting users to choose the light or dark side, with a dedicated department closely tracking the related data.

This spring, news about Star Wars 7 practically occupied the front pages of most entertainment media outlets. Whenever the hype began to cool, Lucasfilm and Warner Brothers would drop new updates to attract the fans' attention.

However, this period was awards season after all, and news about the awards season still stole a lot of focus. Just as the Oscar nomination list was announced and media attention began to shift, Duke, Lucasfilm, and Warner Brothers held a joint press conference to officially announce the title of Star Wars 7 as Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

This news pulled the fans' attention right back.

With three months left until Star Wars: The Force Awakens began shooting, work on the film's visual effects was already underway. A major focus was designing a brand new droid. In the concept drafts Duke submitted to Industrial Light & Magic, this droid named BB-8 wouldn't fight enemies in the movie like R2D2; its main job was to act cute.

BB-8 would shoulder the heavy responsibility of marketing and driving merchandise sales.

Although his drawing skills were quite limited, Duke had already created the prototype for BB-8 back in the previous year, sketching out the very first draft of BB-8 on a piece of drawing paper.

Taking into account the passionate, handcrafted style consistently featured in the Star Wars movies and the overall atmosphere of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Duke's hand-drawn sketch depicted BB-8 as two stacked spheres, with a small dot on the top sphere representing an eye. This sketch also became the core concept for BB-8's design.

Duke's ideas also spurred Industrial Light & Magic designer Christian Alzmann to complete BB-8's final design.

To complete the design work for this droid rolling on a sphere, Christian Alzmann experimented with various methods, balancing Duke's vision on one hand while highlighting new characteristics on the other.

Naturally, since the droid in the original sketch looked gentle and endearing, he couldn't take the design in a serious or aggressive direction. Every time a new version of the BB-8 design was created, Duke provided corresponding feedback, which ultimately led to the complete concept design for BB-8.

Christian Alzmann confessed to Duke that while designing BB-8, he had observed all kinds of strange spherical objects for inspiration. It wasn't until he saw a soccer ball rolling around in front of him that, in a flash of lightning, he realized this was exactly the feel he had been dreaming of.

Once Alzmann nailed down the basic design philosophy, the next task was figuring out how to merge that concept with reality.

After constant attempts and repeated refinement, the designers from the Industrial Light & Magic creature team locked in the final look for BB-8: a rotating spherical body and a hovering hemispherical head. It looked simple but not simplistic—classic Star Wars style.

Moreover, for the sake of convenience during actual filming, the designers ensured BB-8 could be remote-controlled to perform various movements.

Finishing the concept design was only half the battle. Figuring out how to materialize that concept was the true key to success.

For this, the Star Wars: The Force Awakens crew hired Neal Scanlan, a legendary figure at Industrial Light & Magic, to serve as the supervisor for the task.

At Duke's request, Neal Scanlan followed the design philosophies of the other two designers, but turning BB-8 into reality remained a massive challenge.

This modeling team, led by Neal Scanlan, first set out to create several puppet versions of BB-8.

Applying concept designs to reality would inevitably produce some changes. Duke was well aware of this, which was why he specifically had Neal Scanlan's modeling team build different versions of BB-8 to find the most suitable one among them.

Neal Scanlan and Duke discussed a lot of topics regarding how the BB-8 droid should move, such as whether it needed a retractable neck.

But Duke felt it was unnecessary. To prove his idea, he had the modeling team spend half a day constructing a mobile puppet droid.

This puppet droid's flexibility was absolutely astonishing. Its head and arms could move freely at will. Everyone agreed the droid was fantastic, and this puppet version laid a solid foundation for the final, materialized BB-8.

After building the puppet, figuring out how to operate it for actual filming became another thorny problem facing Duke and Neal Scanlan's team.

The two crew members serving as BB-8's operators holed up on a soundstage at Warner Studios, spending two full weeks mastering BB-8's movement patterns and expressions.

Simultaneously, Duke had John Schwartzman send a camera assistant to record all of BB-8's expression data on the soundstage with a lens, constantly adjusting and practicing, which ultimately allowed BB-8 to perform rich, continuous movements and expressions.

After the process of making the model and practical operation, Neal Scanlan's team presented the fruits of their labor to Duke. When seeing the nimble movements and rich expressions BB-8 displayed, Duke felt a massive wave of relief, finally able to set down the heavy burden he had been carrying on his shoulders for so long.

BB-8's stellar performance also conquered the Star Wars: The Force Awakens crew. It felt less like a puppet model and more like the actual BB-8 from the movie.

Meanwhile, to better serve Star Wars: The Force Awakens and the subsequent series, Lucasfilm specifically had Industrial Light & Magic establish a studio in Los Angeles. This studio was led by Ross Upham, a prominent figure at Industrial Light & Magic, and Duke also appointed him as the visual effects supervisor for Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

In today's Industrial Light & Magic, visual effects supervisors like Russell Earl still inherited the tradition of "serving the filmmaker," a tradition originally established by George Lucas in the 1970s.

Russell Earl joined Industrial Light & Magic in 1994, when he was still just a technical assistant. To date, he had overseen visual effects production for numerous blockbuster hits, including Mission: Impossible 2, the Pirates of the Caribbean series, the Transformers series, and The Avengers. He was highly experienced.

If a director wanted to add a spaceship to a movie, have Iron Man flying all over the sky, or cram hundreds or thousands of animals into Noah's Ark, he absolutely needed a visual effects supervisor to lead the entire effects team. Duke was naturally no exception.

Directors like Duke always hoped visual effects could be elevated another tier. In modern Hollywood, every bit of visual effects needed upgrading, while at the same time production schedules were shrinking.

Therefore, for all of Duke's projects, visual effects work always had to begin from the moment they were greenlit. Some even had to start work before they were officially established.

Fortunately, Duke had Industrial Light & Magic by his side all these years. Now that Industrial Light & Magic had become his asset, he essentially never had to worry about visual effects.

When this prep work came to a close, Duke received a call from Aerin Lauder's cousin. A billionaire from New York wanted to speak with him regarding the movie's female lead.