The Star Wars universe is populated by countless alien creatures. From the behemothic Exogarth to the tentacled Rathtars, there are so many beings that look deeply, wondrously strange in the Star Wars franchise, and they help give the series some of its exotic and creative flair.
Yet if you look a little closer at some of these creatures, you might find that some of them actually are a whole lot closer to Earth-dwellers than they might appear at first glance. From hybrids of common sea creatures to adorable CGI takes on beloved pets, these Star Wars creatures were actually inspired by inhabitants of our very own home planet.
Porgs
Porgs are ridiculously adorable, rotund, giant-eyed avian waddlers that are hard not to fall in love with. As it turns out, they were created to deal with a logistical filming problem. While making The Last Jedi, director Rian Johnson kept running into clusters of puffins on Skellig Michael, the Irish island where the movie was being filmed. Instead of trying to get rid of the puffins or editing them out, Johnson turned them into species native to the remote island planet of Ahch-To.
While puffins were the blueprint, a number of other earthly creatures went into the design that eventually became the porgs. “It was influenced by a seal and a pug dog and the puffin,” Star Wars designer Jake Lunt Davies told StarWars.com. “The big eyes of a seal or the big eyes of a pug dog and the sort of funny, ugly face [of a pug].”
Caretakers
Puffins helped give shape to yet another creature in the Star Wars universe—the Caretakers, residents of Ahch-To who maintain the Jedi temple. Rian Johnson gave designers just one direction when it came to designing these characters: he wanted them to look like “puffin people.”
“We started to look at aquatic animals. The color ways of puffins combined with aquatic animals, I suppose,” designer Jake Lunt Davies told StarWars.com. “And I drew lots of things that were riffing off walruses and seals and whales.” What emerged was a unique creature that looks a bit like an elderly, misshapen hippopotamus, dressed up in nun-like costumes. One creature that didn’t make the vision board for the Caretakers? “We were trying to avoid turtles,” Davies added.
Ewoks
A lot of different inspirations went into the crafting of the Ewoks, the forest-dwelling, spear-wielding, improbably adorable stars of Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi. The Viet Cong’s style of guerrilla resistance fighting played a role, but ultimately, the biggest inspiration for this critter was George Lucas’s own dog, a toy breed called the Brussels Griffon. Though the Ewoks went through some changes and wound up looking a bit more like teddy bears than pups, it’s not hard to see the resemblance to Lucas’s pet in their furry faces and stout forms.
Vulptices
The crystalline planet of Crait is inhabited by a crystal-covered, fox-like creature called a vulptex. These creatures were actually inspired by culpeos, which are types of fox-like canids that sometimes could be seen hunting around Salar de Uyuni, the otherworldly Bolivian salt flat where the Crait scene from The Last Jedi was filmed.
Banthas
Banthas, the loyal, hard-working horned beasts of Tatooine, bear an obvious resemblance to a number of Earthly mammals, from bighorn sheep to yaks. In actuality, though, a 22-year-old elephant played the Bantha in Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope. The pachyderm, named Mardji, wore a heavy costume that included a horned headpiece and a fur suit. Since the scenes were filmed in Death Valley, California, her costume had to be frequently removed and put back on.
Fortunately, one of her trainers was there—decked out in a Tusken Raider costume, but on hand to supervise all the same. Also, Mardji had the opportunity to play in a creek in between filming, which she apparently seemed to enjoy quite a bit. She also won the heart of George Lucas, who visited her at her zoo in Redwood City after filming was complete. Later, Lucas went on to base the gait of the AT-AT imperial walkers in The Empire Strikes Back on Mardji’s style of movement.
Yoda
With his wide eyes and huge ears, Yoda is a totally unique creature—except for the fact that Yoda fans have a tendency to recognize him in everything from dogs to particularly wide-eyed cats. In reality, make-up artist Stuart Freeborn based Yoda’s wizened face on Albert Einstein and his own visage. But some fans have noted that Yoda bears a particular resemblance to the tarsier, a tiny primate that lives in the forests of Indonesia and the Philippines. With its supermassive eyes and pointed ears, it’s not hard to see the resemblance.
Wookiees
Wookiees might look more like Bigfoot than any other creature, yet a whole lot of real Earthly animals went into shaping this iconic Star Wars race. According to StarWars.com, Chewbacca’s appearance was a “mix of a dog, cat, lemur, and monkey.” His voice, meanwhile, “mixed the calls of bears, walruses, lions, badgers, and other types of sick animals to make the iconic Wookiee roar.”
Jar Jar Binks
It’s hard to forget Jar Jar Binks—his appearance is pretty singular and decidedly unearthly. Or is it? Actually, illustrator Terryl Whitlatch based this unusual Gungan’s walk on that of long-legged flightless birds such as ostriches, emus, and cassowaries. Jar Jar Binks’ appearance was also reportedly based in part on that of the hadrosaurus, a duck-billed dinosaur that lived during the Late Cretaceous Period and likely was abundant in what is New Jersey today.
Thala-Sirens
Thala-Sirens are docile animals that enjoy sitting in the sun on the shores of Ahch-To. These gigantic, blubbery mammals were actually inspired by another creature that enjoys doing just that: regular Earth-dwelling seals.
“The whole idea was that by only seeing their heads and neck, that you would get this feeling that they were like basking seals, that these creatures would come to the shore at a certain time each day and just enjoy the sunlight before returning back to the sea,” concept designer Neal Scanlan said to IGN.
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