When a trailer for a highly-anticipated movie debuts, fans can’t help but analyze every frame of it and become infatuated with singular elements. With The Last Jedi, fans can’t seem to get enough of the porgs, the small bird-like creatures that populate Ahch-To. Not everyone is a fan of these cuddly creatures, as The Late Show with Stephen Colbert lovingly parodied in a recent sketch. You can check out the sketch in the video below.
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Much like the porgs have dominated the social media circuit this year following their debut, the droid BB-8 dominated the social media conversation when it debuted in promotional footage for The Force Awakens in 2015.
Lucky for BB-8, its on-screen appearance proved just as entertaining as the promotional footage, quickly making it as beloved a droid as R2-D2 and C-3PO.
Porgs, on the other hand, have done little more than make their presence known and shriek here and there, which has been more than enough to inspire the internet to show off their more creative sides with memes and Photoshop projects.
What makes this “cute” creature’s popularity so interesting is that, for decades, fans have looked down upon the Ewoks from Return of the Jedi as being too “cute” and merely existing as a marketing tactic. Some might dismiss porgs similarly, but that hasn’t stopped many Star Wars fans from falling in love with the creatures.
The creatures were created by writer/director Rian Johnson, who might not have had any idea how popular the cuddly creatures would be.
While speaking with Yahoo! about the impending release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi and porg fever, Johnson asked, “Are you sick of them yet?”
“It wasn’t until we got the actual puppets on set and the whole crew reacted with ‘Oh my God, they’re adorable!’ and also then a few people in the crew were giving them that suspicious side-eye of ‘These are cute, but are they too cute?’” Johnson shared of creating the porgs. “But the overwhelming reaction on set was everybody loved the porgs. And I love ’em, so you know what? I get it if people are a little wary of cuteness in the Star Wars universe, but I personally love them, and I think they have their place in the movie.”
The Last Jedi lands in theaters on December 15.
