‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’ Featurette Shows How Serkis Becomes Snoke

Ahead of the Academy Awards and the home video debut of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, a new video explores how Lucasfilm and Industrial Light and Magic was able to bring the leader of the First Order to life.

In the clip, we get to see how Andy Serkis portrayed the villainous Supreme Leader Snoke on set, detailing the process from filming to the layers of effects work done in post production. Check it out in the clip above.

Serkis is one of the most renowned motion capture actors working in Hollywood today, and his characters have been in many successful film franchises that dominate box offices. His turn as the mysterious Supreme Leader was met positively by fans.

But of course that performance is heightened by the work of ILM, who make Snoke imposing and terrifying, despite his frail and decrepit appearance. There’s a reason why the film is nominated for an Oscar Award for its Visual Effects.

Seeing the process of the character come to life shows the work put into the production of a Star Wars film. The model sheets, the lighting references, and the stand in all contribute to the finished product. It almost makes us miss the character, especially knowing he won’t be back for Star Wars: Episode IX.

After Serkis’ brief appearance in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, many fans had their own theories as to his character’s significance, backstory, and how he’d figure into the future of the saga.

Serkis seemed to be throwing fans off in the lead to Star Wars: The Last Jedi, telling IGN that he and Lucasfilm had the character’s backstory set, saying “Oh yeah, absolutely I know it.”

But Rian Johnson had other plans in place when Kylo Ren decided to strike down his master instead of following his instructions to execute Rey. All of the fan theories about Snoke being a Palpatine clone or Darth Plagueis were dashed in that moment.

Johnson said he wrote the script for the movie before the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and so his film was set before all of the fan theories and speculation ran wild. Though the character’s popularity surprised him, he did not change his story in response to fans.

“A lot of things that ended up taking hold in the fan community in terms of who is Snoke, who are Rey’s parents, and the fever pitch that those rose to, I obviously knew those were questions you had coming out of Force Awakens, but I didn’t have the weight of the fan expectation of what the payoff of those questions would be,” Johnson said to /Film. “Which I think was a good thing.”

Star Wars: The Last Jedi comes to Digital HD on March 13th, and will be available on Blu-ray and DVD on March 27th.