The Star Wars franchise gained its iconic status in Hollywood thanks to the genius vision of pioneering filmmaker George Lucas who set the benchmark when it came to the sci-fi genre. Lucas was also fortunate to have a strong team of technical experts who brought his ambitious ideas to life on screen.
Sound designers Ben Burtt and Randy Thom who created the entire soundscape for the franchise, were expectedly crucial to the narratives. Speaking about the extensive research that went into creating unique languages and sounds for the non-human characters, Burtt revealed the out-of-the-box process they used to arrived at the now recognizable language of Jabba The Hutt.
How Jabba The Hutt’s Iconic Speech Patterns Were Perceived And Created
Creating Star Wars is undoubtedly a task of Herculean proportions that only a visionary like George Lucas could have achieved. The epic filmmaker also had a trusted core team of brilliant technicians and creative artists who helped bring his lofty ideas to life.
Among them was the award-winning team of Ben Burtt and Randy Thom who were responsible for the entire soundscape of the films. From the swashbuckling crack of the lightsabers to the various languages and dialects that were created for characters like Chewbacca, Burtt and Thom’s work with sound engineering and mixing expertly brought these aspects to life.
In Return of the Jedi, the sound technicians tackled the key role of the intimidating alien Jabba The Hutt whose voice and language has attained cult status with die-hard fans. The character speaks Huttese which Burtt revealed (via Star Wars.com), was created from the basis of a Peruvian-Inca dialect called Quechua which was spoken by the character Greedo in the first film.
They then incorporated aspects of this dialect with the help of renowned linguistics professor Larry Ward, an expert at mimicking languages. Ward’s voice formed the foundation for the character to be developed further.
We had heard Quechua language tapes back on the first movie, and I just liked the sound and rhythm of it. We listened to a lot of examples of it and then we would either attempt to imitate it, or we would get Larry Ward to do it.
Burtt also revealed an extremely strange and out-of-the-box process that he used to perfect the various sounds and speech patterns of the character, which even included using food made by his wife. Elaborating on how it all panned out, he revealed the manner in which Ward’s voice which uttered the words, was manipulated.
We then took his voice and slowed it down, so it was deeper. At the time, we had some ability to pitch lower electronically, and then we added a subwoofer to the bass to make it seem solid and heavy.
Jabba’s voice was then augmented with a lot of cheese casserole that my wife makes. I would take a bowl of it, work it with my hands, and make a kind of a slurpy sound. We tried to put pieces of that into all of Jabba’s movement, so he sounded liquid-y and squishy as it went along.
While these ideas may have sounded rather crazy at the time, they ultimately resulted in created a totally unique soundscape for Jabba The Hutt which is now synonymous with the character.
This Star Wars Scene With Jabba The Hutt Took The Mickey Out Of Carrie Fisher
Judging by the massive scale of George Lucas’ Star Wars saga, it goes without saying that the effort that went into bringing his ambitious ideas to life would have been nothing short of staggering. Whether it was the technical details or the production design, every member of the cast and crew gave it their blood, sweat, and tears to ensure that the end product was epic.
Princess Leia star Carrie Fisher was one actor who faced a torrid time on the sets of Return Of The Jedi in one particular scene with the intimidating Jabba the Hutt. The difficulties of this segment was elaborated upon in J.W. Rinzler’s The Making Of Star Wars (via Slash Film).
The huge alien creature Jabba the Hutt who is one of the galaxy’s most powerful gangsters, was created with four tons of clay by puppeteer Toby Philpott. In Return Of The Jedi, Fisher’s Princess Leia confronts the character in an effort to save Hans Solo, and is captured by his men.
This scene also required the actor to be chained near Jabba in a gold metal bikini that proved to be extremely uncomfortable for her to move around in. Recalling the huge difficulty she faced in working with this contraption, Fisher said,
This is no bikini. It was metal. It didn’t go where you went.
To make matters worse, one particularly cringeworthy scene required the celebrity to be grossly licked by the gigantic alien. Philpott who had to intricately control the puppet, revealed what took place in the book, Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga: The Official Collector’s Edition (via Game Rant), when Jabba’s tongue touched Fisher in a delicate spot.
After these scenes that took many weeks to shoot, the veteran actor finally got some justice for herself. When asked if a body double could substitute her for the final showdown with Jabba in which she strangles him, Fisher stated in no uncertain terms that she would be the one to inflict this torture on him after everything she had been through (via Slash Film).
Return Of The Jedi is streaming on Disney+.
