One of the most surprising moments for many fans in Star Wars: The Last Jedi was an appearance by Yoda who came to talk face to face with Luke Skywalker on Ahch-To. The character was last seen in the Star Wars prequel films which used CGI to bring the character to life, while The Last Jedi tapped Frank Oz to animate the practical puppet.
Rumors have been thrown around that Yoda could get a spin off film of his own, which if true ,Oz claims will require vast amounts of CGI and wouldn’t use a practical puppet:
“You know what, I keep hearing that and I know nothing about it,” Oz told IGN about the possibility of a spin-off film. “Believe me. That’s way too difficult for me. I rehearse a long time just to do one line of dialogue [as a puppeteer].”
When Disney purchased Lucasfilm, the studio had announced that it would move forward with a new trilogy of Star Wars films and various spin offs including Rogue One & Solo: A Star Wars Story which have been first of two spinoffs that have been made through Disney. There have been rumors that Yoda and even Obi Wan Kenobi could possibility be getting their own films.
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The process would be too time-consuming for a puppeteer to do all the work for Yoda:
“It would have to be [CGI], yeah. It would have to be. It’s far, far too difficult because I’m doing it with three other people. So it’s four people and you can’t just wing it. You’ve got to study every single word with four people.”
Oz had lent his vocal abilities to Yoda for the prequel films, but with the character demonstrating his combat abilities in that trilogy, using an actual puppet would probably be a very difficult process given that his brief appearance in The Last Jedi and the original trilogy required minimal movement for the part:
“Yoda was fully formed as a written character and he was fully formed as a designed character, but the internal part of him was not created,” Oz pointed out. “He was a wise person, and a powerful person, but that’s kind of all that was given to me. So I had to create a whole backstory for him inside me to make him come alive and be transcendent.”
You can see Oz’s performance as Yoda in The Last Jedi on Digital HD now and on Blu-ray on March 27th.
Would you see a Yoda spin-off film with the character completely CGI?
