Wasn’t that ROGUE ONE footage they put out last week just the bees knees? Yes, yes it was. But what got people’s attention were not the epic battles or striking set pieces. No, it was two creatures that made the briefest of appearances and then vanished. But the internet caught them, and then gave them names: “Bigmouth” and “Space Monkey”.
Sitting down with EW, director Gareth Edwards not only gave us details about said characters, but also gave us their names: Pao (Bigmouth) and Bistan (Space Monkey).
Let’s start with Pao, a soldier who shouts a lot of commands during battle, acting as a possible coordinator of those battles.
There was this great design of this creature that’s mouth would open really wide, and he looked like he was really good at giving orders and shouting at people during a battle. I was like, ‘We’ve got to give him that moment in the film,’ and so [Pao] was born out of that.
Next is Bistan, who looks like if the old man from UP made love to Chewbacca. In the footage he seems to be operating some kind of giant gun, laughing like a psychopath as he does it.
It’s not necessarily a character that we get to know, but I think he has a very memorable, iconic look. [He’s] one of my favorites. I can’t give away what happens to him.
Edwards went on to talk about the birth of these creatures, and the many, many others in the film:
It wasn’t like, ‘We’ve got this character, we need to design a creature for it, and here’s what this creature’s like.’ It was more like we told the creature department to come up with a thousand ideas, and then it was like casting the movie. There were walls and walls of these different types of characters that we could’ve picked from. We just went through them, like, ‘God, he’s fascinating…. Who’s that…? And she looks amazing…! And what’s that there?’ Slowly, we got it down to our top hundred, and then it got even more refined.
The greatest thing about these newest STAR WARS movies is the focus on real creatures, makeup and set pieces, as opposed to the CGI overload of the prequels—and Edwards seems to be embracing this gleefully. If you don’t agree with me, just look at the faces on Pao and Bistan. Look how joyful they are! Or angry…I can never tell with these aliens.
ROGUE ONE starring Pao and Bistan comes out December 17.