Star Wars 8: New creatures, critters, and comrades revealed

Entertainment Weekly has released a load of new information and images from ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’ as part of its huge autumn preview issue.

As well as revealing how ‘The Last Jedi’ begins after Rey finally confronts Luke, and the struggles facing John Boyega’s Finn as he comes to terms with his place in the galaxy, the magazine has also revealed an array of new creatures who populate Rian Johnson’s sequel.

The Praetorian Guard

These guys are the Praetorian Guard. The heavily armoured troops are Supreme Leader Snoke’s personal bodyguards, very much like Emperor Palpatine’s red-cloaked Imperial Guard in ‘Return of the jedi’, but way more badass.

“The Praetorians, my brief to [costume designer] Michael Kaplan was that those guys have to be more like samurai,” ‘The Last Jedi’ writer-director Rian Johnson tells EW. “They have to be built to move, and you have to believe that they could step forward and engage if they have to. They have to seem dangerous.”

Snoke himself, as performed by Andy Serkis, will also appear in the flesh rather than by hologram. Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren travels with Domhnall Gleeson’s General Hux for a face to face with their glorious leader to explain their crushing defeat by the Resistance at Starkiller Base.

You can bet it’s going to be majorly awks.

Porgs

These cute little critters are indigenous to Ahch-To, the planet Rey travelled to at the end of ‘The Force Awakens’ to confront Luke Skywalker.

The Porg are penguin-like puppets inspired by puffins, the real-life inhabitants of Skellig Michael, the Irish island where the Ahch-To scenes were filmed. They were practically created by Neal Scanlan’s creature workshop for the film, and EW describes them as “cute, and fluffy, and ingratiating… But they get everywhere.”

Everywhere seems to include the Millennium Falcon as the new image above suggests.

So they sound like Ewoks crossed with Star Trek’s Tribbles to us, but we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt until we see them in action.

Caretakers

These ladies (all Caretakers are female) are another indigenous resident of Ahch-To, who share the islands with Luke Skywalker and the Porgs.

Again created by Neal Scanlan’s creature workshop, the Caretakers maintain the former Jedi Temples of the planet living a spartan, nun-like existence. According to EW, they communicate with Luke Skywalker “through what Johnson describes as ‘a blubbery sort of Scottish fish talk'”, but they are not thrilled to be sharing their home with the exiled Jedi.

They’re amphibious creatures who were drawn from the sea to the holy temples, and were performed by actors within prosthetic costumes on set.

‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’ arrives in UK cinemas on 14 December.

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