No, there’s no electricity-based pun here, my friend. It’s just that things I saw in the second season of The Mandalorian that I was certain were VFX are not, and some of the things I thought I knew for a fact were real were completely VFX. Spend an immensely enjoyable three and a half minutes and see how much you guessed right...and wrong.
Some of the things seen in Industrial Light and Magic’s newest VFX reel from The Mandalorian’s second season are gimmes, of course—the Krayt Dragon and his acid vomit, the massive Imperial bases, and practically anything that flies—but there are some real surprises. For instance, I’m delighted to find out that ILM built a real model of Moff Gideon’s Imperial cruiser to use in some space scenes, just as the original trilogy did. So, somehow, is the majority of the giant convoy vehicle that Mando (Pedro Pascal) and Migs (Bill Burr) hijacked and had a massive fight scene upon in “The Believer” episode.
Meanwhile, there’s a shot of the road the convoys take where ILM decided to add a real mountain from somewhere else to the background. A shot of Mando merely running somewhere is a CG character. The trash dump planet where Mando picks up Migs is mostly CG, of course, but it’s unbelievable how little is made up of a practical set—so little it’s bizarre they bothered. And while you knew that Ahsoka’s epic entrance into live-action required a lot of VFX, you don’t know how many effects it took until you give the video a watch, so just see for yourself.
Unfortunately, we don’t get to see what (bad, weird) work into (poorly) plopping young Luke Skywalker’s noggin on whoever acted as his body double. Now that’s a VFX mystery I hope gets revealed someday (it won’t).
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