Robot Chicken Strikes Back With More Star Wars

By Bonnie Burton

The Emperor, Darth Vader, Boba Fett, and the rest of everyone's favorite Star Wars characters are back with more laughs and plenty of inside hardcore fan details in Robot Chicken: Star Wars Episode II. The special airs this Sunday, Nov. 16 on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim at 11:30 PM. Starwars.com chats with Robot Chicken creators Seth Green and Matthew Senreich about what fans can expect from the new episode as well as special guest star appearances. Seth also talks about his upcoming directorial debut for his comic book The Freshman.

Why did you decide to do another Star Wars special for Robot Chicken?

Seth: That's like saying why did you decide to make out with that beautiful girl who said, "Hey, do you want to make out with me?" Matt and I have loved Star Wars all our lives and the opportunity to get to make Star Wars stuff is kind of invaluable especially when you're given permission to play with it and have fun with it and to do your thing with it.

Matt: The other thing that I love is that we got to develop new versions of characters that have existed for pretty much 30 years. We love that we can play with these characters and give them more personality and take them in more of a Robot Chicken direction.

Seth: This is a bold statement, but I think this one is better than the last Robot Chicken: Star Wars special.

How long did it take to make this special?

Matt: This was about 14 weeks start to finish.

Seth: There's about 20 sketches, but they're also be a bunch of extra footage that will be on the DVD. The special itself is 22 minutes long.

Matt: The only thing that was reused that would be compared to last time is that we put the dinner sequence in.

Seth: Because it folds into the story we're trying to tell.

Matt: We focus a lot on the stories of the bounty hunters this time.

Seth: I've always been fascinated with that tableau on the Executor when you see these six guys -- one of them who is Boba Fett who eventually gets Han Solo. Who are those guys and how did they get there? Do they know each other? Do they have agents? Is there a rivalry like a casting call?

Matt: We just wanted to delve into what's the back stories on these guys.

Seth: What kind of traps do they set? What kind of rivalries do they have with each other? How do they feel when Boba Fett gets him? How does Boba Fett feel when after he's been the hero of the galaxy he falls haphazardly into the Sarlacc pit after being pushed by a blind man and screaming like a woman?

What did you learn from the last Star Wars special that you applied to this one?

Seth: When we did the first one, we were so amazed that we got to do it. We basically filmed all the nerd water cooler conversations from the last 30 years. It's everything that everyone hypothesized. With this one, we just took our time a little more. Having done all those jokes we wanted to do we really were interested in getting a little more under the skin of these guys. There's a lot of fun storytelling.

Any notable guest star voices you'd like to mention?

Seth: Carrie Fisher is in the show, which is awesome.

Matt: Billy Dee Williams came in and knocked it out of the park for us.

Seth: We got to record Billy Dee before, so we had kind of a rapport with him. And this was just... I can't tell you how much I love Billy Dee Williams. He is so awesome. The tracks he gave us are outrageous. We even wrote a whole sketch for the proper season where Billy Dee himself encounters a fan at the supermarket, we loved him so much.

Ahmed Best came in to do Jar Jar. I can't even express how talented that kid is. Abe Benrubi came back to do our Darth Vader.

Matt: Seth MacFarlane is in it again as the Emperor. Breckin Meyer is Boba Fett again. Seth: Donald Faison makes a great appearance as Gary the Stormtrooper.

Is this the first time you all have worked with Carrie Fisher for Robot Chicken?

Seth: This is the first time she's done Robot Chicken, but I've worked with her before on Austin Powers and we've met a bunch over the years. She was great! She was really game and very fun, and totally engaged in the material.

Matt: She said if George Lucas could do it, she could do it.

Favorite sketch?

Matt: I'm going to say that for me in the first one, the Emperor is still great. And in this one, I love the first Boba Fett sketch. I don't want to spoil it for anyone by saying much more, but it's Boba Fett doing everything you want him to do

Seth: It's representative of how he's perceived and how he's depicted. I love that sketch too, but I'm in love with the whole special right now, so it's hard to choose my favorite.

It's a fire and you have to save one sketch, which one do you pick?

Seth: There's a Jar Jar sketch that I think is pretty flawless.

Matt: Yeah, good job. [laughs]

Seth: The Emperor has a really bad day -- and that's great too. It's tough because we've slaved over every detail of it at this point so it's very hard for me to think of it as individual terms.

Why do you hope fans will dig this new special?

Seth: Matt and I are big fans and we come from that perspective so we really just put on film what we would want to see the most. We tend to all have a similar sentiment. Like when we go to Comic-Con, it's not like we're trying to sell to fans, we're talking to the other nerds about the nerdy stuff we all love.

Matt: And every mistake that you actually see in it, we know what we did wrong and what we did right. We pay such close attention to detail in the background shots and the set pieces and character pieces that they are all to a T. And that's the kind of stuff we really take pride in doing.

Seth: Matt and I always try to play to the mainstream as well, and make sure people can enjoy the jokes and the storytelling whether or not they're fans of the franchise. But for the fans of the franchise the special is dense with details.

So are all the props from the Star Wars specials on your desks to play with or are they all under lock and key somewhere?

Seth: I have the Boba Fett puppet that came with those Japanese 8-inch die-cast toys but has not been put together that I stole from the puppet department the first couple of weeks of pre-production.

Matt: But most of the sets are on showcase downstairs and throughout our office.

Seth: We're actually going to pull a bunch of stuff out again because we're shooting new material for the DVD. Eventually, we'll put them up for auction for some sweet charity and let Steve Sansweet bid it out with some fans.

Seth, are you excited to be making your directorial debut with the film version of your comic The Freshman?

Seth: It's funny to think of it as a debut. I've been making movies for almost 30 years now and have paid such tremendous attention to all the great people I've been fortunate enough to work with. And in the last eight years, Matt and I have been actively producing multiple iterations of media. The Freshman is our baby and I wouldn't trust anyone else to mess with it.

We heard you picked George Lucas's brain about making a film, what kind of advice did he give you as a first-time director?

Seth: That's a little misrepresented. Matt and I were lucky enough to spend some time with him a few weeks ago and it was all very casual conversation. We talked a lot about how the studio system has evolved and the corporatization of the entire film industry, and how that affects what creators are able to do. He further advocated independent financing so you're not beholden to anyone else's determinations of your creativity. And that's sound advice. When you have the opportunity to produce something yourself and not have someone with a completely different agenda tell you why your precious thing needs to look or sound this way, I think you're better off.

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Keywords: Television, Robot Chicken

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