Fans can’t seem to get enough of the collision of LEGO animation and the Star Wars universe. The latest experiment in this creative combo, LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy, lands on Disney+ today (Friday, Sept. 13). The clever four-part miniseries features the voices of Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker), Gaten Matarazzo (Sig) Bobby Moynihan (Jedi Bob), Tony Revolori (Dev Geebling), Michael Cusack (Servo) and Ahmed Best (Jar Jar) and is written and exec produced by Benji Samit and Dan Hernandez, directed by Chris Buckley, and produced by Daniel Cavey and Dan Langlois. The story follows a boy names Sig Greebling who finds an ancient Jedi relic that rewrites reality and reverses the order of the Star Wars galaxy.
This week, we had the chance to spend a few minutes with comedy animation veterans Samit and Hernandez (TMNT: Mutant Mayhem, Pokemon: Detective Pikachu) to find out more about their latest fun project:
Animag: Congrats on your clever new animated mini-series. Can you please tell us a bit about how when you two get involved with this special project?
Benji Samit: Our relationship with LucasFilm and LEGO go back now to that that first Star Wars Holiday Special from four years ago. we came in e helped out for just a day on pitching jokes and punching it up. I think we really showed off our love of both LEGO and Star Wars today. I am a massive LEGO guy going way back, so we weren’t just pitching Star Wars jokes and references but also very LEGO-specific stuff. So, fast forward a little when Lego and LucasFilm decided they wanted to do something really special for the 25th anniversary of the their partnership. They came to us first and we wanted to something that felt really big and different.. So we started talking about this idea of rebuilding the entire galaxy to really recreate what the actual feeling of playing with your pieces like the way the way the average kid plays with them. It’s about dumping the whole bin out and you have pieces everywhere. So, you start mixing up mini figs from different parts of the timeline, so you have different characters are interacting. You’re mashing up different ships, etc. It is that full spirit of Lego play.
Dan Hernandez: We started working on the show about three years ago. We started the initial writing process and getting into the development of the visuals along with our amazing director Chris Buckley and all our team at Atomic Cartoons in Vancouver. They have all been incredible as we continued to refine things over the course of these years, so it has been a long time coming and it’s exciting that people are actually going to see it this week.
What would you say was the toughest part of merging these two worlds of Lego and Star Wars together?
Benji: We’re so fortunate that we got all of you know the legacy cast members who came back but also our new cast members our new characters. The all really pop and fit into the Star Wars world. I would say some of the challenging of merging these two worlds together: Making sure that we were staying true to both Star Wars and Lego you know on the Star Wars end of things like it’s tricky when you are when your concept is to mash everything up and change everything. It can be easy to maybe go too far like change it too much where suddenly it doesn’t feel like Star Wars anymore, That was definitely at the front of our minds of like how can we match up the Galaxy and change things but still make it feel like a quintessentially Star Wars story. So, that was one focus.
Then, on the LEGO end of things, we wanted to stay true to the spirit of play and creativity of LEGO. I’m such a big LEGO nerd, so we wanted to make sure that everything felt like a real thing that you could build with the toys. It might have been easy to just figure out well, they look like mini figs, but have the scenery that they’re walking around to be a regular CG set with just a few Lego flourishes. But a lot of the ship builds that you see in the show where things that started with my hands or our director’s hands on physical Lego sets and modifying things with actual Lego bricks and pieces in front of us. We really made sure that builds were real Lego. It was super fun for me to be able to say, “I’m playing with Lego right now because I’m working!”
Can you share some of the details of the initial rebuilding of the galaxy sequence?
Dan: I think the toughest part of this job which really was a dream job in in beyond probably anything that we’ve ever done in our careers but I think the toughest part for me creatively was that sequence where the Galaxy is rebuilt in the first episode. Every now and then you write something where you say to yourself you know if this falls flat, if this doesn’t come through, everything that comes after it is not going to work. Bobby Moynihan gives an absolutely brilliant narration over that sequence. I think that was ultimately the key to unlocking it at least from a writing point of view was finding the right words to say. Then we worked hand in hand with Chris Buckley and the team at Atomic to figure out how it should be visually expressed clearly so that both the biggest fans and the kids who are four or five (like my own children) and maybe a little older will also get it. We just kept iterating we kept iterating and iterating until everything kind of came together. I get goosebumps watching that sequence now because I just know how much effort and passion was poured into it.
What are some of the animated shows or movies who have shaped your creative vision?
Benji: My favorite movie as a kid were Disney Renaissance movies like The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast.
Dan: The movie that I remember loving most as a kid was Disney’s Robin Hood. I loved the character design, the music and the performances, and I think it was an unusual movie in the whole Disney canon. Another one was The Emperor’s New Groove, which I think is one of the funniest movies of all time. You could really see the merging of the studio’s wonderful visual storytelling and great joke-telling. Those were big influences.
Benji: In terms of comedy, I have to mention Looney Tunes. I spent so many hours of my childhood watching those, and they still hold up to this day. And Animanics too, of course.
Dan: Absolutely, those classics really helped shape our comedy references.
This year has been a strange period for animation. Animated movies are by far, some of the most successful titles at the global box office, but we are seeing how animators have to fight hard to get job security and decent pay as well as protection from the threat of AI. What is your take on it all?
Benji: I know things are tough right now, and I commend everyone for the for the fight that they are undertaking. I think it’s a much needed conversation: Just like the other unions that were part of the strikes last year, TAG (The Animation Guild) are having to take the same measures. We definitely are in solidarity with fellow members to fix some of the real issues that that need to be sorted.
Dan: My take is that at every stage of your career, there are oppositional forces and things that are really difficult and that will never change. I don’t think that there’s ever going to be a time that things will not be challenging. Maybe years ago, a forward-looking person would have predicted that in 2024, AI was going to pose existential threats to artists, musicians, writers and even actors. That would not have been on my radar in 2008, but we faced a different set of problems back then too. So, I think that find over the course of your career, that it’s never easy for everyone and that everyone will be happy.
The advice I would give to combat this is two: Number one, find a solid community to be in lockstep with to be in support of and to support each other. Talk to other creative people, not in an exploitive way or necessarily in a networking kind of way. But make true friends in your community who are interested in the same things that you are interested in. Find those other people that are obsessed with animation and care about it deeply. Cultivate those relationships and start writing, drawing and working together.
The second thing is to realize that ultimately the only currency that we have as writers, artists or musicians is the art that we create. You just have to continue on to make that piece of art that could only come from your heart, brain, mouth and your hands. No one can duplicate what you can duplicate what you can do. So, if you can continue to improve and refine your work and your voice, you will eventually create a currency that someone is going to want and be interested. That has been the case for us. It may take a long time, but you’ll eventually land in a a place where people will notice what you’re about and they’ll want to work with you!
LEGO Star Wars: Rebuilding the Galaxy premieres on Disney+ today, Friday, Sept. 13.
Check out the trailer below:
