Mark Hamill Speaks About 'Star Wars VII The Force Awakens,' Says BB-8 Droid is Non-CGI Prop
"Star Wars: The Force Awakens" has still over a year before it hits the cinemas but LucasFilm and Disney were kind enough to offer a tiny glimpse of the upcoming title.
The teaser, brief as it is, did feature some aspects of the movie that generated mixed reactions from fans. This includes the light-saber with a hand-guard, the X-Wings, the bewildered Stormtrooper, among other scenes. There's also the rolling, soccer ball-looking droid which is confirmed to be called as BB-8.
To further shed light on the question about what was featured in the footage, actor Mark Hamill stepped up to say that the rolling droid is in fact not just any CGI-generated prop.
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Speaking with Yahoo!, the celebrated Star Wars actor revealed that BB-8 is a live, remote-controlled prop and he was "amazed" by it.
"They never cease to amaze me with what they're able to come up with, you know? I said, 'How are you ever gonna top R2-D2, the most adorable droid in movie history?' And then they have this new one. And when they were demonstrating how they did this thing, live on set — because it's not CGI, that's a live prop — I was just amazed," he told EmpireOnline.com.
"They let me play around with it. I was running it all around at the creature shop up in Pinewood. I'm telling you, it's an absolute delight. And not having thought that I'd ever go back there, to go back into that world, is just – I get the chills. It's just so much fun," the 63-year-old actor added.
He also spoke about the "new-gen" Star Wars of which he admitted he wasn't expecting to get involved with at all.
"I never thought I'd be involved in it again … And then when George [Lucas] said that they wanted to do more, I rightly assumed that it wouldn't be our story, because we had a beginning, a middle, and an end," Hamill said. "This must be our offspring and the current generation, with us there lending the kind of support that Peter Cushing and Alec Guinness did in the original. So no, that didn't surprise me."
"Star Wars: The Force Awakens" opens in theaters Dec. 18 of 2015.
