The mo-cap guy is totally mo-capping!
Back when Andy Serkis was cast in The Force Awakens, the question on everyone’s mind was whether he would be lending his skills as a motion-capture artist (and performer), a la Lord Of The Rings, King Kong, Planet Of The Apes or whether he would be playing a live-action role – he did in Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige – and just lending his mocap expertise on the side. Apparently that was what he did on Avengers: Age Of Ultron, playing the future Black Panther villain Ulysses Klaue as himself, but also helping/guiding Mark Ruffalo as a performer when it was time to mocap the Hulk into play.
Well today, courtesy of StarWars.com we now have our first look at Andy Serkis in the process of capturing his Force Awakens character Supreme Leader Snoke:
This isn’t all that surprising. It would seem weird for a movie like Star Wars, that is undoubtedly going to be using all kinds of digitally created creatures to bring in Serkis and not take advantage of his skill as a motion-capture artist and, again, performer as well. His performance in both Lord Of The Rings and the new Planet Of The Apes series are incredible. Now he’s here to lend that to Star Wars, a series that so far has really dropped the ball on its CGI characters.
Perhaps more surprising is that Serkis is joining another performer in the mocap suit, and that’s 12 Years A Slave actress Lupita Nyong’o, who we found out in the that first set of Vanity Fair photos is going to be filling in a Jabba The Hut-ish role in the form of Maz Kanata. It’s unclear how both fit into the film just yet, but Serkis’ Supreme Leader Snoke doesn’t seem too pleased. Maybe he’s the leader of this new Stormtrooper army the ‘First Order.’