Originally published November 18, 2016. Updated April 16, 2018.
Entertainment Weekly has put the spotlight on one of the new alien characters set to feature in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story in Admiral Raddus, a Mon Calamari (that’s the same species as Admiral Ackbar, if the above image wasn’t enough of a clue), a high ranking member of the Rebellion inspired by the British wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
“We always tried to find a real world example of who these creatures may be, and in this case we used Churchill,” said Neal Scanlan, creature effects supervisor. “Admiral Raddus is a very strong figure. We would use [Churchill] not only as visual reference for his physical features, but also when it came to performing him and expressing him through the actor. You try to look at a famous actor, or a statesperson or something like that. Someone you could use. It helps to have someone to reference in the real world. It grounds our creatures and ideas. We use these references to pull these creatures back and make them feel like they belong here in our world.”
Unsurprisingly considering we’re less than a month away from release, we’ve seen a whole host of Rogue One promotional material lately, and you can keep up to date with all of our coverage here.
From Lucasfilm comes the first of the Star Wars standalone films, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, an all-new epic adventure. In a time of conflict, a group of unlikely heroes band together on a mission to steal the plans to the Death Star, the Empire’s ultimate weapon of destruction. This key event in the Star Wars timeline brings together ordinary people who choose to do extraordinary things, and in doing so, become part of something greater than themselves.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is set for release on December 15th in the UK and December 16th in the States, with a cast that includes Felicity Jones (The Theory of Everything), Diego Luna (Milk), Ben Mendelsohn (The Dark Knight Rises), Donnie Yen (Ip Man), Jiang Wen (Let the Bullets Fly), Forest Whitaker (The Last King of Scotland), Alan Tudyk (Con Man), Riz Ahmed (Nightcrawler), Genevieve O’Reilly (Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith), Jimmy Smits (Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones), James Earl Jones (Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope), Valene Kane (The Fall), Alistair Petrie (The Night Manager), Warwick Davis (Star Wars: Episode IV – Return of the Jedi) and Jonathan Aris (Sherlock).
