Laura Dern made her first appearance as part of Star Wars: The Last Jedi at Disney's D23 Expo over the weekend and if one thing was clear, it's that she's really excited to be part of Star Wars. In fact, she was so excited on the set of Star Wars: The Last Jedi that she had a tendency to screw up the takes she was in. Apparently, Dern had a tendency to make blaster noises with her mouth while filming, which meant they had to cut and start again. According to Dern...
I remembered you don't have to say the words when you were pretending when you were eight.
The admission came from Laura Dern during the live action film panel at D23 Expo where our own Eric Eisenberg was in attendance. To be honest, nobody here can blame her because if you handed us a film perfect Star Wars blaster you can be damn sure that we'd be making "pew, pew" sounds too.
The "additional sound effects" problem is something of a widespread issue that seems have been growing in the years since the original trilogy. Hayden Christensen recently admitted at Star Wars Celebration Orlando that he got in trouble with George Lucas on the set of the prequels for adding his own lightsaber sound effects while filming his scenes.
It would seem that as people have grown up with Star Wars actually appearing in the movies has become such a fantasy become a reality that the actors fall back into their patterns from when it was a fantasy. Again, we're not surprised by this.
We got only the briefest glimpse of Laura Dern in the behind the scenes video that was shown to the assembled crowd at D23. She had purple hair but that was about the only thing we could tell for certain. No finished footage was released so all we saw were some out of context filming and set moments. Still, hearing everybody talk about how excited they were is getting everybody else excited as well. Though Laura Dern did not speak in the video so we did not get a specific gauge on her level of excitement, beyond her desire to add blaster noises.
It's a testament to the longevity of Star Wars that those who were once pretending to be the characters in the backyard are now pretending to be all new characters on the screen and get to add to the mythology of the franchise. Certainly, we know that means they are invested in making the final product everything that fans would want it to be. We'll learn how well they succeeded when Star Wars: The Last Jedi arrives on December 15.
