Star Wars Turns to a ‘Baby Yoda’ Puppet to Break Its Box-Office Funk

THe breakout asterisk of the famous person summer-movie electrical circuit is a wrinkly william green marionette.At a time when the entertainment world is stuffed with hyper-realistic digital effects and generative AI can conjure most anything from thin air, Disney has put one of its most important franchises on the shoulders of a tiny analog creation.The knee-high space creature—known as Grogu, Baby Yoda or just, as his human minders often call him, “the baby”—is a main character in the first Star Wars movie to hit theaters in nearly seven years, “The Mandalorian and Grogu.”The character first made a splash in a Disney+ TV series more than six years ago. But if his command of the red carpet lately is any indicator, the kid has staying power.An animatronic puppet has been trotted out like a real-life celebrity in advance of the movie’s Friday opening, putting Grogu’s high-tech internal machinery—and the puppeteers operating it out of sight with remote controls—to the test.The promotional tour has taken the Grogu bot from a BBC interview, where he sat waggling pointy ears and blinking saucer eyes, to various premieres, including in Japan where he waved from the arms of director Jon Favreau and clutched a tiny parasol he’d been handed.Across social media, it’s been a spectacle: There he is, serving looks on the red carpet in an earth-tone tunic at the Hollywood premiere; there he is again, rejoicing at a gift of blue cookies, or “tasting” a lemon in a cooking segment with chef Jamie Oliver, Favreau and co-star Pedro Pascal.The seemingly autonomous star, which stands 14-and-a-half inches tall, is actually a new-and-improved model of the various puppets used in “The Mandalorian and Grogu.”Pascal plays the other title character in the movie, a helmeted bounty hunter (also performed by multiple body doubles) who serves as Grogu’s protector and father figure. It’s a buddy adventure that takes the duo from one tight spot to another, including a gladiator-style battle royal and a cavernous snake pit. Grogu shows a growing mastery of the Force, even if the toddler’s lineage to the original Jedi sage Yoda remains mysterious and his language mostly gibberish.About 90% of the Grogu acting was created with puppeteering techniques, says John Knoll, senior visual-effects supervisor at Lucasfilm’s Industrial Light & Magic, whose shop supplemented the other 10% with computer-generated imagery.A studio called Legacy Effects handles the physical side of Grogu. For many of his scenes, two puppeteers manipulated rods controlling his body. In other scenarios, the team used remote-controlled puppets with gadgetry under the skin to perform facial expressions and other subtle movements.It was an evolution of techniques used in the TV series that first introduced the world to Grogu.In 2019, when “The Mandalorian” helped launch the Disney+ streaming service, it set off a scramble for Baby Yoda merch that Disney wasn’t prepared for. Now the company is hoping the stars can draw an audience beyond kids for a PG-13 release and score a much-needed win for the Star Wars franchise.But there’s something bigger afoot.People first embraced Grogu as a novelty, the latest in a line of cute, rascally critters going back to the Ewoks. The difference now: They also seem to be championing Grogu as a small but symbolic physical specimen—a feat of human art and craft that stands out against a tide of AI-generated content many see as ominous.Unlike in the TV show, in which Grogu often got around in a floating pram, he’s been turned loose in the movie. He slinks along a wall, scales a cliff, navigates drain pipes and leaps up and down from his preferred perch—behind the left shoulder of Din Djarin, aka the Mandalorian warrior.Though there’s something a little peculiar, in an age of digital verisimilitude, about watching a big-budget movie character scoot around like a Muppet, Favreau was adamant about showcasing the handiwork.“We’re trying to evoke some of the fun adventure of movies from the ’80s and the ’90s that used these techniques,” Knoll says. “Being aware of the artifice is, to some extent, part of the charm, so we’re not trying desperately to hide that stuff.”Legacy Effects had a half-dozen Grogu models for different kinds of movements and settings. They designed one to get wet, allowing for a swamp swim that nods to “Apocalypse Now.”The team spent a lot of time simulating the way physics would work on a miniature body with a grapefruit-size head and three-fingered hands. “Fortunately he’s got his little tunic, so we don’t have to worry about his legs,” says Legacy Effects co-founder J. Alan Scott.Things got crowded, with up to 20 puppeteers on set during scenes involving the movie’s four Anzellans. At one point these diminutive, muttering, bewhiskered mechanics accompany Grogu on a side quest, piling into a bitty space ship.Knoll’s digital-effects team had the job of erasing all visual evidence of the puppeteers, including shadows. The computer wizards also added actions the puppets couldn’t pull off, like eating. Grogu does a lot of it, at points gobbling a scorpion and the Star Wars version of popcorn. Close-quarters scenes of Grogu tending to a wounded Mando demanded a surgical level of control from Scott and his fellow puppeteers to pull out the emotions. “In those quiet moments,” Scott says, “you really need to show the care and the love that they have for each other.”Even after the film wrapped, the puppet technology continued to improve. In March, Grogu popped up at the Oscars and host Conan O’Brien pointed out that the gleefully waving puppet seated next to actress Kate Hudson lacked the ability to applaud.“Clap, Grogu, clap!” O’Brien shouted.After that public dressing down, “we made it our mission to make sure he could clap next time,” says Scott.As with any movie star, it’s tough to put a finger on the appeal of Grogu, even for the people who made him.“It’s not because he’s 14 versus 9 inches tall, or because he’s green or has long ears,” Scott says. “He’s still a little bit of an enigma.”Write to John Jurgensen at John.Jurgensen@wsj.com