Rogue One: A Star Wars Story to feature more ‘realistic’ aliens

One of the big focal points with Star Wars: The Force Awakens was an emphasis on real sets and practical effects. With less reliance on CGI, the hope was that the J.J. Abrams-directed film would have a similar feel to that of the original trilogy. And for the most part, he succeeded.

Now it looks like Rogue One: A Star Wars Story — one of Disney's planned Star Wars spinoffs — will embrace that same approach. Creature effects supervisor Neal Scanlan sat down with MTV (via GameSpot) to give the community a bit of insight on the upcoming Anthology film.

Apparently, the movie's aliens will be "more realistic" than The Force Awakens.

"In the world of Force Awakens, there was a real mixture of all different kinds, very much like the original Cantina sequence. Working with Gareth [Edwards, the director] now on Rogue One, he sees these aliens as being much more part of the human [world]. They co-habitate, they work together and so it's pushed us very much to create characters that are more realistic."

Applying human characteristics to aliens will definitely make them more relatable to movie-goers, but the Rogue One team is looking to take their aliens to a whole new level.

"They move more realistically they're able to emote more than maybe the characters that we did for The Force Awakens. So they're a closer part of the storytelling. They're less of the world, and they're more of this group who have a mission, and play a part in that."

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is set to release on December 16, 2016. Yesterday, Disney announced that Star Wars: Episode VIII has been pushed back to December 2017, with Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales taking its spot for a May 2017 release.