Disney+ has shaken up the galaxy far, far away with the debut of the animated miniseries built brick-by-brick titled, “Lego Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy.”
Out now (having arrived on Friday, Sept. 13, 2024), this four-piece, family-friendly show revolves around a mild-mannered nerf-herder named Sig Greebling who accidentally discovers the ancient Cornerstone relic inside a forgotten Jedi temple. This triggers a jumbled rearrangement of the entire “Star Wars” universe and shenanigans ensure.
Sig is soon plunged into a wild adventure inside this weird twisted version of the “Star Wars” world where villains and heroes swap places and the fate of reality depends on this unlikely savior to fit the pieces back together again. Ewok bounty hunters? Surfer dude Luke? Rebel AT-AT Walkers? Darth Jar Jar? We’ve got them all!
Written and executive produced by showrunners Dan Hernandez and Benji Samit, who are no strangers to comedic animated films after penning “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem,” “Pokémon Detective Pikachu,” and “The Addams Family 2,” “Lego Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy” was a perfect natural fit for the pair.
“We go back a few years with Lucasfilm and Lego,” Hernandez tells Space.com. “When they made the ‘Lego Star Wars Holiday Special‘ a few years back, we helped out a little on it, pitching jokes and ideas. We kept that relationship up and we really hit it off with everyone over there. I think they saw what massive Lego and ‘Star Wars’ fans we were. My love of both of those things go back as far as I can remember.
“This year is the 25th anniversary of the Lego Star Wars partnership and so they wanted to go big to celebrate that. So they came to us and we thought about what we could do to make something really special this time, that’s a little bigger in scope and feel than the previous Lego Star Wars content that we’ve done.”
Hernandez and Samit dove into the project with unbridled enthusiasm and began talking about making a series that could be a true celebration of Lego Star Wars. Tossing the “Star Wars” galaxy into a cosmic salad-spinner was already an idea prior to bringing in Darth Jar Jar and they made sure that content dictated the form.
“Once we realized that we had the platform to actually do something like Darth Jar Jar, we thought there might not be another opportunity to do this and maybe we should just go for it,” Samit recalls. “This was a different version of the story and a chance to see another side of the character we’d never get to see again. And to have characters that could never interact in the main ‘Star Wars’ canon have full scenes together. What would that be like? We were lucky enough to be given the green light and give it a shot.”
The creative team’s associations with George Lucas’s space fantasy started at an early age, with Hernandez inheriting his older brother’s “Star Wars” toys as a kid.
“So, I had those classic figures from a very young age and I still have them to this day,” he notes. “There really was never a time when ‘Star Wars’ was not a part of my consciousness. I think for people like us, there’s a vocabulary that’s formed when you love and study something over the course of many decades. Once you speak that language it becomes fun to be playful with it. What are the idiosyncratic portions of this galaxy that we’re all fluent in as fans? And Lego Star Wars gives you that perfect ability to be a little bit more self-referential or more aware of memes.
“Having that fluency in ‘Star Wars’ lore and the iconography, the vocabulary, the characters, enabled us to tell a story that could be lighthearted and funny because we have a comedy background. Yes, it’s funny and a bit off-kilter from things we’ve seen before, but we kind of just wrote it as if it were a great ‘Star Wars’ adventure and we hope that comes through.”
Samit grew up obsessed with Lego and “Star Wars” at a time when there were no official Lego Star Wars sets in the late ’80s or early ’90s.
“I was playing ‘Star Wars’ with regular generic Legos,” Samit says. “It’s always had that playful feel where you’re creating this world. That’s what Lego is all about, and we tried to keep that same spirit in this miniseries. It’s still about that celebration of play and creativity, and the reality of dumping that thing of Legos on the ground and matching it all up. To be able to do that in the ‘Star Wars’ galaxy was really cool.”
“Rebuild the Galaxy” showcases the voices of Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker), Gaten Matarazzo (Sig Greebling), Bobby Moynihan (Jedi Bob), Tony Revolori (Dev Greebling), Marsai Martin (Yesi Scala), Michael Cusack (Servo), and Ahmed Best (Darth Jar Jar).
“We led all of the recording sessions,” Hernandez adds. “It’s one of the things that we take a lot of pride in. I think that we cultivate a really fun, fluid and improvisational environment when we record. Gaten Matarazzo is so talented and his work on ‘Stranger Things’ is incredible. I had the pleasure of seeing him in ‘Sweeney Todd’ on Broadway and he’s just a great performer. He’s got a star quality, he’s magnetic, he’s kind, and he’s a massive ‘Star Wars’ fan.
“Bobby Moynihan has been involved with a lot of ‘Star Wars’ stuff. We said, ‘Who should play Jedi Bob? Who’s the funniest Bob or Bobby we know?’ And it was clearly Bobby Moynihan. We really approached the vocal cast as trying to put together an ensemble in much the same way you’d do in a theater company. Different tonalities. Different voices. Even some of the parts that are smaller are really part of an all-star team of classic ‘Star Wars’ performers who’ve been in ‘Clone Wars‘ or ‘Rebels.'”
Samit admits that being able to play with Lego Star Wars like he has his entire life, but now as a job, has been a dream come true.
“And having helped create these Lego sets for the show like the Dark Falcon that’s sold out everywhere now. To see that all the fans are in agreement is awesome and it’s been so rewarding. Everyone at Lego, Lucasfilm and Atomic Cartoons and the entire team, we’re all friends now and we’ve had a blast making this thing.”
For Hernandez, getting to add even a scintilla of something new to the legacy of “Star Wars” has been truly gratifying.
“It’s something that Benji and I have dreamed about doing our whole lives, and that’s not really an exaggeration. We’d talk about it in college. If we could write a ‘Star Wars’ story, what would we put in it? Then as we were starting this project we said, ‘Remember that Ewok bounty hunter idea we had twenty years ago? It’s time to try it.’ And we’ve never seen nerf-herding on screen before. This is actually the first time that we’re going to see what a scruffy-looking nerf-herder is all about.”
“Lego Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy” is available to watch now on Disney+.