The porgs

In 2015’s “The Force Awakens,” Rey lands on the watery, craggy planet Ahchto, where Luke Skywalker had been hiding out. That world was filmed on Skellig Michael Island in Ireland.

“Rian had visited [the island] in Ireland and, at certain times of year, puffins reside there,” Scanlan says. “In fact, it’s a sanctuary, in which puffins are protected. And I think they were a great inspiration to him because they are quite mischievous. There’s something very cute about them.”

Johnson directed Scanlan to combine a puffin with a seal and a pug dog, and thus the porg was born.

“I honestly don’t think I would be too surprised to find one nestling on the branch of a tree at the end of my garden one day,” Scanlan says.

Unlike the George Lucas prequel series, which was dominated by CGI, these new sequels are filled with “practical” puppets, what Scanlan calls a physical prop. Computer animation is still used, but only to achieve what puppets can’t.

“There are many, many practical porgs in the film,” says Scanlan, “and Rian wrote some really kind of clever sequences, which allowed us to approach them from an effects perspective and let us say, ‘We can create this little puppeteered moment.’”