“Dude, you have no idea,” laughs Witwer about the overall experience. “I’m a Star Wars fan from birth, so basically to forge a Star Wars protagonist and portray him was never-wracking because we both know how specific Star Wars fans are about what they want to see, and how vocal they are when they’re displeased. So I’m going in there and I’m thinking, ‘I might as well put a gun to my head now,’ because I would take their criticisms very personally. It would feel as if I had let them down if they didn’t like it, and that would be very bad. But the first one was a tremendous experience, and the second one was every bit as fun. The dramatic content in those games is exceptional. In fact, the Writer’s Guild agreed with us – Hayden Blackman got a Writer’s Guild Award for the first Force Unleashed script. Which is great, because since I was a Star Wars fan, I was very specific about what I thought we should do, because I’d been thinking about it my entire life: How would I play a Star Wars protagonist?
“It was fun to take in all the lessons we learned about Star Wars over the years,” he continues. “You know, Harrison Ford used to say that the only thing Geoge Lucas used to say on the set was, ‘Faster, more intense!’ They would finish a take and George would say, ‘That’s great, but do it faster. Do it more intense.’ But if you watch the original movie, it’s the exact, correct direction for that movie. Everything, when it’s spoken, is fast and loud. First of all, everything takes on an importance and immediacy that you wouldn’t have if you were being more internal, so it makes it seem more important. More importantly, it fills the screen in a way that a 1940s movie would fill the screen – it has that kind of clipped dialogue, people talking extremely fast.”
As he explains it, when they would film a sequence for either Force Unleashed game, it wouldn’t feel particularly Star Wars, so he would suggest that they do it faster and more intense.
“We would do it,” Witwer smiles, “and suddenly Star Wars happened. It was really fun. Dude, the entire process was all about going through and having these discussions – Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia… why is it that we even care? We shouldn’t by all rights, this is a movie that happened a long time ago and we shouldn’t care, but we absolutely do. These characters still work, they’re still relevant and people still want to see more adventures from that universe. So you look at that and you realize, ‘Shit, we have to come up with another one of those guys. We’re in trouble.’”
The solution was to develop a formula to his character, Starkiller. “He’s raised by Darth Vader,” he reflects, “so he’s one part Darth Maul. Then we wanted to make him two parts Han Solo, simply because we should; one part Indiana Jones, because there is a difference, and then after that, we have to have one crucial element of Luke Skywalker there: the interior of the character. There should be a wide-eyed kid who’s just trying to figure out what the right thing to do is. We did that, and people thankfully seemed to have responded to the character. So much so that against all odds he’s returned for this second stint in Force Unleashed II."
So, does Witwer dream of bringing the character of Starkiller alive in a feature film some day? “I don’t have any illusions about that,” he responds. “I’m just proud that I’ve been able to contribute in my own small way to the Star Wars universe. And, in fact, Lucasfilm has been tremendous to me. I’m actually one of the few people who can I’ve been to Skywalker ranch, chilling and hanging out. That’s pretty cool.”
Tomorrow Witwer looks back at Smallville and forward to Being Human.