Page 27 - Star Wars Insider #188

GRIEVOUS

THE I t’s fall 2002.

George Lucas,
producer Rick
McCallum,
concept artists,
GRIEVOUS production members are meeting
and other key

each Friday to review the latest
designs for Star Wars: Revenge
of the Sith (2005). On November
22, Lucas tells the assembly that
GROWL the Episode III villain could be a

Separatist droid general. “I won’t
limit it at this point to a droid. It
could be an alien of some kind.
I’m not sure if I want him to be
human. It’s the Darth Maul. It’s
the Jango Fett. Darth Vader...”
Matthew Wood reveals his incredible double life he’s recorded explaining in The
as supervising sound editor and sound designer at Making of Return of the Sith. He
Skywalker Sound—and the Separatist droid army’s tells the artists the villain is not
a Sith, that it has to be able to do
fi endish cyborg leader with a hacking cough. dialogue scenes, and that it has

to be iconic.
W ORDS: AMY R AT CLIFFE And so General Grievous,
the Supreme Commander of the
Separatist droid army, was born.
Two weeks after Lucas’ instruction
to design the foe, concept artist
Warren Fu presented illustrations
for the character that caught the
director’s eye. Fellow concept artist
Ian McCaig had advised them to
think of their worst nightmares, and
Fu imagined a scary masked enemy.
His designs became the foundation
for the fearsome cyborg who would
stalk across the big screen in the
fi nal Star Wars prequel.

Bela Lugosi
A combination of robotic
technology with an organic base,
General Grievous’ voice is grating
and loud, part mechanical and part
biological. That voice is provided
by Matthew Wood, supervising
sound editor and sound designer at
Skywalker Sound, and it came to be
rather late in the process. “My

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