Latest / Most Things Kenobi - A Star Wars Podcast / Episode 131: Star Wars Filming Locations

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Episode 131: Star Wars Filming Locations · Most Things Kenobi - A Star Wars Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello there. It's time for most things
• 0:02
  Kenobi. Shouldn't it be all things
• 0:05
  Kenobi? Hi everyone.
• 0:19
  Welcome to another episode of Most Things Kenobi, a podcast
• 0:22
  about Obi Wan, Kenobi and all things Star Wars.
• 0:24
  I'm your host, Leanne. And I'm your host, Lauren.
• 0:29
  And Lauren is coming from an off location, an off site location,
• 0:35
  so if she sounds a little different that might be why.
• 0:37
  I wish it was one of the locations we're about to talk
• 0:40
  about. I know, oh good segue.
• 0:46
  See, there are so many places that Star Wars has filmed or has
• 0:50
  used backdrops, images, action in their filming process that we
• 0:57
  each chose to. And we may have like a third if
• 1:00
  we have time. But yeah, it was as a first go
• 1:05
  around 'cause we'll have to revisit this again because
• 1:08
  there's so many good ones. There's so many locations, it's
• 1:11
  crazy. And a lot of them you can
• 1:13
  actually go to, which is nice. I've been to 1:00 to 1:00 I'm
• 1:20
  going to talk about. I have not.
• 1:23
  I don't think. I don't know all the.
• 1:25
  I don't know all of the the locations, but I mean, I've been
• 1:29
  to Italy and that's where mine starts.
• 1:31
  So yeah, but I want to go to one of my locations.
• 1:36
  We should do like a an MTK Star Wars World tour.
• 1:42
  God see all the could we? Please.
• 1:45
  Oh, I thought you just meant like, go on a world tour to
• 1:47
  visit everybody. We could listeners can join us
• 1:52
  in Star Wars locations. I would love to, actually.
• 1:57
  You know, I'm thinking about what you actually said.
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  We could go on a world tour to visit all these locations and
• 2:03
  then if people are around, they can just show up.
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  There'll be a whole thing. Exactly.
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  It would be really fun. Anyway, would you like to begin
• 2:09
  with your first location? Sure, I can't pronounce it at
• 2:14
  all. Oh, OK, let's try.
• 2:19
  So I did the filming locations in Iceland that they filmed
• 2:22
  Rogue One in. Yes.
• 2:25
  And I've been to Iceland, and I'm here to tell you their
• 2:28
  alphabet is not a direct translation to English.
• 2:32
  And the sounds that I'm supposed to make to pronounce these, I
• 2:35
  just really can't do it. So forgive me.
• 2:39
  I'm going to butcher all of this.
• 2:41
  Icelandic folk, please, I beg your forgiveness.
• 2:44
  I don't even know how I'm going to say this, Leanne.
• 2:49
  It's so intimidating. You could spell.
• 2:52
  It it's harder to spell. Probably, probably.
• 2:57
  OK, so the main region they were in was Mira del Sandier.
• 3:02
  I know I butchered that. It's so bad.
• 3:04
  So it's the southernmost, it's the southernmost tip of Iceland.
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  It's a little bit that kind of like pokes out down at the
• 3:11
  bottom and in that is contained the Renisfara black sand beach,
• 3:17
  which I have actually walked on. Yes, I saw your pictures looks
• 3:21
  amazing. It's so cool.
• 3:23
  And it's like truly black. Yes.
• 3:26
  Yeah. And I'll kind of talk about why
• 3:28
  in a minute. I kind of like went through the
• 3:29
  history and like what these locations are not.
• 3:32
  Me too. So more so that than like what
• 3:35
  the filming was just so people can learn.
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  There's like a history and sometimes the history is tied to
• 3:41
  why they chose it for Star Wars. So it's kind of cool.
• 3:45
  So there's also a mountain which I cannot pronounce.
• 3:51
  Sure, Lev Shofti. I have no idea.
• 3:55
  God forgive me. And Hafir say, OK, so this was
• 4:00
  where Lamu is in Rogue One. It's where the Urso family is
• 4:05
  hiding from the Empire at the very beginning.
• 4:08
  And it is so freaking cool. So the whole region is
• 4:15
  considered a desert, even though it's pretty much soaking wet all
• 4:21
  the time, but it's all sand. And they're like, if you look at
• 4:27
  aerial footage of it, you'll see that it is deposits basically.
• 4:32
  So people used to live there like thousands of years ago and
• 4:37
  they kept getting washed out by volcanic eruptions in the area.
• 4:42
  And so when the volcanoes would erupt, it would create sediment
• 4:47
  but it would also melt glaciers, so then there would be massive
• 4:52
  flooding. So the whole area is a wash an
• 4:55
  out wash plain. So there's it's between two
• 5:00
  major rivers and those rivers will like overflow their banks
• 5:05
  quite often and leave sediment and deposit.
• 5:07
  So the area changes all the time because it's constantly being
• 5:11
  deposited on. It's pretty interesting.
• 5:13
  That is. And there was a the the really
• 5:18
  bad one I couldn't pronounce the here left for blah blah.
• 5:26
  I don't know, I really it's really hard to pronounce.
• 5:29
  I even looked up like listened to pronunciations.
• 5:31
  I I can't do it. So it's a volcano in the area
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  and it used to be an island like a really long time ago.
• 5:39
  But it's like it's like cold Hawaii.
• 5:42
  OK, so like it, it erupted so often that it joined the
• 5:47
  mainland and built its own land bridge.
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  And this was by the time like Iceland was settled.
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  So that that was like a long ass time ago.
• 5:57
  Like Iceland's been settled for a long time.
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  God the planet is fascinating, isn't it?
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  It's so it's like for geology nerds like us.
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  Oh my God, it is so great. So that there's a cave there,
• 6:10
  which I think they might have even filmed in, but it's kind of
• 6:13
  like colloquially with a little twinkle in the eye, called the
• 6:17
  Yoda cave because the outline is actually shaped like Yoda's head
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  and it's legit. I'll, I'll try to, I'll post a
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  picture if I can, but it's really cool.
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  But also so the area is not super super safe.
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  It is like to travel there. It is safe to live there?
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  Not so much. Well, no.
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  It sounds like ever changing every ever morphing unstable
• 6:50
  location. Yeah, it's super dynamic.
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  So the thing I I love though, the black sand beach was so cool
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  because it's covered in enormous hexagonal basalt stacks.
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  Oh, and they look man made. So it's these huge they look
• 7:12
  like pillars. Yeah.
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  Coming out of the side of the mountain, right on the edge the
• 7:18
  cliffs like right on the ocean and it it that is.
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  So cool. It's so cool.
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  I I freaking love it, 'cause I love rocks.
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  Yeah, well, it sounds pretty historic because it is, but it
• 7:30
  sounds like otherworldly, which I I love places like that.
• 7:35
  Yeah, And I watched a little feature up for Rogue One, and
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  every actor who was there was saying it feels like we're on
• 7:41
  another planet, It's it's really cool.
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  And so the sand is black because it's volcanic.
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  So it's this basalt that kind of comes out of an eruption.
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  And these pillars, as they crumble because the columns are
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  made by cooling lava, Like everything is made by cooling
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  lava. Yeah, right.
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  And then it gets ground up into sand.
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  And so that's why the beaches are black, because they're
• 8:07
  volcanic beaches. So.
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  Imagine how old that sand is. It's so that's so historic.
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  So this area is really rich soil, but you can't live there
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  because it's dynamic. But there's also all these
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  legends, like historical legends that take place that there's
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  talk about trolls and like the brothers who basically settled
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  Iceland had some mythology there.
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  Like, it's a really special place in the country, and I feel
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  really lucky to to have seen it because it's not that edited in
• 8:41
  Rogue One. It really looks pretty
• 8:44
  straightforward, you know? That's awesome.
• 8:46
  Yeah, it's. I will say from a filming
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  standpoint, the black sand really made Chronic's Cape pop
• 8:55
  because he had the white right. Yes it did.
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  And they had the black, like death troopers or whatever their
• 9:01
  names are. And it was all visually good.
• 9:04
  It was good. It looks so good.
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  Yeah, it really translated well. So one thing before we move on,
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  I just want to warn people, if you ever go to the black sand
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  beach, you have to be so careful do not get near the water.
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  They post this very blatantly there, but they have something
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  called sneaker waves where they will just pop up, snatch you and
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  drag you out to sea. And so you you don't get close
• 9:32
  to the water and it's deep enough you can easily go there
• 9:36
  and be safe. So don't be stupid, go up to the
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  water because of the shape of the like continental shelf.
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  It creates like a mini tidal wave basically that comes in and
• 9:47
  like scoops people out to sea. So you have to just stay away.
• 9:53
  My God. That's right.
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  The whole region is very dynamic so.
• 9:58
  Well, yeah, it's the place is just like I said, it's
• 10:03
  prehistoric. You abide to its rules.
• 10:06
  Yes, absolutely. But I highly recommend going to
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  travel there because it's so cool and it's easy to get to.
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  It's like 2 hours, maybe 2 1/2 out of Reykjavik.
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  It's very easy drive. The roads are beautifully
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  maintained. There's a free parking lot, you
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  just park. There's a little coffee shop
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  there. It's really great, so.
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  Oh, I I was gonna ask, do you know how long?
• 10:30
  Do you know how long they spend filming there, by chance?
• 10:33
  I don't. Probably not too long.
• 10:36
  I would guess couple of weeks maybe 'cause it was just the
• 10:39
  intro sequence, but I guess part of Iceland was used as
• 10:44
  Starkiller base also, but that's a different area.
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  It was one of their glaciers, but I haven't been up there,
• 10:53
  honestly. OK, side note also, I don't know
• 10:56
  how I didn't know this Leanne, but I was like what Starkiller
• 11:00
  Base is on Ilum, which is where they get their kyber crystals
• 11:05
  in, like, right? How did I never put that
• 11:08
  together? 'Cause we don't care about
• 11:11
  Starkiller Base, that's why. It was so depressing to like
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  realize that the they went there and bastardized the place that
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  all the. Younglings, I mean it's it's
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  actually devastating maybe that maybe you just tune it out
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  because it's it's really unfortunate.
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  But yeah, that's that's my Icelandic locations that I can't
• 11:38
  pronounce. Again, sorry.
• 11:41
  Well, if there's anyone out there who does speak it, please
• 11:43
  let us know. That would be very fascinating.
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  Yeah, there is an an Icelandic woman who does Reiki on YouTube,
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  and she'll sometimes go into her language to do it.
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  And it's so lovely to listen to like it's.
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  I feel like such a boring fool for not knowing a language.
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  I'm a basic bitch. I am too.
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  I am too. I loved visiting there.
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  When I went there, everyone speaks English and they speak it
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  beautifully. But I at the time, I had white
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  hair, like, bleached white hair. But because of my, like, white
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  hair, they thought I was Icelandic.
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  So they would always start just talking to me.
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  And I'm like, I'm sorry, I'm American.
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  I'm a poser. Thank you.
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  I miss my white hair. Well, I'm 100% Italian so I had
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  to pick somewhere in Italy. But strangely enough I did not
• 12:48
  intend for this to happen. But both of my picks my two
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  locations are from Revenge of the Sith.
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  I did not see that coming. Yeah, so when I picked the two,
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  I didn't realize that the second one was also like was debuted
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  and Revenge of the Sith any who. The first one I chose was Mount
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  Etna, which is the volcano in Sicily, Italy that is used in
• 13:16
  Revenge of the Sith during the duel between Anakin and Obi Wan
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  which we've talked about in its own episode.
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  It is epic, it is amazing. And it was actually erupting at
• 13:29
  the time and they filmed it erupting.
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  This was back in. This was, let's see footage of
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  the eruptions were recorded by Lucasfilm and integrated into
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  the landscape of the planet. In the 2005 film, it actually
• 13:42
  erupted between 2002 and 2003 and it threw up such a huge
• 13:46
  column of ash it could actually be seen from space and as far
• 13:50
  away as Libya and South across the Mediterranean Sea, seismic
• 13:56
  activity everywhere. It actually destroyed houses on
• 13:59
  the flanks of the volcano itself, caused a lot of
• 14:03
  structural damage. It also destroyed the tourist
• 14:06
  station Piano Provenzano, which is the northeastern flank of the
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  volcano. And it was doing its thing as
• 14:16
  volcanoes do, taking out everything in its path.
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  But Lucasfilm was like, you know what though?
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  There's footage, let's use it. So they actually integrated
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  real, real time footage of it erupting.
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  They put it into the landscape of the model that they built.
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  So they, I didn't actually know this, but the model they built
• 14:41
  for this Mustafar duel is bigger than anything built in the
• 14:47
  original trilogy. Wow.
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  So the lava flow. So there's the, there's there's
• 14:54
  the, there's the backdrop, the actual volcano erupting footage
• 14:57
  from that integrated into the digital comp of the model itself
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  like a blend. And it's the biggest model that
• 15:09
  they built at the time. It was the biggest in the film
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  industry. And they use techniques when
• 15:17
  they built this model and did all this rendering and
• 15:19
  everything and and made this epic scene.
• 15:23
  They use the same technology later in the Mandalorian season
• 15:26
  one when they're on the lava flow where that Droid was taken
• 15:30
  care of. Oh yeah, it was like towards the
• 15:33
  end of last. Episode or something, Yeah.
• 15:36
  And he goes down with the boat, and he he babysits the he
• 15:39
  babysits baby Yoda, and they're trying to get out of that boat
• 15:42
  and all this stuff. It's the same cadence of lava
• 15:46
  flow because they literally used the exact same shit for that
• 15:50
  scene as they did in Revenge of the Sith.
• 15:52
  You know, I had no idea that Revenge of the Sith ending was
• 15:56
  practical at all. Like, I thought it was all CGI.
• 16:00
  It's. Star Wars.
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  Biggest model in history? In history, it's 18 feet wide,
• 16:07
  33 feet long, and seven feet high, and Mustafar itself is
• 16:13
  larger than the Death Star two model that they used in Return
• 16:16
  of the Jedi. Wow.
• 16:18
  That's just insane to think of. So we always make fun of the the
• 16:22
  prequels because of all the CG and stuff, but they were going
• 16:26
  to use CG for this. But they said no, there's
• 16:29
  absolutely no practical way and we can't fuck this up.
• 16:31
  So they've had two films already, OK?
• 16:35
  And they're like, maybe we go back to the basics and they
• 16:37
  built basically where the finale of everything takes place
• 16:43
  between Anakin and Obi Wan, and all of it was initiated by Mount
• 16:47
  Etna in Sicily. So were they going to film at
• 16:52
  Mount Etna anyway? Do you know?
• 16:54
  Or did they just go there because it was erupting and they
• 16:57
  got lucky? Like you can if you look at the
• 17:00
  video of Etna's eruption, like the footage that people took
• 17:05
  looks just like, looks just like, what the fuck?
• 17:09
  So what you're saying is you need to pilgrimage there?
• 17:13
  Why? I guess.
• 17:15
  I mean, go to Sicily, go to Italy in general, There's a lot
• 17:17
  of Star Wars locations in Italy. But that's Vader's castle.
• 17:22
  It's built. It is.
• 17:23
  I mean, I'm a little disappointed that my Italy trip
• 17:26
  this past spring did not involve.
• 17:30
  I did see Vesuvius, though, and that was good enough because
• 17:32
  that one's that one's its own thing.
• 17:35
  So there was a control room that was built, as were any
• 17:39
  structures that the actors had to interact with, with the blue
• 17:41
  screens and stuff. But then lava bursts and a mix
• 17:44
  of CG with real footage obtained by a crew sent to Mount Etna's
• 17:48
  eruption. So they actually went and said
• 17:50
  this is it, we need this. This is Mustafar.
• 17:55
  This is Mustafar, so they were purposely sent to film it.
• 18:01
  The magic of Lucasfilm, right? Right.
• 18:04
  And it's it's so crazy because you can if you go to you know
• 18:10
  any any site that explains we'll we'll just say wiki.
• 18:13
  You know for for instance they show the after effects of the
• 18:19
  houses that were just completely buried.
• 18:22
  You know all this stuff and this is not millions of years ago.
• 18:27
  This isn't like historic like Mount Vesuvius is.
• 18:30
  This is 2002 to 2003, so highly active stuff.
• 18:35
  And the fact that it's like preserved in a Star Wars, it's
• 18:37
  Canon. Mount Etna's Canon.
• 18:40
  So eruptions of Mount Etna kind of occur in multiple patterns, 5
• 18:50
  distinct craters and they each have their own Italian name,
• 18:53
  which I'm just going to skip. I did learn some Italian, I'm
• 18:57
  just not that great of it. I'd do my own, my own ethnicity
• 19:01
  A disservice. But there are over 300 vents in
• 19:05
  this volcano, and they range from tiny holes in the ground to
• 19:11
  hundreds of meters across in size.
• 19:13
  That's crazy. It's really crazy and actually
• 19:18
  the first volcanic activity ever recorded was about 500,000 years
• 19:22
  ago occurring beneath the sea. And then it kind of built up
• 19:29
  Sicily, because Sicily is an island off the boot toe, the toe
• 19:33
  of the boot if you will, of Italy.
• 19:35
  And it's just it continues, it just continues and continues to
• 19:40
  do. Its thing.
• 19:42
  Is Etna on Sicily or is it on mainland?
• 19:45
  Oh, it is. Oh, wow.
• 19:46
  Sicily so one. Day.
• 19:49
  So is it possible that Sicily is going to be attached to the boot
• 19:53
  at some point if the volcanoes? Erupt enough.
• 19:58
  It's crazy though, if you think about it, because they call the
• 20:01
  first known record of eruption Diodorus Siculus, which could
• 20:06
  actually be a Sith name. Really good.
• 20:10
  Darth Diodorus or Darth Siculus. Darth Siculus is good.
• 20:16
  That's great. Right.
• 20:17
  I wonder what it means. I don't know.
• 20:18
  I could, I could go on and on about there were Roman poets
• 20:23
  that that wrote about it. It's in all Roman history.
• 20:26
  It's like, well, it's still Europe's most active volcano, so
• 20:30
  that that's something to consider.
• 20:32
  There were 16 eruptions in 2001 alone.
• 20:35
  Holy shit. So it's it's it's it is not
• 20:40
  dead. Mustafar is active and well so
• 20:46
  but it's taken out stuff. It's taken out us taking out all
• 20:50
  kinds of stuff, but. Yeah, when I was taking geology
• 20:53
  in college, they always said nature is not destructive except
• 20:58
  that men build on it. So nature's dynamic, and we put
• 21:06
  ourselves there, which of course we have to if we're going to
• 21:09
  live, we have to live somewhere. But yeah, it's going to do its
• 21:13
  thing whether or not you put a house on it.
• 21:17
  Do you know when the most recent eruption was 2022?
• 21:24
  Wow, it's not that long ago. Nope.
• 21:27
  There were two eruptions in February.
• 21:30
  There were lava fountains coming out of it.
• 21:32
  Wow, there were collapses and structures of the volcano
• 21:36
  itself. So like, volcanoes aren't just
• 21:38
  spewage, there's also collapses because the weight of everything
• 21:42
  and then that can be its own landslide issue.
• 21:46
  So there's that to consider. And then there it erupted in
• 21:50
  20/21/2018, 2017. I mean, it's every few years at
• 21:54
  this point. So anyway, I find the thing
• 21:57
  amazing. Probably not great for air
• 22:00
  travel with all that Ash because they do have to reroute.
• 22:03
  But I'll tell you what, it did not fail.
• 22:08
  They did not fail in their their coming to the conclusion of the
• 22:13
  whole fight with Obi Wan and Anakin because it worked and it
• 22:17
  worked very well and they broke records with its model.
• 22:23
  Very cool. That was my first choice.
• 22:25
  I feel like I had to come out of the gate with a bang and we both
• 22:31
  talked about volcanoes, which is crazy.
• 22:33
  I don't. Well, I guess they make for
• 22:35
  really dramatic Star Wars a backdrops, don't they?
• 22:37
  I well, Star Wars. I mean, it's a shit show, so why
• 22:42
  not use some some volcanoes in all your scenes?
• 22:49
  So what's your next one? My next one is a location I have
• 22:54
  wanted to visit since well before it was a Star Wars
• 22:57
  location. Yeah, Skellig Michael in
• 23:01
  Ireland. Yes, yes.
• 23:05
  I was doing some research in college for something and I
• 23:08
  stumbled across Skellig and it has lived in my mind as this
• 23:12
  mysterious, really cool place that I have wanted to visit.
• 23:16
  I'm afraid to visit it though, because you have to access it
• 23:20
  only by boat, which I'm terrified of water, and you have
• 23:24
  to go to the Atlantic Ocean off the I think it's like the
• 23:30
  southwest or West of Ireland and it's very choppy and kind of
• 23:36
  dangerous. I bet.
• 23:37
  How big is the boat though? We talking a small little.
• 23:40
  Third, Imagine have to be a big. It's not like a sailboat, but
• 23:44
  it's not huge. It's not like a ferry there, you
• 23:48
  know, like a water taxi size, maybe a little bigger depending
• 23:52
  on the the boat. Oh.
• 23:53
  You probably. That would be interesting.
• 23:55
  And interesting it would. Require a lot of courage on my
• 23:58
  my end to do it, 'cause I'm scared of death, of drowning, so
• 24:03
  but it's it's an amazing sight with an insane history and the
• 24:10
  fact that they filmed there at all blows my mind.
• 24:14
  Yeah. How did they get there?
• 24:16
  Only by boat, and they had to carry their equipment up 618
• 24:20
  steps. And that's what I'm thinking.
• 24:22
  How, like, I know how they got there.
• 24:24
  You just explained that. But like, how did they get their
• 24:28
  equipment? That's crazy.
• 24:30
  That's dedication. When you fly.
• 24:32
  In you can't fly in. No, you can't.
• 24:35
  It's too precarious. Little clouds and winds and.
• 24:41
  All kinds of shit. It's very windy.
• 24:43
  Everything about it is kind of dangerous until you get to the
• 24:46
  very top and then it's like a bowl, so it blocks all the wind.
• 24:49
  So it's really cool. So it's a UNESCO, Is that how
• 24:53
  you say it, the World Heritage Site?
• 24:56
  It's one of two in Ireland, actually.
• 24:59
  It's it's off the coast of Cary, and I've actually been to Cary.
• 25:03
  It's a beautiful area in Ireland.
• 25:06
  It's so gorgeous. So it also has a smaller little
• 25:12
  sister island called Little Skellig, which is just off to
• 25:16
  the side. So it was started by monks, at
• 25:25
  least in the 6th century, but it has been mentioned as far back
• 25:29
  as like 1000 BC. There's references to it, so it
• 25:35
  has a deep, deep history. Most of that history though is
• 25:39
  religious. It's mostly a Catholic site, so
• 25:43
  Saint Fionan's Monastery. It's one of the earliest
• 25:46
  foundations in the country, so if you think about the 6th
• 25:50
  century is the five hundreds. So like the Normans haven't
• 25:54
  invaded Britain yet. It's still a bunch of like
• 25:56
  random little tribes everywhere. Ireland is more probably
• 26:00
  established, I would say. I I can't say for sure than
• 26:04
  Britain at that point, but their history is deep.
• 26:07
  They have really deep history there.
• 26:09
  They said the monks who lived there slept and prayed in these
• 26:14
  beehive shaped huts made of stone which remained to this
• 26:19
  day. And that's the thing that really
• 26:21
  struck me when I went to Ireland in the United States, and you
• 26:24
  can attest to this. You go to a historic site.
• 26:26
  There are ropes everywhere. You can't touch anything, You
• 26:29
  can't sit on anything. You keep your hands to yourself.
• 26:32
  You don't take photographs. That's.
• 26:35
  It. When I was in Ireland, you could
• 26:37
  sit and stuff, touch stuff. I went to this castle right
• 26:40
  away. They're like, Oh yeah, I have a
• 26:41
  seat. I was like, Are you sure it's
• 26:44
  allowed? And they've remained all this
• 26:48
  time, yeah. And that's the thing 'cause when
• 26:50
  they were built, it is rock fucking salad, right?
• 26:56
  And so these things are here still from the five hundreds,
• 26:58
  these little beehive huts that Luke Skywalker lived in.
• 27:01
  Sorry, I guess I even forgot to say what they're they're from.
• 27:05
  I figured you're getting to it. Sorry I was so excited about the
• 27:09
  location. It's Act 2 from Force Awakens in
• 27:13
  The Last Jedi, so it's where Luke goes and hides.
• 27:18
  Yeah, so sorry. It sounds utterly amazing.
• 27:24
  Yeah, it's and it's also some like a a prominent place for
• 27:27
  birds. They have like really amazing
• 27:30
  birds that roost there. So they said the monks left the
• 27:35
  island in the 13th century, but it it remained like a place of
• 27:39
  pilgrimage, so you could go there and then it became a a
• 27:42
  like a haven during the the penal laws.
• 27:46
  I think that's how you pronounce it.
• 27:47
  So there was a time during the Reformation where in Britain
• 27:52
  they became non Catholic, I guess you could call them
• 27:56
  Protestants. They were a mix of that, like
• 27:59
  the King's Protestantism and they actually made laws about
• 28:04
  Catholics. So it became kind of dangerous
• 28:08
  to be Catholic for a little while.
• 28:09
  And then they even like established like civil
• 28:11
  disabilities on Catholics. So like no Catholic was allowed
• 28:15
  to own a horse worth more than £5 or something like.
• 28:20
  That so. It was insane.
• 28:22
  Yeah, it was crazy. So people who were Catholic
• 28:25
  would go to Skellig to take refuge because it was very
• 28:29
  isolated. It was as far away as you could
• 28:32
  get from. OK.
• 28:34
  These laws you'd have to take a boat and it's only during
• 28:38
  certain times of year, like it's closed in the winter time and
• 28:41
  you can climb. It's 618 steps, it's very high
• 28:47
  and a little bit scary. So if you have a fear of
• 28:49
  heights, maybe it's not a place for you.
• 28:51
  But they say once you get to the top, it's like an amazing view.
• 28:55
  It's well worth it and I saw footage of the crew going there.
• 29:00
  And it is and all that stuff. It's insane, dude.
• 29:04
  It must have been the worst fucking location.
• 29:06
  Shoot. I mean, it looks great.
• 29:09
  You can tell it looks very beautiful and that like they
• 29:13
  didn't film there the whole time.
• 29:14
  They went and got establishing shots, the important shots, and
• 29:18
  then a lot of the other stuff they filmed in different
• 29:21
  locations that look similar because it's a really difficult
• 29:24
  place to shoot. Are the steps?
• 29:27
  Do we see the steps in the scenes?
• 29:29
  Are those the steps? We do.
• 29:30
  We see Ray walk up some of them. That's what I was thinking.
• 29:34
  So, OK, yeah. But those little.
• 29:38
  Fish people from this. Jedi Not real.
• 29:42
  Oh, OK, OK, Good to know. But I do wonder if the Porgs are
• 29:51
  like a nod to the puffins that live there because.
• 29:54
  Oh, they probably. There were probably so many that
• 29:56
  they had to be like, what are we going to do with these birds?
• 29:58
  Well, let's digitally create them into something we can sell.
• 30:01
  Exactly. You know what it reminds me of?
• 30:05
  I went on along the coast, the southern it's the Kenai
• 30:09
  Peninsula in Alaska. And we did a boat tour around
• 30:14
  like some of the fjord in like the the cavities.
• 30:18
  You can go in and around and there's little tiny islands not
• 30:23
  inhabitable. They're just like straight up
• 30:25
  and down and the cliffs were covered in puffins there.
• 30:29
  So things are amazing, aren't they?
• 30:31
  Crazy. They build.
• 30:35
  They use the landscape to help them.
• 30:40
  They're smart. Animals are smart.
• 30:41
  Birds are smart. Nature is smart.
• 30:42
  It's us who are dumb. I'll speak for myself, I guess,
• 30:50
  but. I feel pretty dumb.
• 30:53
  I'm there with you. Well, I would love to go there,
• 30:57
  assuming the boat ride is pleasant and the weather's good.
• 31:01
  It's definitely you have to book in advance now because Star Wars
• 31:04
  made it super popular, but also you could make your reservation
• 31:08
  months in advance. Get there and it's bad weather
• 31:10
  and you can't go. So you kind of have to be ready
• 31:13
  to have it not work out because the weather's really semi
• 31:18
  unpredictable sometimes out there.
• 31:20
  Although you may argue with that.
• 31:21
  Is weather ever unpredictable? Leanne.
• 31:25
  How do I answer that? I will say we do our best, but
• 31:31
  it has the final say. Very diplomatic.
• 31:34
  There you go. Honestly.
• 31:36
  And it's honest, but. So what's your next one?
• 31:40
  Well, my next one is a place I've always wanted to go to.
• 31:43
  I love how we're still space twinning.
• 31:45
  I didn't tell each other. We didn't have any.
• 31:47
  We just said, here's what we're going to do so we don't overlap.
• 31:50
  Overlap. Yeah, and I'm biased.
• 31:55
  This place I've always wanted to go to outside of its place in
• 32:01
  Star Wars, it's just if you were to put Leanne in a place that
• 32:05
  symbolizes Leanne, it would be this location.
• 32:08
  And it's Grindelwald, Switzerland.
• 32:10
  Yes. It's first seen as the sequence
• 32:14
  of Alderon in Revenge of the Sith.
• 32:18
  So we know Alderon's our favorite planet, right?
• 32:22
  And the mountains of Grindelwald itself are what's digitally
• 32:26
  input into a similar to the the previous one, Mount Etna.
• 32:30
  It's real stuff put into, you know, a scene even though
• 32:34
  they're not there, right? So they didn't film there.
• 32:36
  They just took what they could, flew in, did this whole imagery
• 32:40
  and stuff and then incorporated it into the movie.
• 32:44
  And then Leia finds her home there, which is I I think a
• 32:47
  beautiful woman deserves a beautiful location such as this.
• 32:50
  And it's soon to be decimated as we know.
• 32:53
  So they really wanted to go big and have the most beautiful
• 32:55
  scenery in the most beautiful place so that the, you know, the
• 32:59
  impact of Alderwan would seem. Even more.
• 33:03
  Yeah, The hamlet of Grindelwald is in the heart of the Swiss
• 33:09
  Alpin region, and it's known as a winter Wonderland with skiing,
• 33:15
  sledging, snowshoeing. It's tranquil and peaceful.
• 33:19
  There's waterfalls in the summer.
• 33:21
  It has a quaint little town. You can walk amongst it and it's
• 33:24
  just all this beautiful. I just want to eat cheese there.
• 33:30
  That's just what I want to do. Did you say this is in
• 33:34
  Switzerland or Netherlands? Yes.
• 33:35
  So actually let me tell you some facts on Grindelwald.
• 33:38
  It's in South Central Switzerland.
• 33:41
  So you could eat cheese, You would get all.
• 33:43
  The cheese. Absolutely Fondue forever,
• 33:46
  bitch. That's what.
• 33:47
  The That is what Bill Organa was doing in his off time.
• 33:57
  There's a lot of places I can't pronounce.
• 33:59
  It's on the slopes of the Lucine Valley.
• 34:03
  Please, please help me out. Europeans, anyone?
• 34:07
  We have. We have several Swiss folks.
• 34:10
  Yeah, it are. Oh.
• 34:11
  Please don't take it personally. If maybe, in fact, maybe fly me
• 34:15
  out there so I can learn from the locals and then I'll figure
• 34:18
  it out. It's funny because this area was
• 34:23
  actually used by serfs and peasants to farm their animals
• 34:28
  because of the rolling green, lush Greenland and all this
• 34:30
  stuff. I had excellent, excellent goods
• 34:33
  for the cows and stuff. And actually, if you do look at
• 34:36
  scenery and videos from there, they have the cows with the big
• 34:39
  bells on. So nice.
• 34:41
  They're like free range and it just seems so lovely, just seems
• 34:47
  so lovely. But it was, it was pasturage
• 34:49
  during the summer by surfs. So it's it's the best of
• 34:55
  everything. You have massive giant peaks
• 34:59
  amidst rolling green lowlands and tiny little glacial, you
• 35:04
  know, rivers and VAT and streams and stuff.
• 35:07
  And they actually build to keep the streams kind of in their own
• 35:10
  banks. Because I'm assuming based on
• 35:12
  what I know from mountain weather, the spring runoff or
• 35:16
  whenever their runoff season happens will probably cause
• 35:19
  those things to swell. But they may have so many
• 35:22
  outlets that it it doesn't get to like a a flood scenario, but
• 35:29
  it just seems delightful. But the valley itself is
• 35:32
  surrounded by the Wetterhorn, the Mattenberg, and the Eiger,
• 35:36
  all of the peaks which rise above 10,000 feet or 3050
• 35:40
  meters, and the two famous streams that I was referencing
• 35:44
  are the upper and lower Grindelwald glacier.
• 35:47
  And those are glacial, glacial streams that come from those
• 35:49
  glaciers. So cool.
• 35:51
  So. So that sounds like heaven.
• 35:55
  Yeah, and it gets blown up because Vader.
• 35:57
  No, no, no. Because motherfucking Targhan
• 36:02
  will blame it on Targhan. Yeah, and Vader.
• 36:05
  Tarkin's sick idea. And then Vader just let it
• 36:07
  happen, yeah? So it seems like a delightful
• 36:13
  place. It's got the Alpen looking homes
• 36:16
  with the the peaked roofs and then the balconies that are
• 36:21
  carved into it. There's actually 35 hotels there
• 36:25
  Alone in in the small little area.
• 36:28
  It sits at 33, I'm sorry, 3392 feet or 1034 meters above sea
• 36:35
  level. So comparatively, yeah, I live
• 36:39
  in a mountain town that sits at 3300 feet above sea level.
• 36:43
  Yeah, so you do. You do just fine there.
• 36:45
  I would be just fine there, so seems great.
• 36:51
  And then you have your ski like heavenly skiing.
• 36:54
  Oh, and the cheese. You're forgetting the cheese
• 37:00
  just seems great. I'm dying skiing and cheese.
• 37:05
  What else could you ever need? I know they also have a coat of
• 37:10
  arms, really. And while I can't pronounce the
• 37:14
  name of it, this is what it says.
• 37:19
  Ghouls on a bar, Argent. A Sami chamois.
• 37:24
  Rampant issuant Sable. Charlotte, I know you're out
• 37:30
  there. Please help me.
• 37:31
  Please scold me. I'll describe it to you.
• 37:34
  From what I can tell, it's got red bars, white stars, and some
• 37:40
  kind of mountain goat. Nice.
• 37:43
  Very nice. Which seems.
• 37:44
  Appropriate. I'm sure there's a ton of
• 37:45
  mountain goats around there. Mountain goats are the the most
• 37:48
  amazing creatures. We have them here and they they
• 37:52
  are the Mountaineers that humans wish that they would be.
• 37:55
  I saw one in the Grand Canyon once on the very edge of a ledge
• 38:00
  in the middle of the Cliff. So not, I don't know how it got
• 38:04
  up there. It was insane.
• 38:06
  I mean, their little toes make it the perfect little way to get
• 38:11
  a a hold on a rock, a tiny rock. It's crazy what they can do.
• 38:15
  It's really crazy. And they just chill.
• 38:18
  They're like it doesn't bother on.
• 38:20
  Eating a little scrub off the side of a rock?
• 38:23
  Yeah, it's. Crazy.
• 38:25
  I just, anyway, I want to go to Grindelwald.
• 38:30
  It is Alderaan on on planet Earth.
• 38:33
  It seems lovely, but I have a few more facts because the Swiss
• 38:39
  technology involved, Swiss technology is very prevalent in
• 38:43
  Star Wars. I did not realize this.
• 38:45
  So the connection within Switzerland goes beyond the
• 38:49
  Alderaan factor. We'll say the Federal Institute
• 38:52
  of Technology in Zurich has a partnership with Disney where
• 38:56
  researchers find high tech solutions to bring aspects of
• 38:59
  the Star Wars films to life. So it was a group of researchers
• 39:03
  at Disney Research Zurich who came up with solutions to make
• 39:07
  the film's Stormtroopers look more realistic.
• 39:11
  No way. The further techniques used by
• 39:14
  the same development group Research Group were also used in
• 39:17
  The Force Awakens and Rogue One, A Star Wars Story.
• 39:21
  How fucking cool is that? Right, so Disney has a research
• 39:26
  team in Zurich coming up with better ways to make the films
• 39:30
  look amazing, which they started with Stormtroopers and now
• 39:33
  they've moved on to whatever's. It doesn't say what they did in
• 39:36
  The Force Awakens or Rogue One, but I can imagine they have
• 39:38
  their hands in a bunch of stuff, so.
• 39:40
  Yeah, I mean those movies both looked looked amazing, so how
• 39:44
  freaking cool. Hats off to the Swiss and their
• 39:48
  technology. They're always doing.
• 39:49
  Listen for for coming from someone who studies avalanche
• 39:52
  and and snow science. The Swiss are by far and large
• 39:59
  decades ahead of even Canadian and United States science when
• 40:03
  it comes to snow science. So I respect them for many
• 40:07
  reasons and now I can add it to my my Star Wars lore.
• 40:14
  You go Swiss, you and your cheese, that I want to eat and
• 40:19
  bathe in. Oh, Alderaan.
• 40:25
  Gone, but not forgotten. Yeah, All right, friends.
• 40:35
  Next week. I don't know how we're going to
• 40:37
  get through this, Leanne. It's AI.
• 40:41
  Don't even know if we can call it a labor of love.
• 40:43
  I don't think we can either. It's a labor.
• 40:45
  Yeah, it's just birthing labor. It's just the labor, but we're
• 40:49
  doing it for all you out there. We're going to watch the holiday
• 40:53
  special, the Star Wars holiday special, as Leon described it as
• 40:58
  mostly wookies screaming, Yeah, yeah, we're going to try.
• 41:04
  We'll talk about whatever we can get through next week and see
• 41:10
  what this is all about. Because I mean.
• 41:13
  Listen, there are people out there that love it.
• 41:18
  They're few and far between, but they're out there.
• 41:21
  I know, and I can't understand it because anything I've seen
• 41:24
  has been excruciating. But here I'll give it a an
• 41:27
  honest try. We're going to see see how it
• 41:30
  goes. Yes.
• 41:32
  Join us back here next week for that nightmare.
• 41:36
  Well, thank you so much for joining us here on the Most
• 41:38
  Things Kenobi Podcast. We appreciate every single one
• 41:41
  of our patrons and are very grateful for your support.
• 41:44
  If you would like to support the podcast and become a patron as
• 41:47
  well, head over to The Most Things Kenobi Patreon.
• 41:50
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• 41:54
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• 41:57
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• 42:00
  free to rate US on Spotify and Apple.
• 42:02
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• 42:05
  amazing score and we thank you for it.
• 42:07
  So thank you and if you need one place to find all this stuff,
• 42:11
  head over to Most Things kenobi.com.
• 42:15
  So until next time, Myspace Twin, may the Force be with you.
• 42:20
  Always.