Death, Star Wars, and the LEGO Pooper Trooper

May 4, 2021 0 By Brian Crecente

Before LEGO® Star Wars™: The Video Game crashed onto the scene, raking in millions and redefining what it meant to be a LEGO game, a Star Wars game, and a family-friendly game, it was a mostly overlooked project by Lucasfilm.

While TT Games and the LEGO Group had faith that the title would do well, those at Lucasfilm overseeing the use of the Star Wars property saw the game as a merchandising opportunity at best and a poor fit at worst.

“We were working on all sorts of different games like Secret Weapons Over Normandy, and Armed and Dangerous and the Old Republic games,” said Matt Shell, Director, Product Marketing at Lucasfilm. “My boss had come to me and told me that I was going to be working on this new LEGO Star Wars game and, to be honest, I think we all were kind of like, ‘Huh?’ That didn’t make a whole lot of sense for us, given the other types of games we’re working on, given what our audience looked like, given the direction of the company.”

That early relationship was really just about working on the marketing and as a licensing partner, since Eidos was publishing the game, he said. The LEGO Group brought with it a sense of identity – perhaps misplaced – that its products were really just for young children.

“When we were thinking about LEGO games, you were you were talking about little kid games and little builders, it was nothing like the LEGO games that we know today,” he said. “Anybody that says we heard about making LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game and thought, ‘This is going to be a huge hit.’ And, ‘This makes perfect sense.’ – you know, I’d be the first to tell you they were lying. Because that was not exactly the first thought that any of us had. It took a lot of convincing. There were a lot of conversations that happened in order to convince us that this is really going to be the match made in heaven it’s turned out to be.”

As LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game approached its 2005 launch, many inside Lucasfilm were beginning to realize just how much fun the game was. And that successful launch confirmed an evolving take on TT Games’ approach to LEGO games.

Because of that, the relationship with Lucasfilm continued to grow, first expanding to include more of the Star Wars movies, and then adding the Indiana Jones titles. The two companies continue to push boundaries and discover new ways to tell the Lucasfilm stories.

Perhaps Shell’s favorite bit of marketing magic was the idea he came up with to promote the boss battles in LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars. It involved a brick bowel movement.

“We were trying to think of different ways to highlight the boss fights, which we were bringing to the franchise, which we hadn’t really had before,” he said. “And so it seemed like a natural fit to have one of the troopers go up against a boss and then literally, you know, have a brick bowel movement on screen. “

The group came up with an animated concept and Shell loved it, but then he had to get permission from both Lucasfilm and the LEGO Group.

“We have a beautiful conference room upstairs that has a view of the Golden Gate Bridge,” he said. “It’s an all-wood room with big leather chairs. It’s like when you’re a kid, you think of the most magical meeting you could ever have. It takes place in this room.

“I’m in there and Howard Roffman [president of Lucas Licensing] was in there, and our president at the time was in there, and a bunch of execs from the LEGO Group, and I had to present this concept. And I literally presented as the character s—-ing a brick, and there was complete silence in the room. I don’t think anybody knew how to react because, you know, the LEGO Group was there.”

Shell managed to get the approval after a bit of convincing and the rest is a glorious 11-seond piece of award-winning marketing history.

Matt Fillbrandt, Executive Producer in charge of product development at Lucasfilm Games, noted that by the time TT Games was working on LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens™, the game was in production at the same time as the movie.

That game not only featured a pivotal death scene from the movie – which had to be presented in a way that was both lightly humorous, but also didn’t disparage the movie’s own evocative scene – but the developers weren’t given a lot of advance insight into what would be happening until the movie was basically out.

“There was a lot of conversation around how to handle that,” Fillbrandt said. “And I think, if I remember correctly, there were even some issues with the LEGO Group side of it where they have specific rules that you’re not supposed to penetrate a minifigure.”

The death scene was violent, so there were a lot of complicated elements to navigate.

“We would take trips out to the TT Fusion Studio in the UK, and we’d be out to dinner, having a team dinner after a daylong meeting, and I’d be out on the sidewalk talking about this scene specifically and what we could do with it and how we’re going to handle it. But ultimately, but we ultimately came up with it.”

The relationship between TT Games, the LEGO Group, and Lucasfilm Games helped to create a new entry point into Lucasfilm’s many famed properties, specifically designed for a younger audience.

“This is how they’re learning the stories, they’re learning the characters,” said Shell. “This is their Star Wars until they’re introduced to the movies and TV shows. “

Fillbrandt added: “I think, for those of us who got to play with LEGO bricks as kids, that even with the adults who might love the movies, there’s also that part of remembering what it was like to put together those first sets that you had and use your imagination to play with these things. And then, when you get to play the games, it all comes to life there, and you get to interact with those characters in the stories that they tell in this magical moment.”

This article originally ran on LEGO.com as a summary of episode one of the weekly Bits N’ Bricks podcast, which you can listen to here.