Max Rebo Band

The Max Rebo Band is a fictional alien pop music band in the Star Wars franchise, first appearing in the 1983 film Return of the Jedi as in-house performers for crime lord Jabba the Hutt. The lineup originally seen in the film consists of the blue-skinned Ortolan organist Max Rebo, a plump Kitonak woodwind player named Droopy McCool, and the Pa'lowick lead singer Sy Snootles, while additional members were inserted into the later-edited Special Edition of the film. A great deal of further information about the band and the personal histories of its members is found in various literature of the now-noncanonical Star Wars Expanded Universe.

The group are classified as Jizz-wailers, which, according to the Star Wars Encyclopedia, refers to a "musician who plays a fast, contemporary, and upbeat style of music."^[1] Max and Droopy were portrayed by actors in bodysuits, while Sy was operated by two puppeteers who were stationed above and beneath the set. The new members seen in the 1997 Special Edition re-release of Return of the Jedi were computer-generated, as was Sy Snootles in that version.

Concept and creation[edit]

Star Wars creator George Lucas stated that the scene featuring the band was intended to be an elaborate production, but the crew "never really had the time" to film it. Lucas commented, "I thought [it] would be funny [to have a musical number] in the middle of a Star Wars film."^[11]

The original band members—Max, Sy, and Droopy—were puppets designed by Phil Tippett of Industrial Light and Magic's Creature Shop. Timothy D. Rose was the puppeteer for Sy.^[12] Lucas was not entirely pleased with the scene, saying that the puppets were too static and motionless.^[11] Special Edition producer Rick McCallum concurred that the requirements of the scene were too complex, even for animatronics.^[13]

For the 1997 rerelease of Return of the Jedi, Sy Snootles was recreated entirely in CGI and nine new musicians and dancers were added, while Max and Droopy's screen time during the segment was reduced in comparison to the original film. Visual effects supervisor Dave Carson described the process of creating Sy and new character Joh Yowza as similar to sculpting clay models, adding that CGI characters were more like puppets than cartoons and that animators "constantly find limitations: [the] characters don't bend right, or their mass isn't right," problems he claimed that confronted puppeteers.^[14]

In addition to the new characters, "Lapti Nek" was replaced with "Jedi Rocks."^[4]^[15] Lucas insisted that the revised sequence added more atmosphere and quality to the film.^[11]