Star Wars: The Force Awakens - 10 Behind-The-Scenes Secrets We Learnt From ILM

4. Snoke's Defining Trait Was Being Intangible And Mysterious

There was plenty kept mysterious by The Force Awakens' marketing, but one of the most secretive was the design of Supreme Leader Snoke, who, bar some leaked concept art, hadn't been glimpsed until the movie hit. That wasn't the only mystery around the character though - he design was always meant to have a strange feel to it. Pritchard talked at length about Andy Serkis' character, jumping right from when he was first brought to ILM with many of his key elements already in place:

"Snoke was originally conceived as a small maquette and that was finished off in the middle of production. And all his scarring, that sort of thing, that was already there and then he was refined throughout post-production. J.J. wanted him to be very monumental. He had the Lincoln Memorial in mind and his idea was that it was very diaphanous, very difficult to figure out what actually was going on. We used references of things like jellyfish to give him an almost a semi-transparent look."

The Lincoln parallels should have been obvious, but it's the translucent approach that is most intriguing, pointing towards the desire to create something really intangible. And that wasn't the half of it:

"We actually built a full skeletal structure inside his head, and veins as well that you can see through, keeping him slightly mysterious. It was always the intention of J.J. to keep him so that he would only reveal himself as a hologram at the end of his first scene."

If you were asking questions about the character after the movie, you were playing right into Abrams' hands.