There's a genuinely fascinating reason why 'Star Wars: The Last Jedi' featured porgs

Star Wars! Zooming through the space, doing a laser on a spaceship, red swords a plenty! Also, in this case, porgs!

Yep, the latest Star Wars movie’s bone of contention is those furry little critters that look a bit like hamsters, and like to scream. Porgy porgy pudding and pie.

Of course, anyone with eyes and ears will realise that they’re very cute and therefore entirely worthy of inclusion in this, or any movie. However, some people have decided that their sole existence is down to one thing: toy sales.

They are the 2017 version of the ewoks, of Jar Jar Binks - they are pointless, they do not impact the story, they are for small children. 

But guess what, grumpy guts? You’re wrong! There was a legit reason for sticking them in the movie, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Eat those hats, internet punks!

Designer Jake Lunt Davies spoke to StarWars.com and revealed all:

“(We) had gone to shoot this sequence on Skellig Michael, which is the real island location that stands in for Ahch-To, and that island is covered in puffins.

“It’s a wildlife preserve and everywhere you look there are hundreds of birds dotted around the landscape.

“We’d already started work on the Caretakers, which again was a brief from Rian. We’d just been told ‘puffin people’. Yeah, there was going to be this race of people and puffins again were a source of inspiration for Rian. The puffins were sort of a big influence on everything, really.

“You physically can’t get rid of them, and digitally removing them is an issue and a lot of work, so let’s just roll with it, play with it. And so I think (Rian Johnson) thought, ‘Well, that’s great, let’s have our own indigenous species.’

“It was a huge surprise. You are concerned about audience reaction. I want to create something that I can be proud of, obviously. And then I kind of forgot about it really, because we got caught up in the next one and in Solo, and then they released the trailer and the little clip behind the scenes with the porgs. I was surprised when, suddenly, the internet goes crazy for it and it turned into a meme fest.”

Surprised that it turned into a meme fest. This man has never been on the internet before. Everything, anything and everyanything gets turned into a meme fest. Do a sneeze, and there are memes of it now. Oops, you blinked, did you? Well here’s a meme of it. Of course a stupid screaming hamster was going to turn into a meme.

Either way, that’s the real reason for the stinky little bizzers, so all you sneering keyboard-smashers can relax now. Get onto Change.org and delete those stupid petitions, pull your pants up and open the curtains - everything is calm now.

Of course, those goddamn porgs are still 100% going to rake in millions of quid in merchandising, but at least there was some thinly-veiled excuse about CGI ready to take the flack once people started a furore. Phew! Quick thinking, Star Wars!

(Image: Rex)