By George & Josh Bate
George Lucas made headlines recently when Illumination president Chris Meledandri casually mentioned that the creator of Star Wars makes a cameo appearance in Minions & Monsters.
As we describe in our review, Minions & Monsters is a love letter to all things cinema and is filled to the brim with references to old Hollywood, whether that be a recreation of Citizen Kane with Minions or a homage to the famous clip of a house crashing around Buster Keaton in the silent film Steamboat Bill, Jr.
Naturally, a movie that pays homage to filmmaking so resoundingly would have to feature some kind of reference to Star Wars or George Lucas, one of the most influential filmmakers in history. And Minions & Monsters does exactly that.
In the first season of Minions & Monsters, a tour guide named Olivia (voiced by Allison Janney) walks visitors through a film history museum. Before flashing back to the 1920s to tell the story of Minions James and Henry and their impact on cinema, Olivia walks past a glass display case in the museum housing none other than George Lucas himself.
Dressed in the kind of white and blue plaid shirt that has become synonymous with the creator of Star Wars, George Lucas pleads Olivia that she let him out of the glass box. Olivia refuses Lucas’ request, after which he asks, “Can I at least have my cell phone?” Olivia once again declines Lucas’ request, stating, “No, you’ll just call for help.”
The reference to ‘call for help’ may be a homage to the iconic plead for help that Princess Leia delivers via hologram to Obi-Wan Kenobi in the original Star Wars.
George Lucas appears at the end of Minions & Monsters when the story returns to the film history museum. As it is revealed that all of what just transpired was part of James and Henry’s movie, the characters of their film seep into the real world and start interacting with everyone in the museum.
One of these characters is the robot child of Dort, an alien robot voiced by Jesse Eisenberg. Dort is a parody of and homage to the character Gort from the 1951 sci-fi classic The Day the Earth Stood Still.
Dort’s child runs up to George Lucas and begins speaking with him. It’s a fitting match given the prominent role droids play in George Lucas’ Star Wars saga.
Lucas’ last acting appearance was in 2007’s Robot Chicken: Star Wars, in which he voiced a fictionalized version of himself. Before that, he made a cameo as Baron Papanoida in Revenge of the Sith, played himself in an episode of The O.C., and had cameos in Men in Black, Beverly Hills Cop III, Hook, and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.