If you recall Princess Leia’s slight insult to Han Solo by calling him a “scruffy-looking nerf-herder” in “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back,” you might have always wondered what exactly a nerf-herder looks like and might even have fallen asleep while counting nerfs being herded over your bed late at night.
Well, Dan Hernandez and Benji Samit, the writers, creators, and showrunners of the new Disney+ miniseries “Lego Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy” have taken up the task to reveal precisely what this strange occupation is by casting their main minifig character of Sig Greebling as an ordinary livestock handler who accidentally discovers an ancient relic that casts the galaxy into utter disarray when disturbed.
Here to help salute the 25th anniversary of “Lego Star Wars,” “Rebuild the Galaxy” is a joyous four-part series that debuted Sept. 13 which carries with it a delightful sense of sheer unadulterated smiles in its wacky story of a “Star Wars” universe turned inside out and upside down.
Directed by Chris Buckley and animated by Vancouver B.C.-based Atomic Cartoons, this crossover of epic appeal plunges into the multiverse concept that’s permeated many a sci-fi and fantasy movie, TV series, comic book, and video game over the last decade. But there’s such an extreme level of charm, goodwill, and heart here that it feels fresh even though the alt-reality fad has mostly run its course.
Partially inspired by the way kids (and adults) play with those little Danish bricks by mixing and matching pieces to create hybrid “Star Wars” vehicles, buildings, and spaceships, “Rebuild the Galaxy” offers an imaginative escape that leaves fans of both camps with a sense of nostalgic fun.
This spin all begins with Sig and Dev Greebling, nerf-herding brothers living in their bucolic home on Finesa. Force-sensitive Sig (Gaten Matarazzo) is happy shepherding nerfs and living a simple lifestyle, but his brother Dev (Tony Revolori) is a restless soul who would love to leave his backwater planet at any moment.
After locating a long-abandoned Jedi temple that contains an ancient Lego brick known as “The Cornerstone,” they remove the relic against the protests of Jedi Bob (Bobby Moynihan) which triggers a seismic shift in the whole Lego Star Wars realm.
This event causes a universal makeover as bricks transform and combine in myriad ways with allegiances swapped and destinations reshaped. A beach bum pod-racing Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) exists on a Tatooine no longer a dry dustbowl but changed to a surfer’s paradise. There are rebel AT-AT walkers, X-wing TIE fighters, and Ewok bounty hunters. Crait’s salt-crusted surface has becoming a peppery planet, Hoth’s vast icefields are now flowing with molten lava, Admiral Ackbar is the donor for clone troopers, and the resistance is led by benevolent iterations of Palpatine, Darth Vader, Count Dooku and the former IG-88 assassin.
Stuffed with amusing cameos, self-referential jokes, and fun surprises, “Rebuild the Galaxy” takes the “Star Wars” mashup craze to the next level. Darth Jar Jar (Ahmed Best) is a hilarious standout as is a psychotic C-3PO flying a golden Naboo starffighter and the Lando Calrissian version of The Mandalorian called The Landolorian. Swapping sides from light to the dark are Darth Devastator (Tony Revolori), Darth Rey (Helen Sadler), Darth Tico (Kelly Marie Tran) and the rebirth of the lovable blue alien of “Young Jedi Adventures” into the diabolical Darth Nubs!
With his Finesa girlfriend Yesi Scala (Marsai Martin), Jedi Bob, and an Aussie-accented Gonk droid named Servo (Michael Cusack), Sig attempts to correct the mistake he made by removing the Cornerstone to reset the galaxy far, far away back to its former state, characters begin to question which world is truly better.
Will they put the pieces back together or embrace both the good and bad of this polarizing realignment? “Lego Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy” delivers what its geeky creators intended with its imaginative “What If?” scenario for the Lego Star Wars 25th anniversary celebration, and we’d love to see a sequel exploring this weird world to encounter more of the playground’s hilarious permutations.
“Lego Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy” streams exclusively on Disney+.
