The Bearded Trio

A look back at the Welsh filmmaker whose work on Return of the Jedi deserves far more recognition. Every now and then I like to shine a light on the filmmakers who helped shape the movies that meant so much to us growing up. Today I’m revisiting one of them: Richard Marquand, the Welsh director of Return of the Jedi . I’m sharing a video tribute I made to him more than ten years ago. The quality is a little rough because it was created long before modern editing tools were easily available, but the heart behind it is still very much there. Marquand is one of those names that often slips through the cracks when people talk about Star Wars. Ask many fans who directed Jedi and you’ll hear the same line repeated again and again: “George Lucas basically took over.” It’s a comment that has been repeated so often it has become part of the mythology. But if you’ve ever read The Making of Return of the Jedi , you’ll know that Marquand’s involvement was far deeper and far more hands‑on than he’...

Brian Johnson, the Oscar‑winning special effects maestro behind some of the greatest sci‑fi films and TV shows ever made, has sadly passed away. His work helped define the look and feel of modern science fiction. From 2001: A Space Odyssey to Alien , from Thunderbirds and Space: 1999 to The Empire Strikes Back , Brian’s craftsmanship shaped entire generations of storytelling. His Oscar for The Empire Strikes Back remains one of the most deserved honours in the history of the Special Achievement category. I was fortunate enough to interview Brian back in 2016 at Showmasters’ Cardiff Film & Comic Con. He was warm, funny, and wonderfully candid, the kind of person who could talk about groundbreaking visual effects with the same ease as sharing a quiet memory from a frozen location shoot. One story that always stayed with me was his time filming The Empire Strikes Back in Norway. While most of us imagine the epic Hoth battle, Brian remembered something far less glamorous: the tiny...