Science-fiction movie food is almost always weird. Whether it's the "bowl of snot" they eat in the real world in "The Matrix" or the bug bars in "Snowpiercer," sci-fi food is generally kind of unpleasant to look at and think about.
There's one fun exception, however, and that's the blue milk from "Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope." The milk was allegedly absolutely foul to drink, according to Mark Hamill, who played intergalactic milk-chuggin' Luke Skywalker, but it looks cool. It's sufficiently strange to be sci-fi, but it's recognizable as milk.
That took a lot of work to pull off, as set designer Roger Christian shared in a retrospective for StarWars.com. Not only did they have to figure out how to ensure the actors didn't get sick drinking warm milk on the hot North African sets, but it was apparently quite difficult to get the milk to look a discernible shade of blue.
Decades later, the blue milk in "Star Wars" is a tiny part of the overall franchise and something we kind of take for granted, but when they were filming "A New Hope" in Tunisia, it was a very big deal indeed.
There were probably quite a few major logistics issues on "A New Hope," but to hear Christian describe it, the blue milk was a pretty major one:
"I had a lot of time agonizing over blue milk because there wasn't much that I could find. I knew we were gonna be in Tunisia, milk would be difficult to get, and also it would be hot. So I had to have something they could drink, because I knew they were going to be drinking it. I eventually found what's called cochineal. It was a food coloring that was more like the [food coloring] for blueberry.
So I found that and, eventually, mixing that, I got it. Because everything I did, it would curdle and look terrible. I eventually found a way of mixing it that I could give it to the props [department], because I knew I would dress the set and leave for the next one. The props had to handle that. So that worked."
In order to keep the concoction safe, Christian used long-life milk, which doesn't need to be refrigerated but is said to have a "burnt" taste, which may have contributed to Hamill's revulsion.
The other major issue was the cochineal, because it's made from bugs, and I can't imagine burnt milk and bugs tastes all that delicious. It turns out that bantha milk tastes pretty disgusting, but what about the other funky-colored milk in "Star Wars"?
In "The Last Jedi," Luke drinks some freaky green milk from a creature on his island home, and he looks significantly less like he's trying to hold back vomit while drinking it. The green milk, unlike its blue counterpart, was just regular old coconut water with the green color added in post-production, making it a lot easier to swig down. Thank goodness Luke wasn't lactose intolerant, but the plant milks probably stay safe to drink a lot longer while tasting less strong.
Fans eager to try space milk of the blue or green variety for themselves can do so at the Galaxy's Edge theme parks inside Disneyland and Disney World, but it's not the same stuff that was used on set. (After all, who would want to drink something that made Mark Hamill gag?)
The commercially-available versions of blue and green milk are made from coconut water and rice milk, along with stabilizers and thickeners for a smoothie-like blend, plus a whole bunch of sugar and flavorings.
The "Star Wars" universe only continues to expand, so maybe we'll get to see some red or neon purple milk sometime soon. "Star Wars" has some of the most fun sci-fi food and drink in the whole genre, so here's to lots more goofy gastronomy!
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