Rick McCallum presented his "Spectacular" today. He started the show by presenting several minutes of footage from Revenge of the Sith. It was enough to make anyone avoiding spoilers go into the fetal position. Though the clips didn't have audio from the movie (there was music playing over it), they were bits and pieces scattered from the whole movie. Scenes showed included everything from the opening space battle to the final funeral scene. Fans got glimpses of General Grievous in action, the wheel bike chase, Polis Massa, the Emperor vs. Yoda, Bail Organa arriving at the Jedi Temple, Padme watching the Temple burn, Ki Adi Mundi on a snow planet, and more. Also included were the very first public glimpses of Alderaan. And as Josh mentioned earlier, there was a great shot of Yoda decapitating a couple of clone troopers.
McCallum followed up the rousing series of clips with a series of animatic vs. final footage comparisons. We saw footage from the final Mustafar battle, Yoda vs. Sidious, Kashyyyk, and more. Most notable was a scene of Anakin walking into the Opera booth and you could see Lucas (as a blue faced alien) in the lower left hand corner. (Now you know where to look for him in the movie!)
McCallum followed up with a Q&A with the fans. Here are the most notable points from what was said:
- ROTS has a final running time of 2 hours 11 minutes. (McCallum joked it had 54 minutes of credits.) Lucas finished the film on Tuesday and screening it with Steven Spielberg (who gave it a Thumbs Up).
- They finished the final shot of ROTS on the same sound stage at Estree Studios that Lucas first started filming ANH on.
- A fan noted that in the footage we saw, Vader's hands are no longer clamped in the upright position. McCallum complimented the fan on catching it and said it would make sense in the movie.
- Lucas got a script for Indiana Jones 4 last week and Spielberg plans to make it the film he does after his next one (presumably after War of the Worlds).
- When asked about the upcoming TV series, he said they haven't done any development work on it yet, but a live action series was definitely planned.
- McCallum confirmed again they plan to do Star Wars in 3-D, but they don't know when. They are currently limited by the few number of digital screens, few companies that can do the conversion from 2-D to 3-D, and more.
- When asked if Lucas would continue tinkering with the films, McCallum joked that he didn't think Lucas would be done until he was dead. McCallum said he had nightmares about Lucas and his daughter calling him in the middle of the night when he was old asking about Star Wars edits for TPM.
- McCallum stated that that will be making Revenge of the Sith availible for screening for the troops in Iraq. Not only that, but it would be WIDELY availible. The process is moving for this to happen.
- McCallum confirmed that they are planning on doing marathon screenings of the saga with George Lucas in the US like he's doing in the UK.
- McCallum and Jim Ward dodged questions about getting the Ewoks and Droids complete series on DVD (as well as the old "making of" shows about the movies). It was obvious from their lack of response that it was in the works.
That's the best of the stuff! I'll follow up by adding a big thank you to Jim Ward and Stacie from ILM for getting us into the event to report it to you. The Gen Con folks have been snubbing anyone with a press badge and not letting them get into presentations easily. Without intervention from the LFL folks, we wouldn't have been able to present this to you. More to come!
Rebelscum Breast Cancer Awareness Charity Patch Posted By Philip on November 25, 2014: Thanks to everybody that ordered patches. I sent a check for $1,600.00 to the National Breast Cancer Foundation on Monday. While it's not as much as I hoped for, it's still very much appreciated. They will remain for sale in the store for anybody that still wishes to purchase them. Details after the jump.