Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
Lucky bastard. I wish I’d had this report to take to this past week’s Jedi Council meeting. Obi-Swan’s in the middle of transcribing those tapes right now, so look for the article to be posted Monday. In the meantime, enjoy this:
Hi Harry,
Long time reader of the site - appreciate all the info you guys manage to pull together. Not sure if this has been posted yet, however I figured I'd send it in just in case.
The company I work for recently was visited by representatives from LucasFilm and a marketing firm, and I was fortunate enough to sneak my way in to the licencing meeting they held. I thought I was going to see some cool new toys, posters, clothing, etc, etc. and was pretty hyped to at least get a peek at some juicy tidbits... little did I know that they had planned to screen the recent Teaser Trailer (this was days before the official release). That was a cool bonus and I was happy just getting to see that early. However, I wasn't expecting that they had brought with them the first eight minutes of the movie! I just about hugged the person who "snuck" me in! But I'm a man.. and men do not hug other men... right? Right?
Well anyway, the scenes were not 100% finished - there were temp soundtracks in place (can't wait to see it with a full John Williams score in place!), computer renditions of sequences and even some voice dubbing for seens that had dialog but not actual shots of the actors - that was funny to hear Anakin's voice to drop a couple octaves when cutting to an exterior shot of his ship. It opens traditionally with the scroll which had some temp text in place as well - at least I hope it did (it was a bit choppy in spots), explaining that General Grevous(sp?) has struck at Coruscant and in a bold move, kidnapped and is holding hostage, Chancellor Palpatine. He is attempting to make his escape from the planet which leads to a HUGE capital ship battle over Coruscant - which is where the opening footage starts. The new ships look great - especially the new (old?) Star Destroyers (which have been shown briefly in the new trailer). The shots of the cap ships slugging it out toe-to-toe are amazing! Never really have we gotten to see that in a Star Wars flick before - so it's something to see here.
It closes in on two new Jedi fighters that are cruising there way along one of the larger ships - followed closely by clone-piloted Republic fighters (look like predecessors to the X-Wing). Anakin and Obiwan are piloting the Jedi fighters and are attempting to get to Grevous' flag ship in order to stage a rescue of Palpatine. All the while the camera is zooming in and out as the enemy ships come screaming in and clone ships are exploding all around them. Anakin and Obi-wan do a lot of back and forth banter with Anakin wanting to help clone pilots in trouble but Obi reigns him in and keeps him on track. Hayden's acting seems a bit wooden in spots but there were a couple of good moments - especially one where Obiwan gives orders to engage enemy craft and Anakin grins evily and says "this is where the fun begins" or something like that. You can see his love for battle and how he views it quite clearly at this point.
Most of the other details are sketchy because it comes at you so fast - the dog fighting and ship combat (at least the finished stuff) was excellent - the opening scene blew away the space battle in Return of the Jedi in it's intensity, in my opinion. The scene that we saw winds up with Obi's ship getting hit with some kind of "missle" that expels a whole bunch of little "bug" droids that climb all over his ship and start dismantling it bit by bit. He tells Anakin to go on ahead but the ever stubborn Anakin tries shooting them off of Obi's ship, which pisses Obi off a wee bit. After getting yelled at, he then pulls up alongside and tries to knock them off with his wing, pissing Obi off even more, who keeps yelling at Anakin to go on without him and get to the Chancellor. As Anakin continues to bat at the small droids, one hops over to Anakins ship and starts to attack R2 while Anakin yells at R2 to "get it!". That's where it ended for us.
The LucasFilm rep went on to tell us about some key points in the movie as well as show us some concept art from the film. The first painting was once Anakin gets on board the Seperatist ship - it shows him standing facing Count Dooku, with Palpatine sitting in a throne of sorts in his Darth Sidious garb (very reminiscent of the throne room in RotJ). He says this is where Anakin kills Dooku/Tyrannus and becomes Sidious' new apprentice. This appears to happen very early in the movie which I wasn't really expecting... The next picture/painting he screened while talking a bit about the Anakin-Obiwan duel showed the two of them hovering (at least that's what it looked like) on some kind of floating platforms over bubbling lava! The last pic he showed was a painting from what he said would be the biggest, BADDEST, lightsaber duel - if not the most anticipated one - of the movie (which we got a hint at in the Trailer): The Emperor versus Yoda! That one caught me by surprise because for some reason I never thought they would have Palpy fighting with anything other than Force-lightning...
I usually tend to stay away from spoilers and have up until that day with RotS... but seeing what I did really got me excited to see what Lucas has up his sleeve for this chapter - it looks to be fairly dark and FILLED with lightsaber battles from beginning to end. I... can't... WAIT!
If I'm not terribly out of date and you do use this, my name is Remo.
Thanks Harry!
Out of date? The movie doesn’t hit until next May. Nice report, man. Thanks!
"Moriarty" out.
