Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of The Sith

[Pubrick]

Me, too

[modage]

hideous coverart as usual.

[killafilm]

I mean really? What is up with Lucasarts?

[Escapeism]

Seriously I dont have toys or go to conventions but I did grow up with the movies and I am really happy with the final movie.  The acting is crap but the action is fantastic as well as the story.

[ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ]

The acting is crap but the action is fantastic as well as the story.

And when you get right down to it... that's all that really matters.

[MacGuffin]

Wal-Mart is going to be offering an exclusive with Lucasfilm & Fox's forthcoming Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith DVD (due on 11/1). If you buy the disc at Wal-Mart stores, you'll get a bonus disc called The Story of Star Wars. It includes the hour-long R2-D2 & C-3PO's Chronicles of Luke and Anakin Skywalker documentary. You can visit this page at Wal-Mart for more. Here's a look at the artwork:

[MacGuffin]

Episode III DVD Details Revealed!
Jim Ward, Sr. Vice President of Lucasfilm, discusses the forthcoming Star Wars disc in elaborate detail.

On October 6, 2005, Jim Ward, Sr. Vice President of Lucasfilm and President of Lucasarts, led a demonstration day at Skywalker Ranch to promote the upcoming release of Star Wars: Episode III - The Revenge of the Sith on DVD. The film, which comes to DVD on November 1, enjoys an elaborate two-disc set stacked with extra features sure to excite Padawans from five to fifty. The purpose of the afternoon, Ward explains, was "to make sure we had the best value-added material that we could possibly have, and not just stuff to cram on there but stuff that people actually wanted to watch. And rather than just list everything for you, we thought we would just play a piece that would probably better demonstrate what's on the DVD itself."

In addition to the feature film, the DVD features animated menu screens, which Ward explained followed those assembled for the release of the previous Star Wars DVDs. "You randomly can go to any one of three planets and have three completely distinct menu sets," Ward says. "We've done that for I and II, IV, V and XI, and now we're going to do it for Episode III." He went on to reveal that Utapau, Coruscant, and Mustafar are the three planets which displayed on the menu screens.

Once the viewer navigates into a specific menu screen, the display shows the interior - more specifically, the cockpit - of a star fighter. "You can see all of the great things that we in fact have on this particular disc," Ward says, describing some of the myriad extras. "One of the things that we have been known for with our past DVDs, and this is consistent with this DVD as well, is actually taking deleted scenes and actually completing them and putting them on the disc. We've shown extended pod races - we've shown lots of different things - and this disc is no different; [and] we wanted to give [journalists] the opportunity to see a couple of the deleted scenes."

The menu screens change again - "we meet our friend General Grievous," says Ward - and he punches up the first of two deleted scenes. "The very first one up is the one we're going to take a look at, called 'Grievous Slaughters a Jedi: Escape From the General'. This is a partially completed scene where we've gone back in and done special effects work at ILM; it's partially an animatic and it's partially a rough cut, but in all the entire sequence is one that was taken out of the movie, but for particularly those of you who are really into Star Wars, it's a moment where our beloved friend Shaak Ti bites the dust. You're going to hear George [Lucas] and Rick [McCallum] discuss why that didn't really remain in the movie, and each one of the deleted scenes has an introduction by George and Rick explaining the context, explaining what the deal was, and then obviously the complete deleted scene."



Lucas' comments explain the need to excise footage from the first major sequence of the film: "There was a lot of material there, and the first sequence, if you will, up until the crash of the Star Destroyer, was an hour, and we needed to get it down under a half hour, so a lot of things had to go. Everything that was important in that scene ultimately got moved to the bridge scene, so we didn't really lose any of the important information. We just did it in a much more economical way."

The scene which follows depicts Obi Wan and Anakin's arrival aboard the starship. Shaak Ti kneels before General Grievous as he goads the Jedis; after he executes Shaak Ti by stabbing her through the chest with a light saber, droids surround Anakin and Obi Wan, and they discuss (via a system of signals that baseball players would envy) an escape route. Eventually, they use their light sabers to cut a hole in the floor and fall to the fuel tanks below.



"The next one I wanted to show you is actually one that's near and dear to all of our hearts, particularly Rick McCallum's," Ward says. "For those hardcore Star Wars fans in the audience, ok guys, you're going to cry at this one, because this is a very short scene and was in fact cut out of the movie. We were all really pushing George to try to keep it in; there were really good reasons why it wasn't, and you'll understand why, but this is the famous scene where Yoda actually goes to Dagobah, and ends up there and obviously we meet him again in The Empire Strikes Back."


 
Producer Rick McCallum describes the scene thusly during his DVD introduction: "[It was] one of the most painful things for me that was cut out of the movie. It's a scene where Yoda basically arrives on Dagobah; it's that simple. It's no more than 30 seconds long - he arrives, the ship lands, you establish the planet, and I was heartbroken when we didn't put it in the movie. I begged George to do it, and I understand the reasons why he didn't." Lucas explains further, "looking at the film, we realized that it was more important to really follow the threads of the children and not the threads of all of the characters, so we first deal with the mother, and then we deal with the father, and then we deal with the two kids. Putting Yoda in there was a bit of unneccessary exposition; we know where he ends up, and we didn't think it was necessary to sort of show that's where he goes."

"I loved that shot," continues McCallum. "It's a beautiful, beautiful moment, and I'm hoping one day as he's tinkering away doing the revised version" - a comment that elicited more than a few uneasy chuckles from the audience - "that he'll think about putting it back into the film, or if nothing else, I'm very happy that everybody gets a chance to see it now."



The scene is as McCallum describes - Yoda arrives on Dagobah in under 30 seconds - but few sniffles are heard in the crowd; quickly, Ward moves on to the featurettes. "We actually have two featurettes on this disc," he says. "The first one is called 'The Chosen One' and one of the issues obviously in this film is he transformation of Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader. But we wanted to take a much deeper look into that, particularly in what we're going to show you today - an outtake of that - particularly the 'fried and crispy' part where he actually burns; we thought that would be an interesting angle to look at.

"Also," Ward continues, "the next featurette is called 'It's All For Real,' which is actually an interesting story about doing all of the stunts as real as we possibly could. The section we're going to show you is actually a pretty dramatic moment on the set where George changes his mind, and you can see everyone involved who had been planning for months and then George changes his mind on the set like that, they've got to react. So it's a pretty interesting little story."

During one of the film's biggest confrontations, in which Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson) tries to apprehend Senator Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid), Lucas changes his mind mid-shoot and insists that Jackson and McDiarmid do their own stunts instead of leaving the heavy lifting for the stunt doubles. Ward overstates the moment's importance - the situation is summarily resolved in a matter of an hour or so - but its message is clear: no matter how much pre-production work Lucas' team offers, they must always be prepared for unexpected changes on the day of the shoot.

Ward then moves on to the centerpiece documentary, which will no doubt earn accolades as much from the critical community and production participants as the fans themselves. "We have a history of doing these [documentaries] both to give people insight into the true process that happens - both the good and the bad. We've certainly done that for our DVDs, and last year with the History of Star Wars - it was also on A & E, and we won an Emmy for that, so we're very proud of this. This time, George in particular was very adamant about a certain approach. You know the credits that roll at the end? Do you guys happen to have any idea what each and every one of those people actually does? It seems like a lot of people, right?"

Before anyone answers his rhetorical query, Ward launches into his pitch. "We thought we could tackle that issue, because we felt and really George that people, when these credits start rolling, it's like, 'my God, why does it take so many people to make this movie? This is Hollywood excess' - or whatever, and that's not really the reality. The reality is that it does take each and every one of those artists to put a movie together. So what we decided to do is take a sequence that's basically less than a minute, isolate that out, and educate the viewer about every single person that touches that less than 60 seconds.

"Usually behind-the-scenes are about the sexy stuff - the special effects, the actors - and we have that in there. But very rarely do we go into each and every facet of what it takes to make a movie, and when you do that, the challenge becomes it's educational but you also need to make it fun. We think we've actually cracked that with this documentary called 'Within a Minute'."

Ward offers a sample of the doc, which features several outtakes, including the set-up, the beginning of it, and then visits the art department, the editorial process, 3-D match movers and practical models - "a lot of the unsung heroes," as he puts it. "Not only is it fun to watch," Ward explains, " but if you have any affinity towards movies, you're absolutely going to learn something and you're going to learn what goes on at least in the world of George Lucas of how to make a film."

The footage opens with a sort of spider-web of different bubbles that circulate around different nuclei - categories, including special effects, production, etc. - and moves directly into one, where a willing crew of artists supplicate themselves at Lucas' feet while he announces which drawings will or will not be used to design the Mustafar duel sequence. From there, different excerpts are shown of different departments in action, but the most exciting revelations were already made - namely, that Lucas called in Spielberg to offer some insights during the pre-visualization, and that the director 'shoots around' his film during principal photography and finds the finished product in the editing room.

That said, the documentary proves to be unlike any other 'making-of' featurette ever made, and will no doubt offer fans new insights into which roles the respect most, and more importantly, they want to take when inspired by Lucas' films.

The final demonstration is a quick glimpse at the Xbox playable demo Lucas offers for the new Lucasarts game Star Wars Battlefront II. Hayden Christiansen himself pops in to demonstrate the game's agile action - despite the exaggerated protests of Ward - and disappears again (check back with IGN DVD next week for a chat with the young actor about embodying Darth Vader), but the point is made; even for gaming novices like myself, the two levels of Battlefront available on Episode III's Disc Two are enticing enough to consider buying an Xbox upon which to play it.

Meanwhile, there are more than a handful of other features not demonstrated by Ward and his able crew, but the final feature he advertises is not the trailers, TV spots, or even DVD-Rom content; rather, it's an Easter Egge, which he says is accessible via the same codes used on previous DVDs.

In the Easter Egg footage, Yoda creeps into frame, casts aside his trademark cane, and performs and impromptu dance to the tune of The Roots "Don't Say Nuthin'." While the clip is hardly substantial, it demonstrates an inescapable truth about Lucasfilm's efforts to revolutionize movie-making as we know it: even when we think we've figured out every last detail, extra, and bit of bonus material, their endlessly inventive staff offers up yet another new feature to catch audiences off guard.

[MacGuffin]

Star Wars Cross-Promotions Due
Slipcases, supplemental discs due from Lucasfilm + retailers.

During the recent press day for the Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith DVD, Lucasfilm Sr. Vice President Jim Ward hinted at a number of promotions that Fox Home Entertainment will be coordinating in conjunction with the release. "We've got great promotions lined up with all of our retailers," Ward said during a panel discussion as Skywalker Ranch on October 6, 2005. "Certainly Wal-Mart; there's a special disc that will come with the DVD that has some great content to it. With Best Buy, we have a really wonderful promotion."

Ward declined to specify what kind of cross-promotion they were developing. "I just can't talk to you about it because it's a surprise and it will blow it," he said. "But suffice it to say we've tied into a nationally-rated television program, and that gentleman is on equal stature with Darth Vader; in fact, some people call him 'Darth Vader of the boardroom'." Other than this apparent nod to TV's The Apprentice host Donald Trump, he said little else. "Suffice it to say we've got some great programs tied in with our friends at Best Buy throughout all of our retail efforts. Absolutely it's going to be great and we can provide you with the details of what those are."

Additionally, Ward said that they were planning to put together some cross-promotional programs that involved slip cases for the prequel trilogy, but declined to describe them in detail. "I think there's some different opportunities there with different retailers and some ASP specific programs and things like that," he said. "I will tell you a lot of fans have done home-grown versions of that that they are putting on the web as well, which is kind of fun, frankly, because you can get a couple of them and switch them in and out." IGN has not received word about Lucasfilm's legal offense to squash these rebel uprisings and ensure that all Star Wars product is produced only by the Skywalker Ranch and its Stormtrooper hordes.

[Pubrick]

star who?

[polkablues]

Okay, I put this movie off as long as was humanly possible, but I finally made myself watch it today.

Here's how I know it was awful: SPOILERS AHEAD
When Anakin Skywalker slaughtered a roomful of children, I didn't care.  Not one little bit.  I mean, seriously!  You have your main character chop up a bunch of little kids in cold blood... as a filmmaker, that's a freebie.  People are going to be invested in that moment.  You really have to fuck up royally to make that scene end up emotionally neutral.

These movies are so bad it makes me weep for the state of the world.  And to think there are still people in the world, after the trilogy's all said and done, that still give a crap about STAR WARS...  They've been drinking the Kool-aid for the past five years, and they haven't keeled over dead yet!  How much self-delusion do you have to possess to be able to convince yourself that your lifelong obsession was worthwhile?  How much disappointment do you have to take before you realize that huddling under George Lucas' massive neckflap won't keep you dry from the rain?

I swear... this movie was so bad it makes me want to rewatch the "Matrix" sequels to get the taste out of my mouth.  That's bad.

[SHAFTR]

I'm still amazed that people who realize how bad episodes I & II are, can still be fooled to think that Episode III was good.

[Just Withnail]

Personally it's a twist on suspension of disbelief; I ignore the fact that they're overall bad/ not quite perfectly executed ( ), and rather watch them for the story, which I honestly feel is very engaging. Visuals have their moments, even the acting does. The music is great. I'm not "fooled" in any way, I just choose to let myself get carried away like I did when I was twelve. So I guess, above all, it's a nostalgic thing. But I'll not deny it in any way; the last hour of Episode III moves me like the first three never did, unabashedly, and it's all there in that film. I'd be just as moved had 4,5 and 6 not existed. I think. I hope.

[MacGuffin]

Okay, I put this movie off as long as was humanly possible, but I finally made myself watch it today.

Here's how I know it was awful: SPOILERS AHEAD
When Anakin Skywalker slaughtered a roomful of children, I didn't care.  Not one little bit.  I mean, seriously!  You have your main character chop up a bunch of little kids in cold blood... as a filmmaker, that's a freebie.  People are going to be invested in that moment.  You really have to fuck up royally to make that scene end up emotionally neutral.

These movies are so bad it makes me weep for the state of the world.  And to think there are still people in the world, after the trilogy's all said and done, that still give a crap about STAR WARS...  They've been drinking the Kool-aid for the past five years, and they haven't keeled over dead yet!  How much self-delusion do you have to possess to be able to convince yourself that your lifelong obsession was worthwhile?  How much disappointment do you have to take before you realize that huddling under George Lucas' massive neckflap won't keep you dry from the rain?

I swear... this movie was so bad it makes me want to rewatch the "Matrix" sequels to get the taste out of my mouth.  That's bad.

Oh, I get it. You're a Trekkie.

[polkablues]

Oh, I get it. You're a Trekkie.

No way.  "Saturn 3", baby.  We're a small cult, but an obnoxious one.

[MacGuffin]

"Saturn 3", baby.  We're a small cult, but an obnoxious one.

Star Wars and The Matrix runs rings around that Saturn thing.

Get it? Saturn - rings?





*taps mic*

Is this thing on?