Star Wars “Big” Announcement

Last week Lucasfilm put up a big countdown clock page. May the 4th was going to lead to a big announcement. So what were we all waiting for?

Perhaps if you have a blu-ray player, that’s huge news. I don’t, nor can I afford an HD TV to watch it on. So this means pretty much nothing to me. For those of you that do, we will take a look at the details, but I want to talk about the advertising campaign, too.

From the Force.net (h/t to Voice Actors in the News’ Twitter feed), here’s what’s been announced on the special set, which appears to be available both in two separate trilogy sets and one huge set. For some reason anything that had a link was in blue, even after I removed the link. The ad wouldn’t have come up anyway.

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DISC ONE — STAR WARS: EPISODE I THE PHANTOM MENACE

• Audio Commentary with George Lucas, Rick McCallum, Ben Burtt, Rob Coleman, John Knoll, Dennis Muren and Scott Squires
• Audio Commentary from Archival Interviews with Cast and Crew

DISC TWO — STAR WARS: EPISODE II ATTACK OF THE CLONES

• Audio Commentary with George Lucas, Rick McCallum, Ben Burtt, Rob Coleman, Pablo Helman, John Knoll and Ben Snow
• Audio Commentary from Archival Interviews with Cast and Crew

DISC THREE — STAR WARS: EPISODE III REVENGE OF THE SITH

• Audio Commentary with George Lucas, Rick McCallum, Rob Coleman, John Knoll and Roger Guyett
• Audio Commentary from Archival Interviews with Cast and Crew

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• Audio Commentary with George Lucas, Carrie Fisher, Ben Burtt and Dennis Muren
• Audio Commentary from Archival Interviews with Cast and Crew

DISC FIVE — STAR WARS: EPISODE V THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

• Audio Commentary with George Lucas, Irvin Kershner, Carrie Fisher, Ben Burtt and Dennis Muren
• Audio Commentary from Archival Interviews with Cast and Crew

DISC SIX — STAR WARS: EPISODE VI RETURN OF THE JEDI

• Audio Commentary with George Lucas, Carrie Fisher, Ben Burtt and Dennis Muren
• Audio Commentary from Archival Interviews with Cast and Crew

DISC SEVEN — NEW! STAR WARS ARCHIVES: EPISODES I-III

• Including: deleted, extended and alternate scenes; prop, maquette and costume turnarounds; matte paintings and concept art; supplementary interviews with cast and crew; a flythrough of the Lucasfilm Archives and more

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• Including: deleted, extended and alternate scenes; prop, maquette and costume turnarounds; matte paintings and concept art; supplementary interviews with cast and crew; and more

DISC NINE — THE STAR WARS DOCUMENTARIES

• NEW! Star Warriors (2007, Color, Apx. 84 Minutes) — Some Star Wars fans want to collect action figures…these fans want to be action figures! A tribute to the 501st Legion, a global organization of Star Wars costume enthusiasts, this insightful documentary shows how the super-fan club promotes interest in the films through charity and volunteer work at fundraisers and high-profile special events around the world.
• NEW! A Conversation with the Masters: The Empire Strikes Back 30 Years Later (2010, Color, Apx. 25 Minutes) — George Lucas, Irvin Kershner, Lawrence Kasdan and John Williams look back on the making of The Empire Strikes Back in this in-depth retrospective from Lucasfilm created to help commemorate the 30th anniversary of the movie. The masters discuss and reminisce about one of the most beloved films of all time.
• NEW! Star Wars Spoofs (2011, Color, Apx. 91 Minutes) — The farce is strong with this one! Enjoy a hilarious collection of Star Wars spoofs and parodies that have been created over the years, including outrageous clips from Family Guy, The Simpsons, How I Met Your Mother and more — and don’t miss “Weird Al” Yankovic’s one-of-a-kind music video tribute to The Phantom Menace!
• The Making of Star Wars (1977, Color, Apx. 49 Minutes) — Learn the incredible behind-the-scenes story of how the original Star Wars movie was brought to the big screen in this fascinating documentary hosted by C-3PO and R2-D2. Includes interviews with George Lucas and appearances by Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher.
• The Empire Strikes Back: SPFX (1980, Color, Apx. 48 Minutes) — Learn the secrets of making movies in a galaxy far, far away. Hosted by Mark Hamill, this revealing documentary offers behind-the-scenes glimpses into the amazing special effects that transformed George Lucas’ vision for Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back into reality!
• Classic Creatures: Return of the Jedi (1983, Color, Apx. 48 Minutes) — Go behind the scenes — and into the costumes — as production footage from Return of the Jedi is interspersed with vintage monster movie clips in this in-depth exploration of the painstaking techniques utilized by George Lucas to create the classic creatures and characters seen in the film. Hosted and narrated by Carrie Fisher and Billie Dee Williams.
• Anatomy of a Dewback (1997, Color, Apx. 26 Minutes) — See how some of the special effects in Star Wars became even more special two decades later! George Lucas explains and demonstrates how his team transformed the original dewback creatures from immovable rubber puppets (in the original 1977 release) to seemingly living, breathing creatures for the Star Wars 1997 Special Edition update.
• Star Wars Tech (2007, Color, Apx. 46 Minutes) — Exploring the technical aspects of Star Wars vehicles, weapons and gadgetry, Star Wars Tech consults leading scientists in the fields of physics, prosthetics, lasers, engineering and astronomy to examine the plausibility of Star Wars technology based on science as we know it today.

So the only thing missing are the Droids cartoons (the first arc and The Great Heap are sadly still not available), the Ewoks cartoon (only a handful released), and the you’ll-never-see-it-released Holiday Special. Personally, I’d rather have more Star Wars stories than more documentaries.

Now granted all of this looks pretty good, especially if they decided to release the original version of the original trilogy (you know, with the models and Han shooting first, although keep the scene where Han and Jabba meet in the hanger on Tatooine, as it was originally intended to be there). Also please bring back the original Ewok victory song (the Special Edition one wasn’t bad, but I liked the first one better) and the adult Anakin as the Force Spirit instead of the younger one. He was redeemed and died as an adult.

All that said, the advertising campaign–and maybe it’s because, again, I don’t own a blu-ray player or an HD TV–seems a bit too much. The huge countdown clock declaring that something major was going to be announced or even happen on May the 4th. (The blu-ray DVD isn’t coming out until September 12th internationally and September 16th in North America…wait, really? We have to wait? WHY?) Then you have the bit where X# of people have to share the information to release the full details. (I got a bit concerned when it looked like some program wanted the rights to post on my Twitter feed because the way it was written made it sound like they were going to post “on your behalf” whenever it wanted to. No other tweet link on sites I’ve tweeted from do that.)

And all we get is an announcement that the trilogies were being released on the new highbrow video format. That’s it. Sure, the extras are awesome if you don’t have most of them separately (granted, as the guy who writes about organizing and condensing his clutter once a week I can appreciate having it all on a smaller set if you don’t want to get one of those multiple DVD cases) but it seems to me the hype is a bit too hyper. Still, congratulations to the blu-ray owners, I guess.

I was hoping it was something a bit more important than the same movies being re-re-re-re-released again, like the live-action TV series they keep teasing about or an animated movie adaptation of Shadows of the Empire, the only novel and comic story that’s officially recognized by Lucasarts (who don’t consider the rest of the “Extended Universe” official canon, which I believe includes their own games). Shadows would be awesome, as it was released in every media format of the day, including a video game and a soundtrack (I own said soundtrack) but never had a movie release. Granted none of the actors are young enough to pull off a story set between Empire and Jedi, which is why I suggested the animation. The actors could come back to voice their characters (granted Carrie sounds her age and they wouldn’t need Harrison Ford unless he voiced a different character just to have him there) and you could still have your movie. But nobody ever consults me on things like that.

Guess I’m just never satisfied, but it’s not like I can do anything with this release anyway. 🙂