STAR WARS SPECTACULAR
By Adam Pawlus
Photography by Mike Sullenger

SAN DIEGO JULY 15, 2005 -- Every year Lucasfilm pulls out the stops to put on an interesting show at Comic-Con, and this year was no different. While nothing was revealed that astute fans haven't already heard in the rumor mills, a lot of things were confirmed that should make a lot of you very happy. If nothing else, it includes a call-out for jobs at Lucasfilm, which certainly don't come around every day! DVDs Steve Sansweet confirmed that Revenge of the Sith would be coming out in November (date TBD) and loaded with features, including deleted scenes. For our amusement, he showed us Bail Organa's office sequence in which Mon Mothma and Bail pretty much formed the Rebellion without stating as much. Other additions are unknown but it's nice to know it's coming. 

In the Q&A portion, a fan asked about Clone Wars Volume 2-- Steve was nice enough to confirm that it was coming in 2005, but did not specify a date. It's going to be a wonderful season for DVDs! Also asked about: Young Indy. It was again confirmed that DVDs are in development and would be a nice tie-in to a hypothetical fourth Indiana Jones feature. 

Sequels

 No sequels. Move along. 

Grievous LIVE!  

Matthew Wood, the voice of General Grievous, came out and did a bunch of things with a voice modulator. He sang, he danced, he coughed, and revealed a lot about the character's quirks. Apparently George Lucas himself was sick when Wood was recording the dialog, and coughed into the microphones to add a little "oomph" to the character. So when you hear a cough, it's entirely possibly George himself! 

LucasArts

 A sequel to Battlefront was shown and apparently you can board space ships, disable the vehicle, and escape. Holy cow, that sounds cool. Also shown was an RTS called "Empire at War," or so I'm claiming as I can't find my notes. Takes place before ANH, yadda yadda yadda. 

Montages

 With no new movie, fans were treated to a buttload of montages on the whole motif of the end of a journey and of general scenes of a movie they have all seen. Either way, it ate up a lot of time and was superior to plugging the concept of Hyperspace all afternoon. 

Television

 With no word on the live-action show, Lucasfilm confirmed a few things about the animated series. One, Lucas set up shop in Singapore to make a new animation studio. Two, the show would be a cross between anime and the likes of Shrek and Toy Story, so it would not be Clone Wars-style. Three, the show would be Clone Wars and take place between the second and third films. Finally, Steve Sansweet went on to talk about jobs at Lucas Animation. He even gave a URL so you could apply-- here's the list. 

In short

 If you've been paying attention, nothing really came off as news at this panel. Magazine interviews and a healthy, accurate rumor mill pretty much covered most of it, so you can be happy if you missed this, you didn't miss much-- absolutely no toy news was present at the whole event.