Celebration VI Mega-Cap - Part 2 - Friday, August 24
Disclaimer to previous post: Yes, I'm aware that sometimes an out of state transaction can cause a credit/debit card to get flagged. However, it had never been an issue at previous Celebrations, where I never notified my banking institution of my travel plans. Hence my surprise at it all of a sudden being an issue. Now, moving on.
And again, for those of you who'd rather just ogle the photos: here.
Warning - Spoilers ahead for the premiere of Clone Wars season 5! (And the season 4 finale.)
Snowbunny day! We overslept today, not awakening until around 10, so I missed the first panel I'd hoped to see that day (the CW cast panel). Pooey. I donned my costume, taking care to wear the extra socks to pad out my too-large boots this time. Last Celebration, easily the most miserable part of the Snowbunny was my feet sliding around in too-large footwear. Incidentally, yes, I did make it through the entire day in costume this time. :)
We got to the convention center around 11, futzed around the exhibit hall for a little bit, got a few picture requests for me in my costume, then went to the Ralph McQuarrie retrospective panel. It was at the same time as Anthony Daniels' panel, but since we'd all seen Anthony before at Celebration and/or SW in Concert, we opted for the McQuarrie. Dave Filoni and a couple of other guys introduced the panel, praising McQuarrie's continued influence on SW even now 35 years later, very heavily influencing the look of TCW series. The rest of the panel was a documentary film featuring Lucas and other Lucasfilm/ILM artists (Doug Chiang, Joel Aron, etc.) reflecting on Ralph, who died earlier this year:
-- It was McQuarrie's concept art that convinced 20th Century Fox to give ANH a shot.
-- Likewise, it was the concept painting of R2 and 3P0 in the desert that sold Anthony Daniels on taking the 3P0 role.
-- McQuarrie was praised as a storyteller, that each painting of his was a story in itself.
-- McQuarrie's paintings contained an aspect of practicality/realism, likely stemming from his days working for Boeing. He had a knack for realistic proportions, and creating designs that were functional as well as beautiful.
-- There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of unused concept art pieces by McQuarrie for the original films. The art designers for the prequels and TCW frequently sorted/still sort through this collection looking for concepts to use.
-- The flying whales on Kamino in AOTC, for example, were originally designed for Bespin in ESB.
-- A lot of praise for McQuarrie the man as well as the artist, described repeatedly as a kind, gentle soul, who it was so hard to believe could so powerfully render these images from another galaxy.
After McQuarrie, I rushed to get in line for the TCW red carpet premiere. After waiting in line for over an hour, the rest of us found out (grumbling) that only a small handful of the people (one section of the queue line) in the line were to get the actual walk-on-the-carpet experience; the rest of us just had to wait until it was time for the premiere to air. I did get a brief glimpse of the carpet as I passed, and managed to snap a mediocre shot where you can just barely make out Sam Witwer (Maul), Ashley Eckstein (Ahsoka) and Dee Baker (the clones) chatting with some of the lucky audience members. :P The actual premiere itself was pretty cool; they had popcorn and drinks out for all of us - which would turn out to be the only food I would eat at the convention that day, in addition to nibbling a few of Nicki's baked goods I'd smuggled in. The two part season 4 finale was aired first, which I appreciated, having not seen it. It being Maul-centric and me finding Maul semi-cool but on the whole overhyped (kind of like Boba Fett *ducks*), I'd not been in any hurry to watch it.
I'm still very iffy on this whole Dathomir witch "magic" as rendered in TCW series - I'd like to hear Dave's (or George's) reasoning on it, how it relates to what we know of the Force, or whether it's meant to be a different energy/power altogether. (I know the original Dathomir witches in the novels were supposed to be Force users.) So while the scene where Maul gets his memory restored and gets new legs from Mother Talzin looks cool, I had to suspend disbelief for a bit that this was still SW. But I loved Ventress and Obi-Wan teaming up! Great banter, like Ventress asking if Obi-Wan's going to run from a fight and Obi-Wan retorting that he learned watching her. Even if poor Obi-Wan did get beat up yet again - if you designed/took part in a Clone Wars drinking game, you'd be tanked just from this aspect of the past few seasons alone. Obi-Wan did also get a great one liner in on Maul - I actually can't remember if this is from the finale or the premiere - that when he'd aimed to kill Maul in their last fight, he should have aimed for the neck. Heh.
Now, the season 5 premiere. Anakin and Ahsoka are the main reason I watch the show, and they weren't really in the premiere (Anakin has a silent cameo at the end), so I was kind of surprised how much I enjoyed it. The main plot of the episode was Obi-Wan and Adi Gallia going off to track down Maul (no explanation on where Ventress went after escaping in the finale with Obi), who wants to recruit the pirates of Florrum - the same band who captured Dooku in season 1 - to his cause. Hondo Ohnaka pretty much steals the show, earning the biggest laughs from the crowd with lines like "You want me to leave you alone to face the horned crazies? *brief pause* Okay! *flees*"
Now, the main spoiler: it's not ultimately surprising that Adi would eventually die, as she is absent from ROTS. But she gets an extremely brutal death scene: Maul's brother Savage gores her in the stomach with his horns, before he runs her through with his lightsaber. :O Obi-Wan faces Maul and Savage again, and takes off Savage's arm (again, to cheers); Maul loses one of his new legs. Both still manage to get away. The end of the episode is Obi-Wan, Anakin, Mace, and Yoda conferring with Palpatine on Maul. Palpatine declares that Maul is not a threat to the Republic and dismisses the notion of sending forces after him - that any pursuit of Maul at this point is no more than personal business of Obi-Wan's. Mace and Yoda agree; Obi-Wan is probably too close to the situation to be objective. The final shot is Palpatine alone in his office, with a sly, sinister look in his face.
There's also an interesting subplot in the episode showing the dynamic between Maul and Savage, that all is not true brotherly love: while Savage had wanted to fight alongside Maul as brothers, Maul has decided it is going to be a Master-Apprentice relationship, with him of course being the Master. The field of Sith wannabes is starting to get a bit crowded... more on that in my Saturday recap. And though I've never been a huge Maul fan, Sam Witwer is terrific in the role (if surprisingly verbal compared to the Maul we saw in TPM - guess he's making up for spending the last ten years as a subterranean psycho parasite), just as he was as the Son in the Mortis trilogy.
After the premiere, I texted Chickadilly, who was in line with Nicki for the Mark Hamill panel and warned they were getting ready to close the doors to the queue room. I was kind of bummed to miss the Clone Wars Q & A with Dave Filoni, especially as they wound up also premiering the season 5 trailer (more on that in the Saturday post too), but I hurried out anyway. Nicki and Chickadilly were in the very first row of the Hamill queue line, so I had to navigate through five tightly packed rows of sitting people in my Snowbunny costume, ducking precariously under the flimsy rods used to separate the lines (I forget how many times this weekend someone knocked those things over), to make my way over to them. Less than two minutes later, the doors to the room were shut. Talk about cutting it close!
While in line I took off the belt, hood, and balaclava for my costume, which made things a little more comfortable; I'd been having trouble with the pouches falling off my belt anyway. So much for mounting tape; I'm going to have to sew them on to wear this costume at Celebration VII.
We had to sit through the annoying DJ and warm-up man again. Aside from showing another silly "I had a dream where Chewbacca was my friend" video, I also got irritated at the lack of love for Padmé - the warm up guy effusively thanked Vader for having Luke, aka Mark, and had all the audience members in Vader attire stand up for a round of applause. Then he asked as an afterthought if there were any Padmés - several of us stood up, including me and two others close by me, but were not acknowledged. :P Dammit boy, Vader may have sired Luke, but Padmé was the one who carried and gave birth to him. Chickadilly and Nicki jokingly consoled it was just as well because Luke (and Leia) killed "me" anyway, to which I replied "those ungrateful brats." Heh. (Yes, we're all aware that the childbirth itself wasn't the primary cause of Padmé's death.)
So, Mark. Very personable and open, just as he was at Celebration V. I didn't enjoy this panel quite as much as the C5 one, mainly because they didn't really touch as much on his SW experiences this time. It was still good, though. Highlights:
-- A video paralleling the "playing chicken" scene in Mark's film "Corvette Summer" to Luke's final run on the Death Star in ANH. Big laughs.
-- Mark meeting Peter Cushing on the ANH set and how Cushing wore these fancy lavender-scented gloves, probably to keep the residue from the cigarettes he liked to smoke from getting on other people's hands. Hey, if you're going to smoke, I guess be classy about it, right?
-- They showed the clip of Mark singing with the Muppets that they also showed at C5. Mark didn't sink into his chair in humiliation this time, though, but did hide his face in his hand. ;)
-- There was a clip shown of Mark and James Arnold Taylor from Mark's indie film "Comic Book: The Movie," which he described as being full of "the most famous people you've never heard of."
-- Mark is still able to recite from memory the main line from his first reading as Luke, a lengthy rant to Han about it being foolhardy to take on the Empire and something about Aquilae and Sullust, which didn't make it into the movie.
-- Mark, Harrison, and Carrie were cast as a group, not individually. There were apparently an "A" and "B" fixed group of actors auditioning for the three leads. James Arnold Taylor quipped that the other group is now telling this same story wistfully in a bar somewhere.
-- Mark quipped he still slips sometimes and refers to Harrison and Carrie as "Harry" and "Carrison."
-- Mark talked about being cast as the Joker in the Batman animated series (one of my childhood favorites). He originally auditioned and won the part of the one-shot villain in the Mr. Freeze "Heart of Ice" episode, and based on that was asked to come back and read for the Joker. Mark was apparently flabbergasted: who would want to cast an actor associated with playing such a pinnacle of goodness as such an icon of evil? So he went to the audition and kind of did it half-assedly, not really expecting anything of it... and then of course he got the call offering him the role. (That was a recurring theme during this panel, Mark talking about the difficulty going up for roles who weren't at all like the good and heroic Luke.)
-- Mark was asked if landing the role of Luke had made him more successful in winning over the ladies. Heh. I don't remember what Mark's response was; I'd turned to Nicki and Chickadilly to ask "Er, wasn't he MARRIED when he made the OT?" I remembered his son Nathan had been born during the filming of TESB. They told me there was indeed a Luke-related anecdote to the story of how Mark met his wife: apparently he met her in a dentist's office (I think she was working there?) and told her he'd played Luke Skywalker. Apparently she wasn't too impressed. ;)
-- Possibly the highlight of the panel: Mark, in full Joker voice, reciting from memory the Joker's eulogy to Batman from the episode "The Man Who Killed Batman". FANTASTIC. Standing ovation from the crowd.
-- A clip was shown from Mark's upcoming project, a film with the word "Sushi" in the title, I think - with Mark almost totally unrecognizable as this creepy, greasy/stringy-haired dude threatening to torture a guy for information by hammering wooden sticks into his knees. Yeeeeah, I think I'll be passing on this one.
-- Mark also plugged a web series his son Nathan is working on. Mark asked Nathan to come to Celebration with him to promote it, but Nathan insisted on promoting the series on his own merits.
-- Mark was asked if he would be doing any guest star work on The Clone Wars. Mark, apparently unfamiliar with the series, seemed confused at first, not sure if the series was set in the right time period for Luke to be a character. The guy in the audience clarified it could be any character. Mark said he'd be willing to do it if asked - again, to vast audience applause. (So please, PLEASE ask him, Dave and/or George!)
-- The finale was the requisite "Phony Photo Memory," where JAT's short stature was again mocked by himself (in addition to others) by suggesting the photo op be of him riding on Mark's back ala Yoda. :)
Mark was our big finale for the day, so we decided to head back to the hotel so I could change out of my costume and we would go grab something to eat. Nicki admitted to us that while Mark Hamill had finally won her over, she still wasn't a Luke fan. ;) On the way out of the convention center, I still got a few requests for pics of my Snowbunny, even without the belt and hood up. Guess I can consider it (mostly) a success!