Five Exciting News Items from San Diego Comic-Con

27Jul09

1. Star Wars

There’s a reason Star Wars continues to live in the hearts of fanboys everywhere… and it ain’t the prequels. The Star Wars Extended Universe is the best in science fiction, by far, and the announcements at Comic-Con 2009 proved that.

LucasArts discussed three developments that should give fans their Star Wars fixes until 2011 when the planned live-action television series is due to hit.

The Force Unleashed DLC – I played this game. Beat it. And haven’t picked it up since. In fact, I felt like selling it a few days ago. LucasArts released the trailer for The Force Unleashed: Ultimate Sith Edition with the tag “What if the dark side won?” In the new downloadable content, the game will include additional Starkiller missions in which he becomes the Emperor’s apprentice and goes on a mission to destroy the rebellion. The trailer features appearances by both Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker.

Clone Wars: Season 2 – The computer animated cartoons were good. Real good. And this season promises to be more violent and feature the Mandalorians—Boba Fett’s people.

Star Wars: The Old Republic – The trailer for this MMO game might have convinced me to buy a PC. Amazing. The Old Republic takes place 1,000 years before Darth Vader and allows players to either be Sith or Jedi. The trailer is absolutely amazing and begs the question, “Why didn’t George Lucas make these prequels?” This trailer actually debuted at the E3 convention last month, but it was still breathtaking to watch on a gigantic high-def TV in the middle of Comic-Con’s exhibition area.

2. Lost: Season 6

Dominic Monaghan showed up to Saturday’s panel with “Am I Alive?” taped to his hand, which suggests we’ll see the return of Charlie next season. In addition, producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse said fans will have a good chance of seeing many characters that haven’t been in the show since season 1 (will we finally see the true relationship between Kate and the marshal?). They said the show’s final season will look a lot like the first with our favorite Losties running around the island not sure what’s going on. Lindelof also said that Jacob has not appeared as any other character on the island.

3. District 9

A huge “Humans only” sign hung near one of the entrances to the San Diego Convention Center during Comic-Con weekend, and that was apropos as a screening of the movie created great buzz. According to a Twitter post from Ain’t It Cool News’s Quints, the movie, which is about aliens being forced to live in an African slum, “is [f'n] awesome. gory as hell.”

And, in an interview with SyFy, director Neil Blomkamp tried to assuage worries that it’d be an “issue” movie: “I was very aware of not being heavy-handed with any sort of allegories or metaphors that were there and present in the foreground…So it’s like, … it sounds really bad to say, I suppose, but it’s a Hollywood film, set against a really violent and destructive background.”

4. Tron: Legacy

A year ago, in footage that resembled those of Big Foot, a video showed up on YouTube of two light cycles racing ending in the murder of the losing racer. The footage was awful, but remarkable at the same time because it was a signal that a movie I, and millions of other geeks, loved as a child would get a reboot. Well, that time has come. Disney released the footage caught on camera last year. And let me say, I’m very, very excited for this movie.

5. Battlestar Galactica/Caprica

SyFy finally set a release date the Caprica TV series—Jan. 22, 2010. It also showed a preview to the new Battlestar Galactica movie, The Plan, which focuses on how the Cylons came up with their plan of attack. During the panel, Edward James Olmos predicted that there’d be more BSG movies after The Plan, which he directed.

According to posts by AICN’s Herc, creator Ron Moore said that the show being ignored by the Emmy’s is “criminal” and producer David Icke said that Starbuck’s role at the end of the series should be compared to that of Gandalf the White from Lord of the Rings.

Here’s the trailer for The Plan:

Major FAIL Award: New Line Cinema

So I was stoked when I heard that the Blu-Ray for The Lord of the Rings would finally be released. STOKED. Then I learned that it’d only be the theatrical versions. Over the weekend, we learned that the extended editions, the better editions, won’t be released for another year. You kidding me? I already own three different versions of LOTR. The Blu-Ray would be No. 4.

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Tags: Battlestar Galactica, BSG, Caprica, Comic-Con, District 9, Lost, LOTR, Star Wars, Tron