Slashdot Mirror
Star Wars II (Attack of the clones) Trailer
tjansen writes "The Episode II Trailer is available.
You need be a starwars.com member to watch it and must have installed the Quicktime plugin though." I guess thats 2 strikes against me. Glad I saw it in front of Monsters Inc.
http://www.apple.com/trailers/
I saw it at the front of that movie too. I was glad that there was a movie after the trailer, and that I hadn't gone just to see the trailer. The trailer doesn't make me want to see ATOTC, as it's more of a slideshow than a real trailer. Not that Lucas really needs to show anything other than a lightsaber to get the fans to go see it... :)
apple.com/trailers/. You still need the QuickTime plugin.
This is actually what the movie industry calls a 'teaser'. In todays movie industry, a trailer is the Cliff Notes version of the movie.
This teaser, on the other hand, is a series of snapshots of different scenes where some fx has been completed. It requires no music, editing, and is basically the cheapest, fastest thing Lucasfilm can put out at this point.
Its disgusting how well they know how to get me. That teaser rips through my consciousness and grabs hold of my emotions instantly. I grew up with Star Wars. "A New Hope" came out when I was 5 - my dad took me to it. I'm not a huge raving fan, but the trailer gets me. Two things in particular: the breathing (!) scours my emotional memories, and the shot of Anakin and Amidala by the dome house brings up founts of anticipated grief!
ARG!!!
I hope that the story isn't ruined. Lucas came close with Ep. I. Please.
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
You can download it from here: http://starwars.apple.com/ep2/breathing/img/sw_ctp _320.mov
Should be a link to the medium sized file. The large one requires QuickTime pro.
Use this Crossover plugin from Codeweavers to play the Quicktime movies under Linux ! It uses wine and works great under Mozilla / Galeon / Netscape.
... yowza ;-)
I just saw the trailer with it
blaah !
Maybe I've become numb to such teasing in my old age, but the trailer did nothing to whet my appetite.
The least they could have done was included a cutaway shot of Natalie's robe falling to the floor, just before her bare, firm buttocks appeared.
I just teased myself into petrification. I'll be back in a few minutes.
Knunov
Why do users with IDs under 100,000 or over 700,000 usually have the most worthwhile comments?
Hate to spoil it for you but Anakin becomes Darth Vader, his son is Luke. Luke and Vader have a fight and afterwards Vader kill the emperor to save his Luke.
The Phantom Premise caused me concern in that I found it hard to reconcile what I was seeing with what I understood the SW universe to be.
The clips in the Episode II trailer (send in the clones for anyone who remembers an RPG game called Paranoia) make me think that Lucas could bring the story back.
Maybe it's just wistful thinking, but scenes of Ewan McGregor with a beard looking older and wiser and Hayden Christianson - who won't be shouting "Yippeee" - looking to do a servicable job as Anakin make me think that Lucas could get it right this time. And finally to see the explanation of the Clone Wars. Children growing into Storm Troopers. Finally we will see how Palpatine seized power.
I had high hopes for the first one too, I hope I won't be disappointed again.
IMHO, as per,
J:)
Oh well, no point in steering now.
Could someone make a sort of quick & dirty java ASCII knockoff of this trailer? I'm at work right now and I don't have the administrative privelages to install the software to view this, so I have to wait until I get home, but that is in 6 hours and I don't know if I can wait that long!!!
*desperately awaiting new star wars footage*
For those either on Linux and unable to, or just hate Quicktime for some reason, Dark Horizons has links to these four mirror sites in .mpg format. Note that these seem pretty hosed as well though...
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
Went to see Monsters Inc. this weekend at a local Famous Players theatre. There was a note up at the ticket counter saying there would be no refunds to tickets purchased for Monsters Inc because of the SW Ep2 Trailer.
...not *all* trailers spoil the entire plot for a movie. But some do. And in my experience, the ones that do that do so because they had to scrounge the entire film in order to find enough interesting, amazing, or funny bits to make a trailer. Once you've seen the trailer, you've seen all the bits worth watching. (Commercials for sitcoms work much the same way.)
Case in point: Disney threw in a trailer for their theatrical sequel to "Peter Pan," cleverly entitled "Return to Neverland." It involves Wendy's daughter and the entire Neverland cast of the original movie, and apparently some Wacky Adventures. Based on that (and, admittedly, my previous experience with non-Pixar Disney sequels), I now know everything I need to know about this movie. My wife and daughter can go see it themselves in February; I know for a fact I won't be missing anything.
If they don't provide an entire plot to you, then you're probably safe going to see it. There will be enough surprises to make it worth your $7.50. Otherwise, take a pass and wait for the Rotten Tomatoes rating to come in.
Its too late I know, but Im really beginning to believe this prequel idea was a horribly bad one. I dont see Episode 2 being much better.
Plot: Episode I sets up the plot for the next film, but without much conviction. How can we see Anakin freeing the slaves, with "Yippee" in our minds. They will need a heavy dose of the Jedi Mind Trick (TM) to get us to forget so much of the flaws of the previous film.
Characters: After the 1st film, we dont have a good association with any of the characters. Anakin was a child, and we had a difficult time understanding the kid. Amidala was always shifting from Queen to friend and back, so we dont really know the real Amidala. Qui Gon is dead, Yoda and Mace were introduced to us like we've known them for ages. The only one we have the slighest insight into would be Kenobi and Binks (sad but true). As such, we really arent motivated to learn more about them.
Lack of surprises: The first trilogy succeeded because we WANTED to know what Jabba looked like. Had to wait 3 movies to find out. 3 movies to see the evil and dreaded Emperor (minus the teaser in Empire). 3 movies to find out about Leia...3 to find out what was under the mask. Episode 1 throws it all out on the table. Midichlorians cause the Force, Emperor in-you-face, etc. I dont see the room for the great plot twists of the originals.
Special Effects: George is hooked on 3d. And it truly sucks. The models used in the originals made it the best special effects ever, and blows away anything they can do today on computers. I dont want to go see on the big screen what Star Trek manages to do on the little screen. After Episode 1, the awe of the space adventure has been cheap-nd. And with the investment in Jar Jar, it shows no sign of going away.
Episode 2 is as doomed to fail as was #1. It may have a more adult theme, but the "magic" of Empire will not be there. And its all because of Episode 1.
Can 3 fix all this? Perhaps but still not likely. 3's problem will be continuity. Its clear Lucas hasnt thought his plots out, and as such by the time 3 rolls around, the continuity will be completely hosed. It will be fun to hear James Earl Jones again, but those kinds of things are the only things that will make it worth watching.
Besides, when you know how the outcome will be, how can we be expected to side with the protagonist? Is this movie going to be about Anakin, or more about Kenobi? Ep 1 had us on Anakin's side. Somewhere in 2, we HAVE to make a switch to siding with Kenobi. This is awkward, and will lose quite a few.
They should have kept on going after Return of the Jedi. Make the final 3 movies instead of the first 3.
Here's the direct link to the larger movie. NOTE: They appear to have done something funky with the web server to first check to see if you have QuickTime 5.0 before they let you download anything. If you do not have 5.0, you will not get to download the movie. It's amazing what you can accomplish with a packet sniffer though. :-) The large movie is 12.1MB. Looks more like a slideshow to me though.
poooooooohhhh
paaaaaaaahhhh
poooooooohhhh
paaaaaaaahhhh
poooooooohhhh
paaaaaaaahhhh
poooooooohhhh
paaaaaaaahhhh
.....
Followed by a lightsaber crash....
My name fits again.
Perhaps it's not a lightsaber at all but a Moodsaber®. It's green when he's around big, handsome and studly Obi-Wan, blue around the other guy that doesn't swing that way, and purple around the princess....
I submitted this as an article when it was announced but it was rejected. Apparently, weekly articles complaining about editors' inability to run QuickTime (while they're happily playing one Windows-only game after another) is News For Nerds, but a solution isn't.
It's always amusing to see the dichotomy between Slashdotters blindly hating all corporations (Borland is giving their C++ compiler away for free, but not the source code! They are evil; down with Borland!) and the love of various other corporations, like AMD, Paramount, Lucasfilm, FOX, and so on.
I made the move to Silicon Valley and ran into a friend here. We were comparing notes on who from our school in Vancouver (ECIAD) made it down. We started talking about one guy who was a great animator and got a job at I.L.M.! Instantly we felt envious.
....
Turns out he has to animate Jar Jar
Poor, poor guy.... I feel sooo sorry for him.
I was hoping to hear Weird Al Yankovic's "I think I'm a clone now" song as the background instead of the typical Star Wars type music.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
This is a little off-topic, but I heard that the Episode 2 trailer was physically attached to the beginning of the reels of Monsters Inc. So, in essence, the teaser is the beginning of Monsters Inc. This was arranged by George Lucas and Pixar since 20th Century Fox and Disney didn't want the trailer in front of it and it's usually up to those companies and the theaters to put the trailers together before the film. Pixar used to be part of Lucasarts, but Lucas didn't want to go the whole CG'd route so they broke off, but they're still good friends with Lucas. So Lucas basically called them up and asked them to put his little teaser at the beginning of the prints for Monsters Inc.
I thought that was kind of interesting, but according to theforce.net the trailer isn't on all prints or some theaters are chopping it off so it's possible some people won't see it in front of Monsters Inc. Just thought some people might find that interesting.
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
http://starwars.apple.com/ep2/breathing/media/pro/ ep2_breathing_m640.mov
.mov that it downloads.
/ep2/breathing/media/pro/ep2_breathing_m640.mov HTTP/1.1
Is the large version that requires Quicktime pro.
Quicktime will use your default proxy (on windows) all you have to do, is parse the proxy log for the 2nd
GET
Connection: keep-alive
Host: starwars.apple.com
Range: bytes=0-
Accept: */*
User-Agent: QuickTime (qtver=5.0.2;os=Windows NT 5.1)
All four of those servers are painfully slow. Looks like "Attack of the Clones" is also another term for the /. effect.
http://starwars.apple.com/ep2/breathing/media/p
Is the large version that requires Quicktime pro.
Quicktime will use your default proxy (on windows) all you have to do, is parse the proxy log for the 2nd
GET
Connection: keep-alive
Host: starwars.apple.com
Range: bytes=0-
Accept: */*
User-Agent: QuickTime (qtver=5.0.2;os=Windows NT 5.1)
Most DLP projectors in theaters are 1920x1080, progressive scan (progressive scan 24fps version of HD's 1080i).
Most film editing systems run using 2k scans (2048 pixels across), so there's not any extra resolution available in the output from the production of the film.
Some effects houses use 4k scans for input to heavy effects scenes, but as a general rule thats beyond the capability of the film stock to hold. (A 35mm film frame is less than 1/2 the area of a 35mm print frame on your normal film camera, and those barely get any benefit from a 4k scan).
The gnutella network is a fine place to find an mpg version of this trailer, and as more people share it the mirrors will be more and more widespread. Peer to peer networks shine best in when they solve bandwidth problems by distributing the cost of mirroring popular data over the internet.
I recommend gnut, a text-based GPL'd gnutella client you can use over telnet or whatever, and you can even open a shell over top of it so you can continue interacting with the file system. it's the coolest.
It may be a good idea to search for "monsters" since the correct trailer (the one I found) was marked that way. Otherwise you might end up with the very well done forgery that has been circulating the net for a while.
Bryguy
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
In the far distant future...
After George Lucas is dead. And his copyrights on the original Star Wars material have expired.
A new film director arises and reshoots the Star Wars Episode I to III as they should have been done.
This new director focuses on story telling and character development. The new films do not make use of fart jokes, inane action sequences that only exists to have action sequences, and highly annoying animated aliens that only school children can appreciate.
All you need to know about CmdrTaco is that he actually liked The Phantom Menace.
That's Jango Fett flying, Boba's dad.
Boba Fett is just a kid in this movie, and is shown in the trailer as one of the clone kids sitting in the room with the blue helmet-thingys on.
Well, it's hard to say exactly what the resolution of film is, because there are many variables:
1) The film stock used makes a huge difference. Kodak has made incredible strides with their stocks (as has Fuji, for that matter). Their 800ASA stock has less grain than their 500ASA stocks of a few years ago. That said, there's a big difference between shooting 5245 which is a 50ASA stock and, say, 5279 which is a 320ASA stock -- the 45 is virtually grainless.
2) The format used makes a difference. There are many different ways of shooting 35mm film, all of which use different portions of the negative. Basically, the more neg you use, the less grain and the more resolution (because the less magnification you have to make to get it on the screen).
3) The exact post-production chain makes a difference as well. The more optical steps you have to go through, the more apparent the grain will be.
I believe that T2 was mostly scanned at 4K actually, which is higher resolution than most films done today. Pleasantville was done at 2K. However, the technology for printing digital files back to film has improved greatly since then, so it could definitely be done better now. Hopefully more films will be done at 4K in the future as hard-drive space gets cheaper (a big concern since film compositing is typically done uncompressed and with at least 10 and up to 16 bits per color channel per pixel, which means that even at 2K each minute of film is at least 11GB.)
A complete digital chain does indeed get rid of film grain. There are digital techniques that are just becoming available to eliminate grain on film originated material as well.
However, digital projection will, at least in the near term, bring about its own artifacts from compression, the lack of resolution, and some other things that are particular to the current technology (DLP can produce some strange flickering in certain colors due to the way it works). (All this is being worked on, of course).
-- It only takes 20 minutes for a liberal to become a conservative thanks to our new outpatient surgical procedure!