SPOILERS!!! Truth about Star Wars Episode One... unlike yesterday's

Harry here, and once again I'd like to apologize for the erroneous Star Wars report of yesterday. Father Geek got a bit over-zealous, mainly due to the Ewan quote, but hey that happens every now and again..especially when one is forced to be updating at the wee hours of the morning. The quote from Ewan came out of a magazine way back in March according to Huntsman (whose letter is included waaaaaaaaaay down at the bottom of the update.) So, shit, sorry that scared a bunch of you, it was quite honestly a tremendous friggin blunder. However, I would like to say that a HUGE amount of the Star Wars rumors that have appeared on this site (and many others) have been true. How can I say that? Because when I was in London, I saw the script to Episode One. And I did do more than just look at it.

A spy named Milo came to my room, this spy had actually come straight from the set. He/she brought all manners of sketches, storyboards, the actual Non-disclosure forms, etc. You've seen one of those sketches, he/she emailed it to me, as he/she didn't want the copy of the script to leave his/her delicate/manly hands, it had numbers on it, as did the sketches, and he/she didn't want the material to somehow lead back to her/him, thus ending his/her British film career. So... what's true....what isn't. I was going to be saving this report till later, when I filed my entire London report, but what the hell, I'll do this part first. You've been screwed hard enough.

This report will contain spoilers. Unlike previous SPOILER WARNINGS in which I said what follows may or may not be true, I can say with absolute perfect certainty that what is about to be read is in fact...fact, at least as it was written in the revised June 6, 1997 Third Draft of Lucas' script. I will not spoil the entire film, I won't even talk about how all the pieces fit together. Why? Well because right now, almost all the pieces have been described, the only major thing that hasn't been put together is the order, and believe me the order I thought the events happened and started was all ass backwards. However, the ending has appeared online, just not here at AICN. Do not read below this line if you do not wish to know anymore than you do now.

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Here you go... So I turned the page. The first thing I noticed was that "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..." was not changed. It didn't have an extra 'long' in place as has been theorized. And I was instantly delighted. I was glad, because I had always thought that while that was a cute idea, it would be wrong because once you saw the whole epic, all 6 parts, what was once cute would be disrupting when seen with the parts we know and love.

What followed that was the now standard crawl. It did not say yellow letters, nor did it say blue letters, but it was merely a 'roll-up, which crawls into infinity.'

The crawl did not talk about some great noble past and tradition of the jedi, nor did it allude to the long history of the galaxy. It got straight to the point, it didn't mince words. I read the first sentence about 15 times to commit it to memory. I had already established with Milo, at his insistence, that I would not be leaving London with a copy, but he would let me look at it. When you watch next May, and it will be next May, you will see the title which will be whatever Lucas wants it to be, and as of the 3rd Draft what would follow would be... "Turmoil has engulfed the Galactic Republic. The taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems is in dispute." Then it went to a new paragraph which I didn't write in my notes, but I remember it talking about a blockade of deadly battleships, something about a Trade Federation and the planet Naboo. The third paragraph of the crawl had to do with the Congress of the Republic, the Supreme Chancellor and sending two Jedi Knights to settle the conflict.

Now contrary to the Talk Back below, which is inevitably slamming me for spewing feces from my mouth, the above is dead to rights true and honest, and so is the following for that matter. The first person to speak in Episode One will be Liam Neeson as Qui-Gon, and it is an off-screen delivered line. The first person we will see is just some Captain. Not a main character. Ya wanna know Obi-Wan's first line? I made a note of it too. It made me laugh, and my eyes tear up. In fact as I turned each page I realized just how cool these movies were going to be. Ok, here ya go. The first thing that Obi-Wan Kenobi utters in the history of Star Wars will be "I have a bad feeling about this."

I didn't make any other quote notes beyond this next one, instead I just made little notes here and there. One thing of interest is that Lucas emphasizes some dialogue by placing it in bold lettering. So when Qui-Gon responds to Obi-Wan's above feeling, it goes like this... "I don't FEEL ANYTHING" now it's not capitalized like that, it's just in Bold lettering, which I don't know how to do on here.

Ok, enough of that. Let's settle some things. First off, the Falcon does not appear, at least not in this draft. And midi-chlorians are a part of the film. Albeit a very small almost throw-away bit. Qui-Gon doesn't remove blood from Anakin, he wipes some off his arm after the pod race onto a pad, which he analyzes later aboard his ship. It really isn't anything to get in a tizzy about. One thing I did learn is that we have been nit-picking away at every scrap of information for so damn long that we lost focus on one thing. They were all pieces. Little ones here and there. For example if you grade the quality of aliens based on a single picture of the werewolf dude from the cantina in Star Wars... well that would be unfairly judging Star Wars. So you have to remember any singular design is just that a singular design. There are hundreds upon hundreds upon thousands of singular things in this film. To judge the film based solely upon say 40 things would be wrong.

Also I feel even more strongly now about the script never finding it's way onto the net. Something I have been told Lucasfilm is anticipating happening this Christmas. No, they won't do it, but they feel it'll be leaked by then, and once leaked it'll just be a matter of time till it is on the net. Here's why I don't think it should be.

Imagine reading the script for Empire Strikes Back. Think about reading a scene about a little green man in a tug-of-war with R2D2 over a flashlight. You have no clue what a Yoda is. You don't have a design or a voice to him. In fact it would be impossible to imagine just how perfect that scene is in the film unless you saw it happen. On paper it's stupid sounding, it reaks of cutesy-poo, but on-screen.... MAGIC.

That said, Jar Jar Binks, which as pronounced by Jar Jar in his dialogue is "JaJa Binkss". Jar Jar has some stuff which could be construed as very cutesy-poo, but given the fact that I know Jar Jar's design, it was in with Milo's stuff, he's not a human character but is an amphibian-humanoid character, I have utterly no idea how his dialogue will come out. It could have a weird low gutteral roar to it, it could be belched out, it will most definately have Ben Burtt sound engineering it in all liklihood. And taken as a whole Jar Jar's character is fascinatingly different in tone and presence from anything we have seen or heard in the Star Wars universe. Jar Jar is a Gungan, and by page 15 we are underwater at OTOH GUNGA. The Gungans are very fantastical, and I can't begin to imagine what this will feel like on screen. My imagination fails me, mainly because of the lack of detail. This script takes no time to describe itself. It just throws out a character's name and has him/her talking. It doesn't describe the character, that's up to Chiang and crew at the Art Department from their discussions with Lucas. Almost every script I have ever read goes into detail when describing amazing characters, settings, etc. But then Lucas didn't have to SELL this script to anyone. He didn't need to get approval from anyone. He is financing it himself, the only person he had to satisfy was himself. Something most writers wish was the case.

I read the first 15 pages quickly, and discovered there were 27 scene changes that spanned from outer space to 2 space crafts, to a planet (I won't say which), to underwater, to palaces, to interstellar communications and more. There is no limit to Lucas brush strokes. He doesn't paint by the numbers.

Now for some specifics. The film takes place on 3 planets: Coruscant, Naboo and Tatooine. On Coruscant there are 2 major locations, On Naboo there are 6 major locations, On Tatooine there is only one... Mos Espa. There is very little 'Space' Action, instead expect a lot, and when I say "A Lot" you better mean I mean it, Land, Air and Underwater action. In all there are 71 specific locations, ie Central hangar on Theed Int. or Mos Espa - Arena - Grandstand Ext. There are 15 main characters that I made note of. These are Obi-Wan, Qui Gon, Rune Haako, R2-D2, Mace Windu, Darth Sidious, Darth Maul, Jar Jar, Anakin, Padme, Amidala, Senator Palpatine, Nute Gunray, Watto and Yoda. There are around 32 other characters that just have a few lines here and there. This is likely to be changed, since there are often lines given by background characters that aren't in a principal script, stuff given to a character while on set, etc. There are about 40 creatures/aliens and around 24 robotic characters and/or items that fly around, walk around or lay around. There are thousands of some of the types of robots though. From the script I made note that there were 13 pods that they mentioned in the Pod Race, which seemed very heavy on action. There were well over 36 different types of ships with hundreds of some of them.

Will we be disappointed. I don't think so. It seemed so cool, that I can't imagine not pissing myself in the theater when I see it. Milo showed me many things, most of which I'll be racking my brain to remember, but Milo has told me that he/she plans to be e-mailing me from time to time with a sketch here and there, and that I may be receiving a script, which will be great because then I can go through and consistantly fact check everything.

In closing let me say this, most of what people have reported on websites about settings, locales, action, etc is true. There is a Gunga Sub that is indeed squid shaped as mentioned on the site long ago, the toilet-seat ship that's shaped a bit like the rebel insignia... it too is true, in fact hundreds of them appear and they are akin to Star Destroyers, and they are quite cool looking. The pod races are true. The fight between Qui Gon and Darth Maul on Tatooine is true, and that ship in the desert pic from way back, that was a Naboo spacecraft, there is quite a bit of political intrigue which should not be given away, that whole bit about Anakin having the highest amount of concentration of midi-chlorians and the alluding to a virgin birth is there, and there is a battle that includes air, ground, space and closed quarters. The film will leave you breathless. And I do understand what Spielberg said when he stated, "Oh My God" First, the film won't be like anything you've seen thus far from Star Wars. Sure there is a similar structure to Star Wars: A New Hope, but actually it covers more than that, it's kinda like a condensation of all three existing films, that in terms of scope surpasses them all.

Now, don't ask me for a script, I don't have it, Milo does. Don't ask for how to get in touch with Milo, I won't tell you. Right now in terms of images and further information I am at the mercy of Milo. Milo is god. Yes, I do kiss up to Milo. Milo is indeed the most beautiful/handsome person that has ever graced/macholy walked the Earth. So there you go. Below you will find Huntsman's letter about the Ewan quote in that piece from Yesterday that was utter garbage, for which I have beaten my father all day. As for further news. I plan on visiting various Prequel sites and reading their news and fact checking it, and as I do, I'll rate the sites on valid vs invalid news. Once again sorry for yesterday. Harry...

Huntsman here.

The Ewan McGregor quote in your "Prequel One Delayed?" story was actually a legit Ewan McGregor quote, and not made up. However, the quote was so out of context that it might as well have been fabricated (it would have been more honest). Let me explain.

Several months ago (March 1998 or so) a film magazine (I forget the name, I just remember that it had a SW cover and that I read it at the library where I should have been going grad. school studying) ran a story about Ewan McGregor and his experience filming Ep.1. It was an interview. Nothing earth shattering, mostly stuff like "Wow, you know my uncle was Wedge, and now I get to play Obi-Wan. Isn't life wierd? I try to talk like Alec Guinness. There was a blue screen." Light fare, spoiler free. At the end the interviewer asks when Ep.1's coming out. Ewan's answer was the exact quote from "Flicks" that your spy sent you. Ewan thought it was coming out Christmas 1999. That was last March. We all know that for North America, at least, he's wrong. The release date in Britain may be another story entirely. But the point is, his answer then, several months ago, was never the official Lucasfilm answer. And we have no reason to doubt the official time-schedule. That 40% rumor you rather ignominously :) helped to spread has been effectively shown to be utter bullshit, though it apparently rears its ugly head from time to time in local newspapers and on radio shows. Your spy was either quoting a shitty little magazine that pieced together two temporally separate things-- the Ewan quote from early 1998 and the 40% rumor-- in a feeble attempt to make a weak rumor stronger or your spy tacked the two things together himself. Either way, it was nonsense!

Any posting in TALK BACK labeled as Harry Knowles is not me. I will no longer be posting to Talk Back till the registration software is installed. So if you see someone acting like me, they are full of baloney. Have fun posting. Harry