DELETED SCENES GALORE COMING ON BLU-RAY!

A Treadwell droid watches Luke as he looks to the heavens in a classic deleted scene from STAR WARS.

Finally, LUCASFILM opens the vaults and shows us some of the Classic Trilogy Deleted Scenes goodies coming up on Blu-ray, and they're all the ones we want to see, as witnessed in this trailer: StarWars.com | Comic-Con 2011 Star Wars Blu-ray Deleted Scenes Teaser

Artoo escapes a carnage wielding Wampa in the caverns of Echo Base in EMPIRE.

Luke looks at the space battle overhead in STAR WARS.

Lando helps an injured Chewbacca to the Falcon in JEDI's famous Sandstorm sequence.

A shot of the Millennium Falcon and Princess Leia's Y-wing on Tatooine.

Luke conceals the damage to his mechanical hand in JEDI...

Luke makes his way to his X-wing during the Sandstorm.

A Mon Calamari pilot joins the Death Star II battle in JEDI

General Solo and his team come under Imperial attack in JEDI

The Bunker battle continues...

BEHIND THE SCENES IMAGE: WAMPA IN THE WILDS!

Inside the huge Stuart Freeborn costume for the fearsome snow beast, the Wampa, Des Webb gets ready for filming opposite the dead Tauntaun carcass. Sadly, the majority of the creatures location scenes, filmed in totally inhospitable climes at Finse, Norway, were deemed unusable and re-filmed, replaced with a new ILM insert of the creature's face and also with new material shot towards the end of the film's Principal Photography, on a partial snow filled backlot at ELSTREE.

Life's hard when you're a Wampa!

To find out more about the making of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, check out our immensely detailed behind the scenes specials here: BACK ISSUE PDF CATALOG

AFICIONADO REVIEW: ROBOT CHICKEN STAR WARS III

Time to Par-ty! Vader and Palpatine go Disco crazy in ROBOT CHICKEN: STAR WARS III. Images: REVOLVER ENTERTAINMENT/ADULT SWIM

ROBOT CHICKEN: STAR WARS III

Available on UK DVD from REVOLVER ENTERTAINMENT

Reviewed by Scott Weller

“Y’know, looking back, it all make sense. Dream big. Live big. Love big. Fall to your death down a fucking giant hole!”

Emperor Palpatine

It may be their last venture into the realms of STAR WARS comedy via the ADULT SWIM universe, but Seth Green and Breckin Meyer’s third and final ROBOT CHICKEN dedicated to the iconic characters, environments and classic scenes from all six STAR WARS movies goes out with an hilariously extravagant and overwhelmingly funny bang, well worth the wait in seeing, and may rank amongst their finest work a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

In fact, it was pretty wizard! And had more belly laughs than last year’s FAMILY GUY JEDI parody-so its one up there for Mister Green. I think!

ROBOT CHICKEN STAR WARS III brilliantly highlights the rise and fall of Emperor Palpatine!

Once again, there’s lots of brilliantly observed new spins on classic scenes, mostly around RETURN OF THE JEDI and the life and career path of old hemorrhoid head Emperor Palpatine (once more brilliantly voiced with neurotic, paranoid, quirky and greedy observation by FAMILY GUY’s Seth MacFarlane) – additionally, the Prequels seem even more ripe than ever for mining comedy gold and brilliant what if? moments for humour that we’ve all been longing to see. Rib-tickling highlights include a whole new look at EPISODE II’s courtly love relationship between Padme and Anakin, as the former shows off her pole dancing skills to the latter, all the while declaring her reasons why they shouldn’t become an item! Anthony Daniels back in Threepio voice mode testing his communication skills in Spanish class, Prune Face finally getting the mega star action hero quality time he deserves, Yarel Poof questioning the prophecy and skills of his fellow Jedi Council members, and his ultimate fate during ORDER 66, what really happened to Owen and Beru Lars at their Tatooine homestead, the JEDI Finale celebration gets a whole new spin, the one armed Wampa trying to get some gas for his car at an intergalactic stopover, just as Luke shows up!, and, capping it off, there’s an alternate version of the skiff battle the way Boba Fett would have liked it to have ended, linked to a reason why Tauntauns have long memories…

Threepio gets a Spanish lesson!

Toilet trouble for Darth Vader on Death Star II!

Plus, running alongside the Emperor’s story-arc, there’s the obligatory classic Vader scenes (notably a laugh out loud moment when the Dark Lord gets used to his suit against the musical backdrop of the classic MEGO Records Disco funk version of the STAR WARS theme!), old fish-face himself, Admiral Ackbar, and the final adventures of Gary the Stormtrooper (where things get a bit too gruesome regarding an Ewok!).

Oh, and though the original programme already had unintentional comedy unwittingly built into it, the 1978 HOLIDAY SPECIAL gets a short but superb look-in, too…

Boba Fett gets his revenge on Han Solo!

As well as the aforementioned Daniels, other WARS veterans returning include CLONE WARS Tom Kane who always gives good Yoda and FAMILY GUY/AMERICAN DAD’s Dee Bradley Baker. Plus Billy Dee Williams and Ahmed Best, all clearly having a blast with their respective roles…

Life's a bitch when you're a disabled Wampa!

Outside of the main production which is funny enough, there’s a whole host of other enjoyable bonus material on the DVD including several fun audio commentaries, multiple behind the scenes animatics, informatic Chicken Nuggets, deleted scenes, trailers, a truncated look at the 2010 CELEBRATION V convention panel for the episode, Skywalker Ranch premiere footage, and, the icing of the cake, a sequence showing a playful George Lucas with the ROBOT CHICKEN writers in conference, in which, in a great scene, he throws one of the team out for bringing up the name of his non-created Mara Jade from the Expanded Universe! Classic stuff!

Prune Face almost steals the show!

IG-88's brother brings down the house party-literally!

Even without the expansive extras, ROBOT CHICKEN STAR WARS III is a tremendous achievement, one you can watch and re-watch and never get bored with. A special note of thanks must also be said not just to the writers and artists but to the incredible work undertaken, I’m sure in rapid time and limited budgets, by the set designers, puppet and costume makers, whose devoted recreations of the STAR WARS movie universe have been nothing short of superb, and surely helped the programmes in their attention to detail and realism to make it even more gag-tastic.

Now, about that STAR WARS: DETOURS...

AFICIONADO RATING: First rate laughs that continue to be both a wonderful homage and celebration to the STAR WARS saga, by a group of enthusiastic celebrity fans that clearly love and enjoy the source material as much as we do. A well deserved 5 out of 5.

Get it from AMAZON here: Robot Chicken Star Wars Episode 3 Adult Swim DVD: Amazon.co.uk: Film & TV Or why not the entire Trilogy box-set, here: Robot Chicken Star Wars Episodes 1-3 Box Set Adult Swim DVD: Amazon.co.uk: Film & TV

CLASSIC IMAGE: HELP FROM AN OLD FRIEND...

Here's some great EMPIRE 1978/79 storyboards from artist unknown (possibly the UK's Ivor Beddoes?) showing Luke's capture by the Wampa and his first attempt to retrieve his fallen lightsaber. Click the pic to see a larger version. Note that, in the original sequence as stated on the board, Luke was to have heard Obi-Wan Kenobi's voice telling him to concentrate and use the Force.

With thanks to Ian Trussler for the image.

WAMPA: SAVAGE BEASTS OF HOTH!

Our penultimate feature celebrating the Thirtieth Anniversary of EMPIRE can now be found on the main site, this time linked to the filming of the Wampa ice creature sequences.

Check out the rare photo feature here:

http://www.starwarsaficionado.com/the_wampa_beasts_of_hoth.html

And don't forget, for all other things behind the scenes related to the film, our two EMPIRE special issues (from 2005 and our current BEHIND THE SCENES COMPANION) are still available as PDFs from the main site's BACK ISSUES area.

With thanks to Chris Baker for the above image.

CLASSIC IMAGE: NICE VIEW UP THERE!!

A maskless Des Webb, wearing the entire Wampa body suit created for filming by Stuart Freeborn and his team, has a look about on a filming day outside the 1222 hotel and a Winter environment that is not yet encompassed by blizzards and dangerous white-outs. In the end, much of the outdoor footage linked to the beast was never used, either re-shot at the end of EMPIRE's studio shooting (at the ELSTREE backlot) or with additional material (like a new facial close-up from ILM near the end of 1979). Note the sled next to him that would often be used by the crew to transport him around whilst he was in the costume.

Look out on our main site for an upcoming photo feature on the Wampa and its missing EMPIRE scenes, accompanied by rare images not seen in the new MAKING OF book.

CELEBRATION V: "EMPIRE" BOOK WATCH!

During Celebration V I was able to hang about the DEL REY books area-the home of the STAR WARS EXPANDED UNIVERSE and anything else STAR WARS related in the US territory-and managed to get a good visual look at J.W. Rinzler's upcoming, if much delayed, behind the scenes tome-THE MAKING OF THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. I wasn't able to get a chance to read any of it bar the odd caption (though the conventions lavish colour booklet had one of its excellent chapters-titled LUKE OF THE TUNDRA- within it), but I looked at every page- and I have to say that, on the strength of the visual material alone, this looks set to beat THE MAKING OF STAR WARS in terms of pure quality and information-and it helps that, from this film onwards, LUCASFILM pretty much kept all of their behind the scenes records intact. There was three times as many pictures-storyboards, photos, effects shots, pre-production art-in a well designed layout (by the author himself), and the detail was stunning. From memory, picture wise, there were lots of shots from the deleted Wampa battle in Echo Base, a look at an alien Dagobah creature that never made the finished film, and some intriguing images of the test hovercraft that were to have been be re-dressed and used in the Finse filmed snow battle which were ultimately abandoned.

The whole book looked absolutely incredible and I can't wait to read it and review it when its released worldwide (via DEL REY in the US and AURUM in the UK).