I first came across this on Tumblr but tracked it back to the source on a site called Toys R Evil. A UK-based group of sculptors and model makers was commissioned by Disney to create this piece as a gift to John Lasseter. The detail is amazing and can be seen is a close-up in the original post.
Toys R Evil is, itself, and interesting site, and not one I had visited before. It gathers news on toys that you are not likely to see in a more mainstream context, such as these creations from a company called OhNo!Doom.
Intrigued, I did some digging and came across an article on IGN that described a trailer that was shown unexpectedly on Thursday at the end of the Walt Disney Pictures panel. It shows a light cycle chase and much more sinister-looking Flynn (again played by Jeff Bridges) before ending up with the number 2 in the Tron logo font as the letters T, R, and N appear around it (to form TR2N) and then fade back out.
This morning there was a Slashdot article that in turn pointed to articles on Gizmodo and Filmstalker with a bootleg video of the trailer (presented belowUpdate 7/28: I grabbed the embed from the Filmstalker article, but as you can see, it’s been pulled. The Gizmodo article still has a non-embeddable version for the time being. Update 7/29: Someone did a pretty decent job cleaning up the video and posted it to YouTube, so it’s back.). The quality is poor as no videotaping is supposed to be going on during the video segments, but it’s good enough to get a feel for what’s going on. Hopefully, an official version of the trailer will be released soon.
Talk of a sequel has been slowly building momentum for some time now. At one one point it was rumored that Pixar wanted to do a remake or a sequel. Around the time of the film’s 20th anniversary, writer and director Steven Lisberger, talked about his interest and ideas for a possible sequel. However, Disney didn’t seem to show any interest in continuing the franchise until it released the game Tron 2.0 in 2003. A first-person shooter set in the computer world, it cleverly extended the metaphors originated in the movie to include modern computing technology such as firewalls, PDAs, and the internet. It was said that the game was going to be used to gauge interest in a sequel, but nothing more was really heard until 2005 when Disney hired a pair of writers to come up with a script for a sequel. It would be two more years before Disney would hire Joseph Kosinski to direct the film (now being written by a writing team from the show Lost). The Hollywood Reporter article detailing this most recent bit of news included this tidbit:
…sources said one of the things Kosinski will be doing is working on a sequence involving the movie’s Light Cycles to work out his vision for the movie.
It would appear that the footage shown at Comic-Con is the culmination of that work. It’s exciting to see that actual progress is being made and that (at least visually) it seems to be faithful to the spirit of the original, but I’m going to try to stay cautiously optimistic until more concrete details are available.
Not that I’m obsessed over this movie or anything, but the folks over at io9 (via Metblogs) have video of a life-size animatronic of the robot Wall-E in action. He seems to have a wide range of motion and is very expressive, at one point rolling up to the camera, raising up a bit, and waving.
I’ve heard he’ll be making the rounds of the talk show circuit to promote the movie. He should also be making appearances in Disney theme parks no doubt giving Push a run for his money.
In what has now become tag-team Ultimate Wall-E posts, a friend posted this morning about Gizmodo’s coverage of the upcoming toy at last weekend’s Maker Faire. Their story included a video of a rep showing off the remote control and talking about Wall-E will be able to do, but there wasn’t much of an actual demonstration because Wall-E was sitting on a small table in loud and crowded room.
Engadget also had a story from Maker Faire about Ultimate Wall-E that included a video (from Techie Diva, embedded below). This video better showcases Wall-E’s range of motion, including his head, arms, and eyes. The rep also demonstrates his collision avoidance and directional sound sensors. And while not implemented in that prototype, the rep explained that he’ll also respond to small number of voice commands.
After seeing this new video, I can’t wait to get my hands on one of these.
Update: A friend pointed out that video changed at some point. It would appear that the embed code I got from Engadget points to the most recent Techie Diva video instead of this particular one. (Incidentally, the original Techie Diva story is showing the same incorrect video) You can find the original video at Blip.tv.
Disney/Pixar’s Wall-E is still about two months from release, and I am definitely very excited to see it. However, I (and several of my friends) have also been anticipating the merchandise. Being a movie about a robot, there is strong potential for some really cool toys.
For example, some friends have a voice activated R2-D2—a Wall-E version of that seems like a no-brainer. Well, last night I came across this Gearlog story (by way of Engadget) that would appear to be just that.
Ultimate Wall-E is a programmable robot with 10 separate motors and sensors that will let him react to his surroundings. He’ll be out sometime this summer for $190 but will be introduced to the public at Maker Faire this weekend (not the 29th as mentioned in the Engadget story).
I first came across this on Tumblr but tracked it back to the source on a site called Toys R Evil. A UK-based group of sculptors and model makers was commissioned by Disney to create this piece as a gift to John Lasseter. The detail is amazing and can be seen is a close-up in the original post.
