Writer-director Kyle Newman and actors Kristen Bell, Dan Fogler and Christoopher Maquette were in attendance at Comic-Con today to present footage from their long-awaited comedy Fanboys, about a group of friends on a mission to steal a copy of Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace from Skywalker Ranch so that their dying friend can see it before he passes away. Newman described the film to his cast as "Stand By Me for fanboys."
They showed several scenes from the film, which is set in 1998. The first scene showed three friends crashing a teen party, much to the embarrassment of co-star Sam Huntington (Jimmy Olsen in Superman Returns). Another scene shows Huntington's character, who has graduated from high school and is now in the work place, chastises Maquette's character for not growing up. But their argument soon devolves into a geeky duel over whether Luke Skywalker really had the hots for his sister Leia.
Then the boys join an Indian (played by Grindhouse's Danny Trejo) at a campfire. The Indian lets the boys eat some of his snacks, which turn out to be laced with peyote. The teens then start tripping out, hearing and seeing things from the Star Wars films. Dan Fogler's leg gets humped by one of the cuddlier characters in the initial trilogy, while another has the cackle of Salacious B. Crumb.
Later, the boys are driving along in Fogler's van when the police try to pull them over. Unfortunately, the Indian has left a big bag of peyote in their van and they are too freaked out to pull over in case it's found. This leads to a humorous car chase where the van may or may not ave its own hyperdrive. The payoff to this scene is too cool to spoil.
We also saw the sequence where the friends finally infiltrate Skywalker Ranch. They find the secret vault - the door to which is right out of the Death Star - and when they enter they discover some of the most iconic props from George Lucas' films (not just including Star Wars). The security guards - all of whom are masked like the T-1000 in Terminator 2 - discover them. When they remove their masks we see that one of them is played by none other than Darth Maul himself, Ray Park. A stand-off leads to a foot chase where the friends find themselves falling inside George Lucas' trash room. You can imagine what happens next.
Finally, we saw the four pals in the van driving along passionately singing the Ewok song from the end of The Return of the Jedi. That alone is worth the price of admission, fanboys.
Hopefully not just building myself up for a disappointment but this sounds like it will be awesome. The basic idea of stealing a star wars movie as a movie sound unique. High hopes for this one