Wat Tambor, head of the Techno Union, cool new character!

Eh, he was amusing in a silly way.



Rick McCallum loves you!

 

Wat was great!

I had no idea that he was CGI until I read about it on the OS. He was a very interesting character in his few minutes of screen time, and top that off the Techno Union Spacehips were also very retro/Flash Gordonish in appearence.

(And some of them were models, I do believe. )

 

If he is tied to Vader's suit, hopefully Vader will look a little sharper when we first see him. Also, memo to George: a good way to get fanboys riled up would be to mess around with Vader's voice with a similar audio distortion.

 

Cool voice!

 

Too short an onscreen time to be truely cool but entirely CGI? Cool - I thought that only his head was CGI (metal body looked very convincing). IMO his entire existence was to serve as a link to DV's voice at the end of Epy III, so that when Hayden turns into James Earl Jones, there's a semi-plausible explanation. Wat Tambors voice ain't a coincidentally "deep and booming"

 

Also, memo to George: a good way to get fanboys riled up would be to mess around with Vader's voice with a similar audio distortion.

"I find your lack of faith - WEEEOOOOOOWWWEEEEE - disturbing."

Add that to the list of necessary ANH UE changes, along with Vader saying "Yippee" when he destroys Red Leader, "Now this is podracing!" when he's flying down the trench, and "I'll try spinning, that's a good trick!" when he goes flying off into space.

Back on topic, Wat Tambor was great. If there was an action figure of him, I'd buy it. (But then again, I'd also buy a Coleman Trebor one, so I must be crazy)

I love the way he's fiddling with his controls when everything goes haywire, so he looks startled then starts readjusting them.

 

GrandMoffTarkin,

The AOTC sounds is pretty cool, I especially like Palpatine's address to the Senate. But its only half way there, is there anywhere, where I can find the full mp3 of that speech, that continues off to say that he will create a grand army?

 

I wanna see Wat Tambor on Leno, Letterman and NIGHTLINE with Koppel.

I want to see him in all those MTV music videos instead of Ja Rule.

I want to see him in the ads for the AOTC Imax release.

I want to him at Celebration III doing his tribute to Jack Haley.

I want to see him beat up Rick McCallum.

I want to see him on the cover of PEOPLE and GQ.

I want to him put his hands in the wet cement at Grauman's Chinese.

I want to see his life story on BIOGRAPHY.

I want to see him on CNN with Larry King.

More Wat Tambor!

 

I want Tom Hanks to play Wat Tambor !

 

I'm thinking of getting a Wat tattoo.

 

I thought it was great that, in the middle of an important scene in the much speculated on Episode II of the Star Wars saga, GL had time to concentrate on the mildly embarrasing (for Wat) speech problems of a relatively minor character.

GL still has time for the strange people in his universe alongside the main players...

 

Wat Tambor is a great retro-sci-fi character. He looks like someone you would meet in the world that the pulp science fiction magazines of the 1930s and the EC brand comic books of the 1950s described.

Wat is the cousin of the flying car, the geodesic dome house, the domestic robot housekeeper, the single-stage rocketship, and the automated suburban paradise (powered by atomic power, of course). In short, Wat Tambor is a villain of the year 2000 as it was envisioned in 1940.

I'm glad GL decided to give a nod to that art deco style of the genre that defined the golden age of science fiction.

 

rsterling:

know what the robot said in "The Day the Earth Stood Still" ? (circa 1940-1950?)

"Klatuu Barada Nikto"

Ever hear those terms before.

 

That was 1951, darth_pooh. The Day The Earth Stood Still was perhaps one of only two or three intelligent sci-fi films of that decade, the other obvious one being the 1956 classic Forbidden Planet.

And, yes, I do recognize those names. Star Wars itself is kind of retro. I like it when GL throws a few references from old science fiction into his movies.

EDIT: If anyone on the Forum doesn't recognize those names, they were the names of characters on Jabba's barge. Nikto was both the name of a character and his species. Klaatu was a member of a sub-race of Nikto. Barada was a Klatooinian. Confusing, isn't it?

 

Wat Tambor was cool for a while, then I read something about him.

Before I read the OS's databank entry, I thought he was a droid. Then I was like, that's so evil. A droid is pledging his support to Count Dooku, and it's giving him a bunch of Superbattle droids to go out & kill it's human enemies. But Wat Tambor isn't an evil psychotic droid. He's just a man in a suit. It would'a been cooler if he was a droid...

 

[image=http://www.dreamerwww.com/scenes12/20.jpg][image=http://64.227.26.45/Grilled-Sarlacc/c/wattambor/bgwatt.jpg]
"Klatuu Barada Nikto" were also the magic words Ash tried to use in Army of Darkness directed by Sam Raimi who recently directed Spider-Man!
The original Klatuu Barada Mikto from the Day the Earth Stood Still

 

I love Wat! Just seeing that picture brings warm feelings to my heart!

 

I'm too lazy to watch "The Day the Earth Stood Still" (but hey - i'm honest) - to those who've seen it, does ol' Klaatu have any more dialogue? Might be a clue to further Epy III names, (I suppose). Wat Tambor's name must be an amalgamation of something too - "What a Bore" doesn't sound right to me.. any ideas anyone?

 

[image=http://classics.www5.50megs.com/gort/day2.jpg]

Klaatu has quite a bit of dialogue, but Klaatu is the humanoid pilot of the spacecraft in The Day The Earth Stood Still. The giant robot is called Gort. Gort had no lines in the film.

I'm not sure if Wat Tambor's name is some kind of anagram. There was a movie back in 1954 called Tobor the Great:

[image=http://www.vcnet.com/valkat/tobor/toborposter.jpeg]

Tobor is "robot" spelled backwards. I don't know if "Wat Tambor" is some sort of anagram of "robot" and some other word. Anybody have an idea?

EDIT: Hmmmm...I was just looking at that movie poster of Tobor the Great. Tobor actually looks quite a bit like Tambor. Interesting.

 

rsterling,

you amamze me. You make me want to go search the web for tambor-like phrases. "Robot" that's great. I was almost going to say that it's a joke on someone' Hungarian name like Tibor, but now I realize maybe that altogether it's ROBMATTAW backwards? What's that "Rob Matthew"? "Wet tham Bor"

 

One thing that amazes me about George Lucas is the seemingly ENDLESS number of characters he comes up with. Every new SW film has introduced more and more characters in the galaxy. It's one of the things I love about SW. Wat is just the latest. And it's always interested me that he can give a new character just a minute or so onscreen and yet it opens up a whole new discussion. Long live Wat Tambor!

 

I hate to disappoint you but many of the names of minor characters for AOTC were made up by people who work at Lucasfilm Licensing. Witness the inanity of "Twink Kee" and "Elan Sleazebaggano". Other names they came up with (for Nightclub patrons) include Sir Mac and Yee Moh.

 

Oh, but the coolest thing (or at least the funniest) was the rough cut of AOTC, where Wat's voice was different. When he started speaking it suddenly went high-pitched and he had to twist his controls to bring it down to normal speed.

 

Gotta love Wat since he's gonna become a little part of Vader.

 

Hmm. Should we be alarmed that the head of the Techno Union apparently can't control the technology that modulates his own voice?

Just a thought.

Regards,

Darth Nemesis, Sith bloke, wondering of ol'Wat put Windows on his hard drive...