In the early 2010s, Seth Green and Matthew Senreich made a Star Wars animated parody series titled Detours. It never aired, and when the Walt Disney Co. bought Lucasfilm in 2012, it was feared the show would never be seen again.
Star Wars fans and the public, however, will finally be able to see at least some of episodes as part of the expansive exhibitions set to be seen at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art.
“There is going to be a curation of episodes of that show on display for the public,” revealed Seth Green, who created the show with his Robot Chicken partner Matthew Senreich, during a panel at San Diego Comic Con.
Green and Senreich were on the stage in Hall H to give insight into the Lucas Museum, which opens in September, and were joined by world renowned comic artist and head of DC Jim Lee, and Lucas Musuem senior curator & head of film programs for Ryan Linkof, as well as moderator actress Keke Palmer.
Linkof revealed that the museum will have, among its 100,000 square feet exhibition space and over 33 galleries, two theatres screening non-stop shorts and movies, highlighting how the art of the images is a vehicle for technology, storytelling and their creators.
Visitors will be able to access the Robert Flaherty Theater and the Slavko Vorkapich Theater in an open-door, drop-in gallery-like experience. The Flaherty will be more documentary focused, and feature documentaries about artists whose work is exhibited in the Lucas Museum, including Norman Rockwell, Lee, Charles Schulz, Maurice Sendak, Diego Rivera, J.C. Leyendecker, and Weegee, as well as playing Comic Book Confidential, directed by Robert Mann, among other works.
The Vorkapich, dedicated to the motion of emotion, will show early silent films by Georges Méliès, Émile Cohl, W.K.L. Dickson, Edwin S. Porter, and others; early animations by Winsor McCay; Looney Tunes; anime from Cowboy Bebop; an episode of Star Wars: Visions; and student films (1965-1969) by George Lucas, among other reels.
Linkof also debuted a trailer for the film program, which can be seen below.
Linkof and the other panelists took time to describe how the art in this museum differed from other museums, as it seeks to focus on the popular arts.
“It will be the home for the kinds of art that we live with,” he said. “There is book and magazine illustration, comic book art, children books illustration, poster art, film. These forms that have influenced and inspired people and have given shape to the world around us.”
Lee, who has already toured the museum and will have art in it, said it will elevate “all of this to be on par with how museums handle art in general, the museum of fine art, the museum of modern art, contemporary art. It’s a very smart way of taking everything that is considered commercial art , art for the masses, or entertainment, and elevating to something else.”
Green concurred, by way of a nerdy-geek perspective.
“We’ve lived long enough to see all the stuff that we were beaten for loving become the fine art of our day,” he said. “It’s kind of extraordinary.”
Lee, making his Hall H debut, closed off the panel with an impassioned monologue in which he talked about how art is critical to developing points of view and how seeing it up close is a way to connect with the artists he admires.
“I think that if you go to this museum, you will see art that you will recognize and have seen your entire life, through commercials, through comics books, but you will see it in a different way that will hopefuly enlighten and inspire you,” he said. “And (it will) really show you, ‘This is amazing art, we have it all around us, how lucky are we?’”
