Source:Edward Douglas

April 3, 2009

ShoWest officially came to a close with the final night Banquet & Award Ceremony with awards presented to roughly a dozen actors and filmmakers including Dennis Quaid, Rachel McAdams, Chris Pine, Sienna Miller, Zac Efron, Bradley Cooper, Zack Snyder, Michael Bay and a Lifetime Achievement Award to Sir Michael Caine.

During the awards ceremony, the audience was treated to full clips from Paramount's upcoming G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and DreamWorks' Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, the latter courtesy of Michael Bay, who was presented with the Vanguard Award for Excellence in Filmmaking.

During Sienna Miller's introduction, they showed almost a full scene from "G.I. Joe," essentially, the Eiffel Tower scene in full and not edited as much as it was when shown a few days earlier. The scene begins with Miller's The Baroness going up a glass elevator like we've seen in the teaser and Super Bowl spot. She arrives on a glass roof that she runs across, then we see Storm Shadow running down the hall toward the board room with the rocket launcher containing nanites (again as before), but this time one of the Joes in an accelerator suit--not quite sure if it was Duke or Ripcord--jumps towards Storm Shadow trying to stop him but the rocket gets fired as Storm Shadow gets knocked through the wall. The nanite-filled rocket hits the Eiffel Tower as before, and it starts eating away at the metal, but this time we see it in a much slower and longer process than any of the footage we've seen before. Storm Shadow jumps down to the roof below, while Channing Tatum's Duke catches up to the Baroness on the roof, as she fires some sort of projectile weapon at him. He runs away as the weapon impacts on the glass roof, which shatters and sends him falling downwards before he grabs onto one of the supporting beams and pulls himself back up. The Baroness then runs towards the edge of the roof as a Cobra aircraft lands and she runs on board. Duke chases after her, then makes a leap off the edge of the roof, landing inside the craft with Baroness and Storm Shadow, and she tells him, "Congratulations, Duke, you just saved Paris... or at least most of it." And then we're back on the Eiffel Tower as the nanites have done enough damage that the entire thing starts toppling downwards.

A little later, Michael Bay thrilled the packed ballroom with a scene from the Transformers sequel which involved Shia LaBeouf's Sam Witwicky, Megan Fox's Mikaela Banes and Bumblebee. Sam opens the garage door to see Bumblebee in robot form hitting himself in the head trying to get his voice back. Sam tells the robot that he wants to talk about college, to which Bumblebee starts playing The Pointer Sisters' "I'm So Excited" and dancing around, but Sam tells him that he's not going to which the robot gives a heavy groan. Sam gives him a long speech why it's best Bumblebee doesn't accompany him, while Mikaela runs outside and starts to disrobe (Yowza!)... no wait, she's just changing outfits. Bumblebee isn't happy and he starts spraying water from his head as if he was crying. Sam explains that he wants to go to college and experience it like a normal guy, but that Bumblebee will always be his first car, etc. As he finishes his sentimental speech, Sam turns and opens the garage door and Mikaela is standing there in what appears to be a wedding dress holding a purple bouquet of flowers.

After that dialogue scene, what followed was a two minute montage of some of the robot action from the movie giving glimpses of almost all the Autobots and Decepticons we'll be seeing as well as The Fallen, most of them on screen slightly longer than the footage seen before. To be honest, it was cut together so quickly that only a diehard mega-fan might be able to see it and name every robot or figure out exactly what was going on. Regardless, it looks like Bay has done it again and anyone who liked the first movie should be suitably impressed with the sequel.

Tomorrow, we'll wrap up our coverage of ShoWest with a slew of photos from the awards ceremony and the press conference that preceded it.