Not long ago in a galaxy not very far away, Patton Oswalt was a guest on Parks and Recreation where he delivered an epic eight-minute pitch for Star Wars: Episode VII as a filibuster to a Pawnee bill. The full spiel didn't make the cut, but NBC put it online and people went nuts over it. Now, thanks to Nerdist, there is a full-fledged animated version of Patton's rant – complete with Marvel Universe character cameos.
The video was done by animator Daniel Spellman for Chris Hardwick's Nerdist channel as part of YouTube's Geek Week. Building on what might be the best un-filmed (and probably un-filmable) Star Wars movie pitch yet, the animated version brings to life a lot of the great ideas from that pitch, like Chewbacca's head on a robotic spider thingamabob, the introduction of Thanos and Spider-Man to the Star Wars universe, and also the introduction of characters from Clash of the Titans and Wrath of the Titans to create what Oswalt called a "giant three-franchise tie-in."
It must be seen to be believed. However, as amazing as this is, it's not the first time we've seen an animated version of Oswalt's filibuster. Shortly after the original version went online and rocketed to nearly 3 million views a YouTuber named IllRoyalty did an animated interpretation of the speech in late April and then—more popularly—Isaac Moores did an animatic-style video as well in mid-May, garnering more than a half-million views to date.
Although Moores tweeted yesterday that Nerdist "made a fan film of my fan film" it seems as though the folks behind Hardwick's channel were unaware of the previous incarnations—the website's post containing the latest video now has a note appended at the bottom stating "Since this video posted, we were alerted to two previous incarnations of animation to this audio" and linking to the two previous incarnations of Oswalt's rant. Spellman also released a statement on Twitter clarifying that his animation was started before Moores' went on YouTube and that he purposefully didn't look at Moores' work "so anything that is similar between Isaac's animation and my animation is purely coincidental."
Putting who-did-it-first aside, it's hard to say which, if any, of these clips is best. IllRoyalty's is the simplest, but it's quite charming. Moores' isn't as thoroughly animated as Spellman's, but it's got some great sight-gags (the interjecting speech bubbles from Leslie Knope/Amy Poehler are pretty fantastic). Then again, Spellman has a sparkly realty-jumping Thanos that farts and lots of Easter eggs. So, let's call it a draw (pardon the pun). Check out Spellman's video above and Moores' and IllRoyalty's below then pick your favorite for yourself.
