“Star Trek,” “Star Wars” and superhero legends are, in a way, the myths of our age. So why would Comic Con Honolulu, which takes place this weekend at the Hawai‘i Convention Center, invite someone famous for busting myths?
Because when that someone is Grant Imahara, of “MythBusters” fame, it’s bound to be as fun and as entertaining as the myths themselves.
Imahara is an expert on such myths, having worked on the “Star Wars” and “Matrix” films before landing his gig on “MythBusters,” a Discovery Channel television show that explodes — sometimes literally — misconceptions widely held as fact. He’ll be talking story on those and other topics when he speaks at 11 a.m. Saturday and Sunday. He’ll also be available for photos at noon both days and will sign autographs at 1:30 and 4 p.m. Saturday and 12:30 and 2:30 p.m. Sunday.
COMIC CON HONOLULU
Where: Hawai’i Convention Center
When: 10 a.m.-midnight Friday and Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday
Cost: $30 Friday and Sunday; $40 Saturday. $65 three-day pass available Friday only. (Individual prices for autographs and photos.)
Info: comicconhonolulu.com
One myth he can talk about is the making of the “Star Wars” prequel films, “The Phantom Menace,” “Attack of the Clones” and “Revenge of the Sith,” and how much of it was generated on a computer. As an electrical engineer with expertise in robotics — he designed the lighting scheme on R2-D2 — Imahara was deeply involved in the technical aspects of the films, which required traditional physical models and props.
“It’s a great misconception that the ‘Star Wars’ prequels were mostly computer graphics,” he said in a phone interview from the San Francisco Bay Area. “As a matter of fact, the amount of work on the ‘Star Wars’ prequels required the largest crew that the ILM (Industrial Light and Magic, the visual effects division of Lucasfilm) model shop ever had. The sheer volume of shots in those movies was more than computer graphics alone could handle, more than practical models alone could handle.
“There were a large number of traditional practical models that were used in those movies. The Federation battleship was a very large, 12-foot diameter model. A number of the environments and ships were all physical, old-school models with miniature lighting inside them that were shot via motion-control.”
Similarly, the “Matrix” films required physical props, which were integrated with computer-generated effects and pyrotechnics.
“In the end, when the Sentinels attack the crane — all the Sentinels are computer graphics, you can see how they move like one liquid stream — but the thing they attack, that big crane thing, was actually a ‘massive miniature,’” he said. “The lights on top of it were lights that I wired myself by hand, and they were all sequenced to go along with this pyrotechnic event, and the crane itself was something that we all knew would be crashed.”
Imahara would get plenty of practice later with explosives and pyrotechnics in his 10 years on “MythBusters,” where his engineering background came in handy building robots, like weapons-firing and sword-swinging machines, car-driving gadgets, even a robot that cut through prison bars with dental floss. (By his determination, it would take 300 days flossing eight hours a day to cut through a single bar.)
Much of the fun, however, was in blowing things up. “I’ve often been asked whether it got boring exploding things every week, and the answer is a resounding ‘No!’ It never got boring at all. It was always exciting to experience something being blown up,” said Imahara, 45.
Since leaving “MythBusters” two years ago, Imahara has been busy with several other projects. He appears on “Star Trek Continued,” a video series available on YouTube and Vimeo that follows the crew of the original Enterprise, in which he plays Sulu, the role immortalized by George Takei, who is also appearing at Comic Con Honolulu.
Takei himself will speak at 2:30 p.m. Saturday, has autograph sessions at 10:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. Saturday and 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. Sunday, and offers photo opportunities at 12:30 p.m. Saturday and 1 p.m. Sunday.
Imahara has perfected Takei’s resonant bass voice and said he relishes the chance to re-create the character.
“To me, Sulu was a very important character when I was growing up, because he was one of the few Asian-American male characters on TV who wasn’t a bad guy. He wasn’t a gangster, he wasn’t a kung fu master,” Imahara said. “He was a hero and part of the core crew on the ship, and for goodness sakes, he’s got an important role: He flies the ship.”
Imahara and his co-stars from “MythBusters,” Kari Byron and Tory Belleci, recently completed filming for a new science-oriented show. Details are to be announced in August.
“It features the three of us doing similar things to what we used to do,” he said. “There won’t be any myths, but as far as doing cool things, we’ll still be doing that, only with a much cooler, slicker, more updated look.”