hi there
thanks for the post - i remember doing a couple of searches around various sites at the time when the movie was on the cinema - and this question was always left unanswered (for me at that particular moment, because i gave up caring and could no longer give a crap at that particular moment).
i remember seeing one site which had a screen shot of nothing but rubble - and the fan boys present swore blindly the rubble "could be R2 blah blah blah" (even as far as drawing outlines of him..... but it was just rubble.
then i completely forgot about it - until you mentioned it just now in this post.
as far as permission for using R2....when your actually liked in Hollywood, like JJ Adams actually is, you get away with stuff like this. Lucas would have seen it as a wonderful tribute -
And if he ever makes another movie, like Star Wars episodes 7, 8 and 9 (and no, he aint going to as far as i know, even though that was the original plan after Star Wars was a hit in 77), he will most likely place a JJ Adams tribute in that - like an Oceania Plane, or a big monster, or a star trek tribute, or Sawyer or something.
movies used to do this all the time - Blade Runner has the Millenium Falcon ship in it, the Phanton Menace is full to the brim of various movie tributes, Jason Goes To Hell has Evil Dead tributes - it aint a new thing. but certainly a thing that hasnt seen the like in the last 10 years or so.
