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Can ‘Clone Wars’ breathe new life into the Star Wars franchise? We find out from the big man himself: George Lucas.
Even with all his avuncular charm, George Lucas can’t help but still be recognized as a fiery force in the motion picture universe. His six Star Wars films and successful product lines orbit beyond the $20 billion mark. And just when you thought all the lightsabers had been put to bed, along comes Star Wars: The Clone Wars, the new animated film from Lucas Animation. The movie, directed by Dave Filoni, opens Friday. Think of the new outing as a creative offshoot of the animated television series set to debut on the Cartoon Network and TNT next month. The series takes place between Star Wars, Episodes II and III. The new film follows similar suit yet chronicles one Jabba the Hutt-laced chapter in the notorious Clone Wars, which was hinted at in a few of the motion pictures. Interestingly enough, Lucas never really thought of brining Clone Wars to the screen. After Revenge of the Sith bowed in 2005, he opted to do a five-minute Clone Wars animation series on the Cartoon Network—this became the precursor to the upcoming half-hour weekly outing. But when production began on the new series, Lucas looked at the early footage and saw greater potential for a screen version as well. He quickly assembled a feature film team for a separate story. What audiences get is a variety of innovative feats from Lucas Animation, in its first full-length feature release—the vibe feels as if some anime, a little “game” technology and a cousin of the ’60s marionettes classic Thunderbirds all met on a galactic playing field. Familiar characters—Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Mace Windu (voiced by Samuel L. Jackson), Padmé, C-3PO and R2-D2—are on board in a story that follows the characters of Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi diving into brutal battles for the Republic. It also happens to introduce two strong female characters, Ahsoka Tano, a teenage girl assigned to serve as Anakin’s apprentice; and Asajj Ventress, a formidable foe working with the villainous Count Dooku. “The idea was that the apprentice after Darth Maul would be a girl,” notes Filoni. “That got abandoned eventually for Count Dooku and Christopher Lee’s character [in the films], but the concept art existed and the comic books and novels of The Clone Wars that had been done had utilized that character. When it came time to develop The Clone Wars, it just happened that we were developing Ashoka at the same time. And we had these two girls coming into this story at the same time, which was kind of an advantage because you have one, which is the apprentice of Anakin, trying to train in the traditional way of the Jedi, and you have one who is the hidden apprentice of Dooku, which is the evil opposite end. That works out nicely for the story.” At a recent press gathering at Big Rock Ranch, near Skywalker Ranch in Marin, Lucas further illuminated what unraveled behind the scenes. Beyond hinting that Clone Wars could be a formidable presence this fall, he also foretold of an upcoming live-action Star Wars saga, scheduled to hit the small screen within a few years. WHY NOW? WHY CREATE AN ENTIRELY NEW STAR WARS? George Lucas: I started out in animation in college. I have always been interested in it. When we did Revenge of the Sith, I lamented the fact that I had to jump over The Clone Wars. And I jumped over them because it had nothing to do with Anakin Skywalker. He is just another player and we had a very narrow focus on him. And I thought, it’s too bad because [The Clone Wars] are like World War II. There is this great, great canvas. We decided we would do this great five-minute animation series for Cartoon Network using anime … But that sort of got me going to thinking that we could do a really big TV show, a half-hour show and it could be great. And we could use all the great new techniques we developed in CG animation. When I finished Star Wars, I said, I am going to do this. I got to fill in a blank and go around in a universe that is not restrictive and therefore not quite as dark. We had a little more fun with it. It’s a little more lighthearted. We ended up doing a TV series and when the first two shots came back, I looked at it and I thought, ‘This is fantastic! This is better than we ever imagined it to be. It could be a feature.’ So I said, why don’t we make a feature, and we have Ashoka as one of our new main characters. It’s purely something I wanted to do in terms of exploring animation and doing something I enjoy doing. WHAT MYTHOLOGY WILL BE IN THE TV SERIES AND THE LIVE-ACTION SERIES? The mythological arc of the saga doesn’t continue in these other things because that is a story. It has a beginning, middle and an end—one man’s struggle against evil and redemption. This is more episodic; more like Indiana Jones. The fun part about animation and The Clone Wars, in particular, is that we are allowed to go and do stories about the Clones and get to know them; know what Jabba the Hutt’s family is all about—things that don’t have anything to do with the main character. The [film] series is basically about one man and it is very very narrow, so you basically pass through a lot things. [Here], we are not tied to this mythological über story about the psychological pangs of why somebody turns into a bad person. WHY DID YOU OPT FOR A MORE STYLIZED VERSION INSTEAD OF SOMETHING PHOTOREALISTIC? Animation is an art. You either like photorealistic art— something that looks exactly like a photograph, like in a museum—or you like something that tries to find the truth behind the realism. And to me, animation is an art. It’s all about design. It’s all about style. It’s not about making it photorealistic. I’ve been making photorealistic movies all my life and they have animation in them. Animation is something else entirely; a completely different medium. DID YOU FEEL WITH THIS FILM THAT YOU HAD BIGGER CHALLENGES AS OPPOSED TO LIVE-ACTION, BECAUSE YOU WERE BRINGING THIS TO A NEW GENERATION OF MOVIEGOERS? Art is a technological medium. A lot of it had to do with engineering; trying to create what you imagine. It’s also a medium dictated by any amount of resources you have available to you. If you are a Pharaoh you can build pyramids. If you are a shaman you have two pieces of chalk and a cave and you have to work within that. The most daunting thing we were trying to do, because we were really trying to push the limits in a TV show that was beyond anything we ever saw on television, was to take feature animation, which costs 20 to 30 times that of TV animation costs—and do that for television so that it looks like feature animation. That was a challenge given a very, very restrictive budget and resources. We had to build a studio from scratch and train people from scratch, and develop new techniques. We did make this the way you make a normal animated feature. We are going to rely on editing rather than storyboarding. It completely shifted the paradigm. It made a different kind of animated film. Everybody wants to go to what they know, and to change is really hard and to create something new from scratch with new technology is really hard. Now I am trying to take Star Wars, which is a $50 million dollar-an-hour adventure and do it for $2 million. Now, that’s a trick. CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE INSPIRATION BEHIND THE TWO FEMALE CHARACTERS, ASHOKA AND VENTRESS? I wanted to develop a character that would help Anakin settle down. At the end of Episode II, he was a wild child and he and Obi-Wan don’t get along. The idea was to see how they become friends, how they become partners and how they become a team. One of the ways to do that—when you become mature, you become a teacher. I wanted to make Anakin forced into something where its ‘Now I have to be responsible.’ I have a couple of daughters, so I happen to have some experience in that situation. So I said rather making it another guy, why don’t we make it another girl. Girls are just as hard to deal with as boys when they are teenagers.
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