Tartakovsky's Clone Wars

"Clone Wars"

2003 - 2005

In the years between “Attack of the Clones” release  and the released of “Revenge of the Sith”, Lucasfilm launched a multi-media project called “Clone Wars”. This project was meant to fill in the gaps between the two films through a variety of novels, comics, toys, and videogames. A series of cartoon shorts was also produced called "Clone Wars". Though these shorts were originally meant to serve as little more than commercials for other Clone Wars products, the impact of the series turned out to be much greater than expected. In fact “Clone Wars” is sometimes seen as one of the strongest Star Wars projects ever produced.

An incredible duel between Anakin & Asajj

Not to be confused with the current computer-generated “The Clone Wars”  (Currently airing on cartoon network), the “Clone Wars” cartoon that premiered in 2003 was rendered in 2-D (traditional animation).  The series was produced and directed by Genndy Tartakovsky, who created shows such as “Dexter’s Laboratory” and “Samurai Jack”. Genndy pitched “Clone Wars” as the “Band of Brothers” of Star Wars, which is the exact feeling I got while watching this series.

Kenobi fights Durj, a dangerous bounty hunter

“Clone Wars” Season 1 and 2 were released as 3 – 7 minute shorts that aired on Cartoon Network in the fall of 2003 and the spring of 2004. Each short follows a different Jedi into battle. Episodes focus on Yoda, Obi-wan, Anakin, Mace Windu, Kit Fisto, Ki-Adi-Mundi and Luminara Unduli. Villains focused on in the series include Asajj Ventress, Count Dooku, Durj, and General Grevious.

Kit Fisto on an underwater siege

The series is action packed, with little dialogue. It’s pacing is captivating and gives the feeling of being in a war zone. Characters are stronger here than they are in the prequel films and it is no surprise that the series is held in higher regard than the prequels themselves. 

Windu in a hopeless situation

The first 20 episodes of the series combined only add up to about 70 minutes of material and have been edited into a short film sold as “Clone Wars: Volume One”. It is not a surprise that this series won two Emmy awards for Best Animated Program.

Season 3 of “Clone Wars” was given a slight format change. This time five episodes were produced at 12 – 15 minutes each. Season 3 has more dialogue and the humor is a bit more child-like. However it is still a marvelous show and some scenes even sent chills down my spine.

Anakin at his darkest

Season 3 was released only weeks before Episode III and it goes a long way in preparing audiences for film. The cartoon shows Anakin becoming a Jedi Knight and explains why his golden arm was lost. It introduces the audience to General Grievous and explains why Grievous was coughing throughout “Revenge of the Sith”. It also shows the General kidnapping Palpatine which leads the audience right Episode III. Season 3 has also been edited together into “Clone Wars: Volume Two” and has a running length of about an hour.

Grievous is dangerous and frightening in "Clone Wars"

Overall these cartoon shorts are nothing short of a marvel. Battles are intense and there are violent scenes that could only be pulled off by 2D animation. In fact, it if this were live action it might have an R rating. Grievous slices through clone troopers like butter. Anakin crushes the skulls of trade-federation bosses with the force. This is the peak of traditional animation and it is sad that we may never see anything like it again. 


I think it is safe to say that this is Star Wars at its best and is probably the best Star Wars television series ever produced. This series is clear evidence of what Star Wars can be when taken out of the hands of Lucas and put into the hands of a visionary such as Genndy Tartakovsky. (It's not that Lucas isn’t a genius, it’s that his ability to write and direct a good story disappeared sometime in the early 80s).  I would urge any to take a look at this brilliant series. It is certainly worth the watch and you won’t be disappointed.

Episode II - The Clone War

           “The Clone War” is a 2004 fan-edit of Episode II created by “Magnoliafan” (Who some believe to be Kevin Smith based on the use of the name Magnolifan in the film Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back.) It is a sequel to “Balance of the Force” which was a re-edit of "The Phantom Menace". Magnoliafan has, once again, made some big changes to the basic plot of the prequels.

Among the most major changes is the nature of Count Dooku and the separatists. The opening crawl has been altered to use the word “rebellion” when referring to the separatists, implying that the separatists may be the beginning of the rebels that we see in Episodes IV – VI. Subtitles have been changed later in the filmand now characters actually refer to the separatists as the “Rebel Alliance”.

If this doesn’t make things morally ambiguous enough, Magnoliafan takes things one step further with Count Dooku’s character. In this film, Dooku is still the leader of the separatists, but not a Sith Lord.  Scenes in which he interacts with Sideous have been eliminated and he now fights with a yellow lightsaber instead of a red one. Viewers can really believe what he is saying he says Qui-Gon could be sympathetic to his cause. In fact, it is now entirely unclear if the Jedi are fighting on the right side in this galactic war.

Does Dooku's character work better if he is the "Father of the Rebellion" rather than a Sith Lord?

As with “Balance of the Force” annoying characters such as Jar Jar & the Nemodians no longer speak with racist accents, but in alien tongues. Again, deleted scenes have been re-edited into the film the majority of which include Padme’s parents, sister, and nieces. These scenes seem pointless until you realize that they have taken the place of some heavily mushy scenes involving Anaking & Padme rolling in meadows.

The Naberrie family enjoys a meal with Anakin & Padme

The entire film in general has been streamlined so that characters are less annoying. Anakin is a little more subtle in some places. Young Boba Fett no longer  has a stupid sinister laugh.  The librarian, Jocasta Nu has been eliminated entirely. Yet at the end of the film one might feel that Magnoliafan did not go far enough.

Another tongue-in-cheek dialogue change

The film still weighs heavily on a fan-boy’s heart. The plotline in which 3-P0’s head is switched with a battledroids is still present and only one of his needless puns have been altered. many love scenes with Anakin and Padme have been removed but the ones left over are still painful. No amount of editing could ever make their relationship believable. Anakin's immature whininess has been trimmed but enough of it remains so that the viewer can still be sure that Padme would never actually be into him.

Jar-Jar aside, was this not the worst part about the prequels?

In the end “The Clone War” is actually a brilliant edit of “Episode II”, but it seems that even a brilliant edit can’t save this film. Perhaps it was doomed the minute George Lucas set eyes on Hayden Christianson. Maybe that’s was the true love story behind Episode II. 

The Making of "Attack of the Clones"

“General Kenobi, Years ago, you served my father in the Clone Wars; now he begs you to help him in his struggle against the Empire.” ~Leia Organa

The Clone Wars were first mentioned in the original Star Wars, so when the prequels came out, fans expected to see them. It wasn’t immediately clear to every fan that the “Clone Wars”  involved actual clones, because we had never seen any characters in the original trilogy or "Phantom Menace" that were clones. There were stormtrooopers, but we never saw under their helmets and their voices were different. However, if you dive into abandoned Star Wars scripts, it is obvious that Lucas had always toyed with the idea of bringing cloning into the films.

Empire Strikes Back concept art

In the original draft of Empire Strikes back, for instance, Lando Calirissian is a clone. He can trace his clone heritage back five generations. Another interesting element in this draft are the native inhabitants of cloud city. They are described as tall, white-skinned creatures that ride on manta rays and use darts as weapons. These elements would later be recycled and used in “Attack of the Clones” as the basis for the inhabitants of Kamino.

In the end Lucas decided that the human template for the clones in his film would be Jango Fett (father of Boba Fett).The name of this character changes from draft to draft, sometimes it is J’mee and sometimes Ambu, but eventually Jango was the name Lucas chose. It is reminiscent of the 1966 Spaghetti Western “Django” (which was also the inspiration for Tarantino’s “Djano Unchained”)

Jango is played by New Zealander, Temuera Morrison. Because principal photography took place in 20^th Century Fox studios in Australia, basically any new character in the film is portrayed by Australian or New Zealand actors. This includes Jango Fett, Boba Fett, the Kaminoians, Zam Wessel, and the entire Lars family.

         

It's all Obi-Wan's fault! He's jealous! He's holding me back!

  One newcomer who doesn’t happen to be from Downunder is Hayden Christianson, who was cast to play Anakin Skywalker (age 19). Though over 1,500 other actors auditioned for the part (including Leo DiCaprio & Ryan Phillipe), Hayden was selected for his chemistry with actress Natalie Portman (apparently Lucas sees something the rest of us do not).

            Another actor added to the cast was film legend Christopher Lee. The character of Count Dooku seems to have been tailor-made for Lee, who became famous for his portrayal of Dracula in several films from the 50s through the 70s. Lee also holds the world record for the most swordfights in films, so it is fitting that his climactic scene in ‘Clones’ included a light saber duel with Jedi master Yoda. Although Lee was almost 80 at the time, he was able to do many of the scenes on his own, with a stunt actor hired for the more intensive work.

Yoda also had to perform his own stunts for the film and therefore could no longer be portrayed by a puppet. For the first time Yoda would be computer generated and the CG version looks much closer to the original trilogy puppet than it does to the botched Phantom Menace puppet.

Another Jedi who saw more action during this film is Mace Windu, played by Samuel L. Jackson. Since Windu would use a lightsaber in “Clones”, Jackson wanted his lightsaber to be different than the other Jedi. It was Jackson who requested that his saber be purple and Lucas agreed. There is also a rumor that Jackson had “B.A.M.F.” engraved into the hilt (if you don’t know what B.A.M.F. stands for, refer to the wallet scene in "Pulp Fiction").

Well, this is awkward...

In the end, “Attack of the Clones” serves as a much better Star Wars film than its prequel predecessor.  It is full of interesting characters, strange alien planets, bounty hunters, and light saber duels with actual dialogue between the actors. Sure, the romance between Anakin & Padme is uncomfortable and horribly written, but fans can look past that. If the film achieves nothing else, it gives Star Wars fans a glimpse of what the “Clone Wars” were and how they laid the seeds for the Evil Galactic Empire. Maybe that’s a romantic idea in and of itself.

Next Time on "Road to Episode VII":

We take a look at "Clone War"

Magnoliafan's fan-edit of Episode II!

The New Jedi Order

The first book of the NJO

In the fall of 1999, only months after the Phantom Menace released (largely criticized for being too kid-oriented) the Star Wars expanded universe launched a book series that would take Star Wars to darker places than it had ever been before. If the Star Wars prequels let fans down, then the New Jedi Order was the antidote for that disappointment.

The nineteen-book series ran from 1999 – 2003 and starts 21 years after Return of the Jedi. It was the furthest into the future any Star Wars project had yet explored. The story focuses on an invasion of the Star Wars galaxy by an alien race called the Yuuzhan Vong. 

The Yuuzhan Vong are not from the galaxy and cannot be sensed through The Force. The Vong are ultra-religious and shun any form of technology that is not organic. They embrace pain and even scar and disfigure themselves to add to their social status.

Among the weapons used by the Vong are amphistaffs, living snake-like staffs that can be used as a spear or a whip. They wear crab-like armor that blasters and lightsabers fail to penetrate. Even their space-fairing vessels are made of living coral.

Vong with Amphistaffs

 It doesn’t take the Yuuzhan Vong long to start occupying and destroying the planets of the galaxy and the New Rupublic and New Jedi Order struggle to defend themselves from the new threat.

Jaina, Luke, & Jacen surrounded

Among the major defenders of the galaxy are the Solo children; The elder twins, Jaina & Jacen, who both flirt with the dark side in these novels and the youngest son, Anakin, named after his grandfather.

         The New Jedi Order was criticized, by some, for being too dark. Without giving too much more away, some bad shit goes down for a lot of characters. The New Jedi order was the first piece of the EU to start killing off main characters and they start off in a big way. 

Even if you have not read the New Jedi Order books, you probably know that they kill Chewbacca off in the first act. Though this is a huge spoiler for the first book, I don’t consider it to be a huge spoiler because it’s been 15 years and if you haven’t read the books by now, maybe that fact will draw you in to reading them.

It will be interesting to see how the writers of Episode VII handle the expanded universe, especially this fact. Do you ignore that Chewie dies and just bring him back to life? Do you just reference his death and expect film fans to go back and read these 19 books (plus the other 300 books in the EU) to catch up?

Regardless of its effects on the Star Wars universe, The New Jedi Order achieves at least three things that the prequels do not.

1. Advancing the Star Wars universe into new, unpredictable territory

2. Giving the fans a dark narrative with adult themes

3. Bringing out a new, deadly enemy with enough depth to be feared and intriguing at the same time.

Luke & Mara

The New Jedi Order books are written by some of the top Science Fiction & Fantasy writers out there including R.A. Salvatore, Michael Stackpole, James Luceno, & Aaron Allston. So if you haven’t read them yet, don’t waste any more time.