Links to the threads on Episode II, Episode III and the 2004 and 2006 editions of Episodes IV, V and VI on DVD, as well as the various rumoured TV series. We don't seem to have a thread on Episode I yet.

See also the threads on 'Star Wars Debate Redux' (Jul 8 - Nov 11, 2003), 'Sci fi = spiritual? Star Wars, X2, etc.' (Apr 12-14, 2004), 'Best Star Wars Movie? (with poll; Apr 18-20, 2004), 'Top 100 Discussion: The Star Wars original trilogy?' (May 6-7, 2004), 'Is Star Wars Blasphemous?' (Jun 15 - Jul 25, 2005), 'Star Wars in 20 minutes' (Aug 8-9, 2006) and 'Star Wars - 30 Year Anniversary' (May 25-27, 2007).

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Free to Follow His Heart Right Back to 'Star Wars'
Using the freedom and the fortune he has amassed largely on the astronomical success of “Star Wars,” Mr. Lucas has accumulated unparalleled creative resources; his next film could be anything from a sweeping epic to one of the intimate personal narratives he has often said he would like to make. Instead his next two ventures will be “Star Wars” projects, no less ambitious than his previous films yet potentially less commercial. And they come at a time when even the “Star Wars” faithful wonder if Mr. Lucas’s continued mining of this fantasy world has anything more to yield. . . .
It is also exceedingly likely that “The Clone Wars” will be the lowest-grossing “Star Wars” movie ever; Mr. Lucas said he would be satisfied if the film made $100 million domestically. (“Revenge of the Sith,” by comparison, grossed $380 million.) . . .
New York Times, June 29

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Uh, does anyone think this movie has even a ghost of a chance of making anything NEAR that much?

George Lucas: Mr Emperor strikes back
“I am the father of our Star Wars movie world - the filmed entertainment, the features and now the animated film and television series,” he says. “And I’m going to do a live-action television series. Those are all things I am very involved in: I set them up and I train the people and I go through them all. I’m the father; that’s my work. Then we have the licensing group, which does the games, toys and books, and all that other stuff. I call that the son - and the son does pretty much what he wants.” He laughs. “Once in a while, they ask a question like ‘Can we kill off Yoda?’, things like that, but it’s very loose.
“Then we have the third group, the holy ghost, which is the bloggers and fans. They have created their own world. I worry about the father’s world. The son and holy ghost can go their own way.”
Sunday Times, July 27

Absolutely not. In fact, I almost feel unfaithful watching the trailer - like I've betrayed an old lover.

Denny

I'd actually be surprised if Clone Wars opens higher than third place for the August 15th weekend. I'm pretty sure Tropic Thunder will pull in a bigger audience, and Keifer Sutherlands Mirrors has a chance of placing second. I hope Lucas is satified with a 50 to 60 million dollar haul over the entire run (not counting foreign sales).

Don't underestimate the power of the For... I mean, the power of the Lucas marketing machine. I think this movie has at least a shot at #1, especially since it will draw the family crowd against those other two R-rated movies.

According to this glowing review, it's better than at least two of the prequel movies. That's not saying much, I know, but this reviewer seems to understand what made the prequels so bad, and much of that is missing from The Clone Wars.
http://www.sfx.co.uk/page/sfx?entry=film_r...w_star_wars_the

morgan1098 wrote:
: Don't underestimate the power of the For... I mean, the power of the Lucas marketing machine. I think this movie has at least a shot at #1, especially since it will draw the family crowd against those other two R-rated movies.

Perhaps, but August seems to be the month for R-rated comedies like Tropic Thunder (and The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and Superbad, etc.), which has been getting a lot of good buzz for months. The "family" crowd is generally catered to at the BEGINNING of the summer, when school is newly out, and by the time you get to mid-August, families are generally getting into back-to-school mode, no?

Good point, and I do agree, but I think there's still a chance that Tropic Thunder and Mirrors will steal a bit of audience share from one another while The Clone Wars will have an entirely different demographic to itself... even if much of that demographic will have to wait until after school or Saturday to see the movie.

Saw it this morning, so I can confirm this report regarding how the new film begins NOT with the familiar opening crawl, but with a sort of '40s-style newsreel. (Well, the "newsreel" effect is really all there in the voice-over, not so much in the visuals. The Star Wars films have never really established whether they even HAVE movies or television in this universe, have they?)

Harry... um... what's the most polite way to say this?... dislikes it.

I haven't read Harry's review yet, but I will say this:

The story revolves around Count Dooku's plan to kidnap Jabba the Hutt's baby boy and frame the Jedi for the evil deed (just as Count Dooku is taking the blame for the Separatist movement when he is really in cahoots with Chancellor Palpatine ... wheels within wheels ... ). And both the Galactic Republic and the Jedi need to help Jabba rescue his boy because they need access to the region of space controlled by the Hutts in order to fight their war against Dooku and the Separatists. Got all that?

So here's what the story boils down to: Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker doing everything they can to save Jabba's son.

If they fail, then mini-Jabba dies and the Jedi lose and the Galactic Republic loses and so on and so on. (But, um, wait, we know they're all going to lose in Episode III anyway!)

If they win, then mini-Jabba lives ... only to see Anakin's son kill his daddy in Episode VI. (Not that we ever see Jabba's son there, but still.)

Really, is anyone in the audience going to be itching for EITHER of these outcomes to win out in the end?

Well, this sounds about as compelling as the Ewok adventures.

Baal_T'shuvah wrote:
: Well, this sounds about as compelling as the Ewok adventures.

And you haven't seen Jabba's uncle yet! My colleagues were debating after the movie whether the uncle Hutt was more reminiscent of Dame Edna or Truman Capote ...

This morning, I was surprised at how much I was looking forward to this movie.

This evening, I'm not sure you could pay me to waste time on it.

That AICN review isn't actually by Harry, but by one of his lackeys, Massa-something-or-other. That said, yes, he really hated, hated, hated this movie. And like Jeffrey, I have gone from being mildly excited about this film to really not caring much at all.

My "taking a long lunch break from work" money this week will go to Tropic Thunder instead.

Seriously, the more I think about it, the more I wonder how any Clone Wars series could work, really. (No, I did not see the 2-D animated series that was produced between Episodes II and III.) I mean, really. Who are the good guys? Well, they're dupes working for the bad guys. And who are the bad guys? Well, they're the bad guys. (Will George Lucas ever dramatize what he was hinting at in the opening crawl to Episode III, when he said that "there are heroes on both sides"? I doubt it, but you never know. So far, everybody on the Dooku/Separatist side is either a top-level schemer or a robot. No real room for "heroes" there, yet.)

If Lucas was planning some sort of thoughtful rumination on the meaning of life, the universe, and everything, I could buy a story set within this fatalistic context. Indeed, in their better moments, the prequels achieved just this sort of significance.

But if all of the Clone Wars TV episodes are going to resolve around simple dilemma-and-resolution storylines -- and again, I have not yet seen the earlier series, so for all I know maybe there IS more to the franchise than this -- then I imagine they're going to ring pretty hollow pretty fast, since we know that NONE of these resolutions will matter in the end (or, worse, that they will just set up more unfortunate ironies down the road).

And none of what I've said here, BTW, is intended as a critique of this particular film. I'm just commenting on the PREMISE of the whole series.

The Lord of the Light Side
George Lucas May Be a Cinematic Force, But Is He a Dramatic Heavyweight? Far, Far From It.
By Ann Hornaday

He may go down in history as American cinema's master mythmaker, but George Lucas still can't tell a story.

Three years after concluding the epochal "Star Wars" franchise and very publicly retreating to his sprawling Skywalker Ranch in Marin County, Calif., to make "my own little movies," Lucas has reverted to form. Earlier this summer, he produced and co-wrote yet another installment of the lucrative but creatively exhausted "Indiana Jones" adventure series. Friday marks the release of "Star Wars: The Clone Wars," an animated spinoff that Lucas executive produced and that looks like precisely what it is: a television show that has been puffed up into a feature-length advertisement for itself.

morgan1098 wrote:
: That AICN review isn't actually by Harry, but by one of his lackeys, Massa-something-or-other.

The truth is even stranger. As per Jeffrey Wells:

Aint It Cool's Massawyrm hates, loathes and despises Star Wars: The Clone Wars as much as Harry Knowles does, except Harry took his review down last night after Lucasfilm insisted that embargo review dates be respected. So if AICN is temporarily pulling its Clone punches, why is Massawyrm ripping it to pieces?

I wondered why Harry's review wasn't there when I looked for it last night.

And yet the reviews by Variety and the Hollywood Reporter are already online. Hmmm.

Wow! Now I really want to read Harry's review. My apologies for doubting Mr. Overstreet when he said the review was by Harry Knowles. Alas, it was already gone when I got there and instead I read Massa-wassa's review.

EDIT: Jeffrey Wells has a link to another site that has the text of Harry's review, at least as of this writing:

http://www.hollywood-newsroom.com/news/har...n-by-lucasfilm/

The fact that Jabba the Hutt's son is the catalyst for the film's plot speaks to everything that is wrong with the "extended Star Wars universe". Jabba was a great background character, sure. One of my earliest cinematic memories is watching the old Return of the Jedi VHS and cowering behind the couch, terrified of Jabba and his Rancor.

Yet his role in the Star Wars universe was never supposed to be that central. And giving him all this backstory is ridiculous. Tatooine is a back water planet, part of what young Anakin calls "the outer rim" in Episode 1; a place so unimportant, it seems, that two wanted droids are able to land an escape pod there to hide from the Empire.

How could anything involving the Hutts be remotely important as far as the Clone Wars are concerned?

Part of the problem with the prequels (and now Clone Wars) is that Lucas doesn't really have a compelling story to center them on, so he had to populate them with all of these familiar classic characters in order to push our "nostalgia" buttons. I seem to remember an interview with Lucas prior to Episode I going into production in which he vowed that very few characters from the original trilogy would appear in the prequels. Instead we got Yoda, Chewbacca, Jabba, and many more, and we even learn that C-3PO was built by Darth Vader himself. Oh boy.

Jeff wrote:
: How could anything involving the Hutts be remotely important as far as the Clone Wars are concerned?

Well, apparently the Hutts control a sector of space that the Galactic Republic needs access to if they are going to be able to fight the Separatists. So they have to get on the Hutts' good side.

But yeah, it's a little weird seeing Jabba engage in direct holographic communications with Chancellor Palpatine and members of the Jedi Council. That's about as likely as, I dunno, Don Corleone making a speech and begging for help from the United Nations Security Council.

Then again, FWIW, this business of the "outer rim" becoming more important within the franchise than it really ought to be was already there in the prequels, really. Naboo is basically Tatooine's next-door neighbour, yet we are supposed to believe that [1] a big war could start there, over the taxation of trade routes, and [2] a native of this "outer rim" planet, namely Palpatine, could somehow vault himself into the Chancellorship of the entire galaxy.

Is Zero the Hutt The First Gay Alien In ‘Star Wars’ History?
Ok, let’s be straight for a second: Jabba’s uncle, Zero the Hutt, a new character introduced specifically for the upcoming animated series, is a gay stereotype that makes what Jar Jar Binks represented to the island of Jamaica look subtle by comparison. It’s not the look or design that pushes it over the top into stereotype, of course, but the voice (performed by Corey Burden), a lispy, high-pitched twang purposively reminiscent of Truman Capote.
So how did a character who wasn’t even supposed to speak English wind up sounding like that? Because George Lucas insisted on it, “Clone Wars” director Dave Filoni confessed.
“Zero, Jabba’s uncle, originally spoke in Hutt-ese, like Jabba and then he had a different sluggish voice just like Jabba, and then George one day was watching it and said ‘I want him to sound like Truman Capote.’ He actually said that and we were like ‘Wow!’” Filion revealed. “It’s a hybrid of it but the inspiration is definitely there on Capote. It’s one of those things that takes him from being an interesting character and I think really does put him over the top and does something. He’s a favorite among the crew here.”
MTV Movies Blog, August 12

FWIW, as I said at my blog last night, I don't necessarily think Zero the Hutt is this franchise's first, um, sexually ambiguous character. Chef Gormaanda -- the cooking-show hostess played by Harvey Korman in The Star Wars Holiday Special -- comes to mind. And then there is always C-3PO, I guess, but I'd rather not perpetuate any stereotypes about the English.

I'm pretty sure there have been some characters in the Star Wars novels that have had non-heterosexual relationships or interests; I know the books aren't part of the movie franchise, but they're definitely considered canon by Lucas.

(By the way, this movie looks capital b Bad.)

Ebert's 1 1/2 star review opens with the question, "Has it come to this?"

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.d...VIEWS/808140301

Scott Van Doviak:

Just to let you know that I’m not a complete curmudgeon, there is one part of The Clone Wars I sort of enjoyed. It was a brief interlude in the seedy side of the Star Wars universe (which we haven’t seen much since the cantina sequence from the original movie) involving Jabba’s uncle, Ziro the Hutt. For whatever inexplicable reason, Ziro is a hookah-smoking drag queen who sounds like Truman Capote on a Bourbon Street bender. If Lucas came up with this, I can only imagine he’s gotten so bored with his own creation that he finally snapped. If that’s the case, maybe I’ll check out the cartoon series after all.

BTW, I can't quite agree with anyone who complains that the performances by the CGI characters in this film are "wooden", since, um, well, for starters, I think the Anakin of this movie is more engaging than the Anakin of the prequels.

Roger Ebert was highly critical of the "cheap" looking animation, but the look of the characters has to be a stylistic decision, right? Lucas isn't one to cut corners.

morgan1098 wrote:
: Lucas isn't one to cut corners.

I dunno, he always complained that The Empire Strikes Back went over-budget, and said something along the lines of, "It didn't have to be THAT good."

He has also talked about the budgetary restrictions of doing a TV show, as opposed to a movie, and said that it would have been too expensive to bring back most of the original actors to do the voices in this series. That's partly why Samuel L. Jackson, Christopher Lee and, um, one other actor are the only ones who participated in this movie.

And then there is the music, which is not by John Williams but was arranged/composed by someone else, and instead of being performed by the London Symphony Orchestra it is performed by some cheaper symphony in Prague, and it sounds like it.

Vader love triangle? New chemistry in 'Clone Wars'
Darth Vader: Sith lord, murderous imperialist, deadbeat dad ... dirty old man?
The latest entry into the "Star Wars" canon features a new, female character whose charms are not lost on Anakin Skywalker, the Jedi general on the brink of becoming the baddest bad guy the galaxy has ever known.
Ahsoka Tano -- who easily out-toughs even Princess Leia in her prime -- is smart, sassy and skilled with a light saber. And despite that she's merely a teen 'toon, Ahsoka kicks up more chemistry in a few scenes with the animated Vader-in-waiting than the real-life Natalie Portman could muster over three whole films.
Associated Press, August 18

I went to see this with my son this weekend. He's 7. He was completely bored. We've watched the six Star Wars movies together, and he was mildly interested throughout. My son mostly engaged during the battle sequences, but with the short-term awe of a good video game or fireworks display.

Watching the prequels, I wanted to like them so much that I suspended both disbelief and disinterest. I wouldn't defend them to friends who would criticize, but I wouldn't join in. The original movies meant something to me. I felt if I said anything negative I would be betraying my childhood and my parents. Star Wars was their spectacle, their fantastic vision of the future, the one they taught me. It's the one I bought in to. I remember holding my breath during lightsaber duels.

I can't let myself be disappointed about the new SW universe, so I tried to sell the good points of the film to my son: "Those Jedi were awesome, huh?" My son replied, "I like the part when the robot said, 'Yes, sir, I mean ma'am, uh, sir." He was grinning at the thin humor, but he wasn't buying in to any new vision.

eyelamp wrote:
: I felt if I said anything negative I would be betraying my childhood and my parents.

'Sokay. It is Lucas, not you, who has betrayed your childhood.

I think this guy over at The Movie Blog has summed up many fans feelings with this obituary... RIP Star Wars Obsession: 1977 - 2008

Here is my review. I state in part:



Denny