Star Wars with occasional sarcasm
Monday’s announcement that Lucasfilm was taking its animation division in a new direction, focusing on exploring a new series while bringing a graceful end for Star Wars: The Clone Wars and a hard stop for Detours, brought out a lot of mixed feelings from fans. Many, like Stooge and me, were sad and angry to see The Clone Wars get shut down at its peak. I’ve rounded up reactions from the voice cast of the show, as well as from bloggers and entertainment reporters.
More info has been leaking out about Star Wars: First Assault, a multiplayer shooter that was likely a predecessor to Battlefront III, but is now in possible limbo, much like 1313.
First spotted last October, though never officially announced, the game was meant to prove there was a market for a new Star Wars shooter, and be the engine for a potential Battlefront III according to Kotaku earlier this week, though the Disney acquisition of Lucasfilm seems to have put its release into question.
Now Kotaku has some additional screenshots of Cloud City and Tatooine, and also some video, including some gameplay footage and a promo teaser, made back in last part of 2012.
Are these leaks intentional to gauge potential interest in such a product? Or is this another glimpse at stuff that could have been…
The LEGOLAND Discovery Center Chicago opened up a new Star Wars miniland this weekend, and it is all The Phantom Menace. Located in the Chicago suburb of Schaumburg, the LEGOLAND Discovery Center is exhibiting three interactive dioramas showing off scenes from the first prequel film:
The new set of Star Wars dioramas, a first for a U.S. LEGOLAND Discovery Center, is made with over 500,000 LEGO bricks and 2,000 mini figures. Additionally, the Chicago skyline diorama will also celebrate the opening by including Star Wars minifigures and other references in its display. The new miniland opened to the public this past weekend with a series of grand opening weekend festivities. One blogger reports their ‘preview night’ experience with lots of photos.
Unlike the miniland dioramas at LEGOLAND California (which previously announced some minor updates for this summer) which assemble characters in a blocky 4-6 inch height scale, these dioramas are at the scale of the regular LEGO mini-figures, so you’ll see your favorite LEGO figures from The Phantom Menace in the exhibit (including a hugely populated podrace arena grandstand).
This is the first Star Wars miniland at any of the indoor LEGOLAND Discovery Centers in North America. The Manchester UK Discovery Center was the first to receive the Episode I miniland, though only from February through June, and there are some hints that the Chicago installation may be temporary as well.
Yesterday’s announcement that Lucasfilm Animation will be wrapping up The Clone Wars with some bonus content but not a full sixth season, while preparing for a new series was not a big surprise, but it was still a sad piece of news for me and other fans of the show.
Stooge and I are both big fans and have a lot of thoughts and feelings about The Clone Wars and its winding down. So I asked Stooge to share his opinion and I’m tacking on my own reaction to this all, using Stooge’s points as a start. Continue reading “Disturbance in the Force: Reacting to the end of The Clone Wars“
It’s been almost a week since the season five finale of The Clone Wars, and there’s still a lot to talk about! You’ve probably already gotten my take on what transpired in those last few episodes (or last few minutes of the last episode, ‘The Wrong Jedi’), but there’s a lot of other good news and discussion out there, and I’ve picked out some of the best here. Again, here be spoilers.
Continue reading “Clone Wars roundup: S5 finale ‘The Wrong Jedi’”
After seeing the The Clone Wars finale at Lucasfilm, and then watching ‘The Wrong Jedi’ again at home, there’s certainly a lot to talk about regarding what happened in that final episode of the season, especially with Ahsoka. This article will move into spoiler realms after the next picture, so go watch the episode if you haven’t done so already.
Also, Ashley Eckstein and Dave Filoni go behind the scenes with ‘The Wrong Jedi’ in the behind the scenes commentary. For more insight on the episode (and the whole finale arc), check out the Question and Answers segment from the Lucasfilm screening with Dave Filoni, Ashley Eckstein and Matt Lanter, recorded by Bryan Young for the Full of Sith podcast, episode XII (If you just want to skip to the Q&A, it starts around 35:10).
Spoilers from here on out! (including the comments)
Continue reading “The Clone Wars S5 finale: Whose fault is Ahsoka’s fate?”
Ahsoka Tano goes on trial as the perpetrator of the Jedi Temple bombing in the final episode of Season Five of Star Wars: The Clone Wars on Saturday morning. ‘The Wrong Jedi’ is an amazing episode, with some big things happening so catch it as soon as possible to avoid spoilers!
In the preview above, Ahsoka faces questioning from the Jedi Council, while in the second preview (below), Anakin Skywalker tracks down Asajj Ventress in the Coruscant underworld for some answers. And there’s another tooka! Find out more what is in store for The Clone Wars with a twitter chat today with Ashley Eckstein, hosted by Christan Blauvelt at Hollywood.com. Continue reading “The Clone Wars: Ahsoka is ‘The Wrong Jedi’ – but is there a right one?”
Chancellor Palpatine returns to The Clone Wars in the final episode of the season with Tim Curry taking the role over after the passing of Ian Abercrombie. Bryan at Big Shiny Robot has the scoop on how Dave Filoni selected Tim Curry and has an exclusive preview clip that has Palpatine presiding over the trial of Ahsoka Tano, with Admiral Tarkin as prosecutor, and Padme as defense counsel. Apparently, there aren’t any trial lawyers in The Clone Wars.
Tim Curry is probably known best for his role of Dr. Frank-N-Furter from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, but has been doing a lot of voice work in the past twenty years, including on The Wild Thornberrys and Young Justice.
The info was first revealed at the Lucasfilm screening of the season five finale last Friday, but was one of those secrets asked to be kept. We’ll have more tidbits from the screening Q&A after ‘The Wrong Jedi’ airs on Saturday, wrapping up the finale story arc.
On Friday night, Lucasfilm hosted a screening of the final season five arc of Star Wars: The Clone Wars for fans and the crew of the show and their families at their main campus in San Francisco. Combining the last four episodes (including the premiere of ‘To Catch a Jedi’ and ‘The Wrong Jedi’), the audience was treated to a special presentation of the story, and was followed up with a question and answer session with Dave Filoni, Ashley Eckstein and Matt Lanter, moderated by Pablo Hidalgo. Also in attendance were Sam Witwer, the voice of Darth Maul; and Charles Murray, who wrote the story arc.
After a quick intro from Dave Filoni and producer Cary Silver (with Filoni officially accepting Bonnie Burton into the 104th Wolf Pack), they got the show started. Similar to other screenings where they have shown an entire story arc, this version included some extra scenes that didn’t fit into the original episodes, and perhaps also helped to tie the whole story arc together. As a bonus treat, Dave announced that the opening had been made for the screening: which was having The Clone Wars logo enter with the Star Wars theme music as if it were a Star Wars movie. Also, classic Star Wars wipes were used between several scenes that I hadn’t noticed before.
My spoiler-free review of the episodes: Holy cow! This is some of the best this show has ever done – with story, with animation and sound, everything. There is really something to seeing this show on a big screen that makes it so much better than watching it on a TV. But even without the Lucasfilm theater experience, this story will blow you away. We’ve already seen a fantastic scene with Anakin Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano at the end of ‘The Jedi Who Knew Too Much’, where their relationship changes with Ahsoka asking her master to trust her as she leaps into the maw of Coruscant. That’s just the start of some great character bits, with Matt Lanter and Ashley Eckstein (and several others) bringing the characters to life in a powerful way. And there’s some awesome action. And some stuff I didn’t expect at all. I’m sure there’s only so many ways I can say that this is amazing, but it truly is.
Before the Q&A started, Pablo answered two important questions that might have been on people’s minds: No, they weren’t going to take any questions on Episode VII or other non-TCW topics, and there is no official announcement yet on if/when/how Season Six (and later seasons) will be broadcast or otherwise enjoyed by the public.
The Q&A obviously covered a lot of the key stuff from the story arc, so I won’t talk about it until after all the episodes have aired. If you’re looking for hints for what happens, go back to see my write-ups from the USO screening for some of the questions and answers from that – part I and part II. If you want something not spoilery, Dave Filoni talked about the influence of his pets on the show, and when asked if he got a motion picture budget to make a Clone Wars movie, he’d spend most of it on hockey pants or crew jackets with rocket packs. This screening was Matt Lanter’s first time seeing the completed episodes, and he was pretty amazed by the final results on screen.
Thanks to Lucasfilm for hosting such a fantastic event. After seeing this screening and the USO screening, I really believe that The Clone Wars is best seen on the big screen, and LFL should keep that in mind for the fans, and fans should seek out any opportunity to watch it cinematically – like at the next Celebration they attend?
The hunt for Padawan Ahsoka Tano continues on this week’s episode of Star Wars: The Clone Wars: ‘To Catch a Jedi’. With Tarkin convincing the Jedi Council that Ahsoka is behind the Temple bombing and the killing of several clonetroopers, the Jedi are conflicted – some like Anakin and Barriss Offee believe in her innocence and try to help her, while others, like Plo Koon, are dispatched to bring her in for justice. In the clip above, Tarkin makes his case to Yoda and the Jedi Council. And in the clip below, we get another fun staple of The Fugitive – the chase aboard public transit: Temple Guards (or transit cops?) try to catch Ahsoka aboard an elevated hovertrain.
Continue reading “The Clone Wars: Ahsoka on the wrong side of the law in ‘To Catch a Jedi’”