The second round of guests for Star Wars Celebration Chicago includes Joonas Suotamo (Chewbacca 2.0), Sam Witwer (the voice of Darth Maul since The Clone Wars) and Greg Grunberg (Snap Wexley in The Force Awakens).
They’re joined by Greg Proops (voice of TPM’s Fode, Resistance’s Jak Sivrak and Garma), puppeteer Dave Chapman, Paul Kasey (Admiral Raddus in Rogue One, Ello Asty in TFA), Orli Shoshan (Shaak Ti) and Ian McElhinney (General Dodonna in Rogue One).
They’ve also revealed the event’s poster, which is a bit… Crowded. Check it out under the cut.
Ashley Eckstein and Her Universe are launching a special The Clone Wars collection at San Diego Comic-Con. To celebrate the show’s 10th birthday, Eckstein (who voices breakout character Ahsoka Tano) gathered some of her TCW castmates as models.
Some of the clothes are already available online, but they’ll also be for sale at the company’s SDCC booth in the Lucasfilm Pavilion.
‘Twin Suns’ get a slightly longer Rebels Recon than usual, with Andi talking to Carrie Beck, Dave Filoni, Henry Gilroy, Pablo Hidalgo, Keith Kellogg, Kilian Plunkett, Stephen Stanton and Sam Witwer. Filoni also talked to io9 about the episode.
Entertainment Weekly has a clip from next week’s Rebels finale, unmasking the ‘Old Master’ we first saw in the trailer for the second half of S2 as Darth Maul. They also chat with Dave Filoni and Sam Witwer about bringing back (again) the villain, Malachor and Sith temples.
And you thought my con coverage was over! Here’s Randy Stradley, writer of Star Wars: Dark Times, and Douglas Wheatley, artist of Dark Times, discussing the start of the current arc, ‘A Spark Remains’. If you haven’t checked it out yet, Issue #1 came out in July, just before Comic-Con, and the second issue comes out today. While setting the stage for the activity in the first issue of ‘A Spark Remains’ (check out my review of #1 on Big Shiny Robot), the pair kept mum about the future of Jedi Dass Jennir and his friends, as well as other projects being worked on. Bonus: we get photobombed at the very end by a certain Sith voice actor.
There was plenty to behold for the 30th anniversary screening of Return of the Jedi at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood as part of Entertainment Weekly’s first CapeTown Film Festival. Held on Star Wars Day, May the Fourth, the set of four screenings of the no-longer-final installment of the Star Wars saga brought out fans and celebs alike. With Jedi being my favorite Star Wars film, I was stoked to see it again on the big screen – twice! While we’ve already covered the news of Mark Hamill’s appearance after the evening screenings, there’s plenty more to share, including a visit from The Clone Wars cast and more! (Also check out my full photo album on Flickr!)
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?
With ‘The Lawless’ airing last Saturday, the story arc of Darth Maul’s ambitions to become a major player in the galaxy have come to an end. Naturally, with many of the big developments that came out of this story, most notably the deaths of Pre Vizsla, Duchess Satine, and Savage Opress, and Maul being spared by Sidious, there’s a lot to talk about with Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Here’s a rundown of some of the buzz on Darth Maul / Death Watch storyline: Continue reading “Roundup: Wrapping up the Maul/Death Watch story on The Clone Wars“
With some big happenings in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, supervising director Dave Filoni took to the Internet with three cast members to discuss today’s episode, ‘The Lawless’, which concluded the Maul storyline and also preview the final story arc of the season, featuring Anakin and Ahsoka. Hosted by Pablo Hidalgo and Christian Blauvelt, the entire video session from Google hangout (more than 50 minutes) is now available online at Youtube, but here’s some of the key points (trying to keep it free of major spoilers for this episode and ones to come):
Sam Witwer talked quite a bit about Maul’s motivations for his entire story arc – getting from Spider-Maul to how he toys with the bounty hunters in ‘Eminence’ to his role in ‘The Lawless’.
One early scene that was voice recorded but cut out of ‘The Lawless’ before it was animated would have brought Anakin and Ahsoka into the episode.
Ashley Eckstein and Dave Filoni broached the final story arc a bit, with a big appearance of a returning movie character, who is viewed very differently by Ahsoka and Anakin.
We got to see a bunch of concept art, from ‘The Lawless’ and from next week’s ‘Sabotage’ as well as a preview clip of ‘Sabotage’, which introduces a David Caruso-inspired investigator, complete with sunglasses-on-and-off-ness.
Pablo Hidalgo took a couple questions from Twitter for Dave Filoni and the cast to answer, including some about the fate of Echo and Gregor, and the return appearance of Twilight, and the return of the Wolfpack.
Ashley Eckstein shared a great story about her first encounter with Matt Lanter on the set.
Dave Filoni started talking about the machinations against the Jedi – not just in reducing their numbers, but in how Palpatine works to reduce their reputation and influence.
Noticeably not answered: anything specific about season six.
Overall, a lot of fun and I hope that we get more of these types of events with the cast and crew, especially with some of the voice talent of recurring but not main show characters, like Sam Witwer (who gave a great interview with Christian Blauvelt on Hollywood.com).
After a quick intro from Dave Filoni and producer Cary Silver (with Filoni officially accepting 
