CAST AND CREW ON… (#137, NOV 2012)
AS SEASON FIVE TAKES THE CLONE WARSTO ALL NEW HEIGHTS. THE TALENT BEHIND THE HIT SERIES GIVE THEIR THOUGHTS ON THE SHOW!
...”Revenge” being an Insider award-winning episode!
Sam Witwer [the voice of Darth Maul]: Darth Maul’s got the Boba Fett factor going for him. He looks cool, and has an attitude that was established in The Phantom Menace.
The big thing for “Revenge” was to describe the cost of what had happened to him—not just physically, but mentally. We also showed the unadulterated dark side of the Force. It isn’t just cool leather suits and red lightsabers. It’s madness, despair, and pain. He’ll get funnier as he goes along, trust me [laughs]
...the darker aspects of the show.
Dave Filoni [supervising director]: There’s stuff that we shoot that does not make it into the show at all. There’s a level where I say, “That’s kind of enough.” I try not to do stuff that goes beyond what you see in the movies. I fully realize that a lot of kids have not seen Revenge of the Sith, nor would you expect them to: It’s a very intense movie.
That clearly illustrates my problem: I’ve got Attack of the Clones on one side, which is the beginning of a downfall, and I’ve got Revenge of the Sith where it’s a complete downfall of the good guys. The Clone Wars is a hard place to be.
We’ve made the villains very powerful and very dangerous, but people are always hungry for the heroes to win. So I want to make sure that we show that they had a lot of victories, but the Jedi didn’t understand that Palpatine was controlling the whole thing. They just missed the one critical thing that could have brought them to victory. I think this season you’ll see that Palpatine’s plan is more perilous than even he thought possible. He has tried to control many futures to make it all happen, but it’s just not that easy to do, and there are many obstacles that could get in his way.
...34 percent of the audience being female.
Ashley Eckstein [the voice of Ahsoka Tano]: I credit Dave and his team for including so many strong female characters. It’s something I hoped would happen. We’ve talked about it all along: In the very beginning, I remember asking, ‘Was Ahsoka created to increase the female audience?”
Filoni: I felt very strongly that if we did another young boy character, it would just be repeating Anakin and Luke. I had a young cousin at the time, and watching her grow up was a big influence on me. I thought it’d be great to get a girl with a lightsaber out there. I think it’s worked out great. Ashley has been a great ambassador for fans. She’s a tiny powerhouse.
...Mark Hamill guest-starring on the show?
Filoni: I wouldn’t ask Mark to do anything on the show until I had something for him that’s really awesome and unique. There have been times when I’ve thought, Well, maybe this could be it, but than I’ve thought, Nah, it’s just not going to have the impact. I want to be able to cast Mark in a way that’s meaningful for him. It’s on my list of things to do. It won’t happen in Season Five, but, hopefully before the show ends, I will be able to get Mark Hamill back into the Star Wars franchise. It will be in a way that is unexpected.
...how the fate of these characters resonates with a new audience
Filoni: All these kids that watch The Clone Wars know Anakin Skywalker really well. When I was a kid and I watched A New Hope, I had no clue. So when Obi-Wan says, “Vader betrayed and murdered your father.” I said, “Oh, wow. That sucks for Luke.”
But if you play A New Hope for kids now, they’re watching our show, and that’s how they find out that their hero Anakin Skywalker dies—it’s that Darth Vader kills him.
...the look of the show
Joel Aron [CG and lighting supervisor]: We don’t light it like animation. Dave Filoni said to me many years ago, “Get it like Frank Miller; get it very graphic, do something different.” Then George came in and had us push it even further. Because of that, I’ve tried to push it even more. The Star Wars films are an influence, but other movies are, too. I’ll see Drive and then I have to use that look.
We see Anakin’s bedroom in Season Five, and I wanted it to be like Elliott’s room from E.T. because Anakin’s room should haw the feeling of a little boy’s room.
We used some of the Mustafar matte paintings from Revenge of the Sith, but we retained that animated edge because George Lucas was very clear with that early on. The shapes have to be hard; the paintwork always has to look like it’s been raked with a fork. Sometimes, when I go through the still frames, I forget which one was a lighting concept and which one was an actual rendering. That’s what we really wanted to achieve.
...what the show means
Filoni: you think of A New Hope and Obi-Wan saying, “For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the keepers of peace and justice in the universe.” I think of that quote and I hear Alec Guinness. Then I look at our show and see these Jedi Knights, these guardians of peace and justice. I never would have imagined when I was a boy that I would be privileged to be a part of telling that story and working with George Lucas. That’s when it connects for me. That’s when I know that I’m playing with heroes who are giants and villains who are treacherous. We’re continuing a storytelling tradition that goes far beyond our show. That’s when you connect to what George was doing in A New Hope, and that’s when you connect to what Joseph Campbell [author of The Hero with a Thousand Faces] always talked about.
...George Lucas’ retirement
Dave Filoni: To us, his retirement means that he has more free time to come and watch the show! I always tell him that I don’t believe he is going to retire. When he stops showing up, then I’ll believe him.
But he’s taught me to make all these decisions without him. He told me when we started that one of the reasons that I’m here is to make sure that when he’s not around, things go the way he wants. And so I think it’s a compliment to myself, my crew, and to the different divisions of Lucasfilm. He feels confident in all of us to say that he can retire. He’s done a great thing for on as a company by bringing in Kathleen Kennedy to take over the reins.
...the future of the show
Filoni: I’ve always said that we’ll keep making the show as long as people are watching. Because of the demands of our production schedule to deliver this high-quality product, we work very far in advance. We have all of Season Five finished, and we’ve been working on the scripts and designs for a sixth season.
