Just wondering, will the opening line “It is the early days of the Clone Wars” be changed at some point through the series? It’s only three years and Anakin’s had time to fight a while, get knighted, and grow his hair out.
Yes, starting in the very next episode, which begins my (production) season 02. So roughly every six episodes, that first line will change. My intention is that taken as a whole, you have that slow-rolling update of where the war is at, then within each episode you follow that first line with a bit more context on what’s happening in the war that’s relevant to that episode, then you get more custom detail. So it’s always kind of framed within this developing war, and you have a bit more of a sense of the ebb and flow.
Oh and one other thing about the last episode I know I would have commented on, even though it should it impact any of your decisions, is that Obi-Wan calls R2 by name. Just because of my history. There’s no good way to reconcile it with ANH. lol
Yeah, I’m afraid that viewers of TCW (and TCW:R) are going to have to live with the fact that Obi-Wan and Yoda both knew R2-D2 well enough to recognise him in the Original Trilogy, and vice versa. I understand of course why people would prefer to allow the OT’s canon win out in conflicts like this, and I appreciate that it takes a little of the magic away from the OT. (R2-D2 was actually WITH Yoda when Yoda first visited Dagobah…)
It’s a shame, but I think the audience need to bend on this one. I know the OT spawned all of Star Wars, and is some of the very best of Star Wars, and therefore holds great cultural ‘mass’. However, with the franchise being as alive and productive as it is right now, there’s new content being created all of the time which builds typically on the newest content, which also gives the ‘new world’ huge momentum. There’s a conflict between the purity of the OT which people want preserved in amber, and the momentum of this new content which is going to refer to (and thus reinforce) increasingly to non-OT sources. And because that new content is never going to stop, I think it wins the fight, and the OT regrettably has to bend. For this reason, I believe that the ‘easier’ fix is to accept that in the OT, R2 and Yoda/Obi-Wan know each other, and Padmé dies in childbirth in a way that Leia doesn’t (conventionally) remember, etc.
It’s the ‘rocks in the stream’ approach to editing. We’re editing now within an absolute flowing torrent of new content and canon. Our edits, the rocks, can cause minor diversions - to minimise cringe, to restructure for impact, to emphasise and de-emphasise - but ultimately that water is going to flow in the same direction. Our starts and ends, and all of our main beats, have to fit within that flow, otherwise the franchise (and the potential FUTURE franchise) doesn’t work as a coherent whole. For example, I’m really against Rey being a Palpatine. I’d love a Nobody cut. But I know that sooner or later there’s going to be some new media - Rey’s Jedi Academy, Mandalorian 2.0, whatever - that references Rey Palpatine, and in order to enjoy that new bit of content we’re going to have to accept Rey Palpatine. So I’ll always edit towards preservation of the FRANCHISE canon, over canon from any one source - and I think that’s necessary in order that fanediting doesn’t become a Sisyphean effort. And in this case, I think the franchise now says “Those guys knew each other, which raises some awkward questions in the OT.”
That’s just me though, and I can understand people wishing it weren’t so enough to make it so.