Official: 'THE CLONE WARS' movie in Theaters 8/15/08 — Page 4

Originally posted by: FanFiltration
it was a stink bomb to most fans of the first film. Same thing with Robocop 2,

Originally posted by: FanFiltration
Remember Highlander 2? Same lovable characters in it, but it was a stink bomb to most fans of the first film.

Originally posted by: Fang Zei

Here's how I see it: Lucas can either move on from Star Wars and finally make us happy, or he can keep being stubborn and make us move on. .

Exclusive: A Rare Sit-Down with Mr. George Lucas
Source: Edward Douglas March 17, 2008


George Lucas is clearly one of the few filmmakers who needs very little to no introduction. To some, he's revered as a God, and maybe rightfully so, because let's face it, few of us would be such big movie fans if not for the "Star Wars" saga and its geek-level of fandom has spilled over into other realms while growing by leaps and bounds due to the internet. If not for the work done by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) to bring Mr. Lucas' vision to life in the six "Star Wars" movies, filmmakers like Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson would never had been able to bring their own creatures and characters to the screen in such a realistic manner. There would never have been movies like Robert Rodriguez's Sin City and Zack Snyder's 300 if not for the way Mr. Lucas pioneered the use of computer-generated background environments for films made on green screen.

Yes, a world without George Lucas and "Star Wars" would be a grey and dismal place for fans of science fiction, action and effects movies, because over thirty years after the big screen debut of the first Star Wars, the characters and worlds created by Lucas continue to find new and younger fans, all of whom will be happy to see him continuing the "Star Wars" saga using the latest technology for many years to come… only this time, on television.

Mere weeks after the announcement that Warner Bros. would be releasing the feature film Star Wars: The Clone Wars in theaters this summer, Mr. Lucas was on hand in Las Vegas at the annual ShoWest Convention to present an extended clip from the movie at the studio's "The Big Picture" presentation. The feature film and animated series fill the gaps between Episodes II and III, but it will also be the first "Star Wars" movie to appear on the big screen in three years. While the feature film looks to be very much in line with the recent movies, the animated series promises to introduce new characters we haven't seen in the previous films and cartoons with stories that will be short episodic mini-movies.

Flanked by six Clone Troopers from the 501st Legion, Lucas introduced the extended clip, which begins with two Jedi carriers departing from a larger Republic starship. Inside one of them, Anakin briefs his young liege Ahsoka on the upcoming battle, telling his young apprentice to stay close because it isn't practice although she's very cocky and self-assured, snapping back that she'll try not get him killed. The battle scene is quite impressive as we get to see Ahsoka in action against a large armored vehicle that's able to climb up a vertical cliff-face, followed by a scene of Count Dooku relaying his plans to his own dark apprentice Asajj Ventress via the normal Jedi hologram communication, their plans interrupted by the entrance of Ben Kenobi, leading to a short lightsaber fight between them, Ventress disarming Kenobi with her advantage of two lightsabers to his one. The animation looked somewhat primitive compared to what else is out there with the characters not being as detailed as some might like, but the battle sequences are still very exciting and impressive.

ComingSoon.net had the rare opportunity to talk to Mr. Lucas briefly before the presentation and then we had more time to sit down with him in a more casual atmosphere afterwards. While there are millions if not billions of bigger "Star Wars" fans, being one of the few online writers who was actually old enough to have seen the original Star Wars when it first played in theaters in the '70s, it was nice to finally meet and talk to such an influential filmmaker.

ComingSoon.net: How much overlap will there be between Genndy's "Clone Wars" animated series and the new feature film and television series?
George Lucas: Well, the Genndy show was an experiment that we did with Cartoon Network that was 5 minutes each, they went sort of where commercials normally go, and it was an experiment, not only in doing five-minute shows, but it was an experiment in trying to translate "Star Wars" into an animated medium, and we felt very good about that. We thought it turned out really well, and we then took it to the next level, which was to do a full-out animated series of "The Clone Wars." There's not much overlap. Genndy did most of the animation and most of the stories for the first experimental series, and this one I'm pretty much following the mythology and the rules of the features, so it's a little bit different, but it's very much like the features except it's in animation. We decided to do it in a slightly different style than Genndy did, still in the anime genre, but we took it a little differently.

CS: Do you see the show going on for a long time? It obviously takes a long time to produce computer animation.
Lucas: We've been doing this for three years. We have one year finished, we're in the middle of the second year. I've written the third year. We expect this to go on for at least five or six years.

CS: And the live action show will go on at the same time?
Lucas: The live action show probably won't start until 2010. We're working on it now, doing the scripts and everything, but it takes too long to get it up and organized, but I think this is a chance for the fans to see the animated series on the big screen. It works great on the big screen and it's kind of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see it big.

CS: Since the feature is being done specifically for the big screen, where is the movie going to end and the series begin?
Lucas: It's not that episodic. This is a movie but we started doing the episodes and some of the episodes are stand-alone and some are two, some are three, some are four, and there's no cliffhangers. It's not like the current vogue of "24" and "The Wire" and stuff where you actually have to watch the entire series in order to understand what's going on. This is an old-fashioned episodic show. We looked at it on the big screen and it looked so beautiful and great that we said, "Gee, we can make a feature just like this." So we did and got all the people, got all the stuff and said, "Let's make a feature." So we did.

CS: There won't be a "To Be Continued" at the end of the movie teasing those who see it to watch the television show?
Lucas: Well, no, but the show starts in October... October 1st... no, in the fall. They haven't decided yet. We just made our deal.

CS: That's pretty tight for a show starting in the fall.
Lucas: Yeah.

CS: I assume the series will continue the same kind of scope and scale that we see on the big screen like the clip you showed earlier?
Lucas: Yeah, and it's still in widescreen even on television. It's got the same production value, it looks the same. Everything is exactly the same.

CS: You've always been such a big proponent of doing things in movies, so why did you decide to enter the TV world after all this time?
Lucas: Well, I love TV. "Young Indiana Jones" was one of the happiest times I ever had, so I love television. It's great to be able to do a lot of work. There's not as much pressure as there is on film. Film is a very tight little box. If you don't fit in that box, you're gone. Television, there's more room to move around. There's certain issues that if you don't fit in the box, you don't get on certain networks, but eventually, you can always find a place, whereas a movie, it's much harder.

CS: But there's also an issue with television where the networks are always looking at the ratings before deciding whether to keep a show on the air. You're already doing so much work towards the future of the show...
Lucas: Yeah, well I'm going to do a hundred shows. I'm going to do it no matter what they do, so obviously, I want it to stay on the air a long time.

CS: I know Anthony Daniels is returning to voice C3PO, but might there be anyone else from the movies that might voice their characters in the animated movie or show? I know that everyone loves Frank Oz as Yoda. Will we see some of them?
Lucas: No, no. I mean, because it's a TV show, it's something that goes on and on and on and on, so it's not really designed to have a lot of the old actors back.

CS: It's harder for scheduling.
Lucas: Yeah, it's impossible, 'cause TV, it's very hard. You have to basically be on-call every day.

CS: There's been a lot of talk about where this animated film and series fit in to the "Star Wars" mythos. We know that "The Clone Wars" takes place between "Episode II" and "Episode III" but there's only a certain amount of time that can be fit in there. Do you know how many years this war takes place?
Lucas: I don't know. I'm not the expert in that field, but a couple years, two or three years, so it's not... if we did every minute of every day, we would be able to go on for a hundred years. (He then laughs heartily at that idea.)

CS: That would be fun to keep it going for that long.
Lucas: No, I think we got plenty of stories. It's an indefinite amount of time. I mean, we know what the time is. We got "(Episode) II" and we got "(Episode) III" so we saw the start of the war, we saw the end of the war, but you don't know all the adventures that went on in between.

CS: What are your plans for theatrical films in the future? You have "Indiana Jones" with Steven, but are you going to continue making movies, even if you're producing other directors?
Lucas: Probably. I mean, what I'm doing is I'm doing a film called "Red Tails" I've been working on for years, and then I'm working on a live action "Star Wars" TV series, and we're in the script stage. That probably won't come out for a couple of years, then I'm going to do my own films. I'm basically... you might say "retire" and just work on "hobby movies" after that.

CS: It's funny you should mention that because it leads to a question I've always wanted to ask you. Anyone who works at the same job for thirty years must wake up somedays and think, "You know what? I don't want to do this job today." You've been so invested in "Star Wars," creating so many worlds and characters, but you must wake up some days and say "I want to do something else today."
Lucas: Yeah, well that happened actually right after I finished the first trilogy. I said, "Look, I expected to do one movie and it turned into three and I expected to be done in a year and it ended up being ten, so I'm ready to move on now." It was later when I realized that it was so big that no matter what I did, it was going to be linked to me and that was basically what I am no matter what I do, so that's when I said, "Okay, I'll finish the whole saga" and then once I came to that, I said, "Well, gee, it would be fun to do an animated film." I love animation. The idea of CG anime is something I've been interested in for a long time, and it's a chance to explore other things and then train a lot of people and let them take off and use their imaginations.

CS: Do you think you'd have other people continue the "Star Wars" saga past "Episode VI" or turn some of the other material into films?
Lucas: But there's no story past "Episode VI", there's just no story. It's a certain story about Anakin Skywalker and once Anakin Skywalker dies, that's kind of the end of the story. There is no story about Luke Skywalker, I mean apart from the books. But there's three worlds: There's my world that I made up, there's the licensing world that's the books, the comics, all that kind of stuff, the games, which is their world, and then there's the fans' world, which is also very rich in imagination, but they don't always mesh. All I'm in charge of is my world. I can't be in charge of those other people's world, because I can't keep up with it.

CS: What's going on with "Red Tails"? Is that something you're going to be working on soon?
Lucas: Well, as a matter of fact, I'm working on it tomorrow. We're getting toward a script, and probably start shooting before the end of the year, and it should come out next year maybe.

CS: So the TV stuff isn't taking away from you making movies.
Lucas: Well, that's probably going to be the last movie I do just because... I mean, apart from my own movies, but my own movies are going to be more esoteric and probably will come and go in a week and be in one or two arthouses here and there. You can get the DVD.

CS: Kind of what Francis Ford Coppola has been doing in recent years?
Lucas: Yeah, it's basically the same as what Francis is doing.

(At this point, Bonnie Burton from StarWars.com, who had been sitting in on the interview, jumped in with a couple questions of her own.)

StarWars.com: A lot of new fans will be watching this new animated series and seeing "Star Wars" for the first time, so what do you think of this new generation of kids that are going to be introduced to the "Star Wars" saga.
Lucas: What do I think of them? The poor kids have to grow up in this crazy world that's been created! Gosh!

SW: It's obviously a different tone but still has the drama and the characters.
Lucas: The TV series is exactly like the movies, exactly. I mean, you can see it in the clip. It's basically just the movies only with cartoon characters. It's basically a dramatic series, there's a lot of action, a bit of humor. It runs along at the same level. It's unusual for an animated film, because it's not really hardcore like say "Beowulf" and it's not a Pixar movie, so it kind of falls in between in this funny world where "Star Wars" is, which is kind of hard-edged but not really, sort of on the verge of PG-13, flips over once in a while, but sort of the high end of PG.

SW: It also seems to show a little bit more of the clone characters as well.
Lucas: Yeah, now we get introduced to the clones, which we didn't get in the movies. Now, they're like main characters and they really are central to the whole thing, and you can identify them and know who they are, and it's sort of like "Band of Brothers" only with Jedi. (laughs)

As we wrapped up, we asked Mr. Lucas about the plans for "Star Wars Saga" on Blu-ray Disc as I took the picture above, but we got sidetracked by that and never got a response about a timeframe.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars opens theatrically on August 15 with the animated show due sometime in the fall.

Special thanks to Orna "Vader" from Warner Bros. for arranging this, Bonnie Burton from StarWars.com for her questions and support (she also took the picture above from the ShoWest presentation), and Mr. Lucas himself for taking the time to talk to us.

George Lucas on 'Star Wars,' Indiana Jones

By Joshua Rich Joshua Rich

At last week's ShoWest convention in Las Vegas, George Lucas took the stage to introduce the movie industry to his latest Star Wars creation, the animated summer flick Star Wars: The Clone Wars. The feature film (which opens Aug. 15) builds upon the Clone Wars shows that have aired on the Cartoon Network; the footage Lucas presented included glimpses of familiar characters like Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker, C-3PO, and R2-D2, as well as more talk of Jabba the Hutt. All the while, naturally, Lucas was flanked by a platoon of stormtroopers — ''I never go anywhere without my army,'' he quipped.

But does the Jedi master expect to ever retire his Star Wars soldiers? What's going on with that live-action TV series he announced, anyway? How excited is he for the debut of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull? What's the status of his longtime promise to direct artier films? And which movie prompted him to say, ''I wish I had made it — I don't think I'm talented enough to do that''? In an extended conversation, EW.com found out the answers to those questions and more.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You explained a little bit in your ShoWest presentation about why you decided to come back and make this film. Do you feel like there's even more to tell in the Star Wars universe?
GEORGE LUCAS: Yeah, you know, I sat down and said, ''Okay, the Luke Skywalker story'' — or the Anakin Skywalker story, actually — ''is done.'' But whenever you create a universe, there's just vast areas you've never touched, and part of that was this. Which is to say, ''Well, gee, I did the movies about everything but the Clone Wars, so wouldn't it be fun to do a TV series that is nothing but the Clone Wars, and we could just have all the adventures?'' And that, with: ''Gee, it would be fun to go back to animation.'' And: ''Gee, it would be fun to do a sort of 3-D animé film, which people haven't done — it would be an interesting experiment, and we should have a good time.''

Is Star Wars: The Clone Wars going to be shown in 3-D?
No, no, it's not 3-D, it's basically CG — I've gotta stop using ''3-D''...

Right, they're not interchangeable.
It used to be that 3-D was considered CG, and then 3-D actually came to be, so now we have to change [what we say]. [Laughs]

You've talked a lot about 3-D, so why didn't you do this project in 3-D?
Well, you know, it's expensive. And we felt that everybody kind of looks at the downside: It would cost twice as much to do it in 3-D as it did to do the movie in the first place. So you say, ''Well, gosh, do you think we're going to get that much more out of it? And is it going to be worth it? And we can always do it later if we really want to.'' So that was really the logic behind it. You know, [the Clone Wars movie] was almost an afterthought — we were doing the TV series and looked at some of the episodes on the big screen and said, ''This is so beautiful, why don't we just go and use the crew and make a feature?'' So we did.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How does it dovetail with the live-action TV series that you've announced?
GEORGE LUCAS: I'm just starting to work on the scripts now for the live-action TV series. We finished the first year of Clone Wars, [and] we're in the middle of working on the second year. I'm finishing the scripts for the third year. And now I'm working on the scripts for the first year of the live-action show. [Smiles] So it's a lot of scripts.

Where is the live-action one going to fit into the overall Star Wars narrative?
It's completely separate. This one has all of the characters that everybody knows — everybody from Yoda to Anakin to Mace Windu to Obi-Wan — everybody's there. The live-action has nobody there, because it's after Episode III, so everybody's dead, basically, or hiding somewhere. You hear about the Emperor, just like you do in Episode IV, but it's mostly about a whole different world. I mean, there are a million stories in the big city — you've only seen one of them. [Laughs]

Yeah, but I guess there is stuff that you could imagine coming in between parts III and IV — for example, we never saw a young Han Solo.
No, well, this has nothing to do with those series. Some of the characters from the features find their way in there, so it's not completely divorced. It's as if we just went down the street and told a different story. You know, we were doing, I don't know, 24, and now we're going to move down the street here and do The Wire. Same thing, it's just different people doing the same thing in the same city.

With the same Emperor.
Yeah.

And the same rules.
Yeah, all the same rules, all the same places, all the same stuff, and a lot of the same species. So it's a familiar world, it's just that you're seeing a completely different side of it.

Do you have a network yet?
Not yet.

Are you still hoping for 100 episodes?
Yeah, I'm going to 100 episodes no matter what.

Cast?
No, we haven't gotten there yet.

Have you built any sets or done any mockups?
No, what we do in our TV series is we write the entire first year and finish it as a script. Then we start getting ready to shoot it, then we start casting, and then we do it. We know where the whole first year is before we even start to work on it. I mean, I can do that because I'm financing the whole thing. So I've got it pegged out for 100 episodes, and I know exactly what I'm going to do and how I'm going to do it and what the risks are.

How long will the episodes be?
They're an hour. It's a regular live-action TV series — you know, Law & Order. [Laughs and waits a beat] I hope.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: When you were here at ShoWest three years ago, you talked about converting all six of the Star Wars films into 3-D. Is that something that's still going forward?
GEORGE LUCAS: It's still on. It's just that, technically, it's a much harder thing to pull off than we thought. So we've been working on how to get it done — we're still in the middle of R&D, so to speak. But we're getting closer now. The field [of 3-D] is opening up a little bit. It's a hard thing because it takes a lot of talented people — like, 100 or 150 — and since it's a craft that nobody's been trained to do before, it's a little tricky. So it's hard. But it'll get there.

Do you see any end to working on Star Wars?
[Vigorously shakes his head]

No?
No. I mean, I'm doing it just for fun now. You know, I'm an executive producer now — I don't do the day-to-day work. I check in once a week, maybe, and it'll be the same thing on the live-action show. I'm also [producing] Red Tails [his long-in-the-works project about WWII's Tuskegee Airmen] — I'm producing all these things now. And then, hopefully, in a year or two I'll be completely removed and I'll just be able to go off and do my own movies again.

Star Wars feature films are over, though, right?
No more, no more. I mean, except for this kind of stuff, which is sort of spinoffs of TV shows.

The other thing that you talked about three years ago was going off to do your own movies...
I'm going to do it. [Chuckles]

You probably have scripts sitting around that you've had for 40 years.
I have ideas, but I don't have scripts. The last of my scripts is Red Tails, which I've had for a long, long time — about 15 years. When I get that done, I've cleaned off the boards — everything I've ever developed I've made. So now I can start fresh and say, ''Okay, now what do I want to do?'' And hopefully, by then the TV stuff will be cranking out on its own and doing its own thing and I can sort of [just] check in once in a while and say hi.

So we're talking a couple of years?
Yeah, it should take another couple years. The live-action TV series probably won't go on until around 2010. It'll take this year just to get through all the scripts and then another year to get them all shot.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Was there anything in Francis Ford Coppola's experience on Youth Without Youth [which received poor reviews and made just $244,397 in a very limited domestic release] that made you think about your plans to do your own movies?
GEORGE LUCAS: No, I mean, we both had our plans. He's actually executing his now — and thumbing his nose at me. Because he's always been saying, ''When are you going to do those movies? When are you going to do those movies?'' [Chuckles] He's been saying that ever since I started working for him, back 40 years ago. And I've said, ''I will, I will.'' I think part of it is he's just doing it to shame me, saying [affects snarky tone] ''I'm doing it, what are you doing? You're still making all those.''

Have you talked about it with each other?
Yeah, we talk about it. And I said, ''I have fun doing this, and I'm going to do it for a while, and then I'm going to go off and do these weird things.'' Because when you're doing personal films, they disappear real fast — I don't care who you are. There's a world of personal films and then there's a world of popular films, and occasionally one will cross over, but 99 percent of the time it's not going to do that. And you just have to accept the fact that you're going into a different kind of moviemaking and [will] probably lose all of the money that you put into it. A few people, esoteric fans, will enjoy it, [but] that'll be it. Especially if you've been successful, you're suddenly faced with: ''Oh, well, he can't do it anymore, he's a has-been.'' All that kind of stuff. What was interesting about watching Francis [was that he] did the closest thing to what I'm going to do, and I can see what the response is. I mean, I liked his film, but people don't rush out and say, ''Oh my God, he's made a new movie and it's so wonderful!'' They're just not going to do it. They aren't going to do it. No matter what you do.

How are you feeling about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull? Feeling good?
Oh, yeah, we had a great time making it.

Are you nervous about it in any way?
No, no, it's a great film. Will it beat [The Dark Knight]? I don't know. But we'll certainly give Batman a run for their money.

Are you going to do another Indiana Jones movie after this one?
That I don't know. We do these one at a time and we do them purely for the fun of it, which means that if we've got too many other things going on — Steve [Spielberg]'s got a couple more movies, he's got Chicago Seven, he's got all this stuff backed up for years — who knows? At least I'm at a point now where I can just enjoy myself and be creative and not have to worry about people getting crazy or trying to make decisions around me or anything. And I'm to a point now where if it isn't successful, it's not the end of the world. It's always a disappointment when it doesn't turn out, but sometimes you know it's not going to turn out. I've [also]] seen other people's movies that I had really high hopes for — I said, ''Oh, this is going to be great'' — and I'd see it and it is great, but it falls flat and nobody goes to see it. You know, I loved Across the Universe, it's a brilliant film. I wish I had made it — I don't think I'm talented enough to do that. But at the same time, it just [motions like it blew away] pffffff. It's too bad. That's the saddest part right there: Something that you think is really good and should work and people should enjoy it, and they don't.

But you're confident that Indiana Jones will work?
Yeah, well, this one, we know that for the fans it won't be the movie that they have been making in their minds for the last 19 years, so they all get bent out of shape. A lot of the critics forget that they didn't like the first three, and so they get off on this one, too — or it's not the Second Coming. And, yeah, we didn't make it bigger and better, we made it exactly the same. So if you loved the other ones, you'll love this one. But if you expect to have F-14s flying under freeways — that isn't there. It's just another period adventure movie with this wacky archaeologist. It's funny. I think it's funnier than the other ones, and it's exciting. So it's got all the stuff that all the other ones have. And Harrison's great in it.