If your a fan of the original Star Wars trilogy then you were probably hesitant about the Star Wars: The Clone Wars series when it first aired like I was. I watched the series with a squinted eye, expecting the next thrashing of my beloved legendary characters to happen. Or at the very least to not be wowed by what the boys at Lucasfilm had in store for us as the next chapter in the Star Wars Universe to be explored. But as I watched one episode after the other I grew to like it more and more. With that being said, and since I expected to hate the series right off the bat, the first season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars was a complete success. The series drew you in, and you didn't care if Anakin was on the screen or not, in fact the episodes with out Anakin are sometimes better.
Tvblog.ugo.com had a sit down with Supervising Director Dave Filoni. Dave let's us in on what has improved since the beginning of the Clone Wars series:
"We've improved so many things, accelerated the animation, the scope of the planets is bigger and broader. The types of stories we're telling now have evolved from season one as we gained confidence that we could make things more and more like the films. We've evolved from a "New Hope" mentality more towards "Empire Strikes Back," where you start to see a lot more different characters involved."
Empire Strikes Back was my favorite episode out of all the Star Wars movies, so to hear that Dave is taking cues from that movie along with A New Hope is promising for the second season of Star Wars The Clone Wars. Is George Lucas involved at all in this series? To which Dave responds:
"I'm tasked by my master with trying to recreate some of that magic. It's a very big challenge - how do we capture that magic that is Star Wars, that everyone fell in love with? How do you get that feeling from the acting and action? There couldn't be a better mentor than George Lucas,"
Ok, ok ok ok. George Lucas is a writer. Not a Director or a boom handler or whatever. George is a writer. The key to success is to have George Lucas write and then bring in a qualified Director that will take the story up a notch. Off course you have to have good actors to direct but I think that was the main difference between the first trilogy and the second trilogy. You have to stay at what your good at.
How involved is George? Dave goes on to say:
"(He's) very specific. He'll get down to a line. He and I will change lines of dialog all the time. It's something that he's taught me to do as a director, which I've never really done before. Constantly with the attitude of making it better. When he writes dialog for Anakin, it's Anakin, there is no doubt. And we do that all throughout the process. He'll watch it in a rough form, a grey proxy animation. He is super hands on. He'll cut things right down to the frame and insert shots but it's all with an attitude of 'I have to be absorbing it, the director has to be absorbing it, I have to maintain that feeling of Stars Wars....If (George) has an idea that's already been explored in the expanded universe of comics and novels, I'll bring it up and kind of refresh him on what that was and at that point we'll make a decision on whether to go around or alongside it..."
"We were so influenced by Star Wars. My friend Mike DiMartino works on Avatar: The Last Airbender and there is Star Wars all over that show and we laugh about it. It's what we knew. And now that I actually get to make Star Wars, I'm really thankful that George is here. This is not supposed to be my Stars Wars. Star Wars is George's thing and he lets me create with him, alongside him and I try to do that as best I can. I'm always listening intently to everything he says. That's not to say I can't go back and forth with him. I'm constantly quoting his old movies to him. It's been a great relationship working with George. It's the best film class I could ever be in."
At least Dave knows his role. I for one am looking forward to tomorrow night when the season 2 premier of Star Wars: The Clone Wars premiers on Cartoon Network at 8 PM.