I like Star Wars, but I certainly never expected it would take over my life . . . I find myself the head of a corporation; there’s a certain irony there. I have become the very thing that I was trying to avoid. That is Darth Vader – he becomes the very thing he was trying to protect himself against.
George Lucas
Star Wars didn’t end with Revenge of the Sith, despite what all those involved – especially creator George Lucas – thought might happen. There was another movie unexpectedly released to cinemas, two animated TV series and an exponential growth of the Expanded Universe in books, comics, videogames and toys.
Generations had now grown up with Star Wars. Those who were children in 1977 when the first movie emerged to surprise them were now middle aged. While the ‘dark times’ between the trilogies attracted new fans to the saga (through re-releases in cinemas, on television, on video and on DVD), they often came to it through the Expanded Universe.
The next generation of Star Wars fans were children captivated by The Phantom Menace and the other prequels and regarded the original trilogy as ‘old’ movies. Even they were too old for the arrival of Star Wars:The Clone Wars on television, so yet another new generation was drawn to the saga through the ongoing animated series. For these kids, the 3D re-release of The Phantom Menace in 2012 was their first chance to see their animated heroes in live-action form on the big screen. Those who were children when Episode I was first released in 1999 were by then into their twenties.
All this showed the apparently never-ending appeal of Star Wars, in all its multi-various forms. There are degrees of Star Wars fandom, from those who consume and collect everything, to those who simply enjoy the movies and have some old action figures from when they were kids. There have even been divisions between those who regard the Expanded Universe as legitimate Star Wars storytelling and those who only accept the movies (and some television material) – the so-called G-level canon (G for George Lucas created or approved) – as the ‘real’ deal.
Whatever level of interest and commitment viewers might have, there can be very few unaware of Star Wars. The worldwide reach and impact of the films – and everything associated with them – has been immense. Star Wars was seemingly everywhere as the second decade of the twenty-first century dawned. The thirtieth anniversary of the original movie came and went – with the United States Post Office issuing a series of celebratory postage stamps – and Star Wars spoofs seemed unending, from the movie Fanboys (2009) to dedicated episodes of Family Guy and Robot Chicken. Fans could view, read and play with Star Wars at their leisure, and the 2011 revamp of the venerable Star Tours ride (first launched in 1987) allowed them to become totally immersed in the Expanded Universe.
The first of the Star Wars animated TV series had appeared in 2003, between the cinema releases of Episode II and Episode III. Under the title Star Wars: Clone Wars, the series initially consisted of three-to-seven minute episodes chronicling battles and encounters between the forces of the Galactic Republic, represented by the Jedi Knights, and the Confederacy of Independent States, led by Count Dooku. Impressed by Samurai Jack and Dexter’s Laboratory, Lucas invited animator Genndy Tartakovsky to create the series as a pump primer for the release of Episode III. It was felt at Lucasfilm that something was needed to help keep Star Wars in the public eye in advance of 2005’s final instalment. It was also a relatively inexpensive way of exploring the possibilities for animated Star Wars on television.
‘We start the clone wars in one Episode and we end it in the next Episode, but we never actually see the war,’ admitted Lucas of his films. ‘So doing the animated series was a great opportunity to fill in some of the blanks in the middle where you get to deal with the adventures of the war, because obviously that’s a very fertile ground for exciting storytelling.’
Tartakovsky was a Russian-born animator who had grown up in the United States in the late 1970s, moving to the country at the age of seven in the same year that Star Wars was released. He spent time in Spain as an animator working on Batman: The Animated Series, learning the nuts and bolts of American TV animation. He had attended the California Institute of the Arts and one of his student shorts formed the basis for the Cartoon Network series Dexter’s Laboratory.
Tartakovsky approached animating Star Wars in his distinctive style, adapting the already established characters to fit. ‘George wanted our interpretation,’ said Tartakovsky. ‘[It was] important for him that we put our own signature on it. The more we pushed things, the more they liked it.’ He had pitched the show as ‘a clone wars-style story with a Band of Brothers-feel to it – where it’s episodes of different battles and strategies during the clone wars’. He was a knowledgeable Star Wars fan and brought this to his interpretation of some characters. For example, he gave C-3PO more expressive and movable animated eyes in the style of Nelvana, the animation house that produced the Boba Fett sequence for the Star Wars Holiday Special and the Droids cartoon.
The first group of ten episodes debuted in November 2003, with a second batch following a year later. Although broken up into short episodes, the story follows Obi-Wan Kenobi’s assault on the planet Muunilist, while Anakin Skywalker (still the moody teenager of Episode II) provides air support in his distinctive Jedi starfighter. Meanwhile, Count Dooku trains a new Sith apprentice, Asajj Ventress. This popular character made her debut on the series, but was based upon concept art originally developed for Episode II depicting a female Sith. Ventress would enjoy a healthy ongoing life in the Expanded Universe, eventually becoming a key player in the follow-up animated series.
Dooku sends Ventress to assassinate Skywalker, who in turn pursues her to Yavin IV (site of the rebel alliance base in Star Wars). Engaging in a fierce lightsaber duel, Anakin emerges victorious, but only after giving in to his fear and anger (traits of the dark side of the Force and a hint of his future). Other episodes saw Kenobi battle the indomitable bounty-hunter Durge (from a species called the Gen’Dai, named for the show’s animator); Kit Fisto leading an underwater assault (an idea later expanded upon in the fourth series of Star Wars:The Clone Wars in 2011); Mace Windu single-handedly taking down a seismic tank on Dantooine;Yoda and Amidala rescuing Jedi Luminara Unduli and her apprentice Barris Offe (characters from the climatic Geonosis arena battle in Episode II); and Ki-Adi-Mundi and other Jedi battling with General Grievous (a launching point for the main villain of Episode III).
The final batch of five episodes aired in March 2005 and each was longer in length at twelve to fifteen minutes. According to Lucas the intention was to supply ‘a little background on what was going on right before Episode III’. The series jumps forward three years to the concluding stages of the clone wars. A more mature (and longer-haired) Anakin and Obi-Wan pursue Grievous to the planet Nelvaan (named after animation studio Nelvana), where they liberate the inhabitants who had been enslaved by the Techno Union. The show links directly into the opening moments of Episode III as Grievous launches an assault on Coruscant and kidnaps Chancellor Palpatine.
Lucasfilm regarded this Clone Wars series as a qualified success. As it was of limited duration, Lucas took to calling it a ‘micro-series’, claiming it as a pilot for later animated ventures. Widely welcomed by fans, most of whom complained about the short duration of the episodes, Star Wars: Clone Wars won two Emmy Awards for Outstanding Animated Programme in 2004 and 2005. The show broke new ground with a near-simultaneous release on television and on the internet via StarWars.com and Cartoon Network’s own website (now standard in television). Clone Wars directly inspired a Dark Horse comic spin-off that adopted Tartakovsky’s graphic style. A series of Hasbro action figures also adopted that distinctive look. The Japanese anime feel brought to the Clone Wars series was unique in Star Wars, attaching an in vogue style to a venerable franchise.
Many of the voice artists involved in Star Wars: Clone Wars would go on to work on the much more extensive follow-up series with the almost identical title Star Wars:The Clone Wars. These included Anthony Daniels, Corey Burton, James Arnold Taylor and Tom Kane (as Yoda). When announcing the second series in April 2005, Lucas called it ‘a 3D continuation of the pilot series’. Pre-production began in July, once the final big-screen movie had been released. Lucasfilm established a dedicated animation facility in Singapore to facilitate production.
The new series was produced using 3D-style computer animation, but no attempt was made to make the characters photorealistic. Instead, they were modelled after marionettes featured in the 1960s puppet TV shows made by Britain’s Gerry Anderson, including Thunderbirds. Designer Kilian Plunkett used Tartakovsky’s 2D characters as a jumping off point, adapting them to the 3D CGI animation. He made the characters square-jawed with chunky hair that was mostly fixed in place (although this would loosen up in future).
Dave Filoni, an animation professional and huge Star Wars fan, was hired as the creative driver for the new show. His work for Nickelodeon on Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005–8) brought him to the attention of Lucasfilm. Animation screenwriter Henry Gilroy headed up the initial writing team, under the supervision of producer Catherine Winder – both departed after the first few years.
The big surprise for Filoni – and Star Wars fans – was how involved in the series Lucas became, given his oft-stated desire to step away from Star Wars. ‘George saw what we were doing, the level of detail and what we can do visually, [and] he got more interested and came up with more story ideas of his own,’ said Filoni. ‘He’s very involved with all the stories and coming up with ideas. It’s turned out to be a really interesting collaboration.’
Late in the production process, Lucasfilm decided to convert the first three episodes into a movie and give the series a theatrical launch. Even though Revenge of the Sith was officially the ‘final’ Star Wars film, the first animated Star Wars movie hit cinemas in August 2008. Alongside Anthony Daniels as C-3PO, Samuel L. Jackson and Christopher Lee returned to voice their animated characters, but only Daniels would continue on the regular television series.
Following a spectacular battle on the planet Christophsis, the movie saw Anakin Skywalker and his new padawan Ahsoka Tano charged with the rescue of Jabba the Hutt’s kidnapped son, Rotta. This is politically important to the Republic as it wants to keep the Hutt gangster clans on its side rather than that of the Separatists. It transpires that Jabba’s uncle, Ziro (voiced in imitation of Truman Capote), orchestrated the kidnapping of his own nephew in league with Count Dooku in an attempt to force the Hutts to turn against the Republic. The revelation causes Jabba to cooperate, opening up his vital trade routes to the Republic’s military and supply traffic.
Most reviewers were not kind to this unexpected extra Star Wars movie, with Entertainment Weekly being particularly scathing. Critic Owen Gleiberman wrote: ‘It’s hard to tell the droids from the Jedi drones in this robotic animated dud, in which the Lucas Empire Strikes Back – at the audience. What wears you out is Lucas’s immersion in a Star Wars cosmology that has grown so obsessive-compulsively cluttered yet trivial that it’s no longer escapism; it’s something you want to escape from.’
The ninety-eight-minute movie had a budget of $8.5 million (almost the pre-release cost of the original Star Wars in 1977). Although not a failure, the worldwide box office of just $69 million ($35 million in the United States) was much lower than that usually expected for a Star Wars movie, although on a par with similar mid-budget animated films. DVD sales would add another $22.7 million in revenue. The income from the theatrical and DVD releases of The Clone Wars movie must have been helpful in financing the first series on television, in much the same way that the Special Editions had helped raise funds for the prequel trilogy. Lucas later described the cinema release of The Clone Wars as ‘almost an afterthought.’
The TV series quickly followed, airing its first season from October 2008 with the introspective ‘Ambush’. The episode focused on the relationship between Yoda and a squad of clone troopers without any of the main characters. It was immediately followed on the same night by a more action-packed instalment, ‘Rising Malevolence’. The first of the ‘Malevolence’ trilogy, it was based around a Jedi assault on a secret Separatist super weapon. Just under four million viewers tuned in, making this one of the highest rated animated shows on American television, giving Cartoon Network its most-watched series premiere to that date.
Season one of The Clone Wars featured repeated appearances by Revenge of the Sith’s General Grievous, while other episodes followed the exploits of a rookie clone trooper squad, the adventures of R2-D2 (in episodes directed by Revenge of the Sith’s animation director Rob Coleman), and multiple episode story arcs dealing with the kidnapping of Count Dooku and the outbreak of a deadly virus. The twenty-two-episode season climaxed with ‘Hostage Crisis’, introducing a deadly new bounty-hunter named Cad Bane (modelled after Lee Van Cleef from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, 1966). Ratings remained fairly steady, having fallen from that initial four million to between two-to-three million regularly.
Each subsequent season was a learning process for The Clone Wars team, with refinements and improvements in animation techniques. The challenge came in filling in the story details of the three-year period between Episode II and Episode III, as everyone already knew the outcome. ‘We get little pieces of the puzzle along the way that tell you more about Palpatine and tell you more about Anakin’s relationship with him,’ said Filoni. ‘Things like that that help so that the next time you watch Revenge of the Sith you say, “Oh I see; now I understand even better why that occurred.” We know how some of these stories come out, we know what happens to the Jedi and we know what happens to the clones. We know the Empire gets formed. But how do you create a series and suspend the interest knowing those facts?’
The big question mark was what would happen to major new characters that didn’t feature in Episode III, primarily Anakin’s new sidekick Ahsoka. Ashley Eckstein gave voice to the character for the show’s run. ‘That’s definitely the number one question people always ask,’ said Eckstein. ‘I’m so emotionally attached to the character [that] the thought of anything bad happening to her makes me emotional. I trust [that] Dave Filoni and George Lucas are going to make the best decision for the overall storyline, and for Ahsoka. I’m fine with whatever her legacy turns out to be ...’
The second season focused on bounty-hunters, building the character of Cad Bane into a recurring villain. ‘Lightsaber Lost’ – in which Ahsoka loses her vital Jedi weapon – riffed on the Akira Kurosawa film Stray Dog (1949) in which a detective loses his police-issued pistol and has to recover it. Episodes set around the planet Mandalore (‘The Mandalore Plot’, ‘Voyage of Temptation’, ‘Duchess of Mandalore’) not only reinvented the Mandalorian commandos that gave rise to the iconic Boba Fett armour, but also gave Obi-Wan Kenobi a romantic relationship. The season also reintroduced the revenge-obsessed young Boba Fett from Episode II (and he would reappear in the show’s third season). A creature-feature B-movie double bill of ‘The Zillo Beast’ and ‘The Zillo Beast Strikes Back’ saw a giant lizard-like creature captured by the Jedi escape and terrorize Coruscant (a homage to King Kong, 1933). Ratings remained stable with individual instalments scoring between 2.5 and 3 million viewers.
The third season in 2010–11 featured not only a young Chewbacca in the season finale, ‘Wookiee Hunt’, but also Lucas himself in the form of Baron Papanoida. Lucas had originated the blue-faced character for a brief director cameo in Revenge of the Sith, but he was recreated in animated form for ‘Sphere of Influence’, co-written by his daughter Katie (as were several other episodes). The Citadel trilogy (‘The Citadel’, ‘Counterattack’, ‘Citadel Rescue’) not only played out as a reprise of the infiltration of the Death Star from Star Wars, but also introduced The Clone Wars’ audience to a younger Grand Moff Tarkin. Here Captain Tarkin begins to develop an interesting relationship with Jedi Anakin Skywalker, sowing the seeds of the characters seen in A New Hope.
The first half of the third season was devoted to Republic politics (disappointing many fans keen to see clone wars action), reaching a creative low point with the episode ‘Corruption’. The episode sees the foiling of a plot to import bootleg bottled tea (dubbed ‘poison Snapple’ by discontented fans) to Mandalore. Another low point was ‘Evil Plans’ in which C-3PO goes shopping (!), only to be captured by Cad Bane.
Things picked up dramatically in the season’s second half. The surprising death of Ziro the Hutt (in ‘Hunt for Ziro’) was quickly followed by the Nightsisters trilogy (‘Nightsisters’, ‘Monster’, ‘Witches of the Mist’) and the mystical Mortis trilogy (‘Overlords’, ‘Altar of Mortis’, ‘Ghosts of Mortis’). These six episodes showed the potential of The Clone Wars to go far beyond the movies, introducing more of the ever-growing Expanded Universe to younger Star Wars fans.
Introduced in the novel The Courtship of Princess Leia by Dave Wolverton, the Nightsisters were a Sith-style dark-side offshoot of the Dathomir Witches. Devoted fans would later ‘ret-con’ (meaning to make retroactive continuity links between stories) Siân Phillips’s witch Charal from TV movie Ewoks: The Battle for Endor as a Nightsister. Various novels and even the Star Wars Galaxies trading card game had deepened the mythology of the Nightsisters, but this trio of episodes brought them more to the fore. The Nightsisters sent their super-powered assassin Savage Opress to be Count Dooku’s new apprentice, while also secretly plotting Dooku’s assassination. The trilogy ended with a hint of the return of Opress’s ‘brother’, Darth Maul (picked up in the show’s fourth season).
Previously described as an ‘energy field’ by Obi-Wan Kenobi and revealed to be propagated by midi-chlorians by Qui-Gon Jinn, the Mortis trilogy delved into the nature of the Force. These episodes introduced a new Force-powered ‘family’ located on the remote planet Mortis, itself a conduit for the mystical energy. The Father, Son and Daughter represent different aspects of the Force. Both Anakin and his padawan Ahsoka are subject to temptations and trials, with Anakin offered a glimpse of his ultimate fate as Darth Vader, and Kenobi seemingly encountering the Force-ghost of his dead Jedi Master, Qui-Gon Jinn. These fantasy-infused episodes looked superb, with atmospheric animation and wonderful characters. Together with the Nightsister episodes, they represented the highpoint of The Clone Wars and revealed the potential the series had yet to unlock. Ratings, however, fell slightly for the third season, ranging from a low of 1.5 million (‘Citadel Rescue’) to a high of 2.3 million (the Chewbacca-starring season finale,’Wookiee Hunt’).
By its fourth year, The Clone Wars was a known quantity both for those who made it and those who watched. Production techniques had improved, resulting in better animation and greater ambition as seen in the opening trio of Mon Calamari-set episodes (‘Water War’, ‘Gungan Attack’, ‘Prisoners’). The action in these three adventures takes place almost entirely underwater, an unusual environment for Star Wars (touched upon in the Gungan city in The Phantom Menace). In a surprising throwback to the 1980s Droids TV series, a pair of episodes (‘Mercy Mission’, ‘Nomad Droids’) focused on the maverick adventures of C-3PO and R2-D2, whose picaresque antics spoofed various movies, including The Wizard of Oz and Gulliver’s Travels. These episodes undoubtedly appealed to younger viewers, but also offered a direct connection to older fans’ own childhood recollections of the animated 1980s Droids TV show.
The travails of war featured in the Umbara episodes (‘Darkness on Umbara’, ‘The General’, ‘Plan of Dissent’, ‘Carnage of Krell’). A new Jedi General – Pong Krell – relieves Skywalker as the commander of the 501st Legion, only for his disdainful attitude to ‘disposable’ clones to put the squad in unnecessary dangers. Across the series many clone troopers had been given individual characters, but these episodes personalized their nature more than before. Walter Murch directed ‘The General’ using sound as much as visuals to bring the frantic world of galactic warfare alive (Murch had supplied the soundscape for Coppola’s Apocalypse Now).
By the time Darth Maul appeared, following a series of episodes dealing with slavery and Anakin’s personal feelings on the issues, on season four of The Clone Wars, Lucasfilm Animation in Singapore was well into production of the fifth season while in Lucasfilm’s San Francisco HQ Supervising Director Dave Filoni was working on the scripts for a planned sixth season. Lucas had committed to ‘at least 100 episodes’ when launching the show, a run of at least five years.
The appearance of Darth Maul on the Star Wars television series was ideally timed for the character’s reappearance in cinemas in the 2012 3D re-release of Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. Since the resurgence of 3D movies in the twenty-first century and especially the success of James Cameron’s Avatar (2009), George Lucas had been seriously investigating the possibility of converting the Star Wars movies for 3D presentation. Test work had been done and screened to theatre-owners using a portion of the original movie. Once he was satisfied with the results, Lucas decided to re-release the movies in 3D at the rate of one a year in numerical order beginning with Episode I. While that film featured many sequences enhanced in 3D – the Podrace, the Darth Maul duel – many fans were desperate to see the original trilogy in cinemas once more. This schedule would mean a wait until 2015 for A New Hope, with The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi following in 2016 and 2017. Even those releases were not guaranteed, as Lucasfilm announced that any 3D releases beyond Episode I would depend upon how well that movie performed at the box office. There seemed little doubt The Phantom Menace (re-released ‘flat’ at the same time) would be anything other than a box office success.
Beyond Star Wars in films and television, there was still much going on in the Expanded Universe. In June 2005, Lucasfilm had relocated Industrial Light and Magic, Lucasfilm Licensing and the LucasArts videogame company to the vacated Letterman Army Medical Centre in San Francisco’s Presidio. Renamed the Letterman Digital Arts Centre, this new twenty-three-acre base (along with Marin County’s Skywalker Ranch and the nearby Big Rock Ranch, and Lucas Animation in Singapore) was to be the headquarters of Lucas’s consolidated empire.
The long-running ‘New Jedi Order’ novel series had been superseded by the ‘Dark Nest’ trilogy (from 2005), several Timothy Zahn novels (Survivor’s Quest, Outbound Flight, Allegiance, Choices of One) and the nine-novel series ‘Legacy of the Force’ (starting with Aaron Allston’s Betrayal in 2006 and concluding with Troy Denning’s Invincible in 2008). A sequel series of another nine novels, under the umbrella title ‘Fate of the Jedi’, started in 2009 with Aaron Allston’s Outcast and concluded in 2012 with Troy Denning’s Apocalypse. All these books expanded upon the post-Return of the Jedi lives of the heroes from the original trilogy, with Luke, Leia and Han growing older and their children taking up the roles of the Jedi (and the Sith) in the post-Empire galaxy.
These ongoing series were interspersed by various standalone novels (notably titles like Millennium Falcon, charting the history of Han’s ship; Death Star, covering the battle station’s construction and destruction; and the pulp adventure Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor), and moves into new areas, like the horror novels Death Troopers and Red Harvest. Despite these varied titles, many fans of Expanded Universe storytelling were tired of the long-form novel series, feeling they often outstayed their welcome, with the ‘Fate of the Jedi’ series coming in for particular criticism. In the wake of long-term series editor Sue Rostoni’s retirement in 2011, there was speculation of an Expanded Universe reboot, with a fresh start proposed for Star Wars spin-off fiction. While in some ways attractive (similar things had happened in movies with the James Bond and Spider-Man series), Lucasfilm and publisher Del Rey rejected the idea, preferring to continue filling gaps in the Star Wars universe timeline (counting back to the Old Republic era they had over 4,000 years to play with).
The world of Star Wars comics was similarly clogged with a proliferation of titles. The prequel era had resulted in a series of spin-offs (featuring Darth Maul, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan, Jango Fett and Grievous), and some notable ongoing series (among them the continuity-busting Infinities [2001–4]; Empire [2002– 6]; Jedi [2004–6]; and Obsession [2004–5]). The post-Revenge of the Sith titles looked back to the Old Republic era in Knights of the Old Republic (2006–2010); the original trilogy period in Rebellion (2006–8); and the future (set 137 years after A New Hope) in Legacy (2006–2010), featuring the adventures of Cade Skywalker, a descendant of Luke. The intermittent, although ongoing, Dark Times series (from 2006) continued to tell stories set during the original trilogy. A new title – Dawn of the Jedi – was launched in 2012 depicting the earliest days of the Jedi Order. Tie-ins with the videogame The Force Unleashed and The Clone Wars TV series were also put out by Dark Horse, although the company tried to restrict its individual titles to between three and four comics each month, believing that more than that meant fans had to make choices.
Besides the prequel movie spin-offs (which had also boosted Hasbro’s toy sales), Star Wars videogames were also flourishing. The aforementioned The Force Unleashed (2008) and its sequel was akin to the earlier Shadows of the Empire project, in that the game was part of a larger release programme (including a ‘making-of’ book, a novelization, a dedicated toy line and a comic book). Star Wars videogames were available in just about every genre, from flight simulators (the Rogue Squadron series), first-person shooters (Republic Commando), role-playing games (the epic Knights of the Old Republic) and online, massively interactive role-playing games (The Old Republic, from the end of 2011 onwards).
Fan activities continued unabated, with fan films, fiction and costuming proliferating – the charitable 501st Legion were celebrated in a documentary on the Star Wars Blu-ray release called Star Warriors. The Star Wars Celebration conventions had provided a new focus for fandom since 1999. The first notorious event (celebrating the release of The Phantom Menace) was held in Denver, Colorado, and was almost washed away by torrential rains (the event was held in a series of tents). A second (2002) and third (2005) Celebration followed in Indianapolis, Indiana, with attendance numbers building each time. Lucas attended Celebration III, announcing he was working on a live-action Star Wars television series and that the Disney Star Wars theme park ride, Star Tours, would be updated. In 2007, Celebration IV was relocated to Los Angeles and focused on the thirtieth anniversary of Star Wars: it was the biggest event to date, with 35,000 fans attending. That same year saw Celebration: Europe take place in London, with Celebration: Japan following in 2008 (celebrating thirty years since Star Wars was released there in 1978). A change of organizing company saw Celebration V relocated to Orlando, Florida, in 2010. The event was such a success that Celebration VI returned there for 2012. It seemed likely that Lucasfilm would maintain the Celebration events as long as attendance numbers held up.
When not at conventions or watching The Clone Wars (alongside rewatching the movies), fans were kept informed, up-to-date and entertained by such fan-produced media as the website TheForce.net and the popular audio podcast TheForceCast.
The Star Wars story grew and changed in the telling. The first movie relates to the rest of the expanded saga in the way that Tolkien’s The Hobbit related to his epic The Lord of the Rings. The original Star Wars was a fairly light, standalone adventure pitching good against evil, with none of the elements that George Lucas later described as ‘the Skywalker saga’. There is little in the publicly available material from Lucas’s first attempts to work out the Star Wars story that suggests the family saga that resulted across the six movies. That element was drawn from his own life, as Lucas confronted his relationship with his own father.
The all-encompassing theme that runs through the entire Star Wars saga, though, is that of the mechanical versus the biological. The Empire represents ‘technological terror’ according to Vader’s description of the Death Star, while the Empire’s humanity-first policy marginalizes the diverse alien races that made up the Republic and largely populate the rebellion. Where the Empire (and its representatives, the Emperor and Vader) rely on technology, the Jedi put their faith in the Force. Yoda notes that ‘a Jedi’s strength flows from the Force’, while Obi-Wan describes the Force as ‘an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.’
The clearest depiction of these mechanical versus biological conflicts comes in the battles between the nascent Empire’s battledroids and the organic Gungans (in The Phantom Menace) or the clone troopers (during the clone wars). Return of the Jedi pitches the mechanical forces of the Empire against the ‘primitive’, disorganized Ewoks. This is George Lucas reinventing his original take on Apocalypse Now, putting his 1970s view of the defeat of America at the hands of the Vietcong into action. He also brought his thoughts on the fall of republics to the prequel trilogy, again accessing his view of early-1970s American politics under Nixon and his reading of history (including the fall of the Roman Empire at the hands of more ‘primitive’ cultures, and the following Dark Ages – the equivalent of the ‘dark times’ mentioned by Obi-Wan).
Influences from mythology and religion are woven through the Star Wars saga, but it is perhaps the politics (in terms of wider society, as well at a personal level) that truly dominate. The prequel trilogy added a welcome layer of complexity to the simple good versus evil theme of the original trilogy. By depicting the evolution of the Republic into the Empire and the manipulations of the triple-identity of Palpatine/the Emperor/Sidious, Lucas introduced moral ambiguity to his saga and brought some depth to his storytelling.
George Lucas was never a mystical guru or an eccentric recluse, despite the attempts of some commentators to portray him as such. While ‘Jedi’ has been listed as the religion of choice by many people in various countries’ census forms (in 2001 there were 70,000 in Australia, 53,000 in New Zealand, 21,000 in Canada and over 400,000 in the UK), it has never been a real-world religion.
Lucas attributed the origins of the Force to a 1963 abstract film by Arthur Lipsett called 21-87 (Lipsett’s sampling approach to video and audio influenced THX 1138). ‘It had a very powerful effect on me [as] it was very much the kind of thing that I wanted to do. I was extremely influenced by that particular movie,’ said Lucas. The short included a discussion between artificial intelligence pioneer Warren S. McCulloch and cinematographer Roman Kroitor (the developer of IMAX) about sources of intelligence. McCulloch argued that humans were simply complex machines, but Kroitor countered with his belief that ‘Many people feel that in the contemplation of nature and in communication with other living things, they become aware of some kind of force behind this apparent mask which we see in front of us, and they call it God.’
Beyond this source, Lucas acknowledged that the idea of the Force was universal and drawn from a variety of worldwide religions and folklores, not to mention the ‘flower-power’ counter culture of California in the 1960s (of which Lucas was never really a part, but he was certainly aware of it even if only through Coppola).
‘The Force evolved out of various developments of character and plot,’ said Lucas. ‘I wanted a concept of religion based on the premise that there is a God and there is good and evil. I began to distil the essence of all religions into what I thought was a basic idea common to all religions and common to primitive thinking. I wanted to develop something that was non-denominational but still had a kind of religious reality.’
Lucas lifted elements of Shinto, of Buddhism, of Taoism and of Celtic druidic lore. Hindu theology suggested a unifying Brahman energy that composes the universe and can be channelled for good or evil, as in the ‘light side’ and ‘dark side’ of the Force. The works of Carlos Castaneda, popular in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, described humans as luminous ‘eggs’ connected with ‘the force of nature’ through ‘lines of power’. This was echoed in Yoda’s description of living beings as ‘luminous’ and not simply ‘crude matter’ in The Empire Strikes Back. In truth, Lucas amalgamated and simplified some of these influences into his notion of the Force, adding some spirituality and fantasy to his science-fiction epic.
John Baxter’s 1999 biography of Lucas attempted to depict him as an isolated figure, surrounded by ‘followers’ who believed in the reality of the Force. Baxter described Skywalker Ranch as Lucas’s ‘home’ (it is not; it’s simply an office complex) and his entourage as ‘people anxious to do whatever he ordered, agree with whatever he said’ (McCallum – and others – will happily relate the many arguments they have had with Lucas). The biographer paints a picture of a Howard Hughes figure with a fear of physical contact and relationships, whose head is constantly in a fantasy world of his own creation rather than reality. While there may be some basic truths here, could such an isolated figure be not only a creative movie director, but also the builder of a business empire that employed thousands?
Watching Lucas at work on the sets of Episode II and Episode III in Australia and interviewing him on several occasions in London and at Skywalker Ranch, there was little sign of the non-communicative eccentric described by Baxter. He’s certainly a man who guards his privacy, but he’s also someone who set out to be a filmmaker but has found his destiny defined by just one film series. He’s vacillated between resisting the pull of ‘the force’ of Star Wars and embracing it. In the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, he tried to escape, but the pull of the Force was too strong, and Lucas gave in to the inevitable and embraced Star Wars once more.
What of the future? The Star Wars franchise was considered all-but-dead by the mid-1980s. Lucas, tired of his creation by this point, took a decade out from close involvement with Star Wars, attempting to expand his wider movie-making interests (not altogether successfully), while developing the filmmaking technology that would allow him to return to the universe of the Force. By the early 1990s, just a decade after wrapping Return of the Jedi, his thoughts had turned to actually making the prequel trilogy.
Following those three movies, which Lucas claimed concluded the Skywalker family saga (despite former promises of nine or even twelve Star Wars movies), this time he didn’t walk away. Long-expressed thoughts of going off to create ‘small, personal’ movies that no one would want to see evaporated. Instead, Lucas got far more involved than he intended in the creation and supervision of The Clone Wars animated TV series, devoting himself to a deeper form of storytelling than his movies had allowed.
Following the conclusion of the movies in 2005, Lucas announced his intention to produce a live-action Star Wars television series, touted as being gritty and grown-up in the style of the popular Western show Deadwood. The series would be set in the twenty-year period between the rise of the Empire in Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith and the rise of the rebellion in Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope. It would explore the underworld of crime lords, like Jabba the Hutt, and bounty-hunters, like Boba Fett. Off limits to the TV show would be the Skywalker saga: Lucas considered that story as having been concluded. Rick McCallum was set to produce the show, which he described as being ‘like The Godfather; it’s the Empire slowly building up its power base around the galaxy, what happens in Coruscant, and it’s [about] a group of underground bosses who live there and control drugs, prostitution.’
Despite rumours of the production being based in Australia (as with the prequels) or in Czech Republic capital Prague (where Lucasfilm’s 2012 movie Red Tails had shot), and that casting had begun, the project was still dormant in the second decade of the twenty-first century. While Lucas claimed to have over fifty scripts written, the cost of matching the movies’ production values on television during an economic downturn was holding Lucasfilm back. Lucas stated to TV Guide that ‘The Emperor and Darth Vader are heard about – people talk about them – but you never see them. There are stormtroopers, but there are no Jedi.’
Despite these ambitions, the conditions were just not right to launch the show. ‘It sits on the shelf,’ Lucas told MovieWeb. ‘We are trying to figure out a different way of making movies. We are looking for a different technology that we can use, that will make it economically feasible to shoot the show. We have to figure out how to make it at about a tenth of the cost of the [Star Wars] features, because it’s television. It’s a very difficult process.’ As always, Lucas was also wondering how his new technological developments could affect filmmaking generally beyond his own efforts. ‘Obviously, when we do figure this problem out, it will dramatically affect features, because feature films cost $250 to $350 million. When we figure this out, they will be able to make a feature film for $50 million.’
The prospect of the live-action Star Wars television series seemed to rule out the idea that Lucas might continue the Star Wars story chronologically beyond Return of the Jedi. In 1983, interviewed in Denise Worrell’s book Icons: Intimate Portraits, Lucas had described his Star Wars ambitions beyond the initial three movies. ‘The first trilogy is social and political [the prequels] . . . [the second trilogy] is more about personal growth and self realization [the original trilogy], and the third deals with moral and philosophical problems [the post-Jedi trilogy]. The sequel is about Jedi Knighthood, justice, confrontation and passing on what you have learned.’ Despite being quoted early in his career as intending to make more than six Star Wars movies, by the time he embarked upon the prequel trilogy during the 1990s, he had begun to backtrack on whether he would ever complete the originally planned nine-film cycle. ‘For the third trilogy, I don’t know if I will still be alive when it comes time to make them,’ he told the French edition of Premiere magazine in 1993. Star Wars producer Gary Kurtz confirmed in 1999 that Lucas did have rough ideas for a concluding trilogy. ‘It was Luke’s journey really up to becoming the premiere Jedi Knight in the Obi-Wan Kenobi mould and his ultimate confrontation with the Emperor,’ reported fan site TheForce. Net of his address to a convention audience. The planned confrontation with the Emperor was used in Return of the Jedi (as was the notion that Luke had an unknown sister, originally part of the sequel trilogy, but a role given to Leia instead).
By 2001, Lucas was quite emphatic: the long-rumoured final Star Wars trilogy would not be happening. ‘Each time I do a trilogy it’s ten years out of my life. I’ll finish Episode III and I’ll be sixty. The next twenty years after that I want to spend doing something other than Star Wars. If at eighty I’m still lively and having a good time and think I can work hard for another ten years between eighty and ninety, I might consider it. But don’t count on it.’ He later told Entertainment Weekly, ‘The saga itself, the story of the Skywalker family, is over!’
Fans, however, could never let go of the idea of a final Star Wars trilogy, especially after the mixed reception that met the prequels. Where the first films had been about the son (Luke Skywalker) and the second trilogy of prequels focused on the father (Anakin Skywalker), many hoped the third post-Return of the Jedi trilogy might feature the daughter (Leia Organa). As with Luke, Leia was also powerful in the Force (explored to a degree in spin-off novels, although her character follows a more diplomatic career in rebuilding the galactic Republic). A third series of films could be built around Carrie Fisher’s Leia, passing on the knowledge of the Force to a younger cohort of would-be Jedi. Fisher’s 2011 dramatic weight loss fuelled speculation she was preparing to return to movies, and what could be more suitable than acting as the Alec Guinness figure in a brand new Star Wars trilogy? There was no reason Mark Hamill could not play an older Luke (the actor had long claimed that Lucas had told him he would want him back thirty years after the first movies to play an older Luke), while even the Star Wars-hating Harrison Ford might be persuaded to perform a cameo.
With the annual 3D re-releases of all six Star Wars scheduled to run until 2017, there would be plenty of time to create and produce a third trilogy of films for immediate release thereafter. Such movies could also provide the ideal launch platform for the long-delayed live-action television series. Whether Lucas himself would write and direct a third trilogy or not is unclear. Like the first trilogy, he may be happier to hand over the films to others. There is definitely interest among some directors who would love to get involved. Director Joe Johnston (The Rocketeer, 1991) used the release of his Captain America (2011) movie to publicly tout for a Boba Fett-focused film that he could direct. Johnston had originally been involved in the creation of the character for The Empire Strikes Back and was keen to explore Fett further. Little came of his suggestion, but it did prove that successful filmmakers other than Lucas might be willing to carry on the Star Wars saga beyond what the creator had intended for it.
As Lucas approaches seventy, it is uncertain whether he is giving thoughts to how the Star Wars legacy can continue without his involvement, but fans certainly are. Despite the fact that Lucas could easily enjoy another twenty years of good health and creative involvement with the franchise, there have been signs that others are being groomed to take over. The slightly younger McCallum (sixty in 2012) would in all probability continue to be his facilitator. McCallum once told of a nightmare he’d had featuring both him and Lucas in their eighties. In the dream, the aged Lucas calls McCallum telling him to pull the Star Wars movies out again, as the creator had just come up with another idea to change them again and make them ‘perfect’.
However, others have been more involved in the ongoing creative storytelling work of Star Wars than McCallum. Both Dave Filoni and Lucas’s adopted daughter Katie were heavily involved in The Clone Wars series and could be seen as inheritors of the legacy. It would be more likely for either of those (or both) to step in as the lead creative forces on Star Wars than anyone from the Expanded Universe worlds of novels, comics or videogames. Both Filoni and Katie Lucas worked very closely with Lucas in the creation of storylines for The Clone Wars, alongside a team of other writers. It seemed the creator was using the animated television series, and Filoni, to explore the wider implications of his creation beyond the scope offered by the movies and the saga of the Skywalker family.
George Lucas has long been an admirer of Walt Disney, who launched a theme park and merchandising empire on the back of his animated cartoons. Disney’s iconic characters of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck had gone on to entertain generations long after Disney’s death in 1966. Lucas had even been among the first visitors to Disneyland in 1955, aged just eleven. He worked directly with the Disney company on the Captain EO theme park film and the two versions of the Star Tours ride. The Disney company had eventually gone on to buy animation studio Pixar, which had begun as the graphics department of Lucasfilm.
Lucas is the nearest thing the movie world has produced to a second Walt Disney. His timeless creations have entertained millions, and have been lucratively spun-off into every conceivable format. They have attracted a dedicated and devoted fan base as well as appealing widely to general audiences. In heroes like Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia and Obi-Wan Kenobi, and in tragic figures like Anakin Skywalker, Boba Fett and Darth Maul, Lucas created cinematic icons. He had started out wanting to make simple films to entertain audiences, but had inadvertently created a classic movie mythology and built a filmmaking empire.
The most successful star to come out of the Star Wars movies, Harrison Ford, recognized a great drive and a surprising amount of autobiography in Lucas’s telling of the Star Wars saga. ‘It is amazing what you can do when you have a vision’, Ford said, ‘when you can bend other people’s will to your desire. Despite the enormous difficulties of the production of Star Wars, the thing that kept it focused and directed towards the ambition was George’s vision and passion for the idea. I always thought the character of Luke Skywalker was George; George growing up, George facing conflict and the need to prove himself – and he did, powerfully. So you’d see the character of Luke Skywalker change from one film to the next in much the same way that George was developing.’
In the original Star Wars Luke gives up his guidance computer and trusts his instincts and the Force to guide him in destroying the Death Star. In creating Star Wars, Lucas had unleashed a monster that came to dominate his life. After the initial trilogy he tried to resist the lure of his creation and branch out in new directions. Instead, his immersion in filmmaking technology brought him back to Star Wars and he created a new trilogy that somehow lacked the heart of the original, despite all the digital innovation. Perhaps, like Luke, Lucas should have given up his computers and trusted to the Force within himself. He started out as a rebellious filmmaker, aiming to buck the Hollywood system. Instead, he’d built an empire he could not escape.
Over thirty-five years Star Wars grew from a little-regarded space movie to an all-conquering multi-media franchise. Behind it all had been a natural born rebel who refused to do things the established way. From making comic books, novels and toys central to his launch strategy for the original Star Wars, to spending his own fortune in developing technology that changed the way movies were made, George Lucas had created a unique world that future generations would continue to play within. It appears that the Force will be with us . . . always!