If you don’t already know, George Lucas played a huge part in making Star Wars: The Clone Wars. He pushed for the series, he got it going, he hired the animated series’ executive producer Dave Filoni… You cannot overstate Lucas’ role in the series, which is currently wrapping up its final season on Disney+. Lucas sat down with Filoni, his protégé, and host David Collins to discuss Clone Wars at an employees-only screening, and Lucasfilm has now shared snippets of the chat on the latest episode of The Star Wars Show. It’s a rare treat.
The discussion, which starts at about nine minutes in, covers a variety of topics from the duo’s favorite episodes to Ahsoka Tano. Lucas said he’s always been interested in animation and that setting the series during the events of the Clone Wars came naturally. The time period offered plenty of ground for a TV show to sustain itself. He and Filoni reminisced about the approach to the look of the show from the beginning, before the movie and show premiered in 2008. Lucas treated it as though they were making a feature. They didn’t brush aside any details because “it’s only TV.” Lucas joked that Filoni didn’t think that could be done. Y’all, Lucas even makes a “do or do not” joke. That’s worth the price of admission.
Lucasfilm
Filoni talked about Lucas’ appetite for trying new technology going back to 2005. The creator of Star Wars predicted The Clone Wars would find strong footing on streaming platforms. And it did indeed explode when it arrived on Netflix. Filoni recalls Lucas talked about virtual shooting and brought up trying to do motion capture too, and The Clone Wars brought mocap to animation for the first time in the series with the recent Maul and Ahsoka duel.
The footage from their chat only lasts about ten minutes, but I could watch hours more of this.
Featured Image: Lucasfilm
Amy Ratcliffe is the Managing Editor for Nerdist and the author of Star Wars: Women of the Galaxy. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
