Greetings everyone!
The following is a blog post I wrote almost a year ago immediately after I had attended Star Wars Celebration V. I was reading through it and realized that while I may have been a little overly enthusiastic about some of my expectations, I should also try to keep my focus on what I love about Star Wars and not get caught up in the quagmire of malicious contention that sometimes seems so prevalent in the Star Wars online community.
We are now coming to the beginning of the third season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars. TCW has come a long way since Ahsoka’s controversial introduction. It has seen many ups and downs. From Jar Jar’s new voice, all the way to large scale battles like Landing at Point Rain, TCW is certainly the biggest, most significant Star Wars project being produced to date.
Most, if not all, of TCW storylines are coming directly from George Lucas, as Dave Filoni has said many times. This is very interesting to me, considering that TCW has not yet been fully embraced by the fan community or mainstream audiences. Sure, it’s very mainstream compared to the other Star Wars projects being worked on, but it hasn’t been adopted to the degree that I would have thought. If you told me 5 years ago that there would be an animated series based on Star Wars, and that would have a launch movie, I would have thought it would penetrate mainstream audiences, and the community, much more then it has. I think the reason at the root of this is continuity, specifically with regards to the EU. Continuity has been at the bottom of a division among fans that has only grown since the beginning of TCW, and this issue seemed to explode when Karren Traviss announced her departure from Star Wars. Continuity is why some fans haven’t fully embraced TCW, and thus why mainstream viewers haven’t taken as much notice of TCW as they might have. If the whole Star Wars community fully embraced TCW it would
only make sense that more casual fans would give it a watch. This is a situation that should be familiar to fans. Remember the prequels? There were fans of “their own Star Wars”, the Star Wars they imagined growing up. The Star Wars they had read in books, comics, ext. George Lucas had something else planned, The Phantom Menace. We all know what happened there…or do we?I was eight years old when The Phantom Menace came out. I didn’t even watch the film until years later, but I remember playing at lightsaber battles with my friends, staring longingly at the action figures swinging from the pegs in the Walmart toy aisle, and all the hype in general as, later on, Revenge of the Sith was coming out. These were really cool experiences and memories, and when I finally watched my first Star Wars film, The Phantom Menace, I LOVED every minute of it. From the opening battle onboard the trade federation vessel, to the sea monsters, to the podrace, all the way to the epic ending battle sequence. And yes, I laughed my head off at Jar Jar.
Fast forward to today. Star Wars Celebration V has just finished. There were a lot of TCW announcements. Asajj Ventress will be back, strong with her new buddies, the Nightsisters of Dathomir. A new villain, Savage Opress, Darth Maul’s brother, will be introduced. Delta Squad will be featured. Also, Baron Papanoida (George Lucas’ cameo from episode 3) and his family will be having a few adventures of their own. This is all pretty cool stuff, if you ask me. However, I am even more excited for season three then I would have been, and here’s why… I attended CV.
For four days I was “on the ground”, so to speak. I was away from it all, away from the forums, away from the updates and the opinions , away from the interwebs altogether, and this gave me a fresh take on Star Wars in general. I was able to look at Star Wars like a kid again. If I had been following the news hunched over my laptop, reading all the commentary live on the web, it wouldn’t have been the same. I would have been constantly analyzing and critiquing the news, asking will this be any good? Will it measure up?
After seeing the excitement and enthusiasm of the cast and crew of TCW, and most especially, the excitement and enthusiasm of George Lucas himself, I realized something. This is Star Wars. Not just any Star Wars, but Star Wars coming from GL himself. There may be faults, it may not be perfect, but it will be AWESOME! I don’t need to worry if it will measure up. What I like about Star Wars is the action, excitement, adventure, and plainly, the fun! TCW offers all of those things, and frankly I can live with a few continuity issues.
After seeing what I saw at CV, I’m going to make a prediction that TCW is about to hit a critical mass of fan support. It is very likely that we’ll see a new faction of fans joining our ranks. In the same way that I came to Star Wars because of the prequels, we’ll see legions of kids coming to Star Wars because of TCW, and not just the kids, their parents will be returning to fandom as well. If you ask me, there has never been a better time to be a Star Wars fan.
Thanks for reading,
Riley
Author: admin
The Star Wars Report: A Star Wars Podcasting Network and Website.