Star Wars: The Clone Wars (film)

• 1. Introduction

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  Star Wars: The Clone Wars opened not in a galaxy far, far away, but in a boardroom decision that surprised nearly everyone involved. George Lucas, watching early footage of his upcoming animated television series on a large screen, turned to his team and asked a simple question: "This is so beautiful, why don't we just go and use the crew and make a feature?" That single impulsive remark set off a chain of events that would produce a theatrical film unlike anything the Star Wars franchise had attempted before. It would earn $68 million worldwide on a budget of $8 million, earn an 18% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and land on Entertainment Weekly's list of the five worst films of 2008. It would also introduce Ahsoka Tano, a character who would become one of the most beloved figures in the entire Star Wars universe. How did a film dismissed as a Saturday morning cartoon pilot become the unlikely foundation for one of the most ambitious animated sagas in science fiction history?

• 2. An Afterthought Goes to Theaters

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  Lucas himself described the film as "almost an afterthought." Howard Roffman, president of Lucas Licensing, observed diplomatically that "sometimes George works in strange ways." Producer Catherine Winder acknowledged the sudden decision added enormous pressure to a production already wrestling with the challenges of establishing a show "of this sophistication and complexity." Yet she also felt that budgetary constraints pushed the team to think creatively. The first few episodes of the television series, originally planned solely for broadcast, were woven together to create the theatrical cut. Warner Bros. Entertainment had been tracking the series from the beginning, and Lucas's theatrical announcement helped convince its parent company Time Warner to distribute the film, and to nudge its subsidiary Cartoon Network into airing the series. The result was a production born of speed and spontaneity, with ripple effects felt across every arm of the Star Wars licensing machine. Lucas Licensing, for instance, never had time to negotiate with longtime marketing partners like Pepsi, Burger King, and Kellogg's. A Pepsi spokesperson, when contacted by The New York Times about Star Wars merchandising in July 2008, was reportedly unaware a new Star Wars film was being released at all.

• 3. Animation Against the Grain

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  Lucasfilm Animation used Autodesk's Maya 3-D modeling program to build the film's worlds and characters. Lucas had a specific vision for the visual style, and it was deliberately unconventional. He did not want the film to resemble the photorealistic ambitions of movies like Beowulf, nor the polished style of Pixar and DreamWorks productions like The Incredibles and Kung Fu Panda. Instead, he wanted something with its own identity. The animation style paid homage to Japanese anime and manga, and to the British 1960s supermarionation series Thunderbirds. Lucas also insisted on a live-action camera philosophy: long shots, aggressive lighting, and editorial rhythm in place of storyboard-driven staging. Steward Lee served as storyboard artist during filming. That same stylistic choice that Lucas framed as a creative statement became the film's most condemned quality. Roger Ebert gave the film 1.5 stars out of 4 and wrote that the characters had "hair that looks molded from Play-Doh, bodies that seem arthritic, and moving lips on half-frozen faces." Variety's Todd McCarthy said the characters had "all the facial expressiveness of Easter Island statues." Tom Long of MediaNews called the animation "downright weak compared to what's generally seen onscreen these days." A handful of reviewers who criticized the characters still conceded that the scenery and backgrounds were vivid.

• 4. A Script Inspired by Samurai Cinema

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  The kidnapping plot at the center of the film traces its lineage not to another Star Wars story but to the 1989 Sonny Chiba samurai film Shogun's Shadow. Count Dooku's scheme to abduct Jabba the Hutt's infant son Rotta, frame the Jedi for the crime, and drive a wedge between the Galactic Republic and the Hutt crime clans drew its structural DNA from that samurai picture. Anakin Skywalker and his newly assigned apprentice Ahsoka Tano are sent to rescue Rotta from a monastery on the planet Teth, while Obi-Wan Kenobi negotiates with Jabba, and Padmé Amidala pursues a separate investigation on Coruscant. Dooku meanwhile dispatches assassin Asajj Ventress to retrieve or kill the infant. The plot turns on a double conspiracy: Jabba's uncle Ziro has secretly partnered with Dooku to engineer Jabba's downfall and seize power over the Hutt clans. Critics were not impressed by the execution. Dialogue was repeatedly described as "simplistic" and "stilted." McCarthy laid out the action structure in blunt terms: "a little exposition, an invasion; some more exposition, a lightsaber fight; a bit more blah-blah, a spaceship dogfight, and on and on." The novelization by Karen Traviss, released by Del Rey Books on the 26th of July 2008, expanded the story with Anakin's memories of his early childhood as a Hutt slave, and Dooku's recollections of battling the Mandalorians.

• 5. Who Spoke for the Galaxy

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  Several major actors from the live-action prequel trilogy were considered to reprise their roles and ultimately did not. Hayden Christensen was considered for Anakin before Matt Lanter was cast. Ewan McGregor was considered for Obi-Wan before James Arnold Taylor, who had already voiced the character in the 2003 micro-series, took the role. Frank Oz was considered for Yoda before Tom Kane stepped in. Natalie Portman was considered for Padmé before Catherine Taber was cast. Ian McDiarmid was considered for Palpatine before Ian Abercrombie took the part. Four actors from the prequel films did return: Samuel L. Jackson as Mace Windu, Christopher Lee as Count Dooku, Anthony Daniels as C-3PO, and Matthew Wood voicing the battle droids. Lee's participation carried a particular weight in retrospect. His appearance as Count Dooku in The Clone Wars was the last time he would voice the character before his death in 2015. The score was composed by Kevin Kiner, known for his work on Stargate SG-1 and CSI: Miami. The soundtrack, released by Sony Classical on the 12th of August 2008, opened with John Williams's main Star Wars theme before moving into more than 30 music cues by Kiner, including passages featuring the erhu, the duduk, and the oud.

• 6. A Franchise at the Checkout Counter

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  Merchandise for The Clone Wars first hit shelves on the 26th of July 2008, weeks before the film opened. Toys "R" Us mounted digital countdown clocks in all 585 of its stores. More than 225 of those locations opened at midnight for the toy debut. The flagship outlets in Mission Bay, San Diego and Times Square in Manhattan held costume and trivia contests and gave away limited-edition products with purchases. Hasbro released 3-inch action figures, an electronic clone trooper helmet, a customizable lightsaber, and an electronic AT-TE vehicle. Topps released a series of 90 trading cards on the same date, including foil cards, motion cards, animation cels, and rare sketch cards. Dark Horse Comics published a six-issue digest comic miniseries, though the sudden theatrical announcement forced the company to temporarily shelve two other Star Wars series, Dark Times and Rebellion. DK Publishing and the Penguin Group released tie-in books across multiple formats. Lego announced a product line at the American International Toy Fair, with U.S. availability planned for July 2008 and UK availability for August 2008. McDonald's held its first-ever Happy Meal promotion for a Star Wars film on the 15th of August 2008, running for four weeks with 18 exclusive toys packaged in specially designed boxes. A Star Wars: The Clone Wars MP3 player was also released, holding one gigabyte of memory and arriving with three interchangeable faceplates.

• 7. Box Office and Lasting Legacy

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  On its opening weekend, The Clone Wars earned $14,611,273 across 3,452 screens, with $6,228,973 coming from opening day alone. That placed it third for the weekend, behind Tropic Thunder and The Dark Knight. Dan Fellman, Warner Bros.'s head of distribution, defended the result by noting that two-thirds of the audience were families and that the film's budget was $8.5 million, modest for a CGI production. When the film dropped to $5.6 million in its second week, at least one outlet described it as "the first bona fide Star Wars flop." Total worldwide gross landed at $68,282,845, making it the lowest-grossing film in the franchise at that time. The film received a Razzie nomination for Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-Off or Sequel, losing to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, another Lucasfilm release that same year. The Clone Wars was also the final film in the franchise to carry significant involvement from George Lucas, who sold Lucasfilm to The Walt Disney Company four years after the film's release. The television series it launched ran far longer than anyone expected in 2008 and proved far better received. And in that series, Ahsoka Tano grew from the "annoying" apprentice Roger Ebert mentioned into a character with her own live-action series decades later.