The Clone Wars Preview Special

insert overused Yoda quote here

The Clone Wars Preview Special aired last night on American TV, revealing a little bit of information about the forthcoming series and hinting at plot points for what looks to be the first four episodes. The special didn’t cover a phenomenal amount of ground. The balance of presenter Ashley Eckstein (voice of Ahsoka) and the interview with Avatar creator Dave Filoni tried to please both older and younger audiences and, well, didn’t really work but I also didn’t feel as if it mattered.

Eckstein is certainly a lot cuter than I imagined she would be but the real selling point was the Sneak Peak at an episode involving Anakin and Ahsoka uncovering a secret Separatist weapon. What pleased me about a lot of the clips from these first few episodes is that Admiral Yularen seemed to appear in a fair few of them.

On a related CW note, I finally finished watching the original CW series last night (at four o’clock in the morning no less) kindly sent to me by the wonderful beccatoria and tallforadwarf. I hadn’t been too interested in the series when it first arrived, due to the stigma of Episode II and when I later tried to watch it during a flight to Japan last year, I only managed to cover the first couple of episodes but, I have to say, in light of the new film, I actually quite enjoyed it.

The CW EU has kind of become the big ‘thing’ for me recently. It started earlier in the year when, lacking any Episode I-related material to listen to at work, I moved over to listening to the audiobooks of Clone Wars era material and was totally won over by Jedi Trial and Yoda: Dark Rendezvous, both of which were of such high quality that I really became involved with this era despite not having an interest in how the story concludes in Revenge of the SIth. Over time, these characters and this era have really become their own entity for me.

I’m not quite sure about the timeline/continuity details of how the books, the old Genndy Tartakovsky series and the new series fit together but I’m okay with that. The freedom of not having seen Episode III allows me to kind of divorce this era from all other shades of Star Wars and…I’m happy with that. I don’t want to see General Grievous presented as another walk on/blink-and-you’ll-miss-him villain introduced and dispatched in one film, I want to see how he develops over the new series and what drives him. I can live without the Battle of Endor with bigger Ewoks and I don’t want to see Darth Vader devalued – for now, I’m happy to just let the story of the Clone Wars continue and, if that means contradicting the established ‘ending’ of Return of the Sith and the future of the OT…then I’m okay with that.

The OT is always going to be there and there will always be a way round whatever future changes George Lucas makes to these films. For now, I’m interested in seeing a different story and not worrying about tying them all together.

Here ends the impromptu rant.