Tuesday, March 19, 2013

When You Wish Upon a Death Star*


*Be really, really careful.

In Attack of the Clones in 2002, we all heard Yoda utter the fateful words, “Begun, the Clone Wars have.” And now in 2013, with a press release so incoherent it makes Yoda’s grammar twisting habits sound clear, endeth, the Cone Wars have. Not with the Battle of Coruscant or even Order 66, but rather as part of the hallowed “new direction” that Disney is taking with Lucasfilm.

Like a lot of the show’s fans, it is very difficult not to be heartbroken. The Clone Wars series has not only offered up five years of groundbreaking animation, complex storylines, soulful characters, and opened up an amazing window into some of the most epic and mythic events in that long ago, far away galaxy, it has become the beating heart of the franchise. After seeing the theatrically released film in 2008, my own interest and passion for the Wars was once again rekindled after Revenge of the Sith.

Just think about where the saga would be without The Clone Wars. For one thing, the blog you’re reading right now probably wouldn’t exist. After Episode III, it really did seem that the bright fire reignited by the special editions and the prequels was going to be extinguished, with nothing left to fill the void but the occasional novel, game, or comic book. More dark times were building on the horizon.

But then came Dave Filoni, who won the position of supervising director of the show. Arguably, he took the entire saga to previously unseen heights. Without a doubt, the man bled Star Wars. He was not only bristling with energy and supremely talented, he was one of us, even cosplaying as Plo Koon at Star Wars Celebration II. Whatever doubts the fanbase may have harbored, he soon won almost everyone over with his enthusiasm, knowledge, and sheer love for all things Jedi.

This ushered in a new era for Star Wars. To anyone listening to podcasts or reading blogs over the past few years, the talent of the cast and crew of The Clone Wars has  only been surpassed by their accessibility and openness to the fans. Ashley Eckstein, James Arnold Taylor, Catherine Tabor, Matt Lanter, Tom Kane, Corey Burton, Dee Bradley Baker, Sam Witwer, and all the rest, have been as wonderful and inclusive to us as anyone could have ever expected them to be.

Whether it be James Arnold Taylor co-hosting the Christmas episode of the Forcecast, or Ashley Eckstein launching another branch of Her Universe, or Stephen Stanton interacting with fans on Facebook, or Sam Witwer waxing philosophical about the dark side, or any of them at conventions or celebrations, they have so given of themselves that it’s been incredible. Their passion and commitment to the show was evident and audible in every interview given and every event attended.

Not in the original trilogy era nor in the prequel era have fans ever been so fortunate when it comes to scoring time with the cast and crew of a current Star Wars project.

It’s meant the world to this fan, going a long way toward making our fandom a proud and positive place to be again. They’ve given us more hours of content than anyone thus far and, had it been this way when I was a little kid, I don’t know that my heart could have taken all the excitement.

But as we know, all things come to an end. Otherwise the Jedi ideal of non-attachment wouldn’t make much sense. While fear of loss may be the path to the dark side, it is difficult not to feel some anger and resentment at the sudden news that the show will not be on Cartoon Network this fall, nor even on Disney XD. It is really sad and disheartening that the team who has given Star Wars not only a voice but a heart and soul for years will now be going off to do other projects.

They’ve become part of the family.

On a side note, I don’t get the sudden about-face of many of the fans. Quite a few of them gave Jimmy Mac of Rebel Force Radio a lot of crap for even suggesting that The Clone Wars might be coming to an end. Then when it did, some seem to be operating in a state of cognitive dissonance that it actually didn’t happened.

Bizarre, to say the least.

Also, this whole the-show-was-going-to-end-eventually-anyhow shrug of the shoulders doesn’t work for me. Yes, the show wasn’t going to run indefinitely. No denying that. And newsflash, none of your lives are going to run indefinitely, either. But that doesn’t mean Disney execs should march over to your house and shoot you this afternoon! Come on, guys.

Frankly, this tragedy reaches almost Darth Plageuis levels when one takes into account the fact that season six is basically complete, with episodes from seasons seven and eight also under production. No one knows when or where or really even if this content will be shown or made available. There was an excellent clip shown of an early Order 66 episode that is extremely tantalizing on the infamous Filoni Hostage Video. Disney’s labeling of the rest of The Clone Wars as “bonus content” is baffling, to say the least.

Not even taking into account the more emotional reality of countless sad little girls in Ahsoka hoodies, this is a very, very inauspicious start to Disney’s ownership of the Star Wars franchise.

The constant line we’ve been fed to explain all this is that the company is taking things in a New Direction. Well, okay. New directions can be fresh and exciting and invigorating, and can yield dynamic and unexpected results. But that doesn’t mean in the middle of a full-on race you suddenly veer off track and head over to start another one across town.

Since Disney’s initial purchase of Lucasfilm, the simple fact of the matter is that every project lined up for this year and the years to come has been either cancelled or indefinitely postponed. Every tantalizing teaser we saw at Star Wars Celebration VI has been mothballed or shut down. First it was the 3D re-releases. Then it was the 1313 game. Then it was Detours. But the real slap to the face was The Clone Wars, a show blossoming into some of the best mythic storytelling ever seen on television.

Unless I’ve misunderstood, the deal was we were getting more Star Wars now that Disney is in control, not less. After the initial round of announcements back in October, however, it’s pretty much been all downhill.

Much like Anakin and the Jedi Order, my confidence in Disney has been severely shaken. At the very least this shows our new corporate overlords do not understand the fanbase, nor could they care less about it.

So much venom has been spewed at George Lucas during his thirty plus year reign of Lucasfilm. This goes to show what good hands the company has actually been in all this time. It seems to me that art and innovation were always prized at Lucasfilm, far and above profit and politics. Lucas loved this show, being personally invested in the story and the characters. It never would have been cancelled or treated so shoddily when he was in charge.

It’s difficult to know what to think about his role in all this. It’s amazing to me that Lucas didn’t have some kind of contingency plan for the show. Speculation now leads me to think maybe he doesn’t have as much input as we assumed he would. Maybe the Lucas really is gone from Lucasfilm (Is he feeling a little like Lando “This deal is getting worse all the time” Calrissian right about now?).

And heaven only knows where Kathleen Kennedy is during all this. A reassuring message to the fans would not be amiss here. 

It was hoped, or at least assumed, when the acquisition came that Disney would be creatively hands off with the property. They absorbed Lucasfilm because it was Lucasfilm, not simply to turn it into a vestigial appendage of their own company. Thus far, that hasn’t been the case.

Considering The Clone Wars was successfully both critically and in the ratings, Disney’s stubborn refusal to find a real home for it speaks loud and clear. The board is being cleared for their Star Wars, for better or for worse. Anything that came before is being given the boot, with perhaps the exception of cameos of the original trilogy cast, but that’s probably more an attempt to cash in on the nostalgia factor than any fan service.

Even at the cost of alienating a generation of young fans, they simply don’t care about The Clone Wars or the talent that helped create it week in and week out. This is all about their Star Wars, their way. Maybe great things are to come, but make no mistake, this is not the fandom and the franchise that we’ve enjoyed since 1977.

While I am still hoping for the best with the sequel trilogy, a certain segment of fandom is understandably getting really tired of hearing about Episode VII already. If they’re shutting down production of The Clone Wars to focus on the new movie, that still doesn’t mean they can’t release what they have, polished up or no. And where does it end?

As a friend of mine noted on Facebook, is Disney going to shut down production on The Avengers sequel to work on Episode VII too? Or how about Disney XD? Why not the theme parks while we’re at it? Just allocate all resources to work on the new trilogy.

Pfft.

P.S. Seriously Disney, we are excited about Episode VII, but just don’t turn it into a hose to beat us with while you’re taking away everything we love. It’s not very endearing. Telling us how wonderful the sequel trilogy is going to be while simultaneously holding our faces in the toilet is disingenuous, to say the least. Some of us are going to notice.




24 comments:

  1. Well put, as ever, Paul--but man, I wish you had never had to write this. My take on the whole Disney thing has been "it's good until proven otherwise"...well, we hit "otherwise" a couple of weeks ago. I'll never stop believing that they could've put out TCW direct-to-Blu-Ray for years to come, and it wouldn't have diminished their "Brave New Direction" one bit.

    I can't help but think that all of those "fans" who've absurdly raged for years about George Lucas "destroying Star Wars"--and who jumped on The Clone Wars bandwagon only in the last season or so, and are now raging that it's gone--have finally gotten their just desserts...if only the rest of us didn't have to eat their poisoned pie, too.

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    1. Right there with ya, Eddie. We have hit the "otherwise" iceberg, Titanic-style. Especially given the news today that the "bonus content" is just that, with no wrap-up for Ashoka, Asajj, Maul, and all the rest.

      As for the whole GL bit ... affirmative on that, too. They ran him out of his own franchise and attacked his kids on Twitter and well, here we are.

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  2. Great post, but the 1313 thing is still a rumor, and it hasn't been confirmed. I'm not really sure if to believe what Disney says, or the rumors coming out from everywhere. As Yoda once said ''impossible to see the future is.''

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    1. Yeah, we'll see. I heard 1313 had been jettisoned too. It would seem to be following the trend ...

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  3. Star Wars fans were caught unawares, me included. Disney was a great licensee; I thought they "got" it. But it's one thing to be a company doing whatever it is to make its licensing partner happy, quite another to be the owner. Boy did we learn that the hard way.

    What worries me is if Disney's this tone-deaf now, it doesn't bode well for what's to come.

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    1. Like you said in your excellent write-ups, this is the first time SW fans have had this experience. We've never had to "fight" for something before. It's not a happy learning curve, to be sure. And yeah, the future is definitely clouded now, dark side style.

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  4. Another great post; you hit the nail right on the head, repeatedly. I was so on board with the Disney acquisition when it first happened, but to say that things have gone downhill in the past month is a huge understatement. In just a few weeks they made the entirety of Celebration VI completely redundant.

    And I'm not buying any of the "focusing on Episode VII" excuses. In 2015, Disney will be releasing Star Wars Episode VII, Avengers 2, and Pirates of the Caribbean 5. If I'm not mistaken, ILM handle the VFX and Skywalker Sound handle the SFX of all 3. Did they cancel or postpone any of them to focus on Episode VII? Of course not. And the thing is, Lucasfilm Animation in no way interferes with or hinders the production of Star Wars movies, as far as I know at least. Plus, they just disbanded the team, so it's not like their efforts needed to be redirected elsewhere. So... why cancel it?
    It's clear this has less to do with Episode VII than it has to do with corporate power plays or whatever. TCW is a project that began before the new management took over, aired on a competing network for five years, and was worked on by a separate animation team even though Disney has their own. Plus, it probably cost quite a lot, and without Lucas's financial umbrella, this became a valid concern.
    So that's really all there is to it: money and power, as Darth Maul once told Pre Vizsla. To add insult to injury, they're basically patronizing the fans, if not outright lying. Compared to how open Filoni and his team were with us, this jarring shift really does feel like a slap to the face. I mean, at least have the courtesy of being honest with us.

    And I agree with LazyPadawan. This really worries me about the future, because while I once had immense faith, it now seems that maybe Disney don't know what they're doing. They either don't understand the fans, or don't care about them. And that does not bode well.

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    1. Thank you, Louis.

      "And I'm not buying any of the "focusing on Episode VII" excuses. In 2015, Disney will be releasing Star Wars Episode VII, Avengers 2, and Pirates of the Caribbean 5. If I'm not mistaken, ILM handle the VFX and Skywalker Sound handle the SFX of all 3. Did they cancel or postpone any of them to focus on Episode VII?"

      Actually, Benjamin Hart of Star Wars Underworld fame has just announced Disney has stopped production on Episode VII .... in order to work on Episode VII!

      Where will it end? :-)

      I've never been a huge Disney fan. In point of fact, my best Disney experience was Star Tours this summer after Celebration VI. I really like certain genre stuff they have done, like Tron Legacy, John Carter, and now Oz. But they also dropped Narnia like a hot potato when Prince Caspian didn't perform as well as the first one, so ...

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  5. It made me even more confused when they announced that Tim Curry was taking over the role of Palpatine after Ian Abercrombie had passed away. That, to me, would have indicated that we were to have at least one or 2 seasons left in the bag. And, with the remaining "stories" left to tell in the series, it seems Tim Curry would have only had a few lines of dialogue, and that's it.

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    1. That does point toward a big question mark in all this, namely who knew what when as all this started to unfold?

      Full of Sith is reporting there were plans for eight seasons. And we knew from the voice talent that season six was almost finished. If only we could get that on blu-ray, but apparently that's not the plan.

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  6. Not just "shrugging my shoulders" here, but realistically recognizing the show could not run forever - and comparing a cancelled show with Disney shooting me at my house is a failed analogy, IMO (be it tongue-in-cheek). It is a cancelled cartoon. Step back from the cliff. I enjoyed it, but it is *not* the end of the world now that it is gone.

    What I find interesting in all this outrage about what Disney has done ("how dare they make their own decisions about their own property!") is how Lucas, Feloni et al are completely off the hook for not planning for a possible end . . . and just rambling on as if they had an infinite amount of time to wrap up key plot points. Consider ~ for every 'Bombad Jedi' or '. . . Day in the Void' episode, we could have instead been treated to further developments on the fate of Maul, Order 66, etc. ~ you know, the stuff we *wanted* to see. THAT is the real shame here, IMO. Wasted time with wasted shows when air time on any network is so precious - too many 22-minute chunks were squandered on filler.

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    1. For starters, coug, I hardly think Paul comes across here or elsewhere as standing on the edge of a "cliff"--if you read anything else he's written, you'll see that though he's passionate about Star Wars,he's the farthest thing from the type of hysterical fanboy you're trying to portray him as.

      Also, your use of the word "we" in the second paragraph assumes that Clone Wars viewers are some monomorphic group, which they most definitely are not. For every adult viewer that hated "Bombad Jedi" or one of the more whimsical episodes, there were probably 50,000 kids that LOVED it. The Clone Wars never was about being some hard-edged, plot-above-all-else version of Star Wars--if you want that, there are always the various SW video games where you can be some "b4d4zz" Dark Jedi Night Acolyte or whatever...except for SW:1313, of course. As for Lucas and Filoni being "off the hook for not planning for a possible end", that's like being pissed at Beethoven for an unfinished symphony.

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    2. "Not just "shrugging my shoulders" here, but realistically recognizing the show could not run forever - and comparing a cancelled show with Disney shooting me at my house is a failed analogy, IMO (be it tongue-in-cheek). It is a cancelled cartoon. Step back from the cliff."

      I don't know. The analogy made me chuckle, at least. It's just weird to me because fandom usually falls into the love-it or hate-it camps. But as Lazy Padawan pointed out, we've never had to deal with anything like this before.

      "What I find interesting in all this outrage about what Disney has done ("how dare they make their own decisions about their own property!") is how Lucas, Feloni et al are completely off the hook for not planning for a possible end . . . and just rambling on as if they had an infinite amount of time to wrap up key plot points."

      Well, that is honestly a question of mine. They had planned an endgame, but did this move by Disney just totally catch them unawares? That puzzles me, too. People have talked about Lucas financing a movie to wrap things up on his own, but I don't know if he could even legally do that anymore.

      "Consider ~ for every 'Bombad Jedi' or '. . . Day in the Void' episode, we could have instead been treated to further developments on the fate of Maul, Order 66, etc. ~ you know, the stuff we *wanted* to see. THAT is the real shame here, IMO. Wasted time with wasted shows when air time on any network is so precious - too many 22-minute chunks were squandered on filler."

      Well, I loved Bombad Jedi, but that's a fair point. Pacing has always been an issue with this show. It is sad to think we could have gotten more Ashoka or Maul arcs instead of one like, you know, the droid stuff.

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    3. "For starters, coug, I hardly think Paul comes across here or elsewhere as standing on the edge of a "cliff"--if you read anything else he's written, you'll see that though he's passionate about Star Wars,he's the farthest thing from the type of hysterical fanboy you're trying to portray him as."

      @Eddie - if I wasn't running around waving my hands in the air and hyperventilating, I would agree with you!

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  8. What I don't understand is why people are not seeing that this is a total marketing plan that every movie studio follows. You ALWAYS give viewers at least 2 years between films for the very reason Clone Wars is being wound down, which is to gather up anticipation and create a build up. If you kept Clone Wars going up until the release of Episode 7, you would be saturating the Star Wars market. This is clearly the reason behind it all. Why hasn't this been mentioned? If you want Clone Wars to continue for another 2 seasons, we wouldn't get Episode 7 until 2017 most likely.

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    1. That's fine by me. I don't give a stuff about Ep 7 they can keep it.

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    2. "If you kept Clone Wars going up until the release of Episode 7, you would be saturating the Star Wars market."

      @Neil - yeah, I can sort of see that, if I squint hard enough. It's funny, because back in my first Disney post, I mentioned my fear of saturating the market. For awhile there, it seemed like Disney planned to release a SW movie every other weekend. First the sequel trilogy, then rumors of a Boba Fett movie, then a young Han Solo one, then a Yoda one ....
      that's the way of oversaturation, imo.

      This is a bit different. The CW isn't a film series, after all. And no one can deny it's built a new generation of fans. This seems to me to be losing momentum.

      And that still doesn't explain the 3D re-releases. Having SW films in the theaters in the late nineties didn't exactly hurt he prequels, ya know? Your average film goer is hardly camped out in front of the television watching CW every Saturday morning anyway.

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  9. My own thoughts are on Jedi News right now and will be on my own blog later this afternoon.

    Basically, I want to fight back, but the more riled up we get the more we sound like the very haters we've been combating for years. People already have this false equivilency between us Saga fans and the hateboys, and I don't want to make it legitimate.

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    1. This is the path of the razor's edge, isn't it? I did enjoy your thoughts, as always. Honestly, it's gotten to where one can't really mention Star Wars and Disney in the same sentence without getting in a verbal fistfight. Kinda laying low for the moment ....

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  10. Hey Paul,

    We're inviting a select few contributors to Moviepilot, and would love to add you as a contributor. This would mean more recognition for your posts due to the large community we already have here on Moviepilot, with 2 million visitors a month and 11 million fans on Facebook. We'd love to have you onboard, so let me know and we can get you set up.

    You can find more information at http://moviepilot.com/contribute and let me know if you have any questions: aaron@moviepilot.com

    Cheers,
    Aaron

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    1. Dear Aaron,

      Thank you for the invite. I have been checking out the site. I will have to email you about this. I haven't contributed much lately but I'm about to come back with something.

      Cheers,

      Paul

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  11. I just posted a couple of snippets to my website about star wars at http://ineverknewbutnowido.com/snippets/tag/star%20wars, but it seems like you would have a lot more to offer. Send me a message if you are interested in sharing some knowledge.

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