Dave Filoni wears his Star Wars geek credentials proudly. Just ask him about his homemade Plo Koon costume.
He was working on his own rendering of the powerful (yet to the casual fan, obscure) Jedi Master when the opportunity came to put his own stamp on George Lucas’ space fantasy — a phenomenon that so far has covered six blockbuster films, along with countless offshoots in TV, books and comics. The animation veteran (Avatar: The Last Airbender) was commissioned to bring to life a pivotal part of the saga largely unseen in the films.
The result, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, airs Fridays beginning Oct. 3 on Cartoon Network. It fills the three-year gap between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, when the Republic used clone soldiers to battle the Separatists and their droid army. Familiar characters such as Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker, Yoda, C-3PO and R2-D2 turn up, joined by newer characters like the evil Sith apprentice Asajj Ventress and Skywalker’s young Padawan learner Ahsoka.
Fans got their first look at the sassy Ahsoka, and the new animation style — which Lucas himself has described as an attempt to meld 3D technology with the marionettes of Thunderbirds — in a big-screen prologue to the series released in August. Reaction was mixed (Roger Ebert started his mournful review with “Has it come to this?”), and Filoni says he can understand some of the negative criticism. Those who are averse to the more kid-friendly aspects of Star Wars, for instance, probably didn’t find much to like in a storyline that involved a plot to kidnap a Hutt baby nicknamed Stinky, or in Ziro the Hutt, who spoke English with an inexplicable Truman Capote accent. But Filoni says the movie was only a taste of the overall feast he has in mind.
“There is going to be such a variety of stories on the show,” he says. “Some will be lighter, and some will be very dark. The movie definitely was on the lighter end.”
That means different characters will step to the forefront in each episode, with some storylines plunging the farthest reaches of that galaxy far, far away. That includes Filoni’s personal fave, Plo Koon. If there is an overall through-line, however, Filoni says it is Ahsoka. Since she is nowhere to be seen in Revenge of the Sith, her fate is left unclear, adding a new tension to the proceedings. Her teacher, after all, is the guy who’s going to become Darth Vader.
All the characters and plot points Filoni and his writers came up with did not emerge in a vacuum. They had to be approved by the Maker himself. Even so, the image some fans have of Lucas — as a micromanager loath to take input from others — didn’t match up with Filoni’s experience.
“He created Star Wars,” Filoni says, “and sometimes people lose sight of that. But George has been pretty collaborative. When we put things to him, we work together and really try to get to the heart of what it is we’re trying to do. And he always has something to say.”