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Welcome
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Roderick Vonhögen's
Virtual Edition
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| December 2003 |
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Merry Christmas 2003 !
23rd December 2003 |
| The VirtualEdition.Net would like to wish everyone a Very Merry Christmas, and a peaceful prospect for 2004 ! |
| Clearly my New Year Resolutions - Star Wars style - are to make a concerted effort to draft up an accurate plotline for Episode III, and to begin to introduce illustrations to help whet our appetites for the final chapter in this operatic Saga ! :o) |
| Nathaniel Reed, 23rd December 2003 |
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T'Bone explores Mustafar !
21st December 2003 |
| Fan site maestro, T'Bone, recently scored two womprat hits with detailed minutae concerning the location of The Duel, as well as the environment where Darth Vader's cybernetics are created ! Although he acknowledges upfront that the accuracy of the detail is likely to be off, he believes the gist of it is true. And what gist !! His spy gives us a rough tour of Mustafar, the unofficially named location for the Obi-Wan - Vanakin Duel, a vulcanic world used by the Separatists for mining the raw materials required by their droid armies. |
| What with actors and crew alike describing this duel as "epic", one can see that a great amount of thought and planning has been given to this environment and its staging. According to Hayden Christensen, Stunt Master Nick Gillard has apparently worked a cause-and-effect story arc into the swordfighting to allow the older Obi-Wan to defeat the Chosen One. Nick has already revealed that Anakin is a weaker swordsman on inclines ; as we discover the dark nooks and crannies of the Separatists' fiery base on Mustafar, this long-awaited duel will indeed be a spectacle ! |
| The other recent report provided by T'Bone details the provision of Vanakin's cybernetic life-support suit. A great amount of detail that again may be a little off the mark, but still whets one's appetite for what is to come ! From what is suggested, clearly this is the scene described by Lucas as "pretty neat", and the 'Frankenstein-esque' atmosphere calls forth the "1930s, 1940s vocabulary" to which the writer-director has harkened. The design of this medical chamber, its Star Wars -style conduits, piping, and cables, its lighting, and the absence of human surgeons causes a shiver to run down my spine, tingling with excitement from the dark menace and 'horror', as well as simply that we will finally see the donning of the Suit, a iconic presence that will dominate the galaxy (as well as glimpsing the genesis of what has dominated our culture since 1977 !). |
| Though Official news has fallen silent, nuggets of info are released through the return of the on set diaries by Pablo Hidalgo for 'HyperSpace' members. This time, though, Pablo is reporting from the offices of ILM, and I will endeavour to hint at anything noteworthy. However, recently the official site let slip in an unrelated article what appears to be the name of Temeura Morrison's clone trooper character, a 'Commander Cody' ...... |
| Nathaniel Reed, 21st December 2003 |
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Reviewing the cartoon Clone Wars
6th December 2003 |
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| The first of ten of what will be a total of twenty short cartoons have now been released. These will be some of the Official Lucasfilm stories detailing key events during the Clone Wars. But what do we think of them ?? |
| Overall, I was quite impressed. Generally the style and pacing is very much 'Star Wars', and there were some nice touches of continuity ; one that jumped out for me was the insectoid-headed gladiator with the double-pronged trident .... the very same species that we see in the first spin-off Star Wars story from the Marvel comics !! The voice actors were well cast, and there were some great designs too : I especially liked the lambda-style republic starfighters, with their rotating tail fins ! There were some elements that didn't feel too in keeping with this universe, and some further character insight would be welcomed, but overall it was a very good effort ! I wonder how far this matérial is now official canonical lore, now that we have glimpsed Mon Calamari ?? |
| Here, long-time forumer, 'CoreWorld', offers his reaction .... |
| "When I first heard they were doing a new animated Star Wars project, my first reaction was one of great excitement, then that was tempered with a growing sense of dread as memories of the 'Ewok' and 'Droid' cartoons from the mid eighties came flooding back. However, it had been announced that Gennedy Tartakovsky was to be the brains behind the operation, which, after catching some initial episodes of 'Samurai Jack' had me sold on the fact that he could bring the Jedi to animated life ; there was still some room left for nagging doubt, I mean, Star Wars in three minutes ! How could this be done ? But thankfully all my fears have proved unfounded.
" 'Clone Wars' is without doubt a very fine addition to the Star Wars Mythos, what with today's children having a (very) short span of attention, the three minute running time works well. After viewing all the episodes back to back they succeed in weaving together a master storyline, the battle at Muunilist, with solo stories featuring Kit Fisto in action on Mon Calamari and Count Dooku's search for a new assassin, Assaj Ventress, counterbalanced with sequences showing the impatient and frustrated Anakin Skywalker, chafing at the bit to get a command of his own, Chancellor Palpatine, (that wily politician !) finding ways to get young Skywalker into the midst of the battle, much to the chagrin of Obi-Wan and Yoda, to the final sequence in the first episode showing Anakin bidding a touching goodbye to Padmé. What's also good is that while outside the realms of the movie series, it gives us a chance to see Anakin as the "cunning warrior" and "best starpilot in the galaxy" - to which Obi-Wan mentions in Episode IV : A New Hope.
"The animation of the characters is handled well, with only Palpatine, who would look equally at home in an episode of 'The Simpsons', being the odd man out. As the series progresses, I would like to see some of the more quieter moments, to build the characters alongside the frenetic action sequences, but as things stand, it's got off to a very good start indeed !" |
| Do you agree with this critique ? Why not send me YOUR thoughts on these first ten cartoons, and I'll post them here ! :o) |
| We have been discussing the Lucasfilm Clone Wars matérial - the novels as well as the new cartoon series - here in this thread of the discussion forum, while this thread discusses the Clone Wars lore in general. |
| Nathaniel Reed, 6th December 2003 |
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