Slashdot Mirror
CG Television Clone Wars Trailer Released
Ant writes "The official Star Wars site has up the one minute and 50 second trailer for the upcoming computer rendered Clone Wars." I'm still not sold on the CG, but the models seem to be somewhat based on Genndy Tartakovsky's designs from the original Clone Wars series. Wikipedia offers a bevy of details on the series.
As if I wasn't already disinterested enough in the Star Wars prequels.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
Wait till you see Beowolf, the CG photo realistic humans will blow your mind.
I can't say I'm sold on this. I enjoyed the Clone Wars cartoon series but even as a die hard Star Wars fan I feel this is flogging a dead horse. Lucas should have his special effects taken away from him and be sent to his room until he remembers how to make a good film (or in this case series).
The saddest thing is that despite my protest I'm sure I'll watch it, secretly hoarde some action figures from the series and own every reissue of the new Clone Wars boxset for the next twenty years.
I never get used to these constant resurrections
LOL! I guess Lucas has to pay for his indie films somehow...
Star wars isn't cool anymore. Even for us.
The CGI isn't terribly impressive, if at all. Even if it were rendered in real time just for me, it still looks like UT 2004 with a Star Wars mod. Not that care, I skipped episodes 2 & 3 (but unfortunately not 1) and don't even remember when I watched the first 3 movies.
..kinda shitty.
I hope that isn't even vaguely prod quality. Yes, I realize it is CG, but damn...even originally CG characters (Greivious, etc) looked bad.
I can count the texels!
Noooo!
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
I'd love to see a Samurai Jack movie . . .
Wikipedia offers a bevy of details on the series.
:)
Or it used to...
just kidding. love you wiki
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
Why is George Lucas bothering to remake the Clone Wars shorts when he knows that everyone really wants prequels to the Ewok Adventure series? I want to see what Wilfred Brimley's character, from Ewoks: Battle for Endor, was like when he was a kid.
Dexter's laboratory, Samurai Jack and Powerpuff Girls are enough to establish his genius. But he managed to turn around my opinion about Star Wars (as someone born in the eighties and having got a TV in the nineties) - while reinforcing my low opinion of George Lucas's later work. Samurai Jack is really another example of a long epic saga, minimalistically drawn, yet full of life, twists and curve balls.
Hopefully, they borrow the good parts from his work and not go all CG centric over the story telling part.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
Is this just a retread of those cartoons, or is it a different plotline?
Some of it looks okay- but there's one spectacularly lame scene where the trooper yells 'get ready!' dramatically, and then the door slowly opens to reveal: 5 of those dorkbots from phantom menace going 'pew-pew'.
It's not supposed to be photorealistic CG. Whether or not they successfully stylized it is the question. It's just like how Pixar decided to make more cartoony CG and was wildly successful with it, while things like the Final Fantasy movie tried photorealism and failed. I can't make up my mind based on a low bitrate low resolution trailer.
Seems like LucasArts has gotten bored with re-re-redoing their movies, so now they're focusing on the already-established Clone Wars series.
Now we can expect to see all their Star Wars videogames to get rereleases.
*Braces for down-mods*
/* No Comment */
Ironically, this will probably turn out to be better than the prequels. I mean, we don't expect convincing performances from a bunch of CG characters.
The lower our expectations are, the happier we'll be.
Its to bad Leia looks like she has Anorexia.
Mikey
I've always been the kinda guy to fall for the girl dressed like an eskimo.
Why is everyone making a big deal that the CG looks crap? BFD! It's about the stories, not the CG. I couldn't care less if it's done with bits of paper on a glass sheet background so long as the stories are written and voiced reasonably well.
No, the CG doesn't look real... you really want it to? I'd prefer something with a little style, a little "not real". Have you watched Polar Express? The characters looked real, and moved realistically alright... but they also looked like propped up corpses because despite all the work of the artists they STILL couldn't quite get it real enough.
There's only so far you can go along the path of making CG realistic. At a certain point you have to start thinking about the look and the flow of the thing instead of whether or not you're rendering 1000 different pores on a human nose. I personally liked the trailer, I think it looked pretty good. The CG doesn't look realistic, and I for one am glad of it. It gives the CG animated series a certain flair.
Did anyone here watch TMNT at the theatres recently? I did with my 6-year-old son and loved it. The story was strong, the characters were well rendered... but realistic it wasn't. It was stylized, but in a way that to me and my son made the characters MORE believable. It's hard to accept an unreal world when there are real people up on the screen. Similarly, it's hard to accept the real world with unreal characters... we use what's called willing suspension of disbelief in order to take some aspects on faith.
Now, whether or not they can actually get some good stories in this is open to be seen. I won't make any quick judgments; sure Lucas has created some tripe like Episode 1... but mostly because it was more about him experimenting with what he could do with CG than writing a good story. Episodes 2 and 3 both improved on this formula but still didn't quite match Empire Strikes Back (though I still think Episode 3 was better (or at least equal) in almost every respect than Return of the Jedi). Since this is going to be all CG, there are no limits and nothing to prove. The only thing he CAN prove with a CG Star Wars is that he can still write. If he can't, the show will fail since there are million and one "also-rans" in this race.
I'll wait and see. The trailer gives is little to go on as far as whether or not the writing is better here than in the prequels. Lucas has written good stuff in his life; look at THX-1138. If he can do it again, this'll be good. If not, then maybe it'll get an audience with the current pre-teen crowd who enjoyed the prequels. However, without strong stories you'll lose them and there'll be no "rewatching" ability.
Can somebody please withdraw the treasure of the Star Wars from George Luca$ before he destroy it completely? His gift was given to the world in 1977. He GAVE it to us. Now he keep giving gifts. One gift was enough.
This new series (which looks like a continuation of the previous Clone Wars) will be directed by Dave Filoni http://imdb.com/name/nm1396048/ (Avatar, Dave the Barbarian), and in my opinion is a step down from Tartakowsky. We'll just have to see if the writing staff does as good a job with this as before. Also: Please, George, no more 5 minute episodes! Those were a torture...
Looks quite like what's done with Penny Arcade: On The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode One
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
>I'm still not sold on the CG,
This kind of CG doesn't look expensive..
At least the animation seems ok: IMHO, it's more important to have a good animation that to have a nice CG.
Music:
Hard to Handle (Otis Redding/Black Crowes)
Come Together (Beatles/Aerosmith)
Hurt (Nine Inch Nails/Johnny Cash)
Twist And Shout (Top Notes/Beatles)
Time is on my Side (Irma Thomas/Rolling Stones)
The Man Who Sold the World (David Bowie/Nirvana)
Mr. Tambourine Man (Bob Dylan/William Shatner) - just kidding
Movies:
Cape Fear
Dawn of the Dead
Oceans 11
The Thing (I'll argue it is a remake)
Scarface
So everyone just relax and reserve judgment until you actually see it. I know how hard that is, especially on the Internets, to not review a movie 8 months before it comes out based on 5 screenshots or something, but let's at least, um... try? If you didn't like the original, then you probably won't like this one. But if you did like Genndy's version and you're already reserving judgment, then right now you're just being close-minded (even if you do wind up disliking it later). Liking both isn't a mortal sin.
The units sent with the knights would usually all die, except them, than they would just wipe every enemy on sight. But depending on the episode they would stop for a quick drink.
To me, those series did not match with the movies at all, if the knights were so freaking amazing, how in the heck were they wiped out, except for 2 of them? Or why send an entire army, when you could just send 1 knight?
I wonder if they will fix those issues.
at least you can give lucas credit for continuing his streak of creating junk.... the original trilogy is still unsurpassed (I guess it has something to do with him not directing ESB and ROTJ and not having the 'creative' tools like he has now)..
Among the wonders to look forward to:
- The original Clone Wars cartoons will be redone in CG, as Lucas had originally wanted.
- Special appearance by Jabba the Hutt, where we discover that he and Obi Wan have done business for some time.
- Someone will shoot Anakin first, causing him to go aggro and eventually turn to the dark side entirely out of self-defense.
- All explosions will be accompanied by planar shockwaves.
- Death scenes of random insignificant characters will be shortened or removed entirely.
- The final episode will feature a galaxy-wide welcome-to-the-rainforest happy-fest victory party.
- Qui-Gon's disembodied head will accompany Obi Wan at all times, acting as his personal Jiminy Cricket.
- DVD Bonus Feature Deleted Scenes of Chewbacca's extended family.
Can't wait!!-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
I clicked the link and ended up here:
http://starwars.com/noflash.html
The 'Click here to get a modern browser'-link points to http://www.mozilla.org/.
I was kind of surprised.
Why wouldn't the series act as a bridge between III and IV instead of padding between II and III?
Is Darth Vader boring?
Any idea where there is a version we can actually see?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
The vaguely engineer-looking character at about the 54-sec mark made me think that a down-to-earth Scotty-like character would make a nice counterpoint to all the mystical Jedi characters running around.
Yeah, I know, not gonna happen.
So, visually, the difference between this and the theatrical Wars prequels is that this is rendered in a lower resolution? Because, aside from the actors, most of the prequels were CGI anyway, so there's not much difference. Our only hope, as it were, is that this is better written.
Why use CG actors when you can use cheap, often unknown human actors? Star Wars has never been about the acting; it's about the story and the style.
Mark Hamill was an unknown, very mediocre actor who only managed to pull off the part in spite of the horrible dialogue because his naivete played in his favor.
Hayden Christensen, also an unkown, in this case with horrible acting skills, couldn't salvage the atrocious dialogue because he was the villain and came off as a bratty prick, not as someone the audience identified with.
Further, having CG actors doesn't allow you to do anything you couldn't with human actors. Audiences fell in love with the original trilogy because they could identify with the heroes. Star Wars doesn't need flying green yodas and mortal combat robots. In the original trilogy the supernatural Force powers were natural-seeming extensions of ordinary people who rose to the occassion to accomplish extraordinary things because of their humanity, not in spite of it, and not by gimmicks or arcade fighting moves.
But then any ability to relate to the characters was pretty much ruined by Mr. Lucas explaining away everything in terms of bio-technological elitism.
The duel between Obi-Wan and Darth Vader in the original trilogy was 10x more compelling and emotional than anything in the new trilogy, eventhough it was slow paced and had no video game acrobatics.
You know, at this point: screw it. There's nothing redeeming left about the Star Wars universe. Have at it Mr. Lucas. I hope you make millions turning the franchise into a DragonBall Z ripoff. Jedis' hair volume and color should correlate to their Jedi rank and powers. That's really all that's left to do.
It looked like crap. So Nope!! I will never watch the full movie!
Was gonna say it, but it was already said. Failing a complete collapse of wikipedia or a complete abandonment of their goals (or OFFICE gone rampant), you can always find (and link to) a specific revision. :)
What people are grasping for here is that these are CGI models moving in 3-D, but they were based on Genndy Tartakovsky's stylized TWO dimensional designs.
For two-dimensional design, all those angles and swoopy bits add drama and impact. They're shape and composition aids.
In 3-D, the characters just look like retarded monkeybots. It's perfectly possible to do stylized 3-D well (The Incredibles) but you have to focus on the nature of the medium. You need round characters that still look like themselves when rotated and minimal textures that enhance the idea of materials rather than looking like a coat of matte spraypaint on a tuna can.
This kind of bad design is distracting in a way that CG held back by technical limitations is not. When we were all playing games like the Ocarina of time or FF7, it was easy to accept people with claw-hands and triangle shoulders because everything looked that way. It was the nature of the medium.
Here Lucasfilms could clearly have designed any character models they liked, but because their deisgn team has been trained to be "spam in front of a can", they just blindly copied Genndy's designs and moved on to coordinating space battles, as usual.
The problem is how do you get out of the trap that Lucas setup. Plot hole trap that is.
In the first movies, with only 1 jedi at the time, we get all the stories about how great and powerful they were, but he didn't really have to deliver. Then in the GT cartoons, we see Mace Windu kill thousands of droids at one time. Then they toss in Grievous. So now we are supposed to see the bad-ass jedi being bad-ass....THEN Grievous is supposed to be slightly better, good enough to be able to kill several jedi. And in some of the written material I gathered he wasn't all to cracked up(pun) to be serving the Chancellor after they tried to kill him.
So how do you keep the story continuum with all the plot holes in place?
I'll probably watch a few if Grievous starts to kick jedi ass all over the place. hehehehe.
The robot chicken spoofs are hilarious...
They Live, We Sleep
Of course if Lucus did this the first 500 or so that would show up on youTube would be "Die Jar Jar Die" or "How Lucas stole my childhood dreams".
I can only hope that someone with talent and a good story will go through and gut episodes I-III of the whole "Saturday Crap Adverture Serials that I remember as a kid mentality that are completely different from the first three I made so I can cash in even more on the merchandise" Lucas had in mind when he did the Prequels.
Wow, man, you're onto something!
Qui-Gon: "Obi Wan, run an analysis of this sample."
Obi Wan: "Anakin's Midichlorian count... It's OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAAAAAND!!!!!!!!! "
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
It looks not bad. For a TV show.
To me the real question, would be any meat in the show? or just another jedi/force show off?
I personally have seen enough of it. New story set in Star Wars world would be definitely more interesting then reiteration of all the stuff we all read/seen/watched before many times.
So it's just a question: would Lucas manage to find a good writers for the show? If story line would be good, I frankly can tolerate crappy graphics. But if it would be great graphics and thousand times repeated again "let the force be with you, luke" ... heck, I had enough of it already. The story is over, I want something new.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
For the love fo Pete, stop making Star Wars movies. STOP. Star Wars is over. You killed most of it in the "prequels" with that wooden acting "anakin", and the "clone wars" that happened in 5 minutes. Move on, take a walk in your lovely ranch, and think of something NEW. As in, not envolving Jedis, lightsabers or siths. Really. Just STOP.
Thank you,
Loyal fan until "episode I" was released.
Way off topic, I know. But if they could do the same thing (take and remaster the audio portion, re-do the whole visual aspect in full 3D CGI) to one of my favorite fantasy movies of all time, Flight of Dragons, it would be great!
Just to relate a little to the topic, the voice of Omadan, the villain of Flight of Dragons, was James Earl Jones.
First glimpse it is the Coast Guard.
Those people who grew up with out the draft it must be computer graphics.
Smelly boy! The Presbyterian Church like enjoys you not!
*grin*
DO NOT WANT
I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
... but all that CGI made me realise how silly the movies actually are.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
I loved Star Wars--I was 9 when the original hit the theaters. The first 3 (well, the last 3 episodes made into the first 3 movies) were awesome.
It started to go downhill when Lucas started "Disney-fying" it. At first, it was with Ewoks and then it turned into Jar-Jar. I was putting up with that until the "midichlorians" came. That ruined it for me--why couldn't the force just be "the force?" Midifuckingchlorians? Bugs in the blood? WTF, George? Sorry I digress...
The computer animated series looks pretty cool--it goes places maybe Lucas wouldn't go with film. I'd give it a shot--maybe. Star Wars is 30. I'm not 9 anymore. Sometimes, you just have to move on, man. I don't mean me; I mean Lucas--he needs to learn a new trick because he's really milked that cow dry.
I'll rent a DVD from Netflix but if I hear the word "midichlorians" I'm putting it back in the envelope and shipping it directly to hell.
(I'm not really bitter...really!)
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
This summer's movies so far don't look good. Right now, we have two #3 sequels, and two zombie movies. One of which is a #3 sequel. Last week we had a #3 sequel. On the "serious" movie side, we have two movies about pregnancy and abortion. Coming up next week is a a #3 sequel to a remake of a heist movie.
Compared to that, another all-CG Star [Wars|Trek|Gate] TV show sounds good. But that's relative.
Just wait. In a few months, the MPAA will be screaming again that DVD sales are down because of piracy.
If the series can continue to take some liberties for the sake of humor, as the original Clone Wars did, then I think this series could be fantastic. I love the stylized design of the cartoon and am happy to see it carry forward to CG...
Also, I am greatly looking forward to seeing Grevious being the ass kicking half-robot we knew he could be from the Clone Wars series, but never lived up to in the movie...
For those that have not seen all the Clone Wars cartoons, you need to - they were a whole other Star Wars movies, and probably the best one of the whole new wave.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"Lucas has written good stuff in his life; look at THX-1138."
Agreed, but tragically the line of THX-1138 Robert Duvall Action Figures weren't big sellers. Ewoks, Pod Racer games and Pizza Hut tie-ins are so much more marketable. Well, that was the theory anyway.
George Lucas is one guy who dreamed up and made a few good SciFi movies 30 years ago.
I NEMA4D/LIGHTWAVE/RHINO/MILKSHAPE. There's a lot of old cinematography books scattered all over the Internet too. When they're done, BitTorrent is a damned fast distribution medium.
These days, we've all got ridiculously high-powered PCs, and many people have one or move of 3DSMAX/BLENDER(free)/VUE/POSER/DAZ-STUDIO(free)/C
These days, anyone can make a science fiction movie. The concept has already been proven by Star Warz Fan Boys who have made their own Star Wars rip offs, on the cheap but with great SFX and decent production quality. Sadly the Fan Boys used Lucas' old material instead of getting an original idea in their head. Lucas' prequels have taught us how *not* to make a movie. Now lets put that to practice.
Some come on people, get together! We don't need to wait for Lucas to dream up next years line of would-be Christmas presents and cheesy merchandising. Do your own damned movies! Instead of another Star Wars rehash, how about something new? Indy bands can now put out music without signing away to the RIAA cartel. We can do the same.
When will you stop raping my hopes and dreams?
It would help if you could list some plot hole that can't be dealt with.
... if they make Erin Esurance a Jedi Knight. The animation style matches up.
I'd much prefer Macross Zero style, mix CG with an anime/manga based cartoon style, the CG seems to lack the emotion that is easier to cover up and express in cartoons. The more real, the more you notice isn't real I guess.
If your neighbours roof is flying past your window, you know it's cyclone season.
Gah this looks awful, the cgi looks very strange and inconsistent - and the content? Do we really need a further insight into the clone wars - from the trailer it looks just like eps 2 & 3 in cartoon form.
... (sigh)
Personally, I love Star Wars and think there is a lot of life left in the series - but I can't help but feel that George Lucas is now the problem. He seems obsessed with making it a kids series and this cartoon looks like its aimed at the 4pm timeslot.. the original series appealed to ALL ages. Kids aren't as stupid as he thinks, I know 9 year old's who thought Jar Jar was childish and found the droids 'telly tubby' voices hugely irritating!
There's a ton of excellent 3rd party material that could be translated for TV, or Film - yet they seem to be shunning it. I for one would have loved to see Shadows of the Empire turned into a film (though casting would be an issue) similarly the Dark-Forces and KOTOR games series provided far more interesting characters and settings than the current tripe, I haven't read any of the books post ROTJ - but am reliably informed they are also mostly great.
Only SW thing I am currently looking forward to is the next instalment of 'IMPS - The Relentless' if only they could be given the budget this series has
OK, Natalie Portman doesn't look hot in this one so I doubt I'll see it. :-p
Also, haven't we got further in 3D tech today? I mean, with ILM or LucasFilm or whoever's server farm that's backing this project up. Yoda look weird. Others supposedly-humans don't look human nearly as much like the now (in computer tech-age) old Final Fantasy movie. But maybe the intention was to make them resemble cartoon characters more than real actors to avoid the uncanny valley or something.
Anyway, I personally thought the Clone Wars TV series was supposed to be live action, and not CG, so watching that was a bit anticlimatic.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Anyone have an alternative link? Apparently Ubuntu 6.06 LTS's Firefox w/Flash 7 isn't "a JavaScript enabled modern browser with Flash" in the minds of some people.
With this new Star Wars production, I was really hoping for a live-action Firefly-esque story set in the Star Wars universe. Good writing and beautiful visuals? How can you beat that? Well, certainly not with a bunch of video game cut-scenes.
Unless the writing in this new thing is stupendous, and Lucas hasn't offered that since Young Indiana Jones, this will be glanced at only as a curiosity. If that. What a waste.
-FL
Home computers today can generate special effects that outclass anything that computers from thirty years ago could do. I expect the same thing will be true thirty years from now.
In 2037, some fan with a home computer will redo the Star Wars prequel trilogy correctly - remove all the stupid stuff, emphasize all the cool stuff, make it all look like it was supposed to be this way to begin with - and then the long nightmare will be over.
... until I see some metal bikinis.
cartoon series, and it was overall pretty meh but had some fun stuff in it. The only thing I really remember was Mace Windu actually having a pair of balls. He went absolutely apeshit and started punching robots in the face. He just ran around bare-fisted punching metal. I mean I know he's Jedi and all but you can't just punch robots in the face. There's no give at all man, that's metal. Unless you're Jude Law, and you're in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Then by all means, punch away.
I think that's why Lucas killed him like such a little bitch, because he was in real danger of becoming the greatest Star Wars character of all time. The point is, if you make Clone Wars CG, you have to have Mace Windu punching robots in the face. But instead of Mace Windu you call the character Superfly Hurricane Fantastic. And instead of the Emperor, you just call him The Man. And instead of space the setting should be an abandoned warehouse. And instead of robots, it's George Lucas's face he's punching. Hard. With malice. Delicious chocolate malice.
I'm shocked. BattleStar Galactica had writers?