The Empire Strikes Again

Published on Sunday 18 October 2009 12:19

I'M PULLING into Geek Central. I'm arriving at Skywalker Ranch, the global HQ of the operation headed by George Lucas, the creator of all things Star Wars in this space-time continuum and the next.

You reach the Ranch, a smooth flow of low-rise, Art Deco-style buildings secreted in the hills high above San Francisco, after a journey up a serpentine mountain road. How do you know when you're finally there? Well, where else on the planet would you have to avoid tripping over the original R2D2 on the path to the front door?

An exquisitely designed, idyllically situated lakeside complex, the 3,000-acre Skywalker Ranch is not visible from the main road and is not open to the general public. It possesses the casual elegance of a property belonging to a man whose personal wealth has been calculated at 2.44 billion.

It is ringed on all sides by beautifully undulating hills and flanked by a gorgeous lake across which dragonflies the size of small birds skip. Sited on the fringes of California's fabled wine region, it has its own vineyard, which each year furnishes the 200 employees with a more than acceptable vintage (Chateau Chewbacca?). The whole feel of the Ranch is Star Wars meets Sideways.

The immaculately tasteful interior of the Ranch is bedecked with a wondrous array of great full-length movie posters – Rio Bravo and Ben-Hur on one side, Notorious and Moulin Rouge on the other. The whole ambiance screams "serious film buff."

The establishment also houses what must be the world's greatest collection of Star Wars memorabilia. For example, in the main courtyard stands a stone fountain shaped like Princess Leia, while a statue of Yoda nestles in a nearby flowerbed. At times, it's like being surrounded by all those exotic alien creatures in that famous bar room scene from the first Star Wars movie, A New Hope.

The employees who wander around the Ranch give off an informal Californian jeans-and-T-shirt vibe. We are not in the land of three-piece pinstripe suits here. Dave Filoni, the supervising director on Star Wars: The Clone Wars, the animated TV spin-off series, sports a jaunty hat that would not look out of place on Indiana Jones, the other hugely successful Lucas franchise.

It is clearly a place which attracts loyal keepers of the Star Wars flame. All the employees I encounter at the Ranch – and dozens are strolling around the corridors – seem fired up about their jobs.

For example, Joel Aron, the visual effects supervisor on The Clone Wars, has worked for Lucas for the past 18 years. He relishes the fact that Lucas is so hands-on, proffering advice on such minutiae as the composition of individual shots.

Aron says that Lucasfilm workers all buy into the same philosophy. "George has conceived something which has inspired a whole lot of people who all heard the notes played on the piano at the same time. Here at the Skywalker Ranch, we're all a bunch of Star Wars geeks – it's in our blood." When I ask what his next career move might be, Aron jokes: "The Force will guide me!"

The Ranch is where Lucas conceives and edits all his productions. It is also the nerve centre from which he oversees the huge Star Wars empire. And what an empire it has become. Since it first crash-landed in our consciousness from a galaxy far, far away, Star Wars has recruited legions of passionate followers.

Thought to have generated around 20.3bn since the first movie was released in 1977, the Jedi industry has long since burst out of the narrow confines of straight cinema and flooded into many other areas such as computer games, comic books and toys.

It has now also spawned an animated spin-off TV series, Star Wars: The Clone Wars. At the Ranch, staff are currently gearing up for the new season, which begins on Sky Movies this week. The show focuses on the youthful adventures of the Jedi knights Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker (who later morphs into the dastardly Darth Vader).

The latest series is certainly a progression from some of the less well-received recent Star Wars spin-offs – last year's Clone Wars movie, anyone? The Clone Wars TV programme is an absorbing, well-thought-out show that cleverly foreshadows the grown-up people the youthful characters eventually turn into during the movies.

This season is notable because it appears to echo many contemporary events – in one episode there are resonances of the dust cloud that enveloped the south of Manhattan on 9/11 and of the coercive interrogation techniques employed at Guantanamo Bay.

However, Filoni is quick to play down the idea that they have created deliberate parallels between the Jedi world and ours. "How much do we think about current affairs when we're making this? I'm not very big on allegory. I take a leaf out of JRR Tolkien's book here. He said that parallels were unavoidable because of the timeless nature of the stories."

But this series of The Clone Wars, subtitled "The Rise of the Bounty Hunters", also benefits from drawing on archetypal, mythic figures. You sense there is a wealth of back story that the creators can tap into.

We already see glimpses, for example, of Anakin's fiery, headstrong nature – he is clearly not someone who will happily kowtow to Jedi diktats.

In this season, Obi-Wan's Jedi knights are compelled to use their light sabres against a powerful new force of bounty hunters. They are led by the sinister Cad Bane, a dark, amoral figure based on Lee Van Cleef's character in The Good, The Bad And The Ugly.

Cad Bane chimes with a cycle which has been described as "space Westerns". Lucas, whose first Star Wars film was inspired by Japanese director Akira Kurosawa's classic film The Hidden Fortress, explains the thinking behind bringing in Cad Bane.

"When it came time to introduce the idea of a ruthless bounty hunter type for the series, it was a natural fit," says the 65-year-old filmmaker. "He's a classic gunslinger – mysterious and also merciless. It's been a thematic part of Star Wars since the beginning."

Another plus point of The Clone Wars is that, unlike many cartoons, it manages to operate simultaneously on different levels. Like The Simpsons, the series works in varying ways for both children and adults. Dee Bradley Baker, who voices all the clones in the show, says: "I love watching it with my nine-year-old daughter because she really keys into the themes, just as I did as a kid. As well as being great entertainment, it throws up all sorts of ideas I want to discuss with my daughter – the difference between good and bad, how you deal with success and failure."

Ashley Eckstein, who supplies the voice of Ahsoka Tano, the feisty young trainee Jedi in The Clone Wars, concurs. "These days how many shows can you sit down and watch with the entire family? Call me cheesy, but I like the fact that in Star Wars good overcomes evil.

"At the end of each episode of The Clone Wars you get a fortune-cookie message and you can ask your kids: 'What did that mean?' That's a really good family bonding experience – and there aren't enough shows that provide that nowadays."

Since the release of The Phantom Menace ten years ago, the Star Wars franchise has been subject to criticism from a cadre of once-devoted fans who believe it has fallen victim to the law of diminishing artistic returns.

The actor Simon Pegg, a one-time super-fan, spoke for many when he voiced his disappointment at recent offerings: "I'm sure Star Wars fans around the world will want to kill me for saying that, and see me as a traitor, because I've always been a very outspoken fan of Star Wars, but I've never been publicly keen on the new ones."

The makers of The Clone Wars, however, contend that the franchise still has a lot to offer. They argue that the Star Wars realm is so rich, there remain all sorts of imaginative seams that they can mine. "People ask me, 'Haven't we had enough Star Wars now?', but I reply that there is still loads to explore," says Aron.

"For instance, there is a character called Luminara who only appears very briefly in The Revenge Of The Sith. What's her story? The movie was just two hours long, but we have 20 weeks to explore her in depth. Maybe next time we'll investigate the stories of the mechanics who work on the X-wing fighters!"

The producers, who are also developing a live-action TV series based on the Star Wars characters, maintain that another advantage of The Clone Wars is it offers a message of hope which, perhaps now more than ever, people are eager to latch on to. In the often bleak aftermath of 9/11 and the global conflict it has triggered, viewers are keen to grab on to something so positive.

"At the moment people want to see heroes," asserts Filoni. "They want to see people who can do things that they can't. They also want to see something uplifting. Look at how well the Disney film Up has done. That is an incredibly positive film that offers such a feeling of hope and renewal. People really want that at present."

Like Greek myth or fairytale, Star Wars has always dealt in timeless themes – and, the makers say, The Clone Wars is merely carrying on that tradition. The conflict between good and evil will never go out of fashion. According to Vince Kudirka, the producer of the new Clone Wars game, Republic Heroes, "the Star Wars franchise is evergreen. It continues to inspire and amaze and touch people.

"It has produced so many iconic ideas – The Force, light sabres, mind tricks – as well as universal concepts such as the battle between light and dark. Both Anakin and Luke Skywalker have to wrestle with inner demons. That kind of theme never goes away. It appealed to people 32 years ago, and it appeals to them now."

Star Wars: The Clone Wars starts on Sky Movies, Saturday, 7.30pm; Sunday, 5.30pm, www.starwars.com/theclonewars

This article was first published in Scotland on Sunday on 18 October 2009