Category: Star Wars Celebration VI

Star Wars Celebration VI was full of great panels, and our first one of the convention was The Clone Wars Panel. The scheduled panelists were Supervising Director Dave Filoni and Visual Special Effects Supervisor Joel Aron. After Star Wars Weekends at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, I was very excited for this panel.  Arriving early we managed to find seats near the front of the hall. While waiting, Todd made friends with the hosts of a Star Wars Podcast.

Dave and Joel dove right in showing us drawings of Onderon, a planet that is well known by fans of the Dark Empire Series of Star Wars books. They discussed tribal influences, and how with this season the Jedi will begin to shift their goals from saving the universe to teaching the universe to save itself. They then showed us a clip of a battle on Onderon.

Discussion turned to the Jedi and their possessions. Reminding us that while most Jedi are trained from birth, Anakin had a life before the order, and as such his bedroom had more to offer than other rooms. Showing us some designs for a new set for his bedroom we learned some of what they planned would be in there. They finally showed us a clip of Anakin and Obi Wan talking in Anakin’s bedroom about his relationship with Padmé.  In the scene was a nod to the movies in the form of a pod-racing poster featuring Sebulba and Ben Quadinaros in his room.

The next part concentrated on droids, and Dave commented about how children could go interact with droids in the Expo Hall and how you should spend some time watching them do this if you had a chance.The next clip shown was of droids on a ship being led by R2-D2 on some sort of unknown mission, and we got to see them get caught in a field of comets. We then shifted to drawings of a Republic Hover Commando. We learned from Dave that he used one of the first painted hockey goalie masks as a reference for the Commando’s mask. They then showed a clip of the Republic Commando in action as he provided backup for the droids.

Next we got to see a series of scenes and images including Darth Maul and Savage Opress working with Pre Vizsla, Leader of the Death Watch.  Some images were presented of members of the Black Sun, a criminal syndicate from Star Wars novels.  The big crowd pleasing scene was when we got to see the Bo Katan lead a team to rescue Obi Wan. After she takes out his captors, Bo Katan does this hair flip at the end of the scene that was both intricate and made it seem like her fight was effortless. Dave brought up a convention guest who was dressed like Bo Katan to demonstrate how popular she had become and why we were getting to see more of her.

After a few more scenes, the lights came back on, and sitting on stage was George Lucas.  It was unexpected and unscheduled.  George discussed that he and the writers had to figure out how to bring Darth Maul back, and why he was in the Clone Wars television series among other things. Then they showed us the Clone Wars season 5 trailer.  Both of which you can see in the following video (The trailer is at 5:24 and runs until 8:50).

The Clone Wars Panel was definitely a highlight of our time at Star Wars Celebration VI!