What Happens Next

Candy Wilder posted on her blog Force The Issue her feelings on the Clone Wars season finale. And while I’m at it, here’s Adam’s take on the show.

More Awesome Cosplay

Gotta love it when they take it to another level and actually travel to “Tatooine!” Here’s another cosplayer in Padmé-wear photographed in Tunisia:

There’s a little bit about her on this Tumblr.

Form Letter

Here’s a quick, pithy template you can use in your letter to save Clone Wars. Let me preface this by saying that your own letters are far more effective than a form letter. However, I know many people aren’t exactly confident of their writing skills and otherwise wouldn’t bother having their voices heard. So, as a public service, here is a handy dandy form letter you can paste, print, and send or tailor to whatever you want.

Date

Your name
Your address
City/state/Zip

Mr. Bob Iger
Disney Studios
500 S. Buena Vista St.
Burbank, CA 91521

Dear Mr. Iger:

I am writing in today to voice my support for the animated series “Star Wars: The Clone Wars.” The show is not only the best animated program on television today, it is probably among the best of any program on the air. I watch every week and I own past seasons on DVD/Blu-Ray. It is a program that has become very important to millions of Star Wars fans, especially since it has kept the fire of fandom alive for the past five years. It has introduced Star Wars to a new generation of fans; it’s very popular with kids. The show’s cast are among the very best ambassadors for the brand, as those who attend Star Wars Weekends at Walt Disney World and other events can attest. The mythology and characters have become part of the tapestry of the saga.

It is my understanding that the show’s status for its sixth season is still undetermined. I urge you to ensure that the show continues whether it remains on Cartoon Network, transfers to a new network, or is exhibited in some other way. As it stands, The Clone Wars has yet to seal the fates of several characters and it would be heartbreaking if those fates are forever unresolved. Please do not get off on the wrong foot with millions of devoted Star Wars fans by abruptly pulling the plug before it’s time. Do not disappoint us. Keep “The Clone Wars” alive.

Sincerely,

Your Name

There’s a pretty good sample here.

Homework Assignment: Time To Act

I was trying to see what people were writing about the Clone Wars Season Five finale screening last Friday to see if there was anything to the rumors of Clone Wars being in trouble.

Here’s the relevant snippet from Jawa James’s recap of the event on Club Jade:

Before the Q&A started, Pablo answered two important questions that might have been on people’s minds: No, they weren’t going to take any questions on Episode VII or other non-TCW topics, and there is no official announcement yet on if/when/how Season Six (and later seasons) will be broadcast or otherwise enjoyed by the public.

Meanwhile, Bryan Young posts this on his non-spoiler review at Big Shiny Robot:

At the Q and A afterward, Pablo Hidalgo mentioned that there has been no official announcement about if and when the sixth season (or future seasons) will be airing or available for our consumption. I did ask questions about the future of the show, but was greeted with many no comments. One person close to Lucasfilm did tell me, though, that now is the time to raise a ruckus about the future of the show. I’d been waiting until the Disney schedule announcement in March to start causing a stink, but I think that might be too late.

This show is too good to let slip away. And after the unanswered questions raised by these last two arcs, it would be a disservice to fans to let episodes that are already in various stages of production never see the light of day.

And trust me, after this last episode, you’ll have twice as many questions than you did after that business with Darth Maul.

He also posted this today on SWPAS’s Facebook page:

There’s totally reason to panic. Trust me.

Now, I’m skeptical if one guy is saying something about Clone Wars on Death Row. I’m less skeptical if it’s two guys. Nobody can say who their sources are but I know who are some of their associates are or might be, and those folks would be close to the show’s production.

“Why would they consider dumping this terrific show?” you may ask. Good question. I don’t know why Disney just axed “Tron: Uprising.” It’s not a show I watched. I do know they axed “Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes” because Disney wanted to do its own version. Here’s my guess as to this situation: it’s not a cancellation per se that’s at issue, rather it’s a question of “who’s going to broadcast the show?” My theory is that Disney doesn’t want Cartoon Network, owned by rival Time Warner, to broadcast Clone Wars after this season. They don’t want somebody else to get the ad revenue from the Star Wars brand. Which is fine. The problem, so goes my theory, is that there’s no one under the Disney umbrella of broadcasters who really wants the show. For one thing, Clone Wars doesn’t fit many of their formats. Only Fox shows animation in prime time and no other regular network succeeds at it outside of the odd Charlie Brown special. Disney Junior skews much younger than Clone Wars. The Disney Channel is mostly live action fare aimed at tweens. The only way Clone Wars would end up on ABC Family is if Ahsoka becomes a fashionista boarding school student who regularly gets into bitch-slapping matches with other girls who annoy her and steal her boyfriends. (“Stay away from Lux, you slut!” *Slap!*) There is Disney XD. The thing is, does Disney XD want it?

We have to remember, we are dealing not with a small band of Rebels in San Francisco anymore. We are dealing with Hollywood now. And things run very differently there than they would in the rest of corporate America. It’s very political. Everything is built on favors, relationships, and getting the right people to back your projects. I’m sure the decision makers at Disney XD have their pet projects they’re backing and maybe they don’t want to make room for something that they never developed themselves. You gotta remember, they’re not the ones who ran out and bought Lucasfilm. Somebody way above them did. Clone Wars becomes the rock band suddenly dropped from a label and their last album is left unreleased because their A&R guy was laid off after a bigger company bought the label (I’m a music fan, I see this happen all of the time). An independent Lucasfilm could have just gone to another network or found a distributor to put Clone Wars out in another format. A Lucasfilm that’s part of a big conglomerate can’t make that decision for itself anymore.

Personally, I would be okay with it if they ran Clone Wars online from here on out or if episodes were released directly to streaming/DVD/Blu-Ray. But we have to make sure that at the very least those options are available instead of just leaving Clone Wars up in the air for all eternity. Don’t buy any shizola about needing all resources to make Episode VII. My gut feeling is that if Clone Wars’s future is in doubt it is NOT because of new films.

So, what do we do? There is this guy running a petition. But I think Jimmy Mac is right…it’s probably most effective to write Bob Iger himself. Again, no death threats or profanity. In fact, I’ll be super nice and post a short, sweet, pithy form letter those of you who don’t write well can just copy, paste, and send. Add a little flair to it if you want. The tone of letters at this point is to emphasize how much Clone Wars means to us and that we really want it to come back.

Disney Studios
500 S Buena Vista St
Burbank, CA 91521
Attn: Bob Iger

Also CC or write separate letter to Lucasfilm:

Lucasfilm
P.O. Box 29901
San Francisco, CA 94129-0901
Attn: Kathleen Kennedy

But we as fans must also ask ourselves, “What ARE we willing to do to save the show?” This is just step one. If Disney decides it’s just going to let Clone Wars wither on the vine, then it goes to step two. Stay tuned. But if you are a Clone Wars fan, make it your goal to send a letter this week.

Some Last Thoughts On The Past 2 Weeks

After being mostly—though not completely—offline for the better part of five days, I had a little time to think about everything that’s been happening in our corner of the galaxy lately. Especially after taking into account what Jim Raynor had to post and some facts Derek Tate supplied about the films’ distribution rights.

I realized that there’s an underlying assumption I have about the state of Star Wars, Lucasfilm, and its fandom these days and that affects my reaction to everything. When they “postponed” the 3D releases, my reaction was based on that assumption. It didn’t help that the entertainment media was making claims based on their biases and it especially did not help that Lucasfilm’s hastily-issued press release gave a lame excuse that will forever be a running gag on SWPAS. Especially now that they’ve magically found the resources to spare on TWO new spinoff films. What was likely the main reason, though perhaps not the only reason, was the legal problems of re-releasing movies through Fox now that a rival studio owns Lucasfilm. Fox has the distribution rights on Eps II-VI until 2020. It has the distribution rights to ANH in perpetuity…or what lay people call “forever.” Apparently this wasn’t worked out during the takeover by Disney even though the plans to re-release all of the films in 3D were in the pipeline. But come on guys, we can handle the truth and if distribution rights needed to be sorted first, we’d understand.

Of course overlooking the distribution rights to the existing films stirred another aspect of my paranoia and that is my concern this whole thing, including a new trilogy and other projects, is a rush job. I know they hurried up with the deal to avoid 2013 tax consequences though nobody has come right out and said so.

Which gets back to my assumption and my worries about a new trilogy, aside from it being a rush job. Not only did I think that Abrams was a very safe and conventional choice, it also made me fearful that they’re intending to make these movies as some sort of suck up to the bashers. Not in the sense that they will retroactively toss everything that came before into the trash but that every moment will be some winky wink of “Look at how unlike the prequels this is!” It’s crazy to believe somebody out there wants to make a movie that hurts fans like me, isn’t it? Not very rational; after all a lot of basher nation really thinks Lucas deliberately set out to hurt their feelings. But I’m not alone in having those fears.

The bottom line is I have a hard time trusting official fandom. The experience of the past decade or so is the reason. Even though I wasn’t in the 501st or anything, I was very much out there doing fan events or whatever from the time of the Special Editions onward. It’s fine because it was my choice but it seemed to me that with the backlash against TPM and against Lucas, official fandom left us on the field and ran away. Worst of all, both the official and fan end of things (I’m looking at you, TFN) validated the extreme elements of this backlash to some degree or another. It went beyond being disappointed with a movie. It was all of the cruelty, bullying, and obnoxiousness that went with it. I’m still baffled as to why anybody would want to reward unkindness, but that’s what they’ve been trying to do.

As a result, beneath the sometimes cheerful surface of fandom, there’s a lot of negative energy. It’s often unacknowledged yet it has permeated everything. Especially on the internet. Instead of focusing on what’s positive, the unspoken reality is so much in fandom caters to the negative. There are a lot of really unhappy campers out there making me an unhappy camper too. What stinks is that unless I want to move into a cave in Afghanistan, I can’t avoid it while still having anything at all to do with Star Wars. I can’t avoid it on SWPAS, including when I have to deal with someone who hasn’t been very nice, or on my LiveJournal page. A lot of us limit our exposure to fandom and our participation because of the negativity, which is really a shame.

You know, for a moment last week I wondered if after 36 years it was time for me and Star Wars to call it quits. Then I found reasons to be positive about it again. Whatever the case may be, we can’t hope that Episode VII fails. We can’t become bashers ourselves. A bad turn at the box office could mean Star Wars ends up the property of some private equity firm that could do God knows what to it. So let’s just figure out, how can we do a smudging on this fandom that badly needs it?

Cross-posted on my LiveJournal.

Book Wars

Aside from writing a full volume on Eps I-III, Paul McDonald has also written a web series called Book Wars, inspired by Star Wars and real life experience working the retail detail at a now-defunct Major Bookstore Chain.

Qui-Gon’s Got Something To Say

Qui-Gon’s got something to say to those already bashing the new set of Star Wars movies before they’re even out.

Here Comes The Star Wars Activist

Congratulations to Adam for signing on as contributor to Jedi News! Here’s his first post.

Now This Is Podracing

Adam posted his response to a dare on The Phantom Menace: The Holiday…tell the cashier “now this is podracing” while buying a podracing figure pack. The moment was recorded for posterity…

Coolest Stroller Ever

Wonder if this stroller goes 900 mph? Look out, Sebulba!