Everyone knows that classic films have always inspired the Star Wars saga. The most often mentioned is Akira Kurosawa’s Hidden Fortress having a direct impact on A New Hope (particularly the two peasants who seemed to translate directly into Artoo and Threepio.) And it’s been no secret that The Clone Wars has followed very much that same pattern.
One of my favorite things to do when I watch each episode is decode what movies they may be homaging. Since the movies they homage are some of my favorites, it deepens my love for the show. In the first two seasons we’ve seen episodes based on Hitchcock films like Notorious (Senate Spy) and Kurosawa’s Stray Dog and Seven Samurai (Lightsaber Lost and The Bounty Hunters) and even Godzilla and King Kong (The Zillo Beast episodes).
It might be one of my favorite things on the show, since Dave Filoni and crew have such a love for not only Star Wars, but the classic films that we should all cherish and hold dear. (In fact, when I interviewed Filoni at Celebration V (video soon!) the entire interview was almost derailed when we started geeking out aboutThe Third Man).
During the final press conference, I was able to ask Filoni what sorts of movies could we be looking at for hints into season three and his answers did not dissapoint. There will be video from this press conference forthcoming, but this answer was too tantalizing for me to wait on.
The short, incomplete list of movies he gave as inspirations for Clone Wars Season 3:
Battle of the Bulge — Filoni said that this one came directly from George Lucas and was obviously an influence on Star Wars. At one point a character blatantly stops and says “I have a bad feeling about this.”
Saving Private Ryan — My guess is we’ll see a lot of WWII-like combat in Season 3, if this is any indication.
Alcatraz — That’s what Filoni said, I can only guess he meant Escape From Alcatraz, which is a great escape film and has all kinds of possibilities in the Clone Wars universe.
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom — This one presents a lot of interesting speculation as of to how the influence could be utilized. Will the Jedi be dealing with the Witches of Dathomir revealed in the trailer like the Thugee? Will there be an episode with a Shankara-Stone like quest for the Jedi? Will it be a comedy, like our second favorite Indy film? The possibilities are endless.
And the last one on his list:
Predator — This is another incredibly interesting film for him to reference and us to speculate on. During the Republic Commandoes clip that was shown, it was insinuated that there was a beast somewhere killing clones and Jedi. Could this be Savage Oppress? Could he be like the predator? He certainly looks the part. On the other hand, we could be in store for another all-clones episode where they’re off in the forest and we could be seeing a direct homage to this film with some random monster on some outer-rim world.
In any of these cases, we won’t know until we see the episodes, but I hope this has provided some tantalizing food for thought about Season 3. Also, I hyperlinked all of the films to their Amazon pages. These are all films you need to have seen, so go ahead and buy them.
Season 3 begins on September 17th with a two part episode about an attack on Kamino.