Full Series Three years too short?

In the commentary for ANH, Lucas said he was looking for a girl that was roughly 19 years old to play the part of Leia, and to be the same age that Luke was.

In AOTC, Anakin says he hasn't seen Padme in 10 years.

I think in the commentary for ROTS, Lucas says roughly how long the Clone Wars are in his mind, though he gives a range like 2-3 or 3-4 (I can't remember exactly what the range is).

There is nothing to say that he can't expand the war by a year or two and still have the T-cannon and G-cannon still work just find unto itself. At this point I think it's unnecessary, but depending on how long the series runs for and just how big episodes and arcs become in scope, it might be necessary. If the show ends only after a couple more seasons, then they can leave it just as it is.

 

I don't know, ever since Sinrebirth posted this:

I've been thinking even 1 or 2 more Seasons would be pushing the restraints a bit, considering Anakin only finds out Padme is pregnant in ROTS. Then again, it could be a nice way to show us why he hasn't been able to get back to Coruscant until then. Of course, that would require a lot more screen time for the Big 3, which I know a few certain someones would be less than up to see.

 

How many months into her pregnancy was Padme at in the beginning of ROTS? It must have been pretty late, in which case I'd probably guess something like 7-8 months or so. Now, that could work with TCW in the current 3-year timeline if some of the EU stuff eg. Labyrinth of Evil and some of the later CW is simply...discarded, or classified non-canon to make way for the continual production of TCW episodes. Not a pretty solution, but otherwise as you've said they've tied their hands together and limited the amount of stories they can tell, though I suspect they won't stop producing such a financially lucrative show for the sake of the overall continuity ripping at the seams.

 

Well, Lucas had always maintained that he was going to stop working on Star Wars after ROTS and start working on more "personal films."

Then he comes up with the idea for the show and said he would get it started and then pass it on to others to continue. But now, three seasons in, he's still involved in the story of every episode. And given that they might be finishing Season 4 or even be working on Season 5 stories by now, that's 4-5 years for him. He doesn't want to let anyone else make more movies, and I'd be curious if once he moves onto the Live Action Series, if he's going to wrap up TCW and not let it continue without his involvement.

 

In the GL interview from the 1996 release of Ep. VI he says for the prequel trilogy he might direct just the first film to set the precedent for the trilogy and then let other people do the other ones. He wound up directing all three.

 

This issue of time compression occurred to me almost instantly when it was announced that Lucas wanted at least 100 episodes, which (with 22 episodes a season) would put it in the middle of season 5. Knowing that TCW lasted 3 years (and that the show starts after Anakin is knighted, which I assume must be at least 6 months into the war), you kind of get the M*A*S*H* problem (11 seasons depicting the 3-year Korean war!). I would honestly be fine with it if they decided to expand the length of the war - three years seems a bit quick for a massive Galactic-scale war that is supposedly locked in stalemate for most of its length. Also, the dates aren't sacred to me - if they're not on screen (like the "10 years" statement in AOTC), then they're changeable, imho.

Then again, they might still be able to fudge it if they limit it to 5 seasons and no more than that - once you hit 6 seasons or more, I think that's when you really begin to stretch it.

 

As I said before, I think you can only increase the war by one year. If you do more it will make Luke and Leia much younger than they look in ANH.

 

The timeline is fine the way it is. For TCW, seasons do not equal years.

 

Well duh.

 

Yup

 

Not necessarily. If you push back TPM and AOTC (as I think it has been suggested), you can still keep ROTS as being 19 BBY. You just have to make sure to keep AOTC 10 years after TPM due to the onscreen dialogue. (I know that Lucas has said that TPM is 32 BBY, but of course Lucas has never changed his mind on anything, right?) But yeah, I don't think it's really necessary unless the show goes longer than its initial 5 season plan.

As for all the EU Clone Wars stuff... well, it's a mess already, ain't it? I'm not sure what the official timeline is, but it seems to me that a lot of stuff happens while Anakin is still a padawan (like the Tartakovsky toon, books, comics, and the video game). I also know that a lot of promotional material implies that the TCW movie takes place shortly after AOTC, but there must be quite some time between, right? Anakin's been knighted, and, frankly, he seems much more mature than in AOTC (of course, that may not be saying much ).

 

The show takes place during the last 2 years of the war. The show begins roughly one year into the war. Its all fiction anyway. But if one wants more reality, consider that some stories happen concurrently.

 

22 minutes times 22 episodes times 6 seasons would be 2904 minutes, or 48.4 hours. That's two days. 6 seasons worth of episodes would only add up to 2 days worth of footage. I think you'd literally need hundreds of seasons for there to be enough hours to require the lengthening of the war to more than three years to make sense with TCW. And that's not even taking into consideration the fact that many episodes have different sets of main characters and could have happened simultaneously.

 

I didn't realize that every second of the war was happening in real rime. Anakin's hair grew quite a bit in two days, and Ahsoka grew quite a bit and learned a new saber style over night. Mind you that she didn't actually practice or anything, because as soon as one mission ends, they instantaneously arrive at the location in which the next begins.

 

yes Tark-person's logic doesn't quite add up- there is obviously sometimes days, sometimes weeks sometimes months between episodes and some episodes take timejumps of days as well we cannot calculate it like that we hardly see every hour of war just bits from here and there.....

 

Did I ever say that every second of the war must be seen in TCW? There seems to be some cognitive dissonance at work here. In order for them to be required to change the length of the war, I think they'd have to have a LOT of footage, not a mere 2 days worth (even if that 2 days actually represented a few weeks...that's still way less than 3 years). And obviously I already mentioned the distinct possibility that many TCW episodes could have occurred simultaneously, yet no one addressed this in their rebuttal.

 

I think people really underestimate how much someone can age under severe stress. We're talking about years of war, serious betrayal, and then exile as an evil emperor takes over the galaxy you once protected. Just look at the pictures of how much President Obama has aged in just his first year in office. The guy looks like he aged 8 years.

 

Given Ahsoka's aging, Anakin's hair change, design changes (types of fighters used, clone trooper armor, etc), time has clearly progressed. I doubt Lucas will ever explicitly say how much time has passed, but you'd think we are at least halfway through the war. Heroes on Both sides really marks the obvious elapse of time and end to time line jumping. Let's say Anakin participated in 20 battles prior to Heroes on Both Sides (sort of an arbitrary number, I'm not going to literally count every battle/operation he has been involved in so far).

That's 20 battles in 1.5 years. If the show goes on for another 3 seasons to fill out the latter 1.5 years with another 20 battles, everything will be consistent and fine. But by putting a stop to timeline jumping that limits how well these events can be spread out over the course of the war. If the show goes on for another 6 seasons and Anakin participates in 40 more battles, then that's 40 in the last 1.5 years alone, not 40 spread across 3 years. Factor into any EU that hasn't been retconned and things get really ridiculous real fast as to believability.

Lucas probably won't do anything to change the timeline or make any explicit reference to the passage of time, since I really don't think he cares. He even mentioned in an interview once how MASH "lasted longer than the actual war" (or something to that effect), so I'm sure he's more than willing to cram as much as possible into the series so long as people are willing to watch it, without ever addressing how many years it has been. I mean if not for the EU I wouldn't know how much time elapsed between ANH and ESB or ESB and ROTJ, or even AOTC and ROTS. It's an undefined amount of time when watching just TCW and the movies as self contained stories (ignoring the EU).

However, it's more the EU that tries to take a "realistic" approach. And once TCW stops and the EU gets a chance to finally sort everything out onto a time line, it wouldn't surprise me if that time line isn't expanded to closer to 4 or 5 years. Adding two years onto everyone's age in the CT isn't going to cause the universe to implode upon itself.

 

There are no hard numbers surrounding how much Ahsoka has aged as far as I'm aware. You are right that time has clearly progressed, but we don't know how much time, so we have no grounds on which to demand a change to the time-line. Also, I'm thinking just of TCW and not all the Clone Wars EU out there, sorry. That would be another matter entirely. And Anakin's hair change?

 

Like I said earlier, you only have to push TPM back one or two years and everything matches up fine with OT. It is a fairly easy retcon when you really think about it.