With Star Wars: The Clone Wars only days away now, George Lucas is doing the rounds all over the place, explaining this and that, and providing the press with a stream of quotes and information. The latest piece of news concerns why Lucas hasn’t brought back the actors who portrayed the characters in the Star Wars prequels.

The only actors returning to voice their corresponding characters are Samuel L. Jackson (Mace Windu), Christopher Lee (Count Dooku), and Anthony Daniels (C-3P0). But characters like Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Yoda are going to have completely new actors behind them. Why?

Home to the kangaroo, the meat pie, and the BBQ, Australia will once again be home to George Lucas and Star Wars, in his live-action TV spin-off of this month’s animated theatrical feature, Star Wars: The Clone Wars. The TV series looks to be filming at the Sydney Fox Studios, which was home to the Star Wars prequels, as well as to movies such as The Matrix and Superman Returns.

The live-action TV series has long been in the making, and is to be set between Episode III and Episode IV. However, it will not focus on any of the main characters from either Star Wars trilogies, but will look at some of the behind the scenes characters. One such character is likely to be Boba Fett, the son of Jango Fett from the prequel trilogy, and the bounty hunter who captured Han Solo for Jabba the Hutt.

“It has nothing to do with the Skywalker saga. None of the Skywalkers or anything,” Lucas said. “This is what I call a little footnote to the Skywalker saga … It is about the lower levels of life, the lower depths. They hear about the fact it is no longer a republic and now it’s an empire, but they are from a world where none of that really means too much to them.”

Star Wars: X-Wing
Written by Aaron Allston
Book 5: Wraith Squadron
Book 6: Iron Fist
Book 7: Solo Command
Del Rey Books

The second part of the X-Wing series of Star Wars novels, and the second last set of books from which I’ll be reviewing, we are introduced to Wedge Antilles’ idea of a flying-commando group. While Rogue Squadron turned out to be fliers who might be able to do other things, Wedge wanted a group of specialist commando’s who, just probably, could fly.

And thus, Wraith Squadron was born, and with it some of the greatest characters you could ever hope for.

Only Wedge is brought over from the first four books for Wraith Squadron, and he is joined by Wes Janson, a character that appears very briefly in Empire Strikes Back. Together, they choose a bunch of misfits and outcasts, most on their last chance in the New Republic military, but that have specific skills, to join their new Wraith Squadron (Wes is Wedge’s number 2).

No, it isn’t some kind of weird dance. The “Star Wars crawl” refers to the opening three paragraphs of a Star Wars movie that fill you in on where the movie is starting.

Along with the 20th Century Fox fanfare, the green LucasFilm logo, “A long time ago”¦” opening, and the great big yellow STAR WARS, the crawl is one of those iconic aspects of the movies. But for Star Wars: The Clone Wars, the upcoming animated full-length feature coming to theaters August 15, 2008, there won’t be any familiar crawl.

Looks like George Lucas has opted for something that he feels suits a TV format better, since the Clone Wars movie is a prelude to the upcoming television series.

“Because we originally developed this as a TV series, George felt that the crawl wasn’t going to be effective as a way to introduce the audience to the TV series,” director Dave Filoni told MTV. “He wanted it to be faster and he wanted to do it visually.”