Star Wars: The Clone Wars Returns Tomorrow

Tomorrow is a big day for LucasFilm: After wreaking vengeance on fans by inexplicably further updating beloved movies finally releasing the live-action Star Wars films on Blu-Ray, season four of Star Wars: The Clone Wars returns, with an hour-long two-part premiere.

While last month’s trailer for Season Four made clear that many of the show’s longstanding villains will return, the season, called Battle Lines, kicks off in an entirely new locale: On the aqueous world of Mon Calamari. Separatist provocateur Riff Tamson goads the planet’s two dominant species, the Mon Cala and the Quarren, to the point of conflict. When the Mon Calamari king is assassinated, war breaks out. The first episode, “Water War,” pits SCUBA clone troopers against Separatist droids, while the second, “Gungan Attack,” features a last-ditch effort by the Gungans to support the Republic.

Dave Filoni, supervising director for the show, says that the show’s cinema-quality animation continues to break new ground:

In one of the premiere battles, there are thousands of characters at war. . . That gives you a sense of the scale we’re trying to deal with now when we say we’re doing a battle. In Episode III Revenge of the Sith we pan over the edge of the Jedi cruiser and reveal the massive space battle over Coruscant. That’s the kind of thing we’re aiming for in terms of combat in Season Four.

Not only are the battles larger in scale, shifting to a watery planet poses its own challenges:

For these episodes we’re really under water the entire time, which presented a lot of new challenges–not least of which was creating animation while keeping the characters buoyant. . . . We wanted the cameras to feel like scuba cameras, and so the movements are slightly different than the ones you normally see in an episode. And the environment is populated with many small details such as a lot of coral and barnacles, which makes it feel as rich and dense as an ocean environment should be.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars kicks off its new season tomorrow at 8pm ET/PT on The Cartoon Network.

Here’s a clip:

And here’s a link to another still from the episode, of Kit Fisto piloting an underwater speeder.