The Clone Wars: Episode 10 - Lair of Grievous
Date: December 12, 2008 at 04:12 PM ET Topic: Movie and TV News
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Jedi Master Kit Fisto Explores
the Heart of Evil in
Lair of Grievous
Jedi Master Kit Fisto steps from the shadows
of the live-action films and into a Separatist trap in “Lair of Grievous,” an
all-new episode of the hit animated series STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS, premiering at 9 p.m. ET/PT Friday,
Dec. 12, on Cartoon Network.
In the episode, General Grievous must prove
himself worthy of the Separatists after repeatedly being defeated by the Jedi. As
a test for his cyborg subordinate, Count Dooku lures Jedi Master Kit Fisto and Fisto’s former Padawan, Nahdar
Vebb, to Grievous’ enclave as deadly sport for the Separatist general.
Episode writer Henry Gilroy says he’s always been intrigued by the concept
of “where evil actually lives,” and this tale of attempted redemption
for General Grievous presented the perfect opportunity to explore the idea.
“I went back to the old serials of the 1930s and looked at the terrible
old places they used to create for the villains,” Gilroy says. “They
were houses full of booby traps and monsters, with eyes knocked out of the paintings
so the villain could look through and spy. It was fun to explore the home of the
bad guy, to create a place so terrible that even the hero doesn’t want to be
in there.
“It’s a great set-up because when the Jedi arrive, they’re expecting
to find Nute Gunray – they don’t realize they’re in the lair of
Grievous. From that point on, once they’re inside and realize they can’t
get out, it’s basically a struggle to survive.”
The episode also provided the perfect vehicle for the series introduction of Kit
Fisto, a popular Jedi Master who appears in both Star Wars: Episode II Attack
of the Clones and Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith.
Like many other Jedi, his character was relegated to the background in the films – but
is now more deeply realized through animation in STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS.
“Kit isn’t one of the most serious Jedi. He tends to be more jovial,” Gilroy
says. “To put him in a dire, life-or-death situation makes for a fun adventure
because he tends to look on the more positive, naturally humorous side. Dread kind
of rolls off him.”
“Kit is great for this episode,” says supervising director Dave
Filoni. “He has an excellent fight with Grievous, and the episode is brilliantly
directed by Atsushi Takeuchi. While we had quite the challenge deciding what Kit
Fisto’s voice would actually sound like, once it was determined he would have
a bit of a Jamaican accent, Phil LaMarr really made it his own.”
The many faces of evil are on display, all with the visage of General
Grievous, in “Lair of Grievous,” an all-new episode of STAR WARS:
THE CLONE WARS premiering at 9 p.m. ET/PT Friday, Dec. 12, on Cartoon Network.
Matthew Wood Gives Evil a Voice in STAR WARS: THE
CLONE WARS
Matthew Wood is the voice of villainy
as both General Grievous and the battle droids throughout STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS,
but evil gets a special opportunity to shine in “Lair of Grievous.”
Though Wood provides the distinctive sounds
of Grievous and the battle droids, voice acting is not his “day job.” Since 1990, Wood has been among the
chief innovators in digital sound technology at Lucasfilm’s Skywalker Sound,
working on such films and TV properties as The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones, Mission:
Impossible, Con-Air, Wall-E, Munich and Armageddon.
In addition, he recently received an Oscar nomination for his work on Paul Thomas
Anderson’s There Will Be Blood.
Wood first dipped into the voiceover world with Star Wars: Episode I The
Phantom Menace, and first performed as General Grievous on the big-screen in Star
Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith. As a relative insider,
he knew what George Lucas was looking for in terms of the character’s sound,
so he anonymously slipped his own audition tape into the casting pipeline. Lucas
made the selection blindly, never knowing his eventual Grievous was already on staff.
“I like playing a villain because
it’s just no-holds-barred,” Wood
says. “Villains don’t have an inner critic; they just speak their mind
and make demands, come hell or high water, with no ramifications. And Grievous
is a classic villain—he uses four
lightsabers, he’s a Jedi killer, and I haven’t seen any humanity left
in him. He knows about as much of the dark side of the Force as you can without having
the Force, and now he’s just out for blood. I haven’t seen any
redeemable qualities in him. That kind of puts him up on the list of all-time great
villains.”
Wood says he combines a low-pitched, deep
voice, lots of yelling and a Bela Lugosi-influenced eastern European flair in his
intonations of Grievous. When the voice is filtered through the computer, it is combined
with the general’s trademark cough to
signify his biomechanical nature. The bottom line for Wood is to capture the core
of villainy within Grievous.
Wood also provides the voices of the battle droids in the series, which allow
him to explore another end of the villain spectrum; as cannon fodder for the Separatists,
the battle droids are used primarily as comic relief.
“I love playing both—and it’s
especially fun when they’re
together because I get to play that juxtaposition,” Wood says. “Grievous
is so exasperated at the thought that he’s stuck with these idiotic, low-rent
droids that can just be bowled over by Jedi, no problem.
“On the other hand,” he says, “the battle droids have this weird
kind of desperation to them. They really want to succeed, but they just know that
it’s not within their programming to do a good job. So there’s this weird,
funny kind of sadness to them. It’s great to do both the villainy and the comedy.”
With four lightsabers, General Grievous is
a potentially lethal adversary for Jedi Knights Nahdar Vebb (left) and Kit Fisto
(right).
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