
The movie features many familiar characters, including Yoda and a young Kenobi, but focuses on Anakin Skywalker's mentor relationship with an orange-skinned young female apprentice named Ahsoka. Thirty-one years later, with his six-film Skywalker family history completed, Lucas is happy to be exploring some of that "extraneous stuff" - starting with the animated "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" movie that comes out Friday, and will continue as a half-hour show on the Cartoon Network and TNT. So you really can't deal with a lot of extraneous stuff." "It's really about a guy turning bad and then being redeemed by his son. "Ultimately, and it's hard to say with a straight face, but 'Star Wars' is a very small, little personal story," "Star Wars" creator George Lucas explained last week at Lucasfilm's Big Rock Ranch. So it was a bit of a geek letdown when the saga's recent prequels barely scratched the surface of the most epic of conflicts in that galaxy far, far away.

It was a throwaway line, delivered by an awestruck Luke Skywalker to Obi-Wan Kenobi in the first "Star Wars" movie in 1977, but it got young imaginations flowing.

SAN FRANCISCO - "You fought in the Clone Wars?"
