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In last Friday's episode of STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS, the detonation of a secret, untested Republic Army weapon on Malastare awakened The Zillo Beast, a gargantuan creature which had lived peacefully under the surface until disturbed. While the electro-proton bomb gave the Republic a decisive victory in disabling the Confederation's vast battle droid army, the Zillo's emergence created an all new threat to the Dug population of Malastare.
Though Jedi knights Mace Windu and Anakin Skywalker urged the Dugs not to enrage the beast by attacking it, the Dug leader Nakha Urus insisted they destroy the Zillo as the two species bore an ancient grudge against each other for survival on their world. Yet as the Dugs poured their fuel supplies into the Zillo's pit, the creature crawled out to avoid a toxic demise and began crushing the Republic's troops.
With the desperate use of Stun Tank weapons to subdue the beast, the Jedi finally capture the Zillo and promise to transport it away from Malastare to live in peace by itself. But Chancellor Palpatine, ever the political opportunist manipulating events of the Clone War behind the scenes, issued new orders to the Jedi: return the Zillo to Coruscant where the Chancellor's scientists will "study" its rare, impenetrable shell of organic armor.
As promised by the teaser preview of this week's upcoming episode, The Zillo Beast
Strikes Back, Palpatine's plans to exploit the Zillo as a monstrous weapon to fight for the Republic go horribly wrong. The Zillo breaks free from its bondage and goes on a destructive rampage across the high-rise landscape of Coruscant!
If all of this super-sized creature feature action sounds familiar, you can bet that THE CLONE WARS Supervising Director Dave Filoni, members of his creative team and even George Lucas himself are fans of GODZILLA and the great history of Japanese monster movies. This new poster sent to FILMEDGE illustrates the Zillo's destructive potential as well as an homage to the cinematic creatures who came before it in sci-fi monster fiction.
Click on the poster image to the left to view the full-size poster created by Lucasfilm artists who are clearly having fun indulging in their creature feature tribute spanning this two-week story arc on the Zillo.
For those STAR WARS fans who haven't mastered the Aurebesh language, visit the Aurebesh letter translator page at StarWars.com to decipher the poster captions yourself. If you're not fluent in over six million forms of communication and have difficulty matching letter symbols, FILMEDGE has translated the poster here but we strongly suggest you try decoding it yourself first just for fun.
 Being fellow fans of monster movies, FILMEDGE did some research and found some vintage posters and images which perhaps inspired Dave Filoni and his team in creating this Zillo bonus poster. There are striking similarities to this 1954 movie poster for GOJIRA (right), the original Japanese release of the classic monster film before it was re-edited and dubbed in English for the 1956 American release starring Raymond Burr.
Note how the Lucasfilm artists humorously mimic the original poster design with the creature vertically dominating the center of the image, with lead characters spanning the bottom border. The Aurebesh letters running up and down the sides and across the lower half corresponds to the text in Japanese perfectly within the STAR WARS universe, though Aurebesh is much easier to translate. Both posters' bold graphic design in image and text placement play up the fun, tabloid-style of giant title placements and lengthy taglines or legends, which became a trademark of Japanese monster movie posters which genre fans remember fondly.
Yet the tributes to monster movies continue in The Zillo Beast episode as the Jedis and Republic clone troops use Stun Tanks to eventually subdue the giant creature without actually destroying it. While humans firing ineffective weapons against Godzilla and his monster pals is a genre staple, the design of this new Stun Tank bears a direct homage to the motorized Maser Cannon, a weapon used in the 1966 Japanese film WAR OF THE GARGANTUAS. Both the Japanese and CLONE WARS versions feature a beam-based weapon focused by a dish placed at the end of a mechanized boom arm. Yet the Stun Tank's basic weaponry design debuted as the Self-Propelled Heavy Artillery (SPHA) walker in Episode II: ATTACK OF THE CLONES during the climactic battle on Geonosis, as shown in the still images below for comparison. In that battle, the SPHAs fired their turbo-lasers to successfully bring down the Separatist core ships attempting to escape the planet.
It's good to see that many creative minds involved in making STAR WARS not only pay tribute to such iconic moments and images in cinema history, but by planting such minute details and hidden 'easter eggs' in their work, prove themselves fans of these stories just like us! Watch this commentary video clip by Supervising Director Dave Filoni talking about the many references to Japanese monster movies peppered throughout The Zillo Beast, episode from last week. Be sure to keep a sharp eye open for more Godzilla-inspired salutes in this week's follow-up The Zillo Beast
Strikes Back, debuting at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT Friday, April 9 on Cartoon Network. FILMEDGE will debut our complete preview of Episode 2.19 later this week, so stay tuned for more details!
FILMEDGE's coverage of THE CLONE WARS continues in Season Two
*Thanks to CollectionDX.com for photos of the Maser Cannon |
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