Grievous, General

• Appeared in:
  
  I
  II
  III
  IV
  V
  VI
  CW

• Homeworld:
  Kalee

• Species:
  Kaleesh

• Gender:
  Male

• Size:
  2.16 meters tall (at full height)

• Weapon:
  lightsabers, blaster pistol, electrostaff

• Vehicle:
  Wheel bike, General Grievous' starfighter, Trade Federation cruiser

• Affiliation:
  Confederacy of Independent Systems

• 

From the Movies

When the greedy corporate titans and the disenfranchised systems of the galaxy pooled their resources together to leave the aging Galactic Republic behind, they became the Confederacy of Independent Systems. Their military assets formed a droid army of seemingly limitless size -- a weapon that needed a military mastermind to be wielded effectively.

From within the ranks of the Confederacy came General Grievous, a brilliant strategist unhindered by compassion or scruples. His lightning strikes and effective campaigns caused his reputation to grow in the eyes of a frightened Republic. To many, he eclipsed the threat posed by Count Dooku, the charismatic leader of the Confederacy's political battlefields -- Grievous was the face of the enemy.

A twisted melding of flesh and metal, General Grievous' body is a deadly weapon forged by the cutting edge developers of the Confederacy. Grievous' living matter was encased within his precision-engineered artificial body; inside the hardened carapace beat the heart of a remorseless killer. A pressurized gut-sack held his vital organs, while his skull-like mask contained his living eyes and brain. Making the horrific amalgam more unpleasant was a persistent wet, hacking cough coming from his ravaged lungs.

Grievous hunted Jedi for sport and kept his victims' lightsabers as trophies of his conquests within his cloak. His unorthodox fighting form and mechanical enhancements gave him an edge in close-quarter combat. Each of his six-fingered arms could split in two, resulting in an array of four limbs, each armed with a lightsaber. Grievous could spin these arms in a whirling storm of deadly lacerating light that few could withstand. Only against opponents he deemed worthy did he enter into combat. Grievous often preferred to let his electrostaff-wielding bodyguard droids do the fighting.

In the final stages of the Clone Wars, Grievous orchestrated a daring strike against the heart of the Republic. His flagship led a fleet of massive warships to Coruscant, where an immense battle raged in the upper atmospheres of the capital world. The supreme commander of the droid army had managed to kidnap the leader of the Republic, Chancellor Palpatine. Fleeing with his valuable hostage, Grievous was determined to be victor, and hoped to add the lightsabers of the most famous Jedi warriors -- Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi -- to his grisly collection.

Skywalker and Kenobi infiltrated Grievous' Trade Federation cruiser flagship, and were successful in liberating the captive Chancellor and killing Count Dooku. Yet the Republic fugitives were soon trapped by Grievous' droid forces, and marched before the general. In the bridge of the cruiser, the Jedi fought back, engaging Grievous' bodyguard droids. This bought Grievous time to flee the doomed flagship by throwing an electrostaff at the viewport window, shattering the pane and escaping into space. Grievous clawed along the hull of his falling flagship to make for the escape pod bay.

Grievous fled Coruscant to rejoin the Separatist Council on their secret stronghold of Utapau. There, he received a transmission from Darth Sidious, the Sith mastermind behind the Clone Wars. Sidious ordered Grievous to move the council to Mustafar, and not to fret about the loss of Dooku -- Sidious expected a new Sith apprentice to emerge, one younger and far more powerful than Darth Tyranus.

Ordering the council to Mustafar, Grievous stayed behind on Utapau. A Republic task force led by General Obi-Wan Kenobi voyaged to the sinkhole-riddled world to bring Grievous to justice. Kenobi confronted Grievous and the two engaged in a lightsaber duel. Grievous had received training in the Jedi arts from Count Dooku -- and unleashed a withering assault on Kenobi with four lightsaber blades. Kenobi held his own, shearing off some of Grievous' extraneous limbs, and brutally shoving the droid general with a Force push. Disarmed, Grievous skittered away to his waiting escape vehicle.

The cyborg fugitive fired up his ground-tearing wheel bike, fleeing down the twisting avenues of Utapau's sinkhole city. Kenobi gave chase, riding atop a fearless lizard steed named Boga. The Jedi was able to keep pace with Grievous, leaping onto his vehicle and wrestling control of the difficult-to-pilot contraption away from the general. The wheel bike spun out, dropping into the sinkhole abyss.

Its two occupants tumbled to a stop on Grievous' secret landing platform, the one that contained his personal starfighter. The tenacious Kenobi still fought with Grievous, even though he had his lost lightsaber in the pursuit. The fight degraded to bare knuckles and brutal kicks, and the metallic servo-powered Grievous had the clear advantage. He tossed Kenobi aside, throwing him off the platform. The Jedi caught the lip of the platform and with a free hand, dragged Grievous' discarded blaster pistol to him with the Force.

As Grievous closed to deliver a deathblow, Kenobi opened fire with the blaster. The shots tore into Grievous' open carapace. The blasts cracked the pressurized organ jar, igniting the preservative fluids. Grievous' vital organs exploded in an oily blaze, shooting jets of fire from his helmet's eyeholes.

Grievous' artificial body collapsed on the platform, no longer driven by life, hatred or the compulsion to destroy.

From the Expanded Universe

Before rebuilt as a cyborg warrior, General Grievous was one of the greatest military masterminds the Kaleesh people had seen. From the harsh world of Kalee, the Kaleesh had conquered the land and seas of their planet, and displayed pride in their superiority by wearing masks cobbled from the bones of their most feared animals, the mumuu and the karabbac. Warrior families would hand down these bone masks from generation to generation, adorning it with fresh blood prior to every hunt or campaign.

Grievous wore such a mask in his battle against the hated Huks, a neighboring species. He weathered countless close calls as he unleashed destruction on Kalee's enemies. He would return home to his wives and offspring, bloodied but emboldened, ready for battle again. After the war ended, Grievous had difficulties adjusting to life without conflict.

Grievous' war record had attracted the attention of San Hill, Chairman of the InterGalactic Banking Clan. His contacts within Count Dooku's growing Separatist movement had caught the scent of profound galactic change in the air, and Hill began looking for leverage and advantage in the inevitable civil war that was brewing. He saw in Grievous a valuable asset. In exchange for supporting Kalee's staggering debts incurred in the planet's war with the Huks, the Banking Clan bought Grievous' eternal services as an intimidator and warrior.

It was this strong warrior spirit that transformed into profound anger, embarrassment and outrage that he should be crippled by so mundane a fate. General Grievous -- decorated champion of the Kaleesh, vanquisher of so many Huk warlords, grinder of the enemy's bones -- was fatally injured in a shuttle crash.

With his ally Poggle the Lesser, San Hill had targeted Grievous' shuttle for sabotage resulting in a terrible accident. Suspended in bacta, Grievous' shattered form was kept alive. He had not met an ignoble end; he was not cheated of a warrior's death. The technological wizards of the Banking Clan and the Geonosian foundries rebuilt him. They then presented their cyborg killer to Count Dooku as a gift.

Dooku was at first taken aback by so bizarre an underling. But he and Darth Sidious saw potential. Dooku began training Grievous in the ways of the lightsaber. He was dismayed that the subtleties and finesse of lightsaber combat had been discarded in favor of brutal, multi-weapon attacks, but so go the changes of war. At his hidden base aboard the Trenchant space station, Dooku pit his minions Asajj Ventress and Durge up against Grievous to determine who would be the commander of the Separatist droid army. Grievous emerged victorious.

When Grievous was first reborn, he was given a very generic droid face plate, and wore no cape. Possessed of vanity, Grievous made personal modifications, adding the metal teeth and stripes above his eyes to simulate the Kaleesh tribal bone mask, and created a new cape for himself. Since he knew in joining the Separatists he would be in for a long battle with the Republic, he carved the lines, instead of painting them, to make it a permanent statement. He also made sure that all his guards wore the capes with the Mumuu war paint symbol as well.

Though Grievous was active at the time of the Battle of Geonosis, no Jedi had reported his existence as none had escaped his presence alive. He orchestrated many campaigns from sheltered bunkers, but he was not afraid to fight alongside his soulless troops in the frontlines of the battlegrounds. Jedi General Daakman Barrek first reported Grievous' frightening form on the industrial world of Hypori, where Grievous laid waste to almost all of Barrek's forces.

Following that bloody debut, scattered reports along the HoloNet told of numerous successes in the Office of the General's campaigns against the Republic. Grievous led a stab into the Republic's inner systems along the Corellian Trade Spine, conquering world after world. When Duro fell to a concentrated Confederacy attack, the insulated Core Worlds trembled in fear of what the General was able to achieve.

Behind the Scenes

General Grievous was developed for Episode III as a powerful new villain on the side of the Confederacy. The initial instructions that Director George Lucas gave the Art Department were very open-ended: "a droid general." From that vague direction, the artists developed a lot of explorations, some purely mechanical, some not, for the look of General Grievous.

Ultimately, it was a sketch by Warren Fu that most defined what Grievous would look like. From that initial sketch came further refinements, and finally a foot-tall maquette sculpted by Robert Barnes showed what the General would look like in three dimensions. This sculpture was further modified to become a realistic computer-generated model for use by Industrial Light & Magic.

The model of Grievous was one of the most complicated ILM had every constructed, having so many parts of differing physical qualities. On set, no one person played Grievous, though off-screen dialogue reader Duncan Young read his lines. For combat sequences, stunt performer Kyle Rowling wore a greenscreen or bluescreen suit to play Grievous in his battles with Obi-Wan Kenobi. It would be many months before a voice actor was hired to perform Grievous' dialogue. In the end, Supervising Sound Editor Matthew Wood had submitted the winning audition.

Though Grievous made his theatrical debut in May 2005, he made several notable appearances in the Star Wars expanded universe. The most prominent is his appearance in the Star Wars: Clone Wars micro-series. He also appears in the Boba Fett young reader series, and the adult novel Labyrinth of Evil. For more information about the genesis of General Grievous, click here to see the Making of Episode III web documentary devoted to this subject.