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So wait, the clones being on the side of the good was supposed to be a plot twist?
- Thread starter Gustaf
- Start date
The Clone Wars as presented in the prequels and prequel-related media do not represent how I visualised that mysterious conflict to be at all.
When Obi Wan briefly mentioned the Clone Wars in Star Wars, the image I had in my mind was of evil clones, or at least a fascistic army akin to the android police in THX 1138. The clones were a villainous species to be overcome by the heroes in the story.
You could argue that subverting our expectations and having the clones be on the side of the "good guys" is a novel twist, but Lucas is simply not a talented enough writer to execute this idea while - importantly - marrying it with the existing universe as seen in the OT.
The "Clone Wars" should never have been about the Republic having access to unlimited cloning technology. It's a weird conceit which breaks the universe, doesn't fit with the OT, forces a series of clumsy retcons and doesn't really feel like a "Star Wars" idea anyway, being more science fiction than science fantasy. The idea of the clone troopers having chips in their heads which change their personalities on the fly is just weird and an unnecessary extra step in getting the Republic Army to become the Empire stormtroopers. Also, what is the satisfying reason for the Empire abandoning their elite clone troopers for the less than perfect human army in the OT? Yes, I'm sure a Visual Dictionary and the Clone Wars cartoon have explained that they were phased out in favour of human conscripts, but again, it's an awkward over-complication in my opinion.
I would have preferred it if the Clone Wars revolved around a mysterious marauding alien race which could self replicate and the Republic, led by the ambitious and cunning politician Palpatine, "desperately" drafting anyone across the galaxy they could find into a Galactic Army to fend them off. Palpatine could still secretly be in league with the marauders, or alternatively, he could just be a slick politician with authoritarian tendencies who ascends to being Emperor through popularity with the masses.
After the end of the war (having blown up the alien cloning facilities, maybe), the Republic naturally evolves into an Empire when Palpatine and his strong military have proven successful in keeping order. Thus, the Galactic Army, comprised of drafted men and other species, organically become the stormtroopers.
While I like the idea that Palpatine is the grand mastermind manipulating both sides, it's very hard to write that without making either side look like colossal idiots...as the prequels demonstrated. My main priority would be to make the Clone Wars conflict organically flow into the events of the OT. The Republic/Empire having cloning tech opens up too many narrative cans of worms.
When Obi Wan briefly mentioned the Clone Wars in Star Wars, the image I had in my mind was of evil clones, or at least a fascistic army akin to the android police in THX 1138. The clones were a villainous species to be overcome by the heroes in the story.
You could argue that subverting our expectations and having the clones be on the side of the "good guys" is a novel twist, but Lucas is simply not a talented enough writer to execute this idea while - importantly - marrying it with the existing universe as seen in the OT.
The "Clone Wars" should never have been about the Republic having access to unlimited cloning technology. It's a weird conceit which breaks the universe, doesn't fit with the OT, forces a series of clumsy retcons and doesn't really feel like a "Star Wars" idea anyway, being more science fiction than science fantasy. The idea of the clone troopers having chips in their heads which change their personalities on the fly is just weird and an unnecessary extra step in getting the Republic Army to become the Empire stormtroopers. Also, what is the satisfying reason for the Empire abandoning their elite clone troopers for the less than perfect human army in the OT? Yes, I'm sure a Visual Dictionary and the Clone Wars cartoon have explained that they were phased out in favour of human conscripts, but again, it's an awkward over-complication in my opinion.
I would have preferred it if the Clone Wars revolved around a mysterious marauding alien race which could self replicate and the Republic, led by the ambitious and cunning politician Palpatine, "desperately" drafting anyone across the galaxy they could find into a Galactic Army to fend them off. Palpatine could still secretly be in league with the marauders, or alternatively, he could just be a slick politician with authoritarian tendencies who ascends to being Emperor through popularity with the masses.
After the end of the war (having blown up the alien cloning facilities, maybe), the Republic naturally evolves into an Empire when Palpatine and his strong military have proven successful in keeping order. Thus, the Galactic Army, comprised of drafted men and other species, organically become the stormtroopers.
While I like the idea that Palpatine is the grand mastermind manipulating both sides, it's very hard to write that without making either side look like colossal idiots...as the prequels demonstrated. My main priority would be to make the Clone Wars conflict organically flow into the events of the OT. The Republic/Empire having cloning tech opens up too many narrative cans of worms.
I watched Chris Lee's hammer Dracula movie last month. It wasn't too bad. So technically you are correct.
Grand moff tarkin is the real start of the hammer films though. I like him way more than Vincent price.
Yeah I remember schoolground theories way back in the day usually had the Emperor being a powerful/influential governor or member of the nobility who amassed power & weapons, then launched a war using clones (re: stormtroopers) to take over the Republic. Sort of like the evil version of Alderaan and Leia's family.
Darth Vader was basically seen as an Arthurian knight who turned to evil. Somehow we all knew that he'd fought Obi-Wan on a volcano planet.
They did a really poor job explaining what the deal was with Dyas. Then Obi Wan shows up and the clone manufacturer just hands over the keys to the army to the first guy who says he's a jedi.
They do have chips in their head that makes them obey the order.
It was a spoiler for Order 666 or whatever.
We new them clones was gonna go bad the instant they thought them up. It was a giant Foreshadowing Bat.
And Tarkin is basically the Ming the Merciless rip-off in SW. He plays it perfectly.
You're right.
I enjoy the clone wars cartoon, but there's a lot the show introduces that kind of messes with what's established in the PT.
Then again, the PT does the same to the OT, so it's like poetry.
When I was a kid in the nineties I somehow knew this as well. Was it in a book or something?
It was kinda obvious the clones were bad news. Kamino was fucking weird and the aliens making the clones were blatantly bad guys, plus Yoda ends the movie rather ominously with a "welp now I can see the future again and we're fucked". Then you've got Palpatine looking down on that fucking army and you know he's already won.
Dooku convinced Sifo Dias to order the Army in secret, then had him assassinated, so that when questions were asked it wasn't obvious who was really behind it.
Though this isn't properly explained in the film, it is made clear in the film that the Kaminoans believed that the Jedi and the Republic were completely aware of the Clone Army and that Obi Wan was just an inspector coming to visit.
George talked about it in an interview at some point, I believe while promoting the release of RotJ.
It wasn't explained in the film because it was originally supposed to be Sido-Dyas, aka Sidious. Apparently one part of the script had it misspelled "Sifo-Dyas" and George liked the way it looked, so he just changed it everywhere with the intention of explaining more in Episode III. When he started actually working the script for that movie, he realized there wasn't time to do any of that so it was just left alone. Oopsie.
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It always bothered me how this was played out in the films. They made it seem like there was going to be the big payoff for Sifo Dias. Also him being killed 10 years ago is the same time as The Phantom Menace and I always thought the was some connection to QuiGon.
It makes sense if Anakin isn't Darth Vader
Old guy Obi-Wan and old guy Anakin fight in the Clone Wars --> The Clone Wars end --> Obi-Wan recruits a young Darth --> Darth betrays Obi-Wan and helps give rise to the Empire --> Darth hunts down and kills the Jedi Knights, including Anakin --> Obi-Wan throws Darth in a volcano
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Dude we were talking about this in the early 80s before Jedi even came out. It's like some Jungian thing that everyone apparently tapped into.
Well, Without Sheev the separatist wars Pretty Much will be happening anyway.
He just Makes it faster.
Honestly AOTC makes Obi-Wan/Yoda/the jedi in general seem dumb as fuck. A mysterious giant army pops up on a mysterious hidden planet and they just go along with it and recruit them all without doing any serious research.
You were supposed to see the clones who looked like Storm Troopers, and then a guy named "Fett" and think "oh shit these are going to be the bad guys" and then be surprised when they jumped in on the side of the good guys towards the end of the movie.
But because pretty much nothing in the Prequels is clearly directed, acted, scripted or delivered it completely undercuts that and you're just sort of watching random scenes strung together without much cohesive tone.
But because pretty much nothing in the Prequels is clearly directed, acted, scripted or delivered it completely undercuts that and you're just sort of watching random scenes strung together without much cohesive tone.
I think the distinction is important because the republic became the empire vis a vis palp keeping his emergency powers after the clone wars/destruction of the Jedi. The First Order is a group of empire remnants/others that slowly came
together over 30 years (actually just like 5 years before Force Awakens).
my biggest gripe with the new trilogy is that none of this is explained. I bet the average movie goer thinks the resistance is the rebellion and the first order is the empire.
I mean you can't really blame them considering how lazy the worldbuilding was in TFA.
If you've only watched the movies that's basically what they come off as. I only know the other stuff from people mentioning it on this board
I'm pretty sure it's explained in the opening crawl of TFA but they basically have the exact same dynamics and tech as the OT so.
The Stormtroopers are not clones during the original trilogy. The clones are short-lived and are almost extinct by the time ANH starts. Most of the Stormtroopers in the OT are normal recruits. Even Luke wanted to join the Imperial Academy at the start of ANH.
I mean you can't really blame them considering how lazy the worldbuilding was in TFA.
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yeah it is what it is. Fortunately the books are quite good.
My favourite is the holdo maneuver not being explained. Everyone thought it was a plot hole. Like why didn't every ship just jump to light speed and take down like 20 other ships? Well the raddus has experimental shields that allowed it to do that... as explained the TLJ novelization.
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yeah it is what it is. Fortunately the books are quite good.
My favourite is the holdo maneuver not being explained. Everyone thought it was a plot hole. Like why didn't every ship just jump to light speed and take down like 20 other ships? Well the raddus has experimental shields that allowed it to do that... as explained the TLJ novelization.
OP
OP
this exactly my point,
all the movie is like obi wan trying to figure out if the clone army is bad or good, and people that watched the OT knew clones were kinda bad news, and the jedi not knowing about why saifo diaz gave the order, makes you think that they will be the principal enemies of the clone wars.
then suddenly boom, they come and save the jedi's asses.
and just now figure out that lucas thought this would be a twist of epic proportions, like throwing everthing we know out of the window, but yeah he did not nail the execution at all
Honestly it would have made much more sense and been way cooler if they had cloned Jedi. Base your whole army on a guy that gets dunked on by a guy with a purple lightsaber, or base your army on a bunch of superhuman wizard warriors. I was sure that the whole stupid midichlorian thing in EP. 1 was a set up for explaining how you could clone Jedi. I then thought maybe they would go full crazy and clone Anakin giving the whole "certain point of view" thing have some extra nuance. But we got what we got... An army of boba Fett's Dad and a diner scene with alien ass-crack.
They age twice as fast so they'd all be seniors by the time of ANH
I just realized, did they Kaminos use those anti force ferrets? Cause in the star wars universe when you clone you got to grow the clone in real time or it comes out insane. You can fix that by keeping the clone from being exposed to the force.
That's what I want to know. I remember in the 90s just knowing "oh yeah, Obi-Wan and Vader dueled in a volcano, of course" and I have no idea where that idea came from, but sure enough that's exactly how it ended up in ep III
What the actual fuck is the deal with this?
My impression is that they were cornered in a position of having to accept the clones or have the republic fall. By the time Obi-wan discovered the clone army, the Separatists already had a full functioning Droid army that was about to wipe out the Jedi in Geonosis if the clones hadn't step up. The Separatists would have easily won the war if the Jedi Order had decided to sit on the army while they investigate.
I know. But I was saying that even at the time in 2005 I heard rumors floating about that it was so. It wasn't until the season 6 episodes that this was confirmed to be the case.
Episode II: Revenge of the Sand
Episode II: Not Just the Women
Episode II: Stop Panickin Anakin
Episode II: Space Diners and Dives
Episode II: Genesis of the Clones
I think it was in the rotj novelization, I can't find my ancient copy to check.
Can't it be just:
Old Guy Anakin and Older Guy Obi-Wan fight in the Clone Wars --> The Clone Wars end --> Anakin betrays Obi-Wan and helps give rise to the Empire --> Obi-Wan throws Anakin in a volcano
?
Sounds right. I remember people telling me about them dueling in a volcano when I was in 2nd grade before any of these prequels had come out.
Obi Wan: "When I saw what had become of him, I tried to dissuade him, to draw him back from the dark side. We fought…your father fell into a molten pit. When your father clawed his way out of that fiery pool, the change had been burned into him forever—he was Darth Vader, without a trace of Anakin Skywalker. Irredeemably dark. Scarred. Kept alive only by machinery and his own black will."
Yes, it's from the novelization