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DougRed4
Rear Admiral
Joined: 18 Jan 2013
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 Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2015 7:27 pm Post subject: |
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Yes, very fascinating and interesting!
I think this thread sums up what probably contributes to a lot of the issues/problems people have with the Prequels. Assumptions/speculations about what "the Clone Wars" (plural) were and the hope that we'd get a (or, at least one) movie about Vader hunting down and destroying the Jedi.
Like Whill, I've known since way back when the first movie came out (right after I got the book, and read the opening 'Journal of the Whills') about how the Republic rotted from within, and how Palpatine maneuvered himself into becoming the Emperor in charge of the Empire.
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Barrataria
Commander
Joined: 28 Dec 2005
Posts: 295
Location: Republic of California
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| Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2015 7:47 pm Post subject: |
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| DougRed4 wrote: | | I think this thread sums up what probably contributes to a lot of the issues/problems people have with the Prequels. Assumptions/speculations about what "the Clone Wars" (plural) were and the hope that we'd get a (or, at least one) movie about Vader hunting down and destroying the Jedi. |
That would have been a great third episode in my alternate-universe prequel trilogy, the Adventures of Obi-Wan Kenobi! 
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Zarm R'keeg
Commander
Joined: 14 Apr 2012
Posts: 481
Location: PA
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| Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2015 10:16 am Post subject: |
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After a day's rabid reading, my jaw is hanging open- a totally unexplored corner of the pre-90s SWU that I'd never heard of before. (Albeit a might-have-been rather than anything published, but I love that stuff.) That in all my reading of Pena and Wallace and the guides and everything else, I've never come across it before...
Thank you, RyanDarkstar. I feel as if I've taken my first step into a larger world.
| DougRed4 wrote: | | I think this thread sums up what probably contributes to a lot of the issues/problems people have with the Prequels. Assumptions/speculations about what "the Clone Wars" (plural) were and the hope that we'd get a (or, at least one) movie about Vader hunting down and destroying the Jedi. |
Very true. I think everyone was broadsided by the nature of the clone Wars, too. I still maintain that the very name and how it was carried out are disingenuous; who names a war for just what their own soldiers were? It's like calling WWII 'The Drafting War,' or Vietnam 'The Marines War.' You usually name it for who you fought, or where you fought, or what both sides collectively fought with... not what your own soldiers were. I suppose the novelty of 'this time, we used clones' kinda works, but... no one was expecting clones to exclusively be good guys, based on standard naming conventions. They'd spent 20 years preparing themselves for a war between clones, or a war against clones... and they never got it. And yeah, same with Vader hunting down the Jedi. From ANH, they were expecting an epic, broad hunt- and Order 66 just gave us a minute and a half of it.  That a lotta childhood expectations confounded.
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Barrataria
Commander
Joined: 28 Dec 2005
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Location: Republic of California
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| Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2015 10:26 am Post subject: |
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| Zarm R'keeg wrote: | | You usually name it for who you fought, or where you fought, or what both sides collectively fought with... not what your own soldiers were. I suppose the novelty of 'this time, we used clones' kinda works, but... no one was expecting clones to exclusively be good guys, based on standard naming conventions. They'd spent 20 years preparing themselves for a war between clones, or a war against clones... and they never got it. And yeah, same with Vader hunting down the Jedi. From ANH, they were expecting an epic, broad hunt- and Order 66 just gave us a minute and a half of it. That a lotta childhood expectations confounded. |
Good points, I guess that was the underlying expectation based on the name. Like the American name for the "French-Indian War". And yes, not to turn this into the eleven millionth anti-prequel thread, but those films were certainly long enough to ditch some Galactic C-Span Tax Committee hearings for 2 hours of "Most Dangerous Jedi Game"! I think I just figured out what Ep. III in my SWU prequel trilogy looks like.
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Whill
Dark Lord of the Jedi (Owner/Admin)
Joined: 14 Apr 2008
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Location: Columbus, Ohio, USA, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way Galaxy
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| Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2015 5:11 pm Post subject: The Clones Are Coming... |
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| Zarm R'keeg wrote: | | I think everyone was broadsided by the nature of the clone Wars, too. I still maintain that the very name and how it was carried out are disingenuous; who names a war for just what their own soldiers were? It's like calling WWII 'The Drafting War,' or Vietnam 'The Marines War.' You usually name it for who you fought, or where you fought, or what both sides collectively fought with... not what your own soldiers were. I suppose the novelty of 'this time, we used clones' kinda works, but... no one was expecting clones to exclusively be good guys, based on standard naming conventions. |
So, the war naming conventions of our modern western civilization on our single little planet in our own galaxy should determine the galactic war naming practices a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away? I find that suggestion to be very limiting.
And although the idea of stormtroopers being clones existed in the 70s, we should keep in mind that Lucas admitted that the references to the "clone" wars was just something he made up to make it sci-fi-sounding. You know, like droids talking to moisture vaporators in a "binary" language and the Falcon making the Kessel run in 12 "parsecs." Lucas didn't have the details of the clone wars planned out in his SW backstory. When the prequels came out, Lucas said the only reason he even had the Clone Wars be a part of the prequels was because it was referred to in the classic films and he was "finishing the job" of the Star Wars film saga. He emphasized that the clones in Star Wars were not meant to represent any sci-fi-ish messages about real-world cloning. He just had to cash the check he wrote in 1977.
Despite my childhood expectation of both sides having clones, I feel what Lucas came up with totally works. Having it clones vs. droids make it distinct and different sides. Clones are superior to droids, and the clones were on the side that won. There hadn't been a large-scale war in 1000 years, and the Republic had no army. AotC's opening crawl states, "Senator Amidala, the former Queen of Naboo, is returning to the Senate to vote on the critical issue of creating an ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC to assist the overwhelmed Jedi..." This mysterious army of clones just popped up out of nowhere, just when the Republic needed them, a point made in the Jedi Temple dialogue at the end of AotC. I don't see it as a stretch to name this space opera conflict after the clones. The clones not only saved the Republic from the Separatist Confederacy, but they also saved the galaxy from the Jedi Rebellion.
And remember, history is written by the victors. "The Clone Wars" is not actually stated anywhere in AotC or RotS. Later calling them The Clone Wars may have been Imperial propaganda to remind everyone that the victorious clone army that won the war and defeated the Jedi are under control of the Emperor towards an intimidation factor. Another possibility is that "The Clone Wars" is not actually the official name of the conflict, but by the time of ANH it is a common colloquialism. That could also explain the pluralization of the term, just lumping together several early conflicts featuring the new clone army.
I find that the Alliance-Empire conflict being merely named "The Galactic Civil War" is unrealistic for galactic civilization that is over a thousand generations old and has had several galactic civil wars prior, (including the film canonical Clone Wars less than two decades prior which was also a "galactic civil war" conflict). Maybe The Galactic Civil War was also named out of Imperial propaganda (the Empire having a greatly expanded war machine in place by the Rebellion era and it was the first major conflict after the rise of the Empire) or perhaps The Galactic Civil War was a non-official colloquialism.
Finally, in the EU, Separatist did have a clone army on their side during the conflict. I seen nothing in the films or EU that prevent there from being clones used on both sides, even though droids remained the primary soldiers of the Confederacy as a whole.
| Zarm R'keeg wrote: | | no one was expecting clones to exclusively be good guys |
I run into this a lot. The clones weren't actually good guys. The clones are amoral pawns made to follow the orders of whomever they recognized as commanding them, without question. Without a second of hesitation the clones went from being commanded by Jedi generals to following the order of a Sith Lord to kill their commanders. There was no "good side" in the Clone Wars. Both sides of the war were under control of a single master of evil who manufactured the war to take over the galaxy. Both sides in the war were bad, unlike the Rebellion against the Empire. Yes, the Republic had some good guys like the Jedi, but I think that there would have had to have been some good guys on the side of the Separatist too, some people that saw the corruption in the Republic and bought into the rhetoric about "starting over" that Count Dooku used to sway people to his side. In light of the prequels, I would think that a lot of former Separatists joined the Alliance in the classic era.
| Zarm R'keeg wrote: | | They'd spent 20 years preparing themselves for a war between clones, or a war against clones... and they never got it. And yeah, same with Vader hunting down the Jedi. From ANH, they were expecting an epic, broad hunt- and Order 66 just gave us a minute and a half of it. That a lotta childhood expectations confounded. |
I personally never expected the prequels to show everything that happened in the backstory of the classic trilogy. And the things that did happened that weren't showed still happened offscreen. Vader could have spent years hunting down fugitive Jedi in the inter-trilogy period. For fans hungry for that, there is a some of that in the excellent RotS sequel novel Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader by James Luceno. The newly cyborged Vader acclimates to his new more-machine-than-man body, hunts down Jedi and political enemies of Palpatine, and assists Tarkin in the subjugation of Kashyyyk and enslavement of the Wookiee species.
I think you hit the nail on the head as to why some many old school SW fans were disappointed by the prequels or view the filmic Clone Wars as "newfangled nonsense". Expectation. No Star Wars is better than the Star Wars in our heads!
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Last edited by Whill on Sun Aug 16, 2015 11:01 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Zarm R'keeg
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| Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2015 3:27 pm Post subject: Re: The Clones Are Coming... |
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| Whill wrote: | | So, the war naming conventions of our modern western civilization on our single little planet in our own galaxy should determine the galactic war naming practices a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away? |
Seeing as it is a movie written by western civilization for western civilization, yes- for the same reason I'd expect the principles to speak English. But generally, it's more of a 'because those are standard naming conventions, a certain expectation is logically formed in the mind of a western audience, which this choice confounded.'
| Whill wrote: | This mysterious army of clones just popped up out of nowhere, just when the Republic needed them, a point made in the Jedi Temple dialogue at the end of AotC. I don't see it as a stretch to name this space opera conflict after the clones.
And remember, history is written by the victors. "The Clone Wars" is not actually stated anywhere in AotC or RotS. Later calling them The Clone Wars may have been Imperial propaganda to remind everyone that the victorious clone army that won the war and defeated the Jedi are under control of the Emperor towards an intimidation factor. Another possibility is that "The Clone Wars" is not actually the official name of the conflict, but by the time of ANH it is a common colloquialism. That could also explain the pluralization of the term, just lumping together several early conflicts featuring the new clone army. |
By history, perhaps. But Yoda did dubbing them as such at the end of AOTC ("Begun, this Clone War has"), and that did not feel at all organic to me- just a shoehorned inclusion of an audience-familiar term from a character that had no reason to be saying it.
But I can see your point as to why such a name might have stuck, considering the circumstances. I just doubt there were many who would've originally assumed such a scenario based on the name... nor many in-universe who would've named it such just after it began.
| Whill wrote: | | The clones weren't actually good guys. The clones are amoral pawns made to follow the orders of whomever they recognized as commanding them, without question. |
True. More appropriately 'fighting on the side of the good guys (as defined by the OT; a.k.a. Obi-wan and his order)' or 'perceived as the good guys by the general public' or 'on the side of the republic and perceived by citizens of the empire to have been the good guys.' That's the part I think no one was expecting.
Incidentally, while I disagree with the naming logic, those statements were not intended as a criticism of the Clone Wars, just an exploration of why it ended up so different than many people pictured, based on natural assumptions of their culture and the information/context given us.
| Whill wrote: | | Expectation. No Star Wars is better than the Star Wars in our heads! |
Very true!
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
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| Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2015 10:10 pm Post subject: |
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I never really put a lot of thought into what the details of the Clone Wars might be, beyond the general idea that various nefarious parties made clone soldiers to fight their wars for them.
However, if you are looking for a great source of ideas, the Mesan Alignment of the Honor Harrington series would provide some great material. The Alignment was / is a secret society based around the idea of genetic manipulation to produce a superior human being. They concealed themselves behind various corporations, specifically one known as Manpower, Inc. Manpower grew and sold genetic slaves, each specifically grown and trained for a specific task, be it labor, "pleasure", entertainment, or more specialized technical work. Manpower also served as a testing ground for the Alignment's genetic experimentation, allowing them to experiment and refine their planned improvements to the human genome under the guise of product experimentation.
I've only discovered the Honor Harrington series recently, but I'm very impressed with the degree of detail that David Weber incorporates into his universe, and the kind of multi-century planning and secret scheming that personifies the Mesan Alignment would make a great basis for deep background on the motivation of the clone masters; not just using clone troops for fighting wars of conquest, but a vast, centuries long conspiracy to conquer the human race from within by breeding in genetic superiority, complete with all the nefarious activities that go along with it; bribery, blackmail, espionage, murder, kidnapping, etc.
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TheDoctor
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Posts: 150
Location: San Francisco
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| Posted: Tue Jan 20, 2015 4:11 pm Post subject: |
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Spookily enough, I remember being about 8 or 9 years old and having a really vivid dream about watching Episode II specifically (roughly 12 years before Episode II actually came out). In my dream, R2-D2, C-3PO (who looked less shiny and somewhat pale) and Princess Leia (who actually wasn't Princess Leia). All I remember is that they were in some really dark, Star Warsy chamber similar to the garbage compactor. Years later, I was astounded how similar the Geonesis Droid Factory scenes were to my dreams as a kid that'd I remembered.
As an eight-year old, based on that dialogue, I remember imagining that General Kenobi was leading legions of Jedi against some enemy I didn't really ponder about. I assumed for whatever reason that "clone" was a made-up Star Wars word like Jedi or Hutt. Clearly Leia's father was Obi-Wan's direct commander.
I further imagined that Luke's dad (unnamed at the time in the film) was a fighter pilot not unlike Luke himself. Based on the dialogue, I assumed Luke's dad was at least 20 when Obi-Wan met him. Learning decades later that Obi-Wan was really referring to an eight year old in a pod race nearly broke me....
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Whill
Dark Lord of the Jedi (Owner/Admin)
Joined: 14 Apr 2008
Posts: 10435
Location: Columbus, Ohio, USA, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way Galaxy
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| Posted: Wed Jan 21, 2015 1:55 am Post subject: |
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Reading Doc's post reminded me of two things.
I also had a dream about watching part of Episode II, but mine was only a year or so before Episode I came out... I remember seeing a landspeeder like Luke's, and a young Obi-Wan and Anakin in canyon that looked like it could be on Tatooine. They were both adults, and Anakin was very dark haired, dressed similar to Biggs Darklighter in his deleted Tatooine scene in ANH (with a cape and all). In the dream I wasn't in a theater but rather outdoors in a makeshift theater in a big crowded tent like it was a bootlegged movie reel. I stopped watching and left... I suspect that the dream was probably representative of my internal conflict to know more info versus not wanting to be spoiled.
The other thing I remembered is that after seeing AotC, I assumed that Episode III would have the Battle of Alderaan with General Kenobi literally serving under Bail Organa during that battle, and suspected that Alderaan adopting a 'no weapons' policy was an outcome of the battle. After seeing RotS, I don't really have any issue with Leia's ANH line referring to Obi-Wan serving Senator Organa only more vaguely as being a part of the Jedi Order serving the Senate as body during the Clone Wars. Obi-Wan did say, "Anakin, my allegiance is to the Republic, to democracy!" Bail Organa was a senator in that democratic Republic, and Leia could have also had an inflated perception of her adopted father's authority during the war. And there still could have been an unseen battle on Alderaan with Bail and Obi-Wan (There was in my SWU).
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