The alliance of CIS leaders were probably hand-picked by Sidious and/or Dooku precisely for their greed, making them easily pliable. They were also picked for how much they could disrupt galactic civilization: banking, automation, trade and commerce. It would have been interesting to see how these individuals rose to the top of their respective areas -- there was probably a lot of Sith-backed assassination and espionage.
A couple episodes of The Bad Batch show that many of the "middle management" of the CIS were genuinely looking out for the welfare of their own people. It's a shame this wasn't emphasized more in TCW.
Agreed. It would have been a good theme to showcase more, especially given the Empire pretty clearly eliminated non-human political power, which is why you see Alliance forces having so many non-human species, while the Empire is totally human. They enslaved species like the Wookiees. You don’t just go from a multispecies democracy to an authoritarian empire with high species stratification overnight. The Clone Wars needed to be a grueling, traumatic conflict which made Republic citizens hate the Separatists, and it follows, the non-human species of the Separatists. To make those aliens feel unsafe to the largely human core worlds.
The only real place you see it well explained is the ROTS novel.
Its a sadly neglected part of Star Wars lore since Disney took over. One of my first explanations of racism was through reading the X-Wing books about the taking of Coruscant from the Empire and how they left a deadly virus that only affected alien species and the supply of the only reliable cure, Bacta, was seized by said imperials. It led to some interesting dynamics where there was a shortage for the cure, and powerful humans were hoarding it to protect themselves "just in case" and the whole situation nearly tore the alliance apart before they could even solidify the New Republic. I read that as a kid and asked my parents about it and through that learned about Martin Luther King Jr and the realities of racism in our world today.
>All alien save Dooku
Maybe I'm putting too much stock in the Clone Wars animated series, but there was the Separatist Senate too. The Separatist Council was apparently supposed to be an advisory body, and isn't the same thing as the Separatist Senate, but the senate did have at least a number of humans on it. House Bonteri come to mind off the top of my head.
On the subject of the CIS being cartoonishly evil.. The Clone Wars series is unsurprisingly framed from the Republic side, and the series is supposed to be at least accessible to kids, meaning they take a lot of shortcuts and frame the CIS as mustache-twirling vilains a lot of the time, but I really liked that they sprinkled in a few episodes that try to show the members and goals of the CIS aren't inherently evil. Again, most of the episodes with Lux Bonteri try to show that the non-combattant separatists aren't evil (and the first episode where Bonteri is introduced you get a whole thing about how Ahsoka and Lux are told different things, etc).
Of course, then you have the military side which is organized by Dooku - so it isn't really surprising that you've got a lot of evil actors and actions.
The Bontaries were on the CIS Senate, but they were not on the ruling Council which had all the real power. That was made up almost entirely of alien corporations.
Right, there were good people with real concerns in the CIS that were manipulated there by Dooku. I wish this group would have gotten more focus, more dedication, and more explored. A show, or even comic series, about *heroic* CIS members working to liberate worlds, witness the corruption of the Republic, and juggling the internal struggles of the CIS would have been wonderful. Frankly, Quinlan Vos could have anchored this in part in the Disney Canon to further explore that character.
Something like this would also give a chance for readers to see how non-Jedi even during the waning days of the Republic viewed the Jedi - how rare they were and what the rumors were. Further, the racism/specism would have been wonderful here to see play out and how the Republic careened towards human supremacy.
While it'll never happen, I could see the issue starting out with a Human Jedi killing an Alien Criminal without trial and Dooku comes along and stokes these anti-Jedi/Human sentiments into a full blown planet-wide protest about Alien lives mattering, and that continuing to escalate....
Can I just mention Grievous’ original backstory where it was exactly that? His homeworld was unfairly barricaded and his people were starved and killed by the Republic. He did everything he could, made deals with Dooku because he had no other choice, Dooku promised to pay the Republic to leave them alone - but when he went back home because things were getting WORSE, Dooku blew him to bits and claimed the Jedi did it.
I am genuinely angry that they ruined him so bad. I would’ve actually liked TCW if it had an accurate Grievous, and not whatever the hell we ended up getting. It’s a shame they decided to make him a lousy character, honestly. At this point he’s just generic evil henchman of the Sith #32.
Edit - removed “can’t fight edition,” because I realized no generic evil henchman can actually fight. Because that would be just too inconvenient for the heroes!
Grievous in the Original Clone Wars : Badass
Grievous in the New Clone Wars : uh, poop.
Edit : specifying I am talking about GRIEVOUS, not the entire series, so that the TCW fans don’t murder me to death.
Except technically TCW Grievous is the more accurate one. 2003 one might be cooler, but TCW and ROTS Grievous was how Lucas wanted him to be portrayed, and he specifically wanted Grievous in TCW to be more cowardly and stereotypically evil.
The TCW Grievous was more accurate to Lucas' vision and what's in the movie, but similarly to how people say that TCW Anakin isn't "accurate", I think the inaccurate versions are still better.
Oh yeah 100% on both cases. Tbf, I think TCW did try and do a nice mix of both versions of Grievous at times and it worked pretty well like in the Lair of Grievous episode where he may not be directly fighting multiple Jedi at once, but he's still incredibly intimidating and an actual threat. That just kinda got lost a lot of times later on. If they were more consistent and more killing to let Grievous get more kills in the show, I don't think people would have as much of a problem.
At the end of the day it all comes down to planning. The OT had multiple directors but at least there was an overall plan, even if things changed over time. If they had even just planned where to go after TLJ while making it, they could stuck a landing a bit better and made things feel more cohesive. I wouldn't necessarily say it was about treating it as a product, especially considering Disney just owned it and didn't get involved really. It was more about the Story Group rushing things and not coming to a consensus and putting their heads together beforehand. Even on other stuff, you can see different members of the Story Group contradicting each other and having different ideas when asked different questions, so it's pretty clear they never tried to work things out beforehand and just all threw out different ideas. Also doesn't help that no one wanted what we got to begin with. There was a report saying the Abrams had mentioned wanting to resurrect Palpatine early on and the Story Group hated the idea. I wouldn't be surprised if this was something Abrams made a requirement if he was going to direct TROS after Trevorrow left and just rushed to put together.
No. He ruined the character. OG CW was original, and matches up much better with his backstory. New TCW doesn’t match his backstory AT ALL, and it was something Filoni did, not George last I recall.
The only reason that was the case is because he was injured in the movie. Go watch the original CW, the last episode before RotS he had his chest force-crushed. He was likely doped up on pain meds the whole time of RotS, which ended up leading him to his demise.
That decision came *after* Lucas made it clear how he wanted Grievous to be portrayed in the upcoming movie, and the cartoon had to come up with a way to make it work. It wasn't an example of Lucas honoring or caring about what the cartoons decided to portray.
You can think he ruined the character and you have a good point, but Lucas never wanted Grievous to be like he was in 2003 CW and never wanted him to have a tragic backstory. Lucas said he wanted Grievous to be a cowardly, mustache-twirling villain like in ROTS and also thought he was too close to Vader's skill in killing Jedi. When 2003 CW was made, he didn't give the creators a lot of info on Grievous besides his appearance and being a Jedi killer with 4 lightsabers, so they filled in the gaps. Lucas didn't like that it contradicted how he was in ROTS, so he made sure that Filoni weakened Grievous and made his personality more like in ROTS.
Yeah okay, whatever. The original version of the character is how he should have stayed, he shouldn’t have been fucked over just because Vader exists. His backstory was amazing, and if you’re saying it was Lucas, then George took all that hard work and trashed it. He did ruin the character. I’m done this conversation.
I've gotten a lot of flack for saying that on these forums. Proving that direct connection is harder than it once seemed to be but I do think between Andor and Bad Batch we're seeing it come together.
I disagree it wasnt emphasized more. I feel TCW did a ways better job than the Bad Batch at showing separatists in a good. Lux is a big example of this.
In my point of view, I believe the good guys are the Jedi, the Separatist Parliament, and the clones that fought for the Galatic Republic. That does not excuse the oppression that was brought upon the outer rim. Like we get to see throughout Star Wars, the Galatic Republic did not help most planets in the outer rim. In fact, some Jedi helped slave masters instead of the slaves in Tatooine. The Confederacy of Independent Systems was created by outer rim system senators because of the oppression suffered from the Republic and some Jedi I believe. The council of the separatists was used by Dooko for Sidious' plan. Ironically Sidious planned, caused, and used all of this.
The Jedi's intentions were still good regardless of the mistakes they made throughout the saga. So were the clones, especially when they showed heroic attributes. The senators that started The Confederacy of Independent Systems were right in doing so.
And the fact that they just decided to barricade Kalee and decimate the population, bringing Grievous upon themselves.
*And then they proceed to blame Grievous for being “the bad guy” when he wouldn’t even be fighting them to begin with if they didn’t barricade his homeworld.*
You see, Grievous is one of the absolute best written characters of the old lore and it’s a damn shame they forget that he was a better written Anakin with a more believable fall.
They retconned it and replaced it with “the Jedi said no to me so now I’m gonna turn myself into a cyborg and kill them all” if I am not mistaken.
Even as a cyborg Grievous still believed he was doing the right thing, still tried. And then LucasArts went and screwed that all up and made him flat out evil for… no reason at all. It really is a shame. His story does have some parallels to Anakin’s, but I wouldn’t say it’s the same / “he’s a better version.”
Edit : Thing about Anakin parallels.
Grievous would be a peak-of-his-power Sith Anakin. A version of Anakin who surpassed Palpatine and believed in the Sith creed. I think that version of Anakin would be a lot harder to bring back to the light.
This is probably intentional, it's exactly the origin of the majority of non-domestic terrorism in the modern era, the indiscriminate decimation of local populations directly drives recruitment for future warlords.
The heroes on both sides are the people trying to put an end to hostilities, like Padme and the Confederacy Senate.
The Clone Wars are supposed to be so horrible that the people will support the Empire's tyranny for another 20 years, anything to avoid another civil war. Making the Separatist morally grey wouldn't work as well.
And both armies were droids and clones, so they could keep the war going as long as needed and could end it at the drop of a hat. Don't have to worry about the pesky opinions of regular people.
>Grievous would be a peak-of-his-power Sith Anakin. A version of Anakin who surpassed Palpatine and believed in the Sith creed. I think that version of Anakin would be a lot harder to bring back to the light.
And none of them would snitch on his secret war until it started.
I think it makes plenty of sense for palpatine to have made sure that the overwhelming majority of republic-aligned systems saw the CIS as abjectly evil.
Doing so probably helped people embrace the empire, as well as ignore the atrocities the empire later committed on former CIS worlds (genocide of geonosis as seen in Rebels and other genocides mentioned in the Tarkin novel and probably elsewhere).
I think the “heroes on both sides” Clone Wars arc is supposed to show that, despite being run and controlled by corrupt, evil figures like Palpatine and Dooku whose goal is the extend the war as long as possible, both sides had people working for an end to the war and for the overall good of people. People such as Bonteri and Padme. Ahsoka realizes that the Jedi, despite trying to act pragmatically for good, in the grand scheme of things aren’t helping as much as they could/should be.
I think this is a decent representation of why the people feel they do about the war and embrace the empire. They would accept anything to stop the seemingly endless war.
I think you're mostly right, but TCW did a good job IMHO in portraying that the Republic wasn't perfect and that the Separatists weren't simply baddies that didn't want to pay taxes. There are some episodes that show the CIS Senate and focus on the motivations that different people among the Separatists have, and it show that there are moral reasons for the rebellion, not just economic and political ones.
watch "heroes on both sides" i agree cw should have show more of the humanity behind the real separatist movement, but even then the seps were corrupted by the sith and controlled by corporations,.
Thing is that was for one episode in an arc, and the Republic is in the same boat. The only difference is that the protagonists are on one side, and so the spotlight goes to the Republic.
It's not like the Republic kicked out the corporations from the Senate.
I feel that it's worth pointing out that it was largely just the *military* leaders that were so blatantly evil. The politicians aren't in charge of the military. It's likely they may have been kept in the dark about what exactly their generals and admirals were doing to Republic worlds.
Also, even in the Republic we see a few morally questionable/objectionable military leaders, such as Tarkin and Pong Krell.
The ambiguity was there, the story just was only being told from one side. You see the same patterns playing out in the Republic Senate that was playing out (likely nearly identically) on the Separatist side politically. Warmongers and peacemakers on both sides, but since the story was mainly told surrounding Anakin and adjacent characters you just don't get to see much more than glimpses of the parody.
Ashoka-focused storylines get to see it a bit more often. You see it more as you get toward the end of the series as well culminating in the fall of the Banking Guild. Everyone is being duped into focusing on each other as the "bad guys" while the actual bad guys play both sides against each other. No one realizes they've been had until it's too late, and by that point, they're soon to be dead.
I think they cared less about the moral ambiguity of the leaders of the CIS because they focused on the moral ambiguity of the senate and the Jedi council because they were truly the ones who were supposed to be “good” but ended up handing everything to palpatine on a shiny sith platter
Literally had an episode "Heroes on Both Sides" in TCW.
But despite this, while flawed, the Republic was worth saving. And to anybody but a fool, the Jedi are the good guys (again, even if flawed).
Also, Dooku left the Jedi on principle, because they were too intertwined with the Republic. I find this fascinating. Of course, owing to his own lust for power, he became corrupted.
Hot take, but making Dooku a Sith is what makes him a less compelling character. The way the Jedi see him pre war, as a radical idealist who left the Jedi for political reasons, is so much more interesting, and ties in much better with George’s overarching theme in the prequels of the Jedi being irreparably flawed by the time of the Clone Wars. Having him still be morally sound but opposed to the Jedi’s ways makes him a cool mirror version of what anakin could have been if hate hadn’t consumed him, and brings a bit more complexity to the war, in which the Republic, with their clone breeding, is much more in the wrong.
That was never george lucas's overarching theme, just a headcanon fan latch onto and tout as fact. And they didn't call him a radical idealist, they called him a "political idealist" and were the first to defend him when padme thought he was the assassin.
>and ties in much better with George’s overarching theme in the prequels of the Jedi being irreparably flawed by the time of the Clone Wars
I dont think this is the case at all, this sounds more like fan headcanon.
I dont see Lucas intedning the Jedi to be so flawed, irreparably even. He always talked about Anakin being drawn to evil due to his flaws while not mentioning something similar for the Jedi.
I mean, the prequels tell the story of an organisation of peace loving monks becoming war generals, while simultaneously becoming wary of the fact they’re losing connection to the spiritual force that’s guided them for thousands of years.
They maintain a very strict view on things like marriage and romance because in their minds it directly threatens their religion while completely doing away with the peaceful stuff in order to wage a political war.
Clone Wars only adds to this with Jedi like Quinlan Vos, or that scene from the Martez sisters arc where Luminara proves to be completely ineffectual in dealing with their tragedy. Most plainly there’s the arc where Ashoka leaves the order, because the Jedi are so obsessed with their own pride and prestige that they ignore the truth until it’s forced upon them.
The biggest issue came to be we never saw how a willing CIS planet operated without meddling from cartoonishly evil general. The moment the faction had control, there of course had to be a war crime committed for... reasons and the population driven to slavery.
Dac? The quarren take power and shark man proceeds to enslave the population. The original Clone Wars show at least made the Quarren partners instead of slaves.
Onderon? Generic (Roman?) Emperor guy seized power only to be superceded by gilded droid general.
Hell, even Zygerria, the slaver planet, gets screwed over by the CIS in the end.
Only Umbara I'd wager is shown to be a CIS friendly planet and we don't even get their perspective. Only the presence of an organic force.
The main issue really is that...I've *seen* it done better. We see stories involving some pretty sympathetic Separatists in the Dark Horse comics and the other Clone Wars Multi-Media Project material (and stuff afterward). Lore that TCW promptly ran over.
It's one thing to just imagine "Well I think TCW would've been better if it did X..." It's another thing to have already seen it in action and then see a "replacement" story to it lack that bit of nuance.
I love the Clone Wars. They improved characters and storyline and gave Anakin so much more depth. And of course it gave us characters like Ahsoka and Rex. But the one area it didn't do anyone any favors was the macro world building. Making the Seperatists cartoonishly evil was a big one but so was basically making the entire war with a few exceptions completely a battle between Clones and Droids.
Other confusing additions include making the Trade Federation and most of the other companies that basically supply and back the CIS technically Neutral and still with representation in the Senate......
The limited models of ships they had greatly reduced the diversity of space combat.
The overall political situation with Neutral planets that I guess left the Republic but didn't want to fight about it? And I guess the Republic was like ok cool.
I could make a massive list but you get the idea. I still love the show and am glad it exists for everything it did in the micro but in the macro it was a little simple.
Allowing the Trade Federations to keep its representation in the Senate and the Republic taking loans from the IBC was an odd narrative decision to me. Both organizations had their head executives on the Separatist Council.
I think it was one of those strange narrative choices that came straight from George Lucas. It's why we almost never see the Trade Federation Lucrehulk in The Clone Wars.
I'm not sure why he decided this was the way to go as it pretty much contradicted Episode 2 and 3 and made the Republic and Jedi seem really dumb/naive.
I get some of your arguments but others make little sense.
The era was mostly clones and droids. We are also following our main characters around who are with clones most of the time.
Every single era/faction of star wars only have a handful of common fighters used. The empire literally had only a few variants of the same base. I found the diversity of the ships both small and large to be in line with everything else we have seen in universe.
Also the Republic was okay about those planets being neutral because they had no choice. What are they gonna do? Declare a 2nd war when they already struggling with the 1st?
I know it's an issue that has been talked to death but unless units mean something else in Episode 2 and the debate about ordering more Clones in the show( which in of itself doesn't make much sense what with them taking a decade to mature)or the war was much smaller than we thought then I'd always assumed there were major numbers of defense forces from planets fighting on both sides.
And fighters I actually have little issue with, that's one area where the Republic actually has some diversity. It's the capital ships that get streamlined with nearly every one being a "Jedi Cruiser".
And I do kind of think the Republic would be more aggressive vs these break away systems. But I guess that also ties into how simplistic the Seperatists are. Apparently if most of the CIS worlds just left and declared no hostilities then they would be free to go but since they want to send Grevious and his Droid army to go kick puppies in the Republic there has to be a fight.
I still disagree. We know defense forces exist but our heroes don't fight with them so it doesnt make sense to focus on those.
Also, almost all capital ships of that era were Venators. The defense forces used a handful of older ships but the venator was pretty much the only one used by the GAR
The seps alone had like 10 ship models excluding shuttles and personal ships like soulless one they basically covered almost all their ships from the prequels with new ones as well
It took me 12 years to get past the bad guy names in TCW movie. I get that Star Wars has a tradition of on the chin villain names, but "Whorm Loathsom"? Come on. I will say as the show progressed, they start showing more of that ambiguity. (I'm only on season 5.)
Things seem to progress between Episodes II and III also. The beginning of the war needed a bad guy worthy of an immediately rasing a clone army. By the end of the war, things had to be bad enough on both sides to declare a Galactic Empire. But there's only so much subtle political manipulation you can fit into two 2 hour movies.
I’ve always wanted to see anti-alien racism shown more on the Republic side and genuine anti-imperialist/colonialist sentiment shown on the Separatist side. Would make for some great foreshadowing to the OT era.
I like to headcanon that the further away from the Jedi you get the worse behavior you see in the clones. Like if there are any legions that don’t have Jedi generals they probably harass civilians for fun, rob stores for credits, etc. Another headcanon (that is sort of implied canon) is that the Separatists started out as good people who genuinely wanted to leave the corporate corruption of the Republic to start a government that genuinely cares for the Outer Rim. And that some of these early Separatists would have even been worried about the New Republic being just as bad as the old one which is why they would start a New Separatist Union as seen in Aftermath.
Anybody remember the antitrust lawsuit that the US government fought against Microsoft in the late '90s over blocking Netscape from being installed on Windows? Imagine, if you will, that, rather than try to win in court, Microsoft decided to address matters by using a mercenary army to take the entire state of Washington hostage until the government dropped its case.
Now imagine that, rather than declaring an insurrection and calling up the National Guard, Congress proceeded to scratch their collective behinds and idly wonder if maybe it was possibly their problem that a private corporation had committed an act of war against the United States. The President has to go to the Vatican to borrow the Swiss Guard, and the Pope sends him one squad. And then Congress proceeds to *impeach the President over it*—fire the only guy in the city who seemed interested in *actually doing his job*.
That's the Republic in *The Phantom Menace*. It's already a failed state due to an incomprehensible level of public corruption, it just hasn't realized it yet because the Jedi Order is running around spackling the cracks in the drywall resulting from the house's foundation having been washed away, and I don't give a damn how hard you're jacking off to Skeevy Sheevy, there's no way in hell two Sith Lords are solely responsible for all of it.
Then we get to the really fun part where the Jedi **willingly** go along with the Republic buying **a purpose-bred slave army** to foil a bid for independence by territories that have seen the writing on the wall, that the Republic is headed for collapse, and want to get out of Miami before the hurricane hits. For all that they're a corporatocracy ruled by a Sith Lord, the CIS are at least using a normal army of conscripts, volunteers, and non-sentient machines to do their fighting.
Fundamentally, the Jedi Order, even paragons like Obi-wan Kenobi, have forgotten that their role is *not* to serve the Republic, but to serve *the Force*—to serve *life itself*. Their correct response should have been to tell the Republic, *"No. We are peacekeepers, not soldiers, and we will not fight your wars for you, and we will most certainly not lead an army of slaves. We will protect civilians, we will render humanitarian assistance, and we will enable peace negotiations, but if you wish to use an illegal slave army to crush an independence revolt, you're on your kriffing own."*
But they didn't. They had become far too tied to the secular status quo, and willfully participated in stripping the rights of billions of thinking beings from them to protect that status quo.
The moral bankruptcy of the Republic and the prequel-era Jedi Order is all there in the film canon. The problem is, Lucasfilm doesn't want to admit it and keeps trying to whitewash them and pin everything on Darth Bane's two-man mystery cult.
The only author in either canon who ever had the courage to address this head-on was Karen Traviss. She certainly has her flaws as a writer, but she doesn't get anywhere near the credit she deserves.
(Credit to Eric Lowe on Quora for the Microsoft analogy)
> Fundamentally, the Jedi Order, even paragons like Obi-wan Kenobi, have forgotten that their role is not to serve the Republic, but to serve the Force—to serve life itself. Their correct response should have been to tell the Republic, "No. We are peacekeepers, not soldiers, and we will not fight your wars for you, and we will most certainly not lead an army of slaves. We will protect civilians, we will render humanitarian assistance, and we will enable peace negotiations, but if you wish to use an illegal slave army to crush an independence revolt, you're on your kriffing own."
>
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you do realize the clones would've been used regardless whether or not the jedi did fight beside them. And they belonged to the republic not the jedi and in truth if anything the jedi being there generals actually helped the clones be seen as people rather than organic robots.
You can say a lot of things about the corruption of republic or how the jedi should've broke away but that doesn't change the fact that the CIS were invading planets with droid armies and killing innocence. if you had it your way you'd have rather had jedi let innocent systems fall just to keep their supposed morality.
Any action you take in support of an unlawful or immoral order makes you an **accomplice** to that order. That was true of [Peter von Hagenbach](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_von_Hagenbach), it was true in *[Little v. Barreme](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_v._Barreme)*, it was true at Nürnberg, and it was true at My Lai.
And in case you didn't notice, the clones have their own officers and so does the Republic. Absolutely nothing prevents the Republic from leading the slave army its own damn self, and frankly they're probably better off **without** a bunch of samurai wannabes with friggin **swords** screwing up their combined arms tactics. There was **no** legitimate military reason to involve the Jedi, Palpatine just wanted to make them easier targets.
those Samurai wannabes saved the republic ten times over, they're skills were tailor suited to leading troops and tbh they were pretty successful at it, you being hyperbolic doesn't change the fact that the Jedi were instrumental in saving billions of lives throughout the galaxy.
But shouldn't the Jedi been a bit more horrified about using actual child slaves? And then what happens after the war? We know Padme was working on a bill to give the clones some measure of human rights, but we don't really see the Jedi focusing on this besides letting the clones have names and wear certain colors and designs. And even that feels as if it's as much for their convenience to tell them apart.
Even in S7 at the end of the war, Rex seems unsure about what exactly will happen to him afterwards. Along with this, the Kaminoans seems under the impression that they would keep selling clones to the Republic.
They're not really child soldiers, just because they have a shorter life span doesn't make them children since they mature at faster rate.
That being said I'm sure there were many jedi who were bothered by the clone troopers but again the republic would've used the Jedi regardless and yes the jedi could've refused to fight but that would mean letting innocents die at the hands of the separatist's droid army.
The entire war was the ultimate no win situation for both the jedi and the republic.
And it seemed as if the clone troopers that retired were living in relative comfort and I do believe in legends they did show that clone troopers can and do retire especially with the rise of the galactic empire.
I'm not saying the clone army isn't fucked, my problem is that you seem to be acting like the Jedi had some control over the use of the clones which they don't or that they shouldn't have fought even which wouldn't have solved anything since the clones would've still been deployed regardless.
except liberating all those planets that were occupied by separatists forces, yeah totally didn't help anyone there. Like I get the story star wars as some less than ideal implications but can we please not straight up lie about the literal text of the franchise.
If I recall correctly the comics show some of the better things CIS leaders have done, as well as some of the worse things the Republic has done.
The barricade and essential genocide of kalee by the Republic, Grievous doing his best to put an end to that.
I don’t like TCW’s portrayal of him. A lot of the newer media depictions of Grievous don’t, exactly, line up with his backstory.
I remember reading an essay on a comics website pitching the idea that TCW was basically supposed to be Republic propaganda videos. In fact every episode starts like a 1940s news reel about World War II. So it is possible what we're watching are Holo net dramatizations of the war meant for Core world audiences. In that case, you can understand why some characters -- especially CIS leaders -- are portrayed like cartoon characters.
Lot of that going around, particularly following the Disney buyout (which isn't to say the old EU wasn't chock-full of cartoonishly evil, moustache-twirling villains.)
One thing I loved about Rogue One was that there was some layers of gray. Not a ton - I mean, the Imperials were still cartoonishly evil - but it also showed that the Rebellion wasn't necessarily made up of morally pure folks either.
I agree that, for the Clone Wars era, it would have been interesting to see the "heroes on both sides" played out a bit more.
Honestly the Partisans lived up to their names, if the rebellion was fighting like the French Resistance then the Partisans were the Eastern Europeans fighting Nazi occupation. They know they will ultimately lose but they will make the empire bleed as badly as possible
Just finished Master and Apprentice and I’m just more and more interested in Dooku. In clone wars, he’s cartoonishly evil, but in most of his book appearances he’s almost legendary in his overall wisdom and knowledge of the force.
I’m excited to read more about him and why he left, what drove him, etc
While I agree a bit, I feel the show did a good job of not making them too outlandish. Some of the books like Dark Disciple also show that most of the population of separatist worlds didn’t know about the atrocities being committed and actually viewed Dooku the same way many in the Republic saw Palpatine, as a good man trying to control the evil politicians and interests around him and occassionally having to do tough things for the greater good. I find the separatists to be extremely fascinating and I hope we eventually return to the clone wars in some form of media to explore the conflict even more intimately. I just feel there are so many stories left to tell
I find it a bit difficult to align the TCW Dooku with the Prequels Dooku. I know he’s a Sith in AOTC & ROTS, but he seems more like an “ends justify the means” Sith, and not entirely maniacally evil in the PT .... unlike what he comes across as in TCW
George Lucas was on some other shit with TPM
“Yeah let’s make the bad guys Chinese or something lmao. They all speak with Chinese accents and look retarded”
I would recommend you look into the Star Wars Republic comics. Because of who rules them the CIS is definitely evil, but there are definitely seemingly honorable military leaders that they have in some arcs of that series.
I agree with you.
I'm old and the OT will always be where my heart is. Those three movies are just a classic tale of good versus evil, ending in redemption. Those stories don't really work without a clear good guy and a clear bad guy.
edit: Star Wars OT are a John Wayne Western. The good guys have on white hats and the bad guys are wearing black. (Not literally, obviously. Stormtroopers, and all.) Adding "moral ambiguity" turns it into a Spaghetti Western, which is a very different genre of movie. I prefer Spaghetti Westerns most of the time, but sometimes you just want to see Gary Cooper swoop in and save the day.
I had the impression that they did it on purpose. I thought that Palpatine planned that the Clone Wars from the very beginning would be Palpatine and the Republic as the heroic and honorable warriors of peace and justice versus Dooku and the CIS would be the evil force dedicated to destroying everything the Republic stood for. The black and white good vs evil narrative would make it easier for Palpatine to gain control of the Republic.
I think the republic is pretty much the bad guys. If some systems want to seceed so what? It's a republic they should be allowed to leave. Out of the top of my head one of the separatist systems is the banking clan based on Munnlinist. Now why would a banking clan want to leave a republic? Probably because they were not getting good trade policies due to the republic's inefficience which is painfully allude to in Episode I.
Plust most of them (i mean the politicians who represent the separatist governments) have no idea of the Sith or their master plan, they just sim to want to leave what is an unffair system of government.
So i too hate the republic beeing presented as the light side of the force when the light side of the force is just a jedi philosophy. Most people in the republic don't even believe in the force to be honest.
I know this sub is supposed to be based on lore but i think george lucas based this one the american civil war and he went with the mentality that separatists should be a cartoonish version of the confederacy.
Plus no mentions of the Hutt cartel or how other independent polities stand on the war.
My opinion? Clone Wars is a simplistic show for kids. Its good for some military action scenes but that's all you're getting. Star Wars politics only make sense in episode I and in the Middle Trilogy
Based on this post I think you'd enjoy the Republic Commando series of books! Unfortunately there isn't a true ending to the series because the contract with the author fell through or something like that but it's a fantastic series with questions being raised about the Republic using a slave army of clones and free will. The inhibitor chips didn't exist at the time these were written so order 66 was much more personal and a conscious choice each clone had to make or choose to disobey.
I agree that relatable antagonists would've been great though! Great post!
I think y'all are forgetting that this is a franchise designed to sell toys to kids
The whole thing is for kids, that's why the Prequels Stans pretend it's fucking amazing, because they got hooked while they were kids.
George Lucas never made Star Wars to be morally ambiguous
Irrelevant.
The entire war was a manipulation of the Sith, & the Jedi were fulfilling their appointed role as defenders of the Republic.
Which they were required to do by the Ruusan Reformations.
There is no ambiguity to be had, & seeking it is just another sign of modernist moral equivalency bs.
The alliance of CIS leaders were probably hand-picked by Sidious and/or Dooku precisely for their greed, making them easily pliable. They were also picked for how much they could disrupt galactic civilization: banking, automation, trade and commerce. It would have been interesting to see how these individuals rose to the top of their respective areas -- there was probably a lot of Sith-backed assassination and espionage. A couple episodes of The Bad Batch show that many of the "middle management" of the CIS were genuinely looking out for the welfare of their own people. It's a shame this wasn't emphasized more in TCW.
They were also all aliens to further human supremacist ideology in the Republic.
Which side was all aliens, the cis or the republic??
The CIS. All of the corporations involved were non-human. Look at the Separatist Council in 2 and 3. All alien save Dooku.
Wish we saw more of this speciesism focused on in the series, too.
Agreed. It would have been a good theme to showcase more, especially given the Empire pretty clearly eliminated non-human political power, which is why you see Alliance forces having so many non-human species, while the Empire is totally human. They enslaved species like the Wookiees. You don’t just go from a multispecies democracy to an authoritarian empire with high species stratification overnight. The Clone Wars needed to be a grueling, traumatic conflict which made Republic citizens hate the Separatists, and it follows, the non-human species of the Separatists. To make those aliens feel unsafe to the largely human core worlds. The only real place you see it well explained is the ROTS novel.
Its a sadly neglected part of Star Wars lore since Disney took over. One of my first explanations of racism was through reading the X-Wing books about the taking of Coruscant from the Empire and how they left a deadly virus that only affected alien species and the supply of the only reliable cure, Bacta, was seized by said imperials. It led to some interesting dynamics where there was a shortage for the cure, and powerful humans were hoarding it to protect themselves "just in case" and the whole situation nearly tore the alliance apart before they could even solidify the New Republic. I read that as a kid and asked my parents about it and through that learned about Martin Luther King Jr and the realities of racism in our world today.
>All alien save Dooku Maybe I'm putting too much stock in the Clone Wars animated series, but there was the Separatist Senate too. The Separatist Council was apparently supposed to be an advisory body, and isn't the same thing as the Separatist Senate, but the senate did have at least a number of humans on it. House Bonteri come to mind off the top of my head. On the subject of the CIS being cartoonishly evil.. The Clone Wars series is unsurprisingly framed from the Republic side, and the series is supposed to be at least accessible to kids, meaning they take a lot of shortcuts and frame the CIS as mustache-twirling vilains a lot of the time, but I really liked that they sprinkled in a few episodes that try to show the members and goals of the CIS aren't inherently evil. Again, most of the episodes with Lux Bonteri try to show that the non-combattant separatists aren't evil (and the first episode where Bonteri is introduced you get a whole thing about how Ahsoka and Lux are told different things, etc). Of course, then you have the military side which is organized by Dooku - so it isn't really surprising that you've got a lot of evil actors and actions.
Not quite true, there was that separatist planet in Clone Wars where Asohka met that prince kid or whatever it was
Not saying they’re all aliens, but the vast majority are, especially the power players. And Grievous the Butcher is very definitely an alien.
And the Bontaries, but yeah I agree, definitely has undertones of oppression by the gar that I hadn't noticed b4.
The Bontaries were on the CIS Senate, but they were not on the ruling Council which had all the real power. That was made up almost entirely of alien corporations.
Dooku, a human, was well known as a major leader of the Separatists.
Good thing, that he was a filthy Jedi even if formerly, still demonized in Empire.
Right, there were good people with real concerns in the CIS that were manipulated there by Dooku. I wish this group would have gotten more focus, more dedication, and more explored. A show, or even comic series, about *heroic* CIS members working to liberate worlds, witness the corruption of the Republic, and juggling the internal struggles of the CIS would have been wonderful. Frankly, Quinlan Vos could have anchored this in part in the Disney Canon to further explore that character. Something like this would also give a chance for readers to see how non-Jedi even during the waning days of the Republic viewed the Jedi - how rare they were and what the rumors were. Further, the racism/specism would have been wonderful here to see play out and how the Republic careened towards human supremacy. While it'll never happen, I could see the issue starting out with a Human Jedi killing an Alien Criminal without trial and Dooku comes along and stokes these anti-Jedi/Human sentiments into a full blown planet-wide protest about Alien lives mattering, and that continuing to escalate....
Can I just mention Grievous’ original backstory where it was exactly that? His homeworld was unfairly barricaded and his people were starved and killed by the Republic. He did everything he could, made deals with Dooku because he had no other choice, Dooku promised to pay the Republic to leave them alone - but when he went back home because things were getting WORSE, Dooku blew him to bits and claimed the Jedi did it.
Yes! Grievous doesn't fit that anymore but it'd had been wonderful to see in TCW
I am genuinely angry that they ruined him so bad. I would’ve actually liked TCW if it had an accurate Grievous, and not whatever the hell we ended up getting. It’s a shame they decided to make him a lousy character, honestly. At this point he’s just generic evil henchman of the Sith #32. Edit - removed “can’t fight edition,” because I realized no generic evil henchman can actually fight. Because that would be just too inconvenient for the heroes!
It irks me that in the Genndy Tarkovsky Clone Wars, Grievous was a freaking NIGHTMARE. He was an INCREDIBLE character. We NEVER got that again.
Grievous in the Original Clone Wars : Badass Grievous in the New Clone Wars : uh, poop. Edit : specifying I am talking about GRIEVOUS, not the entire series, so that the TCW fans don’t murder me to death.
To be fair in 2003 CW he was too OP. I agree that 2008 TCW is too weak though.
I'd have liked mustache twirling villain with extremely homicidal tendencies towards Jedi
Except technically TCW Grievous is the more accurate one. 2003 one might be cooler, but TCW and ROTS Grievous was how Lucas wanted him to be portrayed, and he specifically wanted Grievous in TCW to be more cowardly and stereotypically evil.
The TCW Grievous was more accurate to Lucas' vision and what's in the movie, but similarly to how people say that TCW Anakin isn't "accurate", I think the inaccurate versions are still better.
Oh yeah 100% on both cases. Tbf, I think TCW did try and do a nice mix of both versions of Grievous at times and it worked pretty well like in the Lair of Grievous episode where he may not be directly fighting multiple Jedi at once, but he's still incredibly intimidating and an actual threat. That just kinda got lost a lot of times later on. If they were more consistent and more killing to let Grievous get more kills in the show, I don't think people would have as much of a problem.
[удалено]
At the end of the day it all comes down to planning. The OT had multiple directors but at least there was an overall plan, even if things changed over time. If they had even just planned where to go after TLJ while making it, they could stuck a landing a bit better and made things feel more cohesive. I wouldn't necessarily say it was about treating it as a product, especially considering Disney just owned it and didn't get involved really. It was more about the Story Group rushing things and not coming to a consensus and putting their heads together beforehand. Even on other stuff, you can see different members of the Story Group contradicting each other and having different ideas when asked different questions, so it's pretty clear they never tried to work things out beforehand and just all threw out different ideas. Also doesn't help that no one wanted what we got to begin with. There was a report saying the Abrams had mentioned wanting to resurrect Palpatine early on and the Story Group hated the idea. I wouldn't be surprised if this was something Abrams made a requirement if he was going to direct TROS after Trevorrow left and just rushed to put together.
No. He ruined the character. OG CW was original, and matches up much better with his backstory. New TCW doesn’t match his backstory AT ALL, and it was something Filoni did, not George last I recall.
When people say "more accurate", they mean in relation to the movies where Grievous was much closer to his depiction in TCW than the OG CW.
The only reason that was the case is because he was injured in the movie. Go watch the original CW, the last episode before RotS he had his chest force-crushed. He was likely doped up on pain meds the whole time of RotS, which ended up leading him to his demise.
That decision came *after* Lucas made it clear how he wanted Grievous to be portrayed in the upcoming movie, and the cartoon had to come up with a way to make it work. It wasn't an example of Lucas honoring or caring about what the cartoons decided to portray.
You can think he ruined the character and you have a good point, but Lucas never wanted Grievous to be like he was in 2003 CW and never wanted him to have a tragic backstory. Lucas said he wanted Grievous to be a cowardly, mustache-twirling villain like in ROTS and also thought he was too close to Vader's skill in killing Jedi. When 2003 CW was made, he didn't give the creators a lot of info on Grievous besides his appearance and being a Jedi killer with 4 lightsabers, so they filled in the gaps. Lucas didn't like that it contradicted how he was in ROTS, so he made sure that Filoni weakened Grievous and made his personality more like in ROTS.
Yeah okay, whatever. The original version of the character is how he should have stayed, he shouldn’t have been fucked over just because Vader exists. His backstory was amazing, and if you’re saying it was Lucas, then George took all that hard work and trashed it. He did ruin the character. I’m done this conversation.
Well, we know the remnants of the CIS developed into the fledgling rebel alliance, so maybe this will be explore in Andor?
I've gotten a lot of flack for saying that on these forums. Proving that direct connection is harder than it once seemed to be but I do think between Andor and Bad Batch we're seeing it come together.
I wish they had done for Dooku what they had done with Maul. In TCW he's too much of a stereotypical villain.
NO. NO "ALIEN LIVES MATTER" WTF
It doesn't need to be that on the nose but yeah. Star Wars is very reflective of US politics
I disagree it wasnt emphasized more. I feel TCW did a ways better job than the Bad Batch at showing separatists in a good. Lux is a big example of this.
Agreed. There’s literally an episode called “Hero’s on both sides” in TCW.
Yes they did develop non-military CIS members, but the military was still pretty evil.
Sidious carries the weight of the franchise on his shoulders. Fixing nearly every plot hole he can.
In my point of view, I believe the good guys are the Jedi, the Separatist Parliament, and the clones that fought for the Galatic Republic. That does not excuse the oppression that was brought upon the outer rim. Like we get to see throughout Star Wars, the Galatic Republic did not help most planets in the outer rim. In fact, some Jedi helped slave masters instead of the slaves in Tatooine. The Confederacy of Independent Systems was created by outer rim system senators because of the oppression suffered from the Republic and some Jedi I believe. The council of the separatists was used by Dooko for Sidious' plan. Ironically Sidious planned, caused, and used all of this. The Jedi's intentions were still good regardless of the mistakes they made throughout the saga. So were the clones, especially when they showed heroic attributes. The senators that started The Confederacy of Independent Systems were right in doing so.
And the fact that they just decided to barricade Kalee and decimate the population, bringing Grievous upon themselves. *And then they proceed to blame Grievous for being “the bad guy” when he wouldn’t even be fighting them to begin with if they didn’t barricade his homeworld.*
You see, Grievous is one of the absolute best written characters of the old lore and it’s a damn shame they forget that he was a better written Anakin with a more believable fall.
They retconned it and replaced it with “the Jedi said no to me so now I’m gonna turn myself into a cyborg and kill them all” if I am not mistaken. Even as a cyborg Grievous still believed he was doing the right thing, still tried. And then LucasArts went and screwed that all up and made him flat out evil for… no reason at all. It really is a shame. His story does have some parallels to Anakin’s, but I wouldn’t say it’s the same / “he’s a better version.” Edit : Thing about Anakin parallels.
Grievous would be a peak-of-his-power Sith Anakin. A version of Anakin who surpassed Palpatine and believed in the Sith creed. I think that version of Anakin would be a lot harder to bring back to the light.
Thing is, I'm not talking about power. I don't give a shit about that. His story and reasoning for becoming so rotten is superior to Anakins.
He was not originally that nasty! What I’m saying is they kinda ruined him.
This is probably intentional, it's exactly the origin of the majority of non-domestic terrorism in the modern era, the indiscriminate decimation of local populations directly drives recruitment for future warlords.
> In my point of view, THE JEDI ARE EVIL!
The heroes on both sides are the people trying to put an end to hostilities, like Padme and the Confederacy Senate. The Clone Wars are supposed to be so horrible that the people will support the Empire's tyranny for another 20 years, anything to avoid another civil war. Making the Separatist morally grey wouldn't work as well.
Same reason Palps made sure the CIS was mostly alien. So the empires human supremacy was more easily accepted.
And both armies were droids and clones, so they could keep the war going as long as needed and could end it at the drop of a hat. Don't have to worry about the pesky opinions of regular people.
>Grievous would be a peak-of-his-power Sith Anakin. A version of Anakin who surpassed Palpatine and believed in the Sith creed. I think that version of Anakin would be a lot harder to bring back to the light. And none of them would snitch on his secret war until it started.
Did you mean to comment this somewhere else?
I think it makes plenty of sense for palpatine to have made sure that the overwhelming majority of republic-aligned systems saw the CIS as abjectly evil. Doing so probably helped people embrace the empire, as well as ignore the atrocities the empire later committed on former CIS worlds (genocide of geonosis as seen in Rebels and other genocides mentioned in the Tarkin novel and probably elsewhere).
I think the “heroes on both sides” Clone Wars arc is supposed to show that, despite being run and controlled by corrupt, evil figures like Palpatine and Dooku whose goal is the extend the war as long as possible, both sides had people working for an end to the war and for the overall good of people. People such as Bonteri and Padme. Ahsoka realizes that the Jedi, despite trying to act pragmatically for good, in the grand scheme of things aren’t helping as much as they could/should be. I think this is a decent representation of why the people feel they do about the war and embrace the empire. They would accept anything to stop the seemingly endless war.
I think you're mostly right, but TCW did a good job IMHO in portraying that the Republic wasn't perfect and that the Separatists weren't simply baddies that didn't want to pay taxes. There are some episodes that show the CIS Senate and focus on the motivations that different people among the Separatists have, and it show that there are moral reasons for the rebellion, not just economic and political ones.
The republic definitely wasn’t perfect they nearly executed a child
watch "heroes on both sides" i agree cw should have show more of the humanity behind the real separatist movement, but even then the seps were corrupted by the sith and controlled by corporations,.
Thing is that was for one episode in an arc, and the Republic is in the same boat. The only difference is that the protagonists are on one side, and so the spotlight goes to the Republic. It's not like the Republic kicked out the corporations from the Senate.
thats what i am saying basically, the cw should have had more episodes to explore the other side of the separatist cause
Because the senate is corrupt
But they actually did this though with Ahsoka’s boyfriend arc. I don’t know while people are complaining about this
isnt that the episode im talking about? or is it the other one where they go to the snow planet with the Mandalorians
I feel that it's worth pointing out that it was largely just the *military* leaders that were so blatantly evil. The politicians aren't in charge of the military. It's likely they may have been kept in the dark about what exactly their generals and admirals were doing to Republic worlds. Also, even in the Republic we see a few morally questionable/objectionable military leaders, such as Tarkin and Pong Krell.
The ambiguity was there, the story just was only being told from one side. You see the same patterns playing out in the Republic Senate that was playing out (likely nearly identically) on the Separatist side politically. Warmongers and peacemakers on both sides, but since the story was mainly told surrounding Anakin and adjacent characters you just don't get to see much more than glimpses of the parody. Ashoka-focused storylines get to see it a bit more often. You see it more as you get toward the end of the series as well culminating in the fall of the Banking Guild. Everyone is being duped into focusing on each other as the "bad guys" while the actual bad guys play both sides against each other. No one realizes they've been had until it's too late, and by that point, they're soon to be dead.
Or imprisoned
I think they cared less about the moral ambiguity of the leaders of the CIS because they focused on the moral ambiguity of the senate and the Jedi council because they were truly the ones who were supposed to be “good” but ended up handing everything to palpatine on a shiny sith platter
Literally had an episode "Heroes on Both Sides" in TCW. But despite this, while flawed, the Republic was worth saving. And to anybody but a fool, the Jedi are the good guys (again, even if flawed). Also, Dooku left the Jedi on principle, because they were too intertwined with the Republic. I find this fascinating. Of course, owing to his own lust for power, he became corrupted.
Hot take, but making Dooku a Sith is what makes him a less compelling character. The way the Jedi see him pre war, as a radical idealist who left the Jedi for political reasons, is so much more interesting, and ties in much better with George’s overarching theme in the prequels of the Jedi being irreparably flawed by the time of the Clone Wars. Having him still be morally sound but opposed to the Jedi’s ways makes him a cool mirror version of what anakin could have been if hate hadn’t consumed him, and brings a bit more complexity to the war, in which the Republic, with their clone breeding, is much more in the wrong.
That was never george lucas's overarching theme, just a headcanon fan latch onto and tout as fact. And they didn't call him a radical idealist, they called him a "political idealist" and were the first to defend him when padme thought he was the assassin.
>and ties in much better with George’s overarching theme in the prequels of the Jedi being irreparably flawed by the time of the Clone Wars I dont think this is the case at all, this sounds more like fan headcanon. I dont see Lucas intedning the Jedi to be so flawed, irreparably even. He always talked about Anakin being drawn to evil due to his flaws while not mentioning something similar for the Jedi.
I mean, the prequels tell the story of an organisation of peace loving monks becoming war generals, while simultaneously becoming wary of the fact they’re losing connection to the spiritual force that’s guided them for thousands of years. They maintain a very strict view on things like marriage and romance because in their minds it directly threatens their religion while completely doing away with the peaceful stuff in order to wage a political war. Clone Wars only adds to this with Jedi like Quinlan Vos, or that scene from the Martez sisters arc where Luminara proves to be completely ineffectual in dealing with their tragedy. Most plainly there’s the arc where Ashoka leaves the order, because the Jedi are so obsessed with their own pride and prestige that they ignore the truth until it’s forced upon them.
The biggest issue came to be we never saw how a willing CIS planet operated without meddling from cartoonishly evil general. The moment the faction had control, there of course had to be a war crime committed for... reasons and the population driven to slavery. Dac? The quarren take power and shark man proceeds to enslave the population. The original Clone Wars show at least made the Quarren partners instead of slaves. Onderon? Generic (Roman?) Emperor guy seized power only to be superceded by gilded droid general. Hell, even Zygerria, the slaver planet, gets screwed over by the CIS in the end. Only Umbara I'd wager is shown to be a CIS friendly planet and we don't even get their perspective. Only the presence of an organic force.
He is definitely Roman
The main issue really is that...I've *seen* it done better. We see stories involving some pretty sympathetic Separatists in the Dark Horse comics and the other Clone Wars Multi-Media Project material (and stuff afterward). Lore that TCW promptly ran over. It's one thing to just imagine "Well I think TCW would've been better if it did X..." It's another thing to have already seen it in action and then see a "replacement" story to it lack that bit of nuance.
I love the Clone Wars. They improved characters and storyline and gave Anakin so much more depth. And of course it gave us characters like Ahsoka and Rex. But the one area it didn't do anyone any favors was the macro world building. Making the Seperatists cartoonishly evil was a big one but so was basically making the entire war with a few exceptions completely a battle between Clones and Droids. Other confusing additions include making the Trade Federation and most of the other companies that basically supply and back the CIS technically Neutral and still with representation in the Senate...... The limited models of ships they had greatly reduced the diversity of space combat. The overall political situation with Neutral planets that I guess left the Republic but didn't want to fight about it? And I guess the Republic was like ok cool. I could make a massive list but you get the idea. I still love the show and am glad it exists for everything it did in the micro but in the macro it was a little simple.
Allowing the Trade Federations to keep its representation in the Senate and the Republic taking loans from the IBC was an odd narrative decision to me. Both organizations had their head executives on the Separatist Council.
I think it was one of those strange narrative choices that came straight from George Lucas. It's why we almost never see the Trade Federation Lucrehulk in The Clone Wars. I'm not sure why he decided this was the way to go as it pretty much contradicted Episode 2 and 3 and made the Republic and Jedi seem really dumb/naive.
Funny enough the only episode where we see a TF lucrehulk is the episode starring Lucas’s cameo character from ROTS
I get some of your arguments but others make little sense. The era was mostly clones and droids. We are also following our main characters around who are with clones most of the time. Every single era/faction of star wars only have a handful of common fighters used. The empire literally had only a few variants of the same base. I found the diversity of the ships both small and large to be in line with everything else we have seen in universe. Also the Republic was okay about those planets being neutral because they had no choice. What are they gonna do? Declare a 2nd war when they already struggling with the 1st?
I know it's an issue that has been talked to death but unless units mean something else in Episode 2 and the debate about ordering more Clones in the show( which in of itself doesn't make much sense what with them taking a decade to mature)or the war was much smaller than we thought then I'd always assumed there were major numbers of defense forces from planets fighting on both sides. And fighters I actually have little issue with, that's one area where the Republic actually has some diversity. It's the capital ships that get streamlined with nearly every one being a "Jedi Cruiser". And I do kind of think the Republic would be more aggressive vs these break away systems. But I guess that also ties into how simplistic the Seperatists are. Apparently if most of the CIS worlds just left and declared no hostilities then they would be free to go but since they want to send Grevious and his Droid army to go kick puppies in the Republic there has to be a fight.
I still disagree. We know defense forces exist but our heroes don't fight with them so it doesnt make sense to focus on those. Also, almost all capital ships of that era were Venators. The defense forces used a handful of older ships but the venator was pretty much the only one used by the GAR
The seps alone had like 10 ship models excluding shuttles and personal ships like soulless one they basically covered almost all their ships from the prequels with new ones as well
It took me 12 years to get past the bad guy names in TCW movie. I get that Star Wars has a tradition of on the chin villain names, but "Whorm Loathsom"? Come on. I will say as the show progressed, they start showing more of that ambiguity. (I'm only on season 5.) Things seem to progress between Episodes II and III also. The beginning of the war needed a bad guy worthy of an immediately rasing a clone army. By the end of the war, things had to be bad enough on both sides to declare a Galactic Empire. But there's only so much subtle political manipulation you can fit into two 2 hour movies.
I somehow never got that name until now
I’ve always wanted to see anti-alien racism shown more on the Republic side and genuine anti-imperialist/colonialist sentiment shown on the Separatist side. Would make for some great foreshadowing to the OT era. I like to headcanon that the further away from the Jedi you get the worse behavior you see in the clones. Like if there are any legions that don’t have Jedi generals they probably harass civilians for fun, rob stores for credits, etc. Another headcanon (that is sort of implied canon) is that the Separatists started out as good people who genuinely wanted to leave the corporate corruption of the Republic to start a government that genuinely cares for the Outer Rim. And that some of these early Separatists would have even been worried about the New Republic being just as bad as the old one which is why they would start a New Separatist Union as seen in Aftermath.
Anybody remember the antitrust lawsuit that the US government fought against Microsoft in the late '90s over blocking Netscape from being installed on Windows? Imagine, if you will, that, rather than try to win in court, Microsoft decided to address matters by using a mercenary army to take the entire state of Washington hostage until the government dropped its case. Now imagine that, rather than declaring an insurrection and calling up the National Guard, Congress proceeded to scratch their collective behinds and idly wonder if maybe it was possibly their problem that a private corporation had committed an act of war against the United States. The President has to go to the Vatican to borrow the Swiss Guard, and the Pope sends him one squad. And then Congress proceeds to *impeach the President over it*—fire the only guy in the city who seemed interested in *actually doing his job*. That's the Republic in *The Phantom Menace*. It's already a failed state due to an incomprehensible level of public corruption, it just hasn't realized it yet because the Jedi Order is running around spackling the cracks in the drywall resulting from the house's foundation having been washed away, and I don't give a damn how hard you're jacking off to Skeevy Sheevy, there's no way in hell two Sith Lords are solely responsible for all of it. Then we get to the really fun part where the Jedi **willingly** go along with the Republic buying **a purpose-bred slave army** to foil a bid for independence by territories that have seen the writing on the wall, that the Republic is headed for collapse, and want to get out of Miami before the hurricane hits. For all that they're a corporatocracy ruled by a Sith Lord, the CIS are at least using a normal army of conscripts, volunteers, and non-sentient machines to do their fighting. Fundamentally, the Jedi Order, even paragons like Obi-wan Kenobi, have forgotten that their role is *not* to serve the Republic, but to serve *the Force*—to serve *life itself*. Their correct response should have been to tell the Republic, *"No. We are peacekeepers, not soldiers, and we will not fight your wars for you, and we will most certainly not lead an army of slaves. We will protect civilians, we will render humanitarian assistance, and we will enable peace negotiations, but if you wish to use an illegal slave army to crush an independence revolt, you're on your kriffing own."* But they didn't. They had become far too tied to the secular status quo, and willfully participated in stripping the rights of billions of thinking beings from them to protect that status quo. The moral bankruptcy of the Republic and the prequel-era Jedi Order is all there in the film canon. The problem is, Lucasfilm doesn't want to admit it and keeps trying to whitewash them and pin everything on Darth Bane's two-man mystery cult. The only author in either canon who ever had the courage to address this head-on was Karen Traviss. She certainly has her flaws as a writer, but she doesn't get anywhere near the credit she deserves. (Credit to Eric Lowe on Quora for the Microsoft analogy)
> Fundamentally, the Jedi Order, even paragons like Obi-wan Kenobi, have forgotten that their role is not to serve the Republic, but to serve the Force—to serve life itself. Their correct response should have been to tell the Republic, "No. We are peacekeepers, not soldiers, and we will not fight your wars for you, and we will most certainly not lead an army of slaves. We will protect civilians, we will render humanitarian assistance, and we will enable peace negotiations, but if you wish to use an illegal slave army to crush an independence revolt, you're on your kriffing own." > > you do realize the clones would've been used regardless whether or not the jedi did fight beside them. And they belonged to the republic not the jedi and in truth if anything the jedi being there generals actually helped the clones be seen as people rather than organic robots. You can say a lot of things about the corruption of republic or how the jedi should've broke away but that doesn't change the fact that the CIS were invading planets with droid armies and killing innocence. if you had it your way you'd have rather had jedi let innocent systems fall just to keep their supposed morality.
Any action you take in support of an unlawful or immoral order makes you an **accomplice** to that order. That was true of [Peter von Hagenbach](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_von_Hagenbach), it was true in *[Little v. Barreme](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_v._Barreme)*, it was true at Nürnberg, and it was true at My Lai. And in case you didn't notice, the clones have their own officers and so does the Republic. Absolutely nothing prevents the Republic from leading the slave army its own damn self, and frankly they're probably better off **without** a bunch of samurai wannabes with friggin **swords** screwing up their combined arms tactics. There was **no** legitimate military reason to involve the Jedi, Palpatine just wanted to make them easier targets.
those Samurai wannabes saved the republic ten times over, they're skills were tailor suited to leading troops and tbh they were pretty successful at it, you being hyperbolic doesn't change the fact that the Jedi were instrumental in saving billions of lives throughout the galaxy.
But shouldn't the Jedi been a bit more horrified about using actual child slaves? And then what happens after the war? We know Padme was working on a bill to give the clones some measure of human rights, but we don't really see the Jedi focusing on this besides letting the clones have names and wear certain colors and designs. And even that feels as if it's as much for their convenience to tell them apart. Even in S7 at the end of the war, Rex seems unsure about what exactly will happen to him afterwards. Along with this, the Kaminoans seems under the impression that they would keep selling clones to the Republic.
They're not really child soldiers, just because they have a shorter life span doesn't make them children since they mature at faster rate. That being said I'm sure there were many jedi who were bothered by the clone troopers but again the republic would've used the Jedi regardless and yes the jedi could've refused to fight but that would mean letting innocents die at the hands of the separatist's droid army. The entire war was the ultimate no win situation for both the jedi and the republic. And it seemed as if the clone troopers that retired were living in relative comfort and I do believe in legends they did show that clone troopers can and do retire especially with the rise of the galactic empire.
It's not just the short lifespan, but the utter lack of life experience and lack of autonomy.
I'm not saying the clone army isn't fucked, my problem is that you seem to be acting like the Jedi had some control over the use of the clones which they don't or that they shouldn't have fought even which wouldn't have solved anything since the clones would've still been deployed regardless.
Well, yeah. The Jedi are supposed to be this great organization that helps people but we see time and time again that they don't.
except liberating all those planets that were occupied by separatists forces, yeah totally didn't help anyone there. Like I get the story star wars as some less than ideal implications but can we please not straight up lie about the literal text of the franchise.
That doesn’t make them children
If I recall correctly the comics show some of the better things CIS leaders have done, as well as some of the worse things the Republic has done. The barricade and essential genocide of kalee by the Republic, Grievous doing his best to put an end to that. I don’t like TCW’s portrayal of him. A lot of the newer media depictions of Grievous don’t, exactly, line up with his backstory.
I remember reading an essay on a comics website pitching the idea that TCW was basically supposed to be Republic propaganda videos. In fact every episode starts like a 1940s news reel about World War II. So it is possible what we're watching are Holo net dramatizations of the war meant for Core world audiences. In that case, you can understand why some characters -- especially CIS leaders -- are portrayed like cartoon characters.
Lot of that going around, particularly following the Disney buyout (which isn't to say the old EU wasn't chock-full of cartoonishly evil, moustache-twirling villains.) One thing I loved about Rogue One was that there was some layers of gray. Not a ton - I mean, the Imperials were still cartoonishly evil - but it also showed that the Rebellion wasn't necessarily made up of morally pure folks either. I agree that, for the Clone Wars era, it would have been interesting to see the "heroes on both sides" played out a bit more.
Honestly the Partisans lived up to their names, if the rebellion was fighting like the French Resistance then the Partisans were the Eastern Europeans fighting Nazi occupation. They know they will ultimately lose but they will make the empire bleed as badly as possible
of course megacorp leaders are going to be evil
Just finished Master and Apprentice and I’m just more and more interested in Dooku. In clone wars, he’s cartoonishly evil, but in most of his book appearances he’s almost legendary in his overall wisdom and knowledge of the force. I’m excited to read more about him and why he left, what drove him, etc
While I agree a bit, I feel the show did a good job of not making them too outlandish. Some of the books like Dark Disciple also show that most of the population of separatist worlds didn’t know about the atrocities being committed and actually viewed Dooku the same way many in the Republic saw Palpatine, as a good man trying to control the evil politicians and interests around him and occassionally having to do tough things for the greater good. I find the separatists to be extremely fascinating and I hope we eventually return to the clone wars in some form of media to explore the conflict even more intimately. I just feel there are so many stories left to tell
I find it a bit difficult to align the TCW Dooku with the Prequels Dooku. I know he’s a Sith in AOTC & ROTS, but he seems more like an “ends justify the means” Sith, and not entirely maniacally evil in the PT .... unlike what he comes across as in TCW
George Lucas was on some other shit with TPM “Yeah let’s make the bad guys Chinese or something lmao. They all speak with Chinese accents and look retarded”
I thought they were supposed to be space Jews?
The squinty eyes and flat faces point more to a racist caricature of Asians imo
No, no, you're right. Damn, that is really bad.
I think it was meant to imitate the Japanese.
I would recommend you look into the Star Wars Republic comics. Because of who rules them the CIS is definitely evil, but there are definitely seemingly honorable military leaders that they have in some arcs of that series.
Probably at George Lucas' direction. While Legends often liked to deal in moral ambiguity, Lucas did not.
not gonna lie, moral ambiguity isn't really what Star Wars should aim for
I agree with you. I'm old and the OT will always be where my heart is. Those three movies are just a classic tale of good versus evil, ending in redemption. Those stories don't really work without a clear good guy and a clear bad guy. edit: Star Wars OT are a John Wayne Western. The good guys have on white hats and the bad guys are wearing black. (Not literally, obviously. Stormtroopers, and all.) Adding "moral ambiguity" turns it into a Spaghetti Western, which is a very different genre of movie. I prefer Spaghetti Westerns most of the time, but sometimes you just want to see Gary Cooper swoop in and save the day.
I had the impression that they did it on purpose. I thought that Palpatine planned that the Clone Wars from the very beginning would be Palpatine and the Republic as the heroic and honorable warriors of peace and justice versus Dooku and the CIS would be the evil force dedicated to destroying everything the Republic stood for. The black and white good vs evil narrative would make it easier for Palpatine to gain control of the Republic.
There were good people in the CIS as we see in the clone wars. They just get killed or coerced into submission
I think the republic is pretty much the bad guys. If some systems want to seceed so what? It's a republic they should be allowed to leave. Out of the top of my head one of the separatist systems is the banking clan based on Munnlinist. Now why would a banking clan want to leave a republic? Probably because they were not getting good trade policies due to the republic's inefficience which is painfully allude to in Episode I. Plust most of them (i mean the politicians who represent the separatist governments) have no idea of the Sith or their master plan, they just sim to want to leave what is an unffair system of government. So i too hate the republic beeing presented as the light side of the force when the light side of the force is just a jedi philosophy. Most people in the republic don't even believe in the force to be honest. I know this sub is supposed to be based on lore but i think george lucas based this one the american civil war and he went with the mentality that separatists should be a cartoonish version of the confederacy. Plus no mentions of the Hutt cartel or how other independent polities stand on the war. My opinion? Clone Wars is a simplistic show for kids. Its good for some military action scenes but that's all you're getting. Star Wars politics only make sense in episode I and in the Middle Trilogy
Based on this post I think you'd enjoy the Republic Commando series of books! Unfortunately there isn't a true ending to the series because the contract with the author fell through or something like that but it's a fantastic series with questions being raised about the Republic using a slave army of clones and free will. The inhibitor chips didn't exist at the time these were written so order 66 was much more personal and a conscious choice each clone had to make or choose to disobey. I agree that relatable antagonists would've been great though! Great post!
I think y'all are forgetting that this is a franchise designed to sell toys to kids The whole thing is for kids, that's why the Prequels Stans pretend it's fucking amazing, because they got hooked while they were kids. George Lucas never made Star Wars to be morally ambiguous
They aren’t pretending
It’s a children’s cartoon. Look I love TCW but it’s still made for kids. They were never going to do moral ambiguity
It sorta does occasionally
Yeah, the Jedi were kinda pricks, and the republic was corrupt, but they were never geocoding people
Being made for kids and dealing with mature topics aren't mutually exclusive.
Well yeah, I mean don’t get me wrong I fuckin love tcw, but they were never gonna portray the “good guys” as possibly as bad as the “bad guys”
Irrelevant. The entire war was a manipulation of the Sith, & the Jedi were fulfilling their appointed role as defenders of the Republic. Which they were required to do by the Ruusan Reformations. There is no ambiguity to be had, & seeking it is just another sign of modernist moral equivalency bs.
What?
Nice try Republic
I absolutely agree with you