Star Wars Thread 1: The Phantom Post, Star Wars Options

[Dark Reaper]

Eh Star Wars thread on the Bethesda forums lets bring it here. Anyway if anyone here love Red Letter Media and the Star Wars Pizza Roll review then you're in luck cause He's Baaaaack.

I love the part where he talks about the connection between the prequels and the original trilogy as it give you an insight that the prequels COULD have worked as proper Star Wars films, but it was the sloppy writing that did the most damage. The review is giving me an urge to rewatch the prequels.......Excuse me I need to take a shower in hot water and cry uncontrollably.

[Callidus Thorn]

Less on Lucas' ability to pull it off and more on the Jedi's basic ability to understand what was said to them, really. Like, Dooku actually said to either Anakin or Obi-Wan that the Senate was actually in control of the Sith and come Revenge when the reveal was set up, they were actually surprised! Derp

To be fair to the Jedi, I'm not sure if its said just how many knew how clouded the Force had become, and how little the Jedi Council could actually see. And it's not as though Obi-Wan(I'm pretty sure it was him)had any reason to trust Dooku, who was not only one of those who turned away from the Order, but was working with those who'd imprisoned him(If I'm remembering the scene correctly).

Essentially all the Sith do is backstab one another. I believe Dooku was fooled into Sidious' plan and genuinely believed he had a part to play in the great Sith-dominated future. Darth Vader was seduced but he also planned on using Sidious to save Padme. After Palpatine revealed himself as a Sith Lord and became his new mentor, I think Vader began to see some similarities with him and Obi-Wan. There's a part in the novel that explains this well enough. In the end Vader wanted to overthrow The Emperor and rule the galaxy with Padme.

Strictly speaking it's not all the Sith do. They have unified numerous times, generally for another crusade against the Republic or the Jedi. But their philosophy does lead them to think a certain way, and knowing what they've done(or would be prepared to do) in the name of acquiring power, it's no real surprise.

Dooku knew what the Jedi had become; enforcers propping up a corrupt and failing Republic, then he learned it was all part of an elaborate and long term Sith scheme. My guess is that he felt more trapped than anything else: It was too late to save the Jedi, centuries too late, and he knew how much damage had been done in previous Sith wars against the Republic. In one of the books he even goes so far as to try and return to the Jedi Order. And Vader was more a dark Jedi than a Sith at that point, considering how at the end of the film he was throwing around words like "evil" in relation to the Jedi(which felt hilariously forced, by the way). And let's face it, Vader's idea of overthrowing Palpatine was far better handled in The Empire Strikes Back.

I still think the clone inhibitor chip introduced in the Clone Wars cartoon was a bad idea.

*snip*

Yeah, that does sound like a horrible idea.

But Order 66 was very much a blanket policy. It couldn't be used to remove a general, only to remove that entire level of the chain of command. Having a contingency plan to remove pretty much everyone between the commander-in-chief and the clone commanders in the field does seem a little extreme. But then, the Clone Army was always part of the trap, they just didn't know it.

One of the things I like about some of the Clone Wars books is that some of the clones, usually commandos who have more independence than the standard clone trooper, didn't carry out Order 66. In particular I'm rather fond of the Republic Commando books, though no so much the last one, as they explain(or in other words, patch the holes of) a lot of what went on.

Personally, I think Order 66 has its problems. For one thing, if entire levels of the chain of command have turned traitor, not just certain individuals, then that's the sort of thing that would require actual evidence. If the president of the US issued an order to summarily execute every high ranking officer in the army on charges of treason, without a shred of proof or even the pretense of due process, I sincerely doubt even a single shot would be fired.

And that's the one of the biggest problems the movies have, in my opinion. It's clones versus droids, and frankly you might as well call it meat droids versus metal droids, going on the films. But the more you humanise the clones, the harder it becomes to square that unthinking, unquestioning response to Order 66. Because as far as the film is concerned, not one clone questioned or disobeyed that order. And it's not just Jedi in the field that were being targeted, but those at the Jedi Temple who hadn't even been involved in the fighting. To use your US example again, if the order in the previous paragraph were extended to include the summary execution of children on the same charge, the army would just turn around and arrest the President.

The kind of unthinking obedience displayed by the clones fundamentally undermines any attempt to present them as anything more than droids made of flesh and bone instead of metal. The inhibitor chip is a shoddy patch for a problem that shouldn't have existed in the first place, in my opinion.