The Clone Wars - Not what you thought?

[Darth Wong]

My daughter has a thing for old men. She thinks they're all nice. Hardly an average reaction but that's my only child gauge for the prequels.

Well, neither of my boys reacted that way. They saw him as a bad guy right away.

She gets confused because the stormtroopers were bad in OT but now they seem to be fighting with the Jedi who are good guys and that throws her. I've explained to her that they turn bad later on because of the emperor. Its the intial confusion that I'm talking about here. I never had any confusion as a 5 yo watching ANH who the bad guys were.

And generally speaking, nobody has any confusion watching AOTC as to who the bad guys are. The only "confusion" you're talking about pertains to how they become bad guys between AOTC and ANH, and that will be answered in about 3 weeks.

I told my son that clonetroopers just follow orders and they don't care whether they're good or evil orders. He had no trouble at all understanding this. How old do you think a child has to be in order to comprehend this?

It's the not needing to explain anything at all that I'm talking about. My mother took me to see ANH when it came out - I was 5 - and she spoke very little to no English. She couldn't explain the movie to me, in fact I translated some things for her but she got the plot and enjoyed it without knowing the language. A testament in my opinion to the storytelling in ANH. (The translations were for things like What is the Force?)

Oh for fuck's sake, if your kid watched ANH and TESB but she hadn't watched ROTJ yet, she would have a fucking shitload of questions for you. The fact that people have questions about what happens during the missing link in the saga is hardly proof that there's something wrong with the storytelling. There would be a pretty big fucking problem if she did not have questions about a six-part story which is missing part #3.

That's because despite all of its atmosphere, LOTR has all the thematic maturity of The Cat In The Hat.

Its a simple story, a myth of good vs. evil. I didn't go into LOTR expecting Waiting for Godot.

Neither did I, but I didn't really expect to be bored either. FOTR was pretty good albeit slow at times, but of course, it sets up the second and third films, right? Too bad the second and third films were even SLOWER, to the point that they were snoozefests.

[DPDarkPrimus]

I have problems with the Clone Wars as they are now. A lot of them have been mentioned. One hasn't yet.

Where's Anakin the great pilot? Blowing up a single capital ship because of a fluke accident hardly qualifies him for that distinction.

[Darth Wong]

BTW Stravo, you may have inadvertently explained why you hate the prequels so much and TPM in particular. It's quite obvious from the subject of this thread that you had a lot of strong preconceptions about what the prequels should be like. In my experience, the people who walked into the theatre with such strong preconceptions tend to be the ones who were most upset with the films.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

I have problems with the Clone Wars as they are now. A lot of them have been mentioned. One hasn't yet.

Where's Anakin the great pilot? Blowing up a single capital ship because of a fluke accident hardly qualifies him for that distinction.

Isn't that being covered by the Clone Wars EU stuff?

[Vympel]

Honestly, I have real difficulty believing that you're not altering your observations to suit your preferred conclusion. I love the OT as much as anyone, but my kids find the entire middle of TESB to be boring. It's the most adult-oriented of the OT films.

When I was a kid I felt the exact same way- I'd get my creaky old VHS out, watch the entire Hoth sequence, the asteroid chase, fast forward through the rest, watch the Falcon get chased out, then voila, on to the lightsabre fight!

As I grew older though, my eyes are stuck to the screen the whole way through.

Re: the prequels and preconceptions- there's a misconception that I was a part of to, that the Republic had no military, ref: AotC. Not the case. The TPM novelization makes quite clear reference to the Republic putting down rebellions with fighters, fleets, and troops within a few decades prior to TPM. I think the "Military Creation Act" referred to in AotC is just a flowery name, not a reflection of the actual state of affairs. The Republic could fight wars, just not "full scale" ones against massive droid armies.

[Vympel]

Where's Anakin the great pilot? Blowing up a single capital ship because of a fluke accident hardly qualifies him for that distinction.

Isn't that being covered by the Clone Wars EU stuff?

It's covered adequately in RotS IMO. The "he was already a great pilot" obviously comes from the pod racing.

[Stravo]

BTW Stravo, you may have inadvertently explained why you hate the prequels so much and TPM in particular. It's quite obvious from the subject of this thread that you had a lot of strong preconceptions about what the prequels should be like. In my experience, the people who walked into the theatre with such strong preconceptions tend to be the ones who were most upset with the films.

Oddly enough the subject of this thread has nothing to do with the plot developments in TPM. The TPM had nothing to do with the clone wars. I may have preconcieved notions as to what the clone wars should have been but I certainly did not know what to expect from TPM.

I make no bones about my dislike of the TPM, and the prequels as vastly inferior to OT. I have no doubt that some of it probably has to do with them being almost nothing like what I expected but more to do with the absolute piss poor plotting and pacing.

Prequels are a sloppy mess of GL's making, No one was there to say no to him as some others did in ESB and ROTJ (to a lesser extent). In fact there are stories of GL having the least control over ESB his finest movie which speaks volumes as to what he needs most - someone to prune the bullshit and get to the gems in his story.

I have posted numerous thread on issues I have with the storytellinig from Anakin's character development being near non existent, The Obi Wan/Anakin relationship a turgid stale thing that will evoke little emotion when Obi Wan finally faces Anakin, Starting Anakin out as a child so we get zero development for one of the three films, etc.

None of this has to do with preconcieved notions and everything to do with bad writing.

[Kurgan]

Since I can kind of piece together now (from the trailers, which seem to go along with a theory I had once) why the Jedi Purge happens even without the spoilers, I will say I really didn't think I knew why the Jedi would be targetted. I just theorized that they were picked as a scapegoat for something and then just exterminated, like the Jews in Nazi Germany or the Templars in medieval times (maybe they were hoarding wealth and secrets that the establishment wanted?) or Henry VIII seizing the monasteries. Somehow Palpatine decided to kill off the Jedi and Vader helped to do it.

I pictured Anakin being a young adult alongside Obi-Wan, both pilots fighting in the wars, etc.

The EU does fill in many of the "gaps" and stuff we fans have wanted to see since before the Prequels came out, but it's a bit of a letdown for me, because I wanted to see a lot of those things on the big screen and on the DVD's, not in a cartoon or some paperback or comic book. It's just not the same. It's the old "happened off screen/show, don't tell" thing with "wizz-bang-wow" sci-fi.

Back when the OT was made, there were issues of budgets and what you could do with special effects of the time, that I could understand, now there aren't quite such set limitations, so it's a bit of an annoyance.

I avoided spoilers for TPM and AOTC (and I'm trying for ROTS, but so much of it has been revealed already and so much is easy to guess) and was glad to be surprised. The only preconceptions I had were from the EU and stuff Lucas had said over the past 16 years or so. Once I came out of the theater after TPM I knew I couldn't take anything I'd read in the official universe for granted about what was to happen, that was fine.

I liked the subtleties of TPM, but overall the movie felt slow, even moreso than ANH. It's one thing for a movie like LOTR which is over 3 hours per part to be slow, but it almost feels like now that TPM was unnecessary in the scheme of things. I understand Lucas is saying now that it's supposed to provide contrast. He's his happy little apple-cheeked boy going "yippee!!" who turns into an evil badass cyborg in armor that hates everyone and everything. Still... like some folks criticized ROTJ for when it came out, I think the last movie is going to try to cram all this stuff we've been waiting for into the third act, and we're going to be like "why didn't they do all this to start with?"

It makes TPM feel more like filler. Maybe I'll feel differently after ROTS is out, I hope so. I enjoyed TPM, but not as much as any of the other movies.

[Comosicus]

I remmeber seeing the posters for AOTC ... where Anakin and Obi-Wan have Jedis with lightsabers flashing in the background, while Douku has the clones. So I figured that there after the droid failure on Naboo the bad guys were switching to clones and that I was to see Jedis fighting against hoardes of clone troopers.

[DPDarkPrimus]

One thing I always thought had happened in the Clone Wars was that there were multiple batches of clones, and not all the clones being based off of a single person. I imagined that the Republic has several different "flavors" of clones, as did whoever opposed them.

Another interesting interesting about the prequel clones is that they are not Caucasian, which doesn't jibe at all with the OT Empire's "old white boy club" appearance.

[starfury]

Just as a post script, I always imagined that the Clone Wars was where the Mandalorians shined, fighting Jedi across the stars before being whittled down to just Boba Fett, a gristled wily veteran of the Clone Wars. I was never happy with what GL did with my favorite faction of the Clone Wars. Marvel Comics did an excellent job filling in a lot of backstory on the Mandalorians that I find far superior than what GL has done with them and it is reflected in my treatment of them in The Twilight War fic.

I wanted that too, it was a bit of a letdown of clones fighting droids, I wanted a titanic Conflict in the likes of the first Sith wars of led by EXAR KUN in the tales of the jedi conflicts, a massive extragalactic invasion leading to massive tramua, leading to the birth of the empire and stormtrooper legions from the ashs of the republic.

[Executor32]

I hate the retcon. If you watch ANH, Obi-wan intimates that Anakin and Owen Lars were brothers, but more than that, they knew each other enough for Anakin to 'share his ideals' with him, and for the latter to disagree. We see none of that in the prequels.

The worst part is Lucas wrote this shit. So he SHOULD know it.

Do remember that they are stepbrothers, so technically the first part is true.

[NeoGoomba]

I never really thought much of the Clone Wars until I read the first Thrawn trilogy where it stated that all the clones went crazy. From that I had always thought that clones were common in the galaxy up until that point where they all went berserk and the Republic had to take them down.

From ANH I always pictured Obi-Wan and Anakin more as hotshot pilots who did a lot of space fighting, close to each other in age, and GOOD FRIENDS, close to combat buddies in that regard. I never discounted other Jedi adventures, but from what little Obi-wan said, the starfighter pilot remark always set my imagination that way.

[Lord Revan]

Well I had never read the Thraw trilogy before I saw the PT (I have read it since and like it) and information I had on the Clone Wars was from the OT (which means I knew practically nothing about it), so I had no preconcived picture of the Clone Wars, so I could enjoy the PT (TPM is a bit too much of a kids movie for my taste, but still).

[Kurgan]

It's true that the "preconcieved notions about the Clone Wars" thing really doesn't apply to TPM, only to AOTC (and to ROTS, but that's broken now, since we've all seen AOTC).

I enjoyed AOTC more than TPM, because my expectations were lowered (by TPM) and it was high on the straight up action/eye-candy. The entertainment level for the film was high and so I liked it. However it didn't gibe much with what I thought the Clone Wars were going to be like back in 1998, but oh well...

[Kartr_Kana]

I think what disapointed me was the shiny higher tech feel. Plus many preconcieved notions. It bugs me that when I read parts of some of the earlier drafts of the OT they had stuff that with a little revision would have been better for the PT.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Oh, like Lando being from a planet full of clones of himself?

Revision is a virtue...

[Cykeisme]

Spanky, are you serious?
The very image of a planet full of Billy Dee Williamses is just.. well..

Btw, are you guys taking into account the Clone Wars animated serials, or discounting them entirely (out of dislike, or the feeling that they're not official enough etc)?
I find it covers a lot of preconceptions I had about Obi Wan and Anakin, like Anakin being a great pilot and them being comrades as well as a mentor and a student. In that respect, I never got the impression that they were around the same age, since it was made clear early that Anakin was taught by Obi Wan. That's just how I saw things, though.

As for Anakin being a great pilot when Obi Wan met him, it doesn't refer to pod racing alone. Anakin destroyed the Trade Federation ship shortly after they met, and in the interceding time, Anakin received no formal starfighter training (hence the "already"), nor did Obi Wan really know the boy that well yet (hence the "when we met".. they were still in the extended process of meeting and getting acquainted, so to speak).

DarkPrimus, I know the Empire is racist in regards to non-humans, but I never got the "old white boy" vibe. Now that you mention it, though, all the Imp officers are white.. if it's an issue, perhaps, though, the clone templates were all replaced with white guys by the time of ANH.

Also, I stumbled across this page a long time ago, which has a bunch of essays written by some guy.. if there's any reason you don't enjoy TPM very much, perhaps some of the ideas here might change your mind.. or perhaps not. But anyway.
http://wso.williams.edu/~rfoxwell/starw ... PMPage.htm

[Stravo]

Btw, are you guys taking into account the Clone Wars animated serials, or discounting them entirely (out of dislike, or the feeling that they're not official enough etc)?
I find it covers a lot of preconceptions I had about Obi Wan and Anakin, like Anakin being a great pilot and them being comrades as well as a mentor and a student. In that respect, I never got the impression that they were around the same age, since it was made clear early that Anakin was taught by Obi Wan. That's just how I saw things, though.

But that's the point. If I need to go to EU sources to find the comraderie between the two men and get the emotional sting when they face off that's bit like the Han and Leia romance being covered in the EU and in ESB just getting the Carbonite freezing scene with Leia declaring her love to Han as he says "I know"

The films should be as self contained as absolutely possible with the EU there if you want to explore things like what was that encounter at Ord Mandell Han was talking about on Hoth NOT major plot points that are meant to deliver an emotional response in the climax of the story. The EU IMO should be like that button in Starship Troopers at the bottom of the screen "WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW MORE?"

It should not be a forum for GL to have key plot points covered because his inept charcter development in the films just hasn't been cutting it. How about cutting some of the Dex bullshit and replacing it with real character development between two men who view each other as father and son and what it will take to tear them apart and make them cross lightsabers? How about making me give a shit that Obi Wan will open a can of whoop ass on Anakin and not counting down until he does because Anakin is such a whiney asshole?

Think on this, will any of you really feel sorrow when Anakin falls? Half of you have been waiting with bated breath for Anakin to finally get all Vaderish. Sounds to me like no one gives a shit about Anakin as the hero and there goes all the fucking drama and tragedy of his fall.

[DPDarkPrimus]

Think on this, will any of you really feel sorrow when Anakin falls? Half of you have been waiting with bated breath for Anakin to finally get all Vaderish. Sounds to me like no one gives a shit about Anakin as the hero and there goes all the fucking drama and tragedy of his fall.

Because he's Angsty Rebellious Teen put in a Star Wars mold. Luke was an angsty teen, but he was given character development. I never saw much development in the character of Anakin. Episode I, he's a kid. Episode II, angsty teen. All that happened really was his mom dying- he got angry and used the Dark Side. But his "forbidden love" and such? Just typical angsty teen stuff.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Spanky, are you serious?
The very image of a planet full of Billy Dee Williamses is just.. well..

Oh, I'm damn serious. That idea was in at least one of the earlier drafts for ESB.

[Darth Servo]

We all must have had our own ideas what the Clone Wars were. Me for instance always imagined that it was the Old Republic vs. Clone warriors. It would have been bloody and nasty affair as the bad guys would have armies of cloned soldiers who didn't care about casaulties because they could just cook up another batch in no time.

The "grow clones in no-time" is a stupid sci-fi brain bug.

Instead of the hordes of droid armies I always imagined clone armies, everyone looking alike, pale and grey and zombie like.

OK, so whats the difference between the clones you're describing and the droids?

So, was anyone else disappointed and/or surprised by that revelation that it was actually a Droid v. Clone setup and that the clones were the good guys and not the bad guys? Did anyone spin out equally cool scenarios in their heads about what the Clone Wars must have been like.

Actually in AOTC, they're neither. (Yoda: Victory? )

[Kurgan]

Oh, like Lando being from a planet full of clones of himself?

Revision is a virtue...

Really? I remember hearing how "Lando's Planet" (I guess they meant Bespin) was supposed to originally be all Black folks. But then I also heard that Lando was originally just a white guy, but Lucas thought Billy D. Williams was so good he'd give him the part (then I also heard that he was thrown in to stave off criticism from the African American community that there weren't any visible minorities in the main cast).

I hear a lot of rumors, I wonder if there are any truth to them...

Well a few of those early ideas are getting used, like the planet of Wookiees. I was surprised to learn that the "Little Shop of Horrors" mouth pasted onto the Sarlacc was actually based on an early production sketch, so sometimes that stuff does come through.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Concept art and paintings seem to depict Lando as always being black.

Maybe if you weren't so lazy or indecisive, you could do your own objective research and sort through all the rumours for actual truths.

Here's a hint: buy and read a small book called The Annotated Screenplays. That book literally explains a lot.

But Heaven forbid you ever get that sort of motivation...

[Uraniun235]

I had envisioned the Clone Wars as basically being multiple powers in the galaxy fielding huge clone armies, and in the process of fighting and winning the Wars, the Old Republic slowly became the Empire.

I don't mind that Lucas has gone in a different direction. I do mind such issues as the whole Anakin/Owen issue that was brought up earlier, but not to a significant degree; I'm too busy being outraged at other wastes of potential in science fiction.