Lit A/V Clone Wars Continuity Discussion (Spoilers Allowed)

Why?

 

I think something which is overlooked -- and this is still my opinion or interpretation so maybe I'm just making it up and it's not overlooked at all -- is that Luke goes to Bespin for revenge and rescuing his friends is the excuse. Luke attacks Vader in the cave to avenge his father, and this darkness in his own heart is the very thing manifesting in the cave before him. He doesn't recognize it, and that's how you fall victim to it. And that's subconsciously why he chooses to go to Bespin. He beelines to Vader. He got his Jedi training and now he's ready to avenge his father. Leia is forgotten -- until he needs her to save him.

There's some moral ambiguity at work in the film.

 

Where exactly did the idea that Order 66 wasn't a hidden evil command turning clone troopers like Cody from loyal best friends into cold soldiers in the blink of an eye come from? From that one author who doesn't work for Lucasfilm anymore? Or were there earlier instances?

Because I know that when I saw the movie, at no point did I think that Order 66 was normal. I still don't think that having been brainwashed devalues the clones as human beings. And I wouldn't think that people who prefer an all-military-yes-sir-explanation would love the implication that military chain of command equals ethical blindness and stupidity. The only way this would work were if Lucas amped the space nazi aspect of the Imperials up to eleven and played with the idea of "they are only following orders, but that they do".

And there is zero implication, no "but Sir" in ROTS that would show that any clone has an interrupted stream of thought from "I love my Jedi general" to "I'll kill him first and then see what next". Either the clones are meant to be brainwashed, or they have no brain at all. And wouldn't a regular Order 66 open up ideas of taking the removed superior prisoner instead of brutally burning them to a crisp after shooting them in the back? Up to now, EU always interpreted Order 66 as shoot on sight, didn't it?

 

Dark Lord by Luceno had some clone commandos disobey the order thinking that it was illegitimate.

 

Thank god for that. That was a great change of pace.

 

AOTC? The Lucenoverse? The ROTS novel? Perhaps we might do better to ask: where did the idea that it was come from?

From AOTC we know that the clones have been genetically modified in some way that makes them more docile and compliant.

But were they ever really at "I love my Jedi general"?

 

You may of course ask your question; mine is more fitting for what I want to know, though.

Soooo... it implies that there was tinkering involved. I don't see the problem in extending this tinkering into brainwashing

Let's have a representative survey whether people think Cody and his boys are only pretending to be great comrades with Obi-Wan in the hangar in ROTS.

Was that before or after clone commandos were said to be more independent thinkers? And that some of the clone groups kept more of Jango's personality than others? Also, why would they think that the order might be illegitimate while all others immediately say "yes, robed figure"?

 

I'm pretty fuzzy on the clone commandos/ARC/commanders/blah blah blah, but it was after the ARCs were said to be less docile and more like Jango.

 

my bold

Selfish bastards with problems accepting their own mistakes?

 

It came from Lucas himself, as I recall, who in an interview conducted around the time of Revenge of the Sith's release, noted that Order 66 was not a brainwashed command but a contingency order the clones were previously aware of. Luceno continued with that note in Dark Lord, discussing it as an order, as did Traviss in the Republic Commando novels, who actually outlined the specifics of what the order was and entailed.

As a military order, Order 66 outlines that the Jedi are officially recognized traitors to the Republic, found guilty of acting against the government. The order comes directly from the Supreme Chancellor, who by the time of the Battle of Coruscant—as the Revenge of the Sith so wonderfully puts it—is beloved by the masses as a symbol of the Republic's strength, with only the upper echelons of the Jedi, military, politicians, and assorted individuals in the know casting anything resembling a scrutinizing eye on Palpatine's actions. Palpatine's role as both Commander-in-Chief and icon of the Republic give strong legitimacy to claims of treachery, even by the Jedi, whose own approval had been shown in slow decline. And with those claims, there are a base three reactions that present themselves among the clones in canon: those who carry out the order because of duty, those who carry out the order due to feelings of betrayal by the Jedi "traitors" they had trusted and looked upon as comrades, and those who refused to carry out the order due to placing personal feelings above military duty.

Order 66 itself, relating specifically to Jedi in officer positions in the Grand Army, does specifically call for the immediate removal by lethal force of all Jedi commanders. In the subsequent purge operations, Masters and Councilors are to be shot on sight, the threat they present too great to respond with anything but lethal force. Padawans, Service Corps Jedi, and the like were to captured, for interrogation and, unbeknownst to most, to be turned to dark side. Knights were to be captured if possible, with certain exceptions, but should the target prove too dangerous, lethal force was authorized.

 

In the Order 66 arc, Anakin goes off to In-N-Out Burger with Tup, Fives, and other clones in his battalion to grab some burgers before the mission.

Anakin: "Alright guys, looks like our order number is 66! Be sure to remember this!"


Tup (grabs his head): "I'm not feeling so well, sir..."
Fives and the other clones follow suit.

 

We already have a lot of sources though, from the EU to TCW, that show that the clones specifically don't blindly obey any order that they are given. It could be that the new episode will give us its own twist on this, but characters like Cut, Slick & every clone trooper in the Umbara arc have pretty much established what we should expect to see from the episode.

 

I see where you are coming from. I hate that S3 arc too.

And I am happy we agree on the second topic! NEIMOIDIANS FTW!

 

I'd love to join this discussion with one of my insane "clones are lemmings" rants, but I just don't have the passion.

 

I have better things to do than get mad over osik, since Lucas is not likely to ever understand what the likes of TCW and TFU have done to fans who love the universe he created, not simply what he created with his films.

 

So their soul will overcome the programming or something like that?

 

Well, we were told in AOTC that the clones had been modified to be more compliant. The earliest EU ran with the idea that the clones were genetically modified and intensively trained to follow orders coming down the chain of command, and you don't need any more than that. They get the order, they execute it.

The fact that it's a controversy is representative of the failure of the EU to really run with that ball and follow up on it, which I find disappointing. The idea of exploring what it is to be a human being whose will has been intensively modified, who has been brainwashed to think precisely inside the box and not even consider disobedience as a possibility, is far more intriguing and unique and science-fictional than exploring what it is to be a guy who's actually totally a perfectly normal human being who just happens to have a lot of brothers who look like him and oh also a brainwashed secret order taking over their minds. That's insanely generic and boring. And it doesn't address the idea of these clonetroopers becoming the stormtroopers and unquestioningly following evil orders, which the whole "Would never question orders" thing takes into account while "They're totally decent fellows with this one secret trigger" doesn't.

Unfortunately, rather than exploring and highlighting and interrogating the uniqueness and bizarre makeup and tragedy of will that the clones were originally designed to be, we've gotten this cheap, nonsensical, concept-contradictory obsession with proving that the clones are all just regular guys like you and me who couldn't possibly be more ordinary or free-willed! It's hard to explore anything that interesting, so we just get fiction's eighty-nine billionth regular ol' soldier types, masquerading as some kind of defense of the clones' humanity. Which misses the point -- the fact that the clones have in some ways lost their humanity is not some flaw in the setting to be corrected (thanks, Karen Traviss!), or some sort of opportunity for heartwarming inspirational messages of humanity-recovering, or some wicked dehumanizing tendency in audiences that must be combated with reminders of the clones' genial everyday humanity -- it's a tragedy that should be highlighted.

But I suppose this is a part of a larger problem, which is authors' discomfort with or lack of interest in the genuinely alien.

 

Gamiel, let me put it this way, TCW didn't give us new locations on old planets, they gave us reimagined planets. Case in point, Mandalore, which TCW would have us believe was a desert planet, which is part of the reason why I reject the New Mandalorians, because they didn't even bother to show the jungle planet that had already been established, which is why I consider the planet depicted in TCW to be Kalevala. And then there is Ryloth, which inexplicable lost its defining trait from the very beginning of being tidal locked for no reason whatsoever.

 

I'm wondering, which books tended to focus on the clones being much like your average GFFA citizen in enthusing over particular sports teams- was it the Medstar ones, the Traviss ones, both, others?

I recall The Cestus Deception trying to describe "What's it like to be a clonetrooper".

 

I am not going to argue against you but it seems that you believe that a planet usualy only have one type of terrain in SW

 

No, I am all for multiple biomes on planets, but TCW would have us believe Mandalore was a desert planet, when its always been depicted as a jungle planet. If it wasn't for TEA and the fact that the EU still carries some weight, I guarantee you that we would have Mandalore as a desert planet right now.