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Topic:
Heroes on BOTH sides?
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DarthDuckie
Registered:
Jan '04
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Date Posted:
5/14 4:20pm
Subject:
RE: Heroes on BOTH sides?
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LOL. Exactly.
I think the point also is that many on both sides thought they were fighting for the same things, such was the way that Sidious had orchestrated things.
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Apathy is the glove into which evil slips its hand.
-Bodie Theone
A hero is a person who understands the responsibility
that comes with his freedom.
- Bob Dylan
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EmeraldBlade
Registered:
Apr '08
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Date Posted:
5/14 4:24pm
Subject:
RE: Heroes on BOTH sides?
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Yup. It works in KOTOR but not in real life.
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Formerly the poster known as AnakinSucks
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SHAD0W-JEDI
Registered:
May '02
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Date Posted:
5/15 4:14am
Subject:
RE: Heroes on BOTH sides?
- Date Edited:
5/15 4:16am (1 edits total)
Edited By:
SHAD0W-JEDI
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The question, with respect, isn't whether some Separatists thought they were doing the right thing. I am sure they did - although I am not sure what that proves. I am sure Tarkin thought that destroying Alderaan was the right thing, as well. Jabba could surely explain to you how he is simply a savvy businessman. Sebulba would deliver a moving speech about how he simply plays to win. Doubtless, Palpatine thought that ending democracy and establishing himself as absolute dictator was just swell. Evil "people" always have their reasons. The question, I think, is why GL chose to put that in the opening crawl, which is (more or less) supposed to be an "objective" summary of events.
After all, I don't recall any of the other crawls referrring to the "heroic" Empire, or the "admirable Sidious", or such. We don't hear anything about "heroes on both sides" and "evil being everywhere" in the Classic movies, do we? It has always been pretty clear, in the SW universe, that the Empire was "bad", and the rebels were "good". That the Sith were "bad", and the Jedi "good".
I can certainly IMAGINE a prequel triology in which the Republic is engaged in a war with a Separatist faction, with the bulk of the Separatists being well meaning, noble, "rebels" who feel they must secede from a corrupt, tired Republic, with the Separatists being manipulated into war by Sidious, fronted by Dooku. But, as I noted before, I HAVE to imagine it, 'cause GL did not give us that. Instead, he populated the Separatist movement with evil, sneaky, cowardly, stock villains! Come on folks - Nute Gunray and company strike you as admirable idealists? Fett? How about that very dignified, philosophical Grievous? No? If GL wanted that to be a plot point with any weight, why didn't be back it up onscreen? It would actually have been pretty easy. Replace the scheming Nute and company with admirable, misguided Separatist leaders. Replace Grievous with Mon Mothma. And so forth. But...nope. Instead, everytime we see a "Separatist", we get a villain.
Shadow
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Malikail
Registered:
Jun '04
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Date Posted:
5/15 5:14am
Subject:
RE: Heroes on BOTH sides?
- Date Edited:
5/15 5:17am (1 edits total)
Edited By:
Malikail
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it occurs to me that people in this thread have problems calling the separatist leaders, including Dooku, heroes.
I don't see why this is.
Evil never think of themselves as evil.
As for those following the separatist, well they were right, they were fighting against an EVIL REPUBLIC lead by a sith lord.
It just so happens both sides were evil and both sides were lead by the sith.
If there is a problem with that line of introduction to RotS it is that there are NO heroes on either side because from a moral perspective both sides are wrong.
It doesn't get much more evil than that.
EDIT:
thing is SHADOW-JEDI in the OT everything is black-white, good-evil and very clear cut.
The PT on the other hand seems to be wallowing in shades of grey.
It is true every time we see a separatist we see a villan.
it is also true that every time you see a Republic soldier you see a villan, we call them stormtroopers later.
That is what is both good and bad about the PT.
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how much greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope? - G'Kar
We wander but in the end there is always a certain peace in being what one is, in being that completely. The condemned man has that joy
Lucas and SuperShadow deserve each other
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TaradosGon
Registered:
Feb '03
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Date Posted:
5/15 5:42am
Subject:
RE: Heroes on BOTH sides?
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It doesn't say both sides are good, it says there are heroes on both sides. This line is followed up with the statement that "evil is everywhere." As stated, I feel that this is meant to be objective. If it wasn't, then evil wouldn't be "everywhere" since, as said, "evil" people don't see themselves as such.
The line: "There are heroes on both sides. Evil is everywhere" I feel is meant to convey that there are good people on both sides fighting against the flaws of the other. The flaw in the Republic is that the Senate is influenced by Darth Sidious (as told to Obi-Wan), and that the Senate isn't interested in "the common good" (see Episode I). Yet, there are heroes fighting for democracy; heroes like the Jedi, Bail Organa, and Padme. Heck, the clones could arguably be considered heroes (but that's debatable as they are forced to serve).
On the other side of the war, we don't see the heroes. We see a droid army led by a Sith lord and greedy corporations. We don't see the senators of planets that the Republic ignored, or anyone standing up to an altruistic ideal. We only see greed. Who are these Separatist heroes then?
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DarthDuckie
Registered:
Jan '04
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Date Posted:
5/15 1:02pm
Subject:
RE: Heroes on BOTH sides?
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But why do the heroes mentioned have to appear in the films to exist? It would be impossible for Lucas to depict the whole story of the Separatist movement. He has a story to tell, about the rise of the Sith, the fall of the Jedi and the stories of key characters attached to that. The crawl gives us background and helps us understand what's going on leading into each film. The "evil" leaders were not the entire Separatist movement. Many separatists were disenfranchised systems who believed that the galaxy was being ruled by a rotten and corrupt Republic. If they had no ideas of the mechanations behind the War and they were standing up for what they believed in - democracy and good government - then they may well have been heroic. At the end of the day, all those fighting on both sides of this war were mere pawns of Palpatine, irrespective of their intentions. There could well have been heroes on both sides.
-----signature-----
Apathy is the glove into which evil slips its hand.
-Bodie Theone
A hero is a person who understands the responsibility
that comes with his freedom.
- Bob Dylan
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SHAD0W-JEDI
Registered:
May '02
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Date Posted:
5/16 4:55am
Subject:
RE: Heroes on BOTH sides?
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Since this keeps being raised - I just don't see how one would justify calling, for example, Grievious a hero, just because we imagine that he does not see himself as evil. By this standard, the SW movies contain no heroes...or, rather, EVERYONE in the SW movies is "a hero". We shouldn't root for Sidious to fail, we shouldn't root for the Rebels and Jedi to "win", since they are no different, really, from the Sith (BTW...this is a VERY Sithy perspective, basicaly asserted by Sidious himself in ROTS). The triumphal scenes at the end of ANH and ROTJ are shams, since all we are seeing is the triumph of one group over another, not the triumph of good over evil.
And I DO think it matters what Lucas shows in the movies. Frankly, that bit about "evil being everywhere"....huh? Unless he is referring to the machinations of Palpatine, secretly playing both sides, not sure what THAT means, or is supposed to mean, either!
Shadow
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DarthApocalypse
Registered:
Apr '07
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Date Posted:
5/16 2:21pm
Subject:
RE: Heroes on BOTH sides?
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SHADOW-JEDI, what do you define a hero as? From your posts it seems that you only consider someone a hero if they conform with your view and that's fine, but since everyone has different views, naturally everyone will have a different perspective on what a hero will be. Not everyone who watches Star Wars has to root for the Jedi and the Republic to win. You might not like Palpatine, but that doesn't mean he cannot be a hero to someone. Hell, plenty of people thought Hitler was a hero and plenty also thought he was a bastard. Neither group is wrong, it just depends on your perspective.
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Don't take life too seriously. Nobody gets out alive.
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DarthDuckie
Registered:
Jan '04
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Date Posted:
5/16 7:24pm
Subject:
RE: Heroes on BOTH sides?
- Date Edited:
5/16 7:46pm (1 edits total)
Edited By:
DarthDuckie
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The whole thing is a sham and that's exactly the point. The Republic forces are manipulated and controlled by Sidious. They are doing his bidding, without realising it. The same for the Separatists. Both sides are being controlled by evil, so evil is "everywhere" Both sides also contain scores of people, on screen and off, who believe that they are fighting against the evil that the other side represents. Heroes on both sides. We don't need to see them all to know that they're there. All but the very beginning and end of the Clone Wars is left out of the films, but we know that they happened.
-----signature-----
Apathy is the glove into which evil slips its hand.
-Bodie Theone
A hero is a person who understands the responsibility
that comes with his freedom.
- Bob Dylan
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SoonerSean
Registered:
Jul '07
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Date Posted:
5/16 8:54pm
Subject:
RE: Heroes on BOTH sides?
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As discussed way back at the beginning of this thread... in virtually every real life conflict there are heroes "on both sides". We might not see them... but you can read tons of books on WII and read stories about soldiers for Germany that were heroic, i.e. thought they were fighting for the right reason/saved comrades/did brave things/etc. (not all were Nazis is what I mean). Same can be said for Japan, Italy, etc. Then I'm sure today you can find stories about Iraqi soldiers that acted heroically or Viet Cong soldiers did something heroic. There are in fact "heroes on both sides" in any conflict.
The issue at hand (for me) is why GL felt it necessary to state it so plainly in the crawl when - as discussed at length in the last couple of pages - not one Separatist on screen is anything but a plain and clear villain or someone who does some despicable things (Sidious, Dooku, Griveous, Gunray, etc.). Sure... I have no doubt in the worlds that sided with the Seps that the were thousands if not millions of beings that thought they were doing the right thing and might be called "heroes".
But what we see on screen is one bad guy after another (and more in the cartoons).
I'd be curious to see if GL might reveal some of these "heroes" in the new cartoon series. It would be interesting to see someone fighting b/c they thought it was right vs. seemingly only wanting to destroy destroy destroy.
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SHAD0W-JEDI
Registered:
May '02
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Date Posted:
5/17 4:48am
Subject:
RE: Heroes on BOTH sides?
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Darth Apocalypse - With due respect, actually, I have no problem saying that anyone who thinks Hitler was a hero is, in fact, wrong. Totally. Disturbingly. The idea that almost everyone believes him/herself to be doing the "right thing", I get. But that doesn't suggest that the rest of us have to buy into their delusions. That is the problem with the whole "ethical relativist" outlook.
Palpatine is evil, and if someone wants to root for evil to win, well... enough said. Granted, it is FICTIONAL evil, but even so...think folks who root for evil to win have...issues.
Sooner - Understood. I just think, as i have said, that GL handled that very awkwardly and strangely. The Separatists we see don't even seem "neutral"; they are all villainous. I think that is why seeing that crawl elicited a big "HUH?" from me. It is a point of view that is out of touch with the series as a whole, and even the Prequels (which, since they deal with the fall of Anakin, are arguably more "gray" than the Classic three). This idea isn't developed, at all, in TPM or AOTC, and after that mention in the crawl, it is not developed in ROTS either. In fact, we are introduced to NEW Separatist villains in ROTS. Go figure.
Shadow
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TaradosGon
Registered:
Feb '03
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Date Posted:
5/17 7:08am
Subject:
RE: Heroes on BOTH sides?
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Nobody declares themself a hero. It's how they are seen by the rest of society.
The dictionary defines a hero as:
"a man of distinguished courage or ability, admired for his brave deeds and noble qualities."
In this light. No, Hitler was not a hero. It would be troubling to see his cause or deeds as noble.
The Jedi were heroes for fighting for the preservation of a democratic society, with the interests of its citizens at heart. The clones were heroes as well. A droid army is not heroic. They have an inability to think and do only what they are programmed to do, and the people doing the programming are corporate leaders out for their own interests, not for a morally upright cause. And Grievous, well he doesn't strike me as serving any cause greater than simply putting his skills as a commander to the test. The "heroes" on the Separatist side are never shown and no reference to them outside of the opening crawl is made, thus they can't be that important. In hindsight, I wish they had shown these heroes as Padme seemed to think that perhaps the Separatists (the ones that had tried to execute her) may be doing the right thing.
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DarthApocalypse
Registered:
Apr '07
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Date Posted:
5/17 7:55am
Subject:
RE: Heroes on BOTH sides?
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SHADOW-JEDI - If you don't think Hitler is a hero that's cool because I don't either. I was just trying to point out that there are people with similar views as Hitler, therefore he would be a hero to some people. The same thing applies to Palpatine. A hero normally isn't defined by the individual, but as society as a whole, and as a whole, both the Nazis and the Empire were highly regarded at one point or another. They fell from grace later, but at one point they were regraded as saviors.
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Nordom
Registered:
Jun '04
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Date Posted:
5/17 11:50am
Subject:
RE: Heroes on BOTH sides?
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DarthDuckie posted:
But why do the heroes mentioned have to appear in the films to exist? It would be impossible for Lucas to depict the whole story of the Separatist movement. He has a story to tell, about the rise of the Sith, the fall of the Jedi and the stories of key characters attached to that. The crawl gives us background and helps us understand what's going on leading into each film. The "evil" leaders were not the entire Separatist movement. Many separatists were disenfranchised systems who believed that the galaxy was being ruled by a rotten and corrupt Republic. If they had no ideas of the mechanations behind the War and they were standing up for what they believed in - democracy and good government - then they may well have been heroic. At the end of the day, all those fighting on both sides of this war were mere pawns of Palpatine, irrespective of their intentions. There could well have been heroes on both sides.
There is an old movie saying, "Show, don't tell" and here we are just TOLD about heroes on both sides but we are not shown it.
The crawl are for OUR benefit, not the people living in the SW galaxy. We as the audience, we get to decide who is the villain and who is the hero and that is based on what we see the characters do. The villains are constanly shown as doing bad or evil things so we have little trouble identifing them as just that, villains.
All we ever see of the separatists are villains. We have Nute, who was very much a villain in TPM and now he is plotting to have Padme murdered, we have the Geonosians who look and act very creepy and their idea of justice is to throw bound prisoners to hungry beasts and let them be devoured to the amusement of the spectactors.
We hear the separatists planing to launch a sneak attack on the defenceless republic and that way the separatists get what they want. Which is what really?
Dooku and the other separatists talk about amking the republic do anything they want but what do they want? Do they want to leave the republic? Seems likely given that they are called separatists but both they and others only talk about the separatists attacking the republic. Unless the republic tries to force the separatists to remain in the republic there is no reason for them to attack.
The greedy, evil heads of the separatists are all that we see, we have no idea if there are other planets that only want to leave the republic because we never see them.
We have no real idea what the separatists actually WANT. They are just villains, plain and simple. They have no motivation for what they do, they just follow Palpatines orders.
So the "heroes on both sides" comment feels hollow because we have never seen anything like it and we are never shown anything like it. It becomes an empty statement.
In all I find the clone wars to be a rather uninvolving conflict because on one side there are nameless, facless droids and on the other clones that we know work for the bad guy. We do not really know what ordinary people feel about this war, it is a staged war, done at Palpatines request. Yes I get that but I still feel that the drama is lacking because both sides are underdeveloped. If we had gotten real sense of the separatists side, that there were some good people there, that only wanted to leave in peace but were played by Palpatine then it might have been more dramatic.
As for shades of gray, I do not think that there are as much as some think.
Most of the villains are just as plain villains as in the OT.
Take TPM, the TF? Very much villains there, greedy, cowardly, evil merchant that attack a defenceless and peacefull planet of Naboo. But again we get no reason why. Sebulba? Looks and act like a villain, a cruel cheater. Maul? Looks and acts VERY much as a villain. Sidious? Same thing.
The only hidden thing is that Sidious is actually Palpatine and he is playing the "good guys" into thinking that he is one of them. But it is pretty clear that Palpatine is no good.
AotC, again the separatists are shown only as villains, no redeeming qualities.
Jango is a hired killer, nothing more. Dooku? Had potential but when we get to see him we know that he was behind the attempts on Padme's life as well as plaing to attack the republic and butcher the jedi. So too little, too late, he is just a villain.
In RotS, the general is again a cartoony villain, bragging and boasting but when it come sdown to, all talk and no delivery.
With the heroes there is shades of gray but mostly in that some of the heroes are rather cold and indifferent and sometimes a little clueless. In all it makes the "heroes" rather unlikable to me, they act like fools sometimes and do not show much warmth which makes it hard for me to care when they get wiped out.
Regards
Nordom
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"Morte, how do you stay afloat?"
"Flatulence, you stupid polygon"
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TaradosGon
Registered:
Feb '03
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Date Posted:
5/17 6:04pm
Subject:
RE: Heroes on BOTH sides?
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I watched Revenge of the Sith again earlier today. I had not remembered that the opening crawl also refers to Count Dooku as "ruthless" and Grievous as being "fiendish." I think it's fair to say that these characters are clearly not meant to be the separatist "heroes" (if there was really any doubt).
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