CT Were there any grey areas to the Empire?.

I apologize if this post sounds pointless. I never read EU, but this question intrigued me.
Were there any grey areas to the "Evil Empire". Did they ever help a civilization from outside forces in the EU?.

 

Thrawn did, in Choices of One, and in the Crisis of Faith novella. Thrawn's generally the exception rather than the rule though.

 

As far as the films are concerned, there is no grey in the Empire. The Republic had some grey, but when it became the Empire, all the white and grey elements were purged.

 

This. Thrawn, although a Grand Admiral in the Imperial Army, was more of a charismatic leader himself. He wasn't a character with evil radiating off him, but more of a tactician with class. Think like a General Count Dooku; not necessarily evil, but doing his job and doing if efficiently with style. Vader also has his semi-grey or light moments, though few and far between.

Most of those in the Empire who held any rank of importance got there mainly because they were willing to step on others and follow orders even if it resulted in unnecessary bloodshed and destruction of innocents. Those who didn't hold importance, such as Stormtroopers, were almost brainwashed to follow orders and never ask questions and think for themselves. That's why in TFA it's supposed to be a shocking scene when Finn doesn't fire a single shot.

Another greyish moment, is before all EU was non-cannonized, is that Han himself was once an Imperial pilot, and escaped because he saw the slavery of Wookies...hence why Chewie owes him a life debt, in the old old EU he had saved him and taken him with him when escaping.

Other than that, not really. The Empire is supposed to represent everything dark, it's a massive army of faceless, nameless and basically "soulless" tyrants, willing to kill anyone or destroy anything that gets in their way of complete and utter domination.

 

Besides the thing about Count Dooku (he was pretty evil), I agree with your argument. That's just one parallel to the Nazis, one of the most fascinating civilizations. Its' amazing how every single Nazi except a few out of thousands was a sociopath.

 

Certainly, atleast if you go by the EU/Nucanon. People like Agent Kallus or Bodhi Rook eventually saw the error of their ways and defected, while you can assume others joined the Empire buying into all of the propaganda before they realized what they actually got themselves into. The only true way to advance in the Empire was to stomp in the face of others and manipulate those around you.

The Servants of the Empire books show that most of the people who achieved success in the Empire were either invested too deep in the propaganda or themselves to be saved, or too arrogant to be swayed.

 

I'm sure not every storm trooper was all bad.

 

From ANH's (deleted) Anchorhead scene:

BIGGS
I know it’s a long shot, but if
I don’t find them I’ll do what I
can on my own… It’s what we
always talked about. Luke, I’m
not going to wait for the Empire to
draft me into service. The Rebellion
is spreading and I want to be on the
right side – the side I believe in.

So if drafting was involved not everyone necessarily needed to love the Empire.

Earlier screenplay drafts suggest that mostly because of Biggs' flying skills at the Imperial Academy he got noticed by Rebel spies from which he learned some of the atrocities committed by the Empire to help him make a personal decision.

 

Actually, I'd say most stormtroopers were emotionless in general. Most were drafted or had no other option financially. Stormtroopers weren't the source of power nor the hand behind actions. That's why they're given numbers instead of names, because they are supposed to take after the mindset of the Clone Army, which were created to do a job and that's mainly what they focused on.

It usually wasn't a stormtroopers place to question their orders. Most stormtroopers did exactly what they were told because they either feared for their lives, or their financial safety, or genuinely didn't see themselves as evil. A large part of being evil is knowing what you're doing is wrong, and most stroomtroopers didn't.

 

Right, it was mostly conditioning on the Empire's part to keep them obedient. Now, Imperial officers or guys like Sgt. Kreel? Yeah, they knew what they were doing.

 

In the uniforms.

 

Vader was the Chosen One.

The Force wanted the Empire.

 

Vader in his role as the Chosen One helped create the Empire that the Force wanted.

 

If the Empire is evil, as claimed in the original Topic of the thread, the Force is evil.

Which is nonsensical.

 

Depends on which version of the story as the films and Lucas implied OT stormtroopers were still clones. Though Lucas flipped flopped several times, and even Disney is doing some flip flops as their parks are selling shirts that say stormtroopers are clones. Personally I find it would be the Empire's MO to use clones sourced from a ruthless thug so they have a army of thugs.

At any rate, there is still positions for draftees such as navy guards, ATST drivers, ground techs, and officers as we know those guys are non clones.

 

Cloning does not create new creatures with identical personalities to the original, though. It would indeed turn out much like the clones were in TCW, where they were basically no different from any other group of people except they all had the same face and a military academy sort of upbringing. Beyond that, one hardly needs to resort to cloning to put together an army of thugs.

Also the Empire displays two traits that make continuing to use clone forces seem out of character: they don't care at all about the well-being of their citizens and (tied in to the first) much of their forces are built around a "sheer overwhelming quantity over quality" philosophy because individual lives are meaningless. TIE fighters are probably the finest single example of this approach.

So why would an Empire that works in this way pay absolutely enormous, Republic-bankrupting amounts of cash to produce clones to fight in place of conscripted citizens, when they already have trillions of people "freeloading" on the Emperor's good will who can simply be shot (along with their families, probably) if they display insufficient loyalty and refuse to serve the Emperor? If every stormtrooper and TIE pilot came with a price tag rather than popping out of the ever-replenishing supply of citizens in the natural-born population, that would probably be the one thing that would actually motivate the higher-ups to care whether they lived or died.

(Additionally, Palpatine choosing to change the name to "stormtrooper" is also another sign of what's coming, because it's divorcing the idea of being a trooper from the qualifier of being a clone. It's changing the public consciousness and laying the groundwork for citizens no longer being shielded from conscription; and he'll convince as many people as he can to do it voluntarily because something something glorious Emperor, fight the good patriotic fight like the clones did before you, and so on.)

 

The clones were portrayed pretty differently in the pt and tcw. The pt movie clones were much more foreboding than their nice guy tcw counterparts. The ending of AOTC made it clear the clone army was not a good thing, it isn't something the republic would do but the empire would do. This is why the imperial march was played while the clones massed for combat. It was the beginning of the end for the republic. Something to remember that much like Anakin and Vader, the empire is a twisted and perverted republic. I think it was pretty telling that the Sith chose a ruthless and seedy bounty hunter of all people to clone an army from. The clones did act like Jango in ROTS, so many of his traits were copied into his clones by design. Order 66 showed the clones' true nature. Clones are mass manufactured and disposable people who only fight, kill, or die.

As for why use clones instead of normal people? There are many reasons. As AOTC states and ROTS shows, clones are genetically engineered to be less independent and docile to obey all orders without question. So they are manufactured to be loyal beyond question. Another reason is because they are clones, you can engineer whatever traits you want into them, such as loyalty and reduction in empthy, which Jango lacked in the first place. Clones would also lack overriding loyalty to family and friends which normal soldiers have which is a real life issue. Since clones are rasied from childhood, you can further condition and brainwash them to be loyal soldiers who lack any life outside of being soldier. Clones lacking a family makes them highly disposable as their is no one to mourn them or to payoff. Next clones are basically slave soldiers, they co not get pay or leave, retirement pensions, or pensions to dependants if they are killed. It also frees the empire from maintain any pretence of staying popular as people do not join or betray unpopular sides, in the ot the empire was rapidly losing popularity.

Going with your TIE example, a mass produced disposable craft is best piloted by a mass produced disposable clone. When ever you want to subjugate a group of people you first render them powerless. You disarm the peons, forbid them from having weapons or how to fight, they create a warrior class to enforce them. By using clone troops, you deny training to normal people as there would not be veterans to pass on what they lean. Plus in real life veterans are viewed as liabilities and have been known to turn on governments they once served. As for costs, the empire is nationalizing the economy in the ot, they can easily nationalize cloning. Palps does not appear to be concerned about costs with building larger SDs and moon size superweapons, a clone army would be a small drop in the bucket. Plus clones, like any massed produced product would have economy of scale.

The term clonetrooper was never utter onscreen in any of the pt films. It was term marketing, not Lucas came up with. Lucas called the clones, stormtroopers during writing of the pt and in interviews. He also had Jango bump his head like the ANH stormtrooper, as he stated he thought it would funny to show how Jango's head bumping got cloned into all the stormtroopers.

Overall, the empire can promote clones as non real people who do all the fighting and dying so its citizens don't have to. But in reality, the clones are really there to ruthlessly subjugate its citizens and keep them untrained peons. Even draftees and shanghied come with big price tags, and losing too many of your citizen based soldiers will invalidate the perceived legitimacy of your government, as well as reduce your population of productive age workers. Cloning is a sustainable source of soldiers as you manufacture them, only thing better in this regard are droids. Lastly, cloning soldiers, creating life to kill or die is a perversion of life itself and goes against nature and the lightside of the force. Mass manufacturing sentient life like that is highly disturbing and fits the cold machine mentality of the empire. There isn't a nation on Earth that would not prefer to manufacture troops who are more pliable and less prone to doubt or question orders than normal conscripts.