Lit Should the Clone Wars have lasted longer?

I think it would have been better if the Clone Wars lasted longer then 3 years (maybe 5 or more)

More time for Obiwan and Anakin and Ashoka to be together. Give more space for stories of characters and factions that will end in RoTS. Ashoka would sure have more time to grow as a Jedi apprentice before order 66.

A longer war could further influence why many in the Republic accepted an Empire.

 

I would say from an IU perspective, no I don’t think it had to be per se.

From an out of universe publishing perspective, it would have been better if it was. To fill in all the content of clone wars era stuff.

Because three years and all the TCW content, novels, comics, the movies, video games, etc... has filled it to the brim. Events in the clone wars now are often separated by weeks and days, in universe. So jam packed of content it is.

From a publishing and timeline maintenance POV, five years would have been better.

Thus you could have done, by having it start earlier. Which means, you’d need to adjust timescales when characters were born and when events took place. TPM for example might be seen as having occurred in 37 BBY. And Anakin born in 46 BBY.

Though doing that may have caused its own problems.

 

Unfortunately the Star Wars timeline is always going to be a bit wonky. You could have extended the Clone Wars or made it start earlier and it still wouldn't be perfect. Just kinda have to roll with it. I think something that would help the Clone Wars is if we explored more characters during that era instead of focusing on Obi-Wan and Anakin. I think most of the problems are because we are just seeing it from their PoV instead of seeing the grander scope of everything.

 

Yeah, i find the notions of the early EU before the Prequels about the Clone Wars, and the different way it was supposed to happen (Clones and/or Mandalorian Supercommandos as the enemies of the Republic) as well as that there were more than one Clone War with the entire timespan of the conflict(s) lasting more than two decades, way more interesting and also more logical than what we got with the prequels.

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While I've never had much of a problem with the current three-years-and-change length of the war, I do like the hypothetical idea of a longer war that ravages the galaxy even more and creates a greater, longer bond between Anakin and Ahsoka. Not sure how that would have aligned with the ages of the actors and such, but in a perfect world a five or ten-year war (or series of wars - the Clone Wars, after all) would have been interesting to see.

 

I really think the Clone Wars being plural is fine as is. There were thousands of conflicts happening on different planets, a lot of proxy wars between the CIS and the Republic. The various Quarren/Mon Cala conflicts, for instance - that could be its own war right there.

Even something like our planet's own WWII was made of various disparate wars that all just happened to be happening at the same time among various alliances. What does Germany invading Poland really have to do with the Americans fighting in Japan?

 

The pre-ROTS books made it sound like the war was lasting much longer. Particularly the Boba Fett books, and I think Dark Rendezvous did the same.

I have to admit, three years does seem a bit anticlimactic when you look at the scope of the war across the galaxy.
I think the biggest plus to making it longer would have been giving Palpatine more time to continue manipulating Anakin, since there were long stretches of time during the war where the latter was on the field.
On the other hand, I think Anakin and Obi-Wan’s friendship would have improved as it did between AOTC and ROTS, and grown even stronger with the additional intervening years.

With an even older, more mature Anakin, would he have been as vulnerable to the dark side as he was in canon, even given thetemptation to supposedly save Padme’s life?

 

Nah, why? The purpose of the war thematically is a falseflag, with only one intention - get Palpatine into power. Once that's done, he has no reason to keep the war going, so he uses the conflicts of the Clone Wars to increase more and more power to himself.

 

Would be better if the Clone Wars weren't directly caused by Palpatine and he would have just used the chaos, destruction and death of the war to get into power.

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I'd have certainly liked them to.

Last time I rewatched the prequels I pretended there was closer to ten years between AotC and RotS (with TPM having started around 42-40 BBY) and it just ... felt better.

I also prefer ANH Obi-Wan in his sixties.

EDIT: Also, yes, from an OOU perspective it gives the creatives more to play around with. Considering the enduring popularity of the Clone War era it did surprise me a little that we saw no reshuffling over the movie timeline after the reboot. Never figured the ten years I'd like would be on the cards but I could have seen it being bumped up to five.

 

Fans considering in-universe reasons why Sidious might end the war after only three years could look to the TCW season six arc where Tup's Order 66 programming triggered prematurely. Sidious's plans came dangerously close to being exposed during that incident, and while a longer war could benefit him in a number of ways I could easily see him accelerating his plans to avoid having more clones "triggering" before their time.

 

Ughh, I still hate the chip retcon.

From palpatine’s angle the war served certain purposes such as thinning and spreading out the Jedi, creating anti Jedi sentiment, militarizing the republic and making it ever more autocratic and getting the institutions and personnel in place for the new order.

A longer war might have made running the one man puppet show more and more taxing.

 

You and me both.

The explanation from (I believe) Karen Traviss that Order 66 was just one of a bunch of contingencies (and a perfectly rational one; you're supposed to prepare for the unthinkable in wartime, especially with something as dangerous as a Jedi's abilities) was just fine.

 

I still feel pretty smug about having called the chip retcon years before the actual episode finally aired tbh. Upside of being a pessimist, I'm usually right!

Anyway yeah 7 years would've been good for the war(s) I think. Other than Owen and Beru having only interacted with Anakin once ever for like a total of maybe twenty minutes (if that) the timeline is probably the single most baffling decision made regarding the prequels. Like fiftysomething ANH Obi-Wan is the one most people think of and it definitely is weird but for me the real biggie is, Anakin goes Vader at 22? Really? Really really?? and then he's like, *45* when he dies? Really, George????

 

That would make him dramatically less intelligent and interesting as a villain.

The chip makes sense the moment the clones stop acting like fascists and more like people.

It makes more sense when you remember Qui Gon Jin was meant to be Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin originally closer to Ewan's age.

 

That worked really well for me actually. A lot of people make their worst decisions in their early twenties. ROTS had that nightmarish feel of a young person trying to do the right thing in the beginning and having it all go horribly wrong. Having been through a grueling UC Berkeley study in a major I was forced to accept (they didn't allow choices due to over-enrollment in popular fields), the time period between 2002 and 2005 was in a way my own personal Clone Wars and seeing ROTS in 2005 really resonated with me. As in I was watching a guy trying to do the right thing for years without reward and finally snapping, and saying, "Yeah, that could be me." (no, of course I'm not picking up a lightsaber etc but I understood that bitterness simmering over until it was too much)

Anyway, near as I can tell only the Legends Clone Wars is packed to the point literally everyone involved is in Jack Bauer "24" mode, accomplishing multiple battles in the course of a day.

Since Disney Canon for the Clone Wars is so empty other than TCW (even Genndy's microseries is not canon), 3 years works fine.

 

Guess that depends on the writing. I believe there would have been many ways to make Palpatine an intelligent and very fascinating villain, or even more so, without him being the mastermind behind the clone wars imo.

The state of the republic at the time of the prequels and the clone wars would have been more interesting if they weren't just caused by the manipulations of the Sith.

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Anakin is actually 23 in ROTS, the same age as Luke in ROTJ. I like how both their respective trilogies end at the same age. Plus there something even more horrifying about Vader being put in that iron lung at a young age.

Personally, all that evil clone/Super Mandalorian Clone Wars stuff is lame imo. Im glad there is more context to why the war exist other than a bunch of evil clones deciding they wanna kill people. That's such a boring and one dimensional idea for a war. The Clone Wars being a much less popular war is more fascinating, especially with the debate if the CIS should secede from the Republic.

 

Lame or great depend on what the reasons for the conflict are, how it started and of course the execution.

There would have been many ways to make another version of the clone wars with clones as the enemies of the republic and/or Mandalorian Supercommandos that might have been at least as good as the version we know from the PT if not even more.





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Exactly. Once TCW established the clones as loyal, decent, relatable, and human, the chip became something of a story necessity - with the added benefits of enhancing their pathos and providing an avenue to introduce clones who didn't execute Order 66 (they simply have the chip removed).

 

Years ago some people here in Lit were writing an alternate prequel trilogy fanfic (fun fact: there was also an alternate NJO involving Otherspace and the Charon) that was linked in somebody's signature. Episode I was called "A Call to Arms" and it opened with the Republic already at war with the Mandalorians. If it sounds strange, remember that in 1999 absolutely nothing had been established about the Mandos beyond Tales of the Jedi, and the prequel-era canvas was still completely blank.

I never read the fanfic but it did lead me to imagine a Clone Wars that was the Mandalorian Wars from KOTOR --- the Republic pushing back a Mando invasion, the Jedi refusing to get involved, but a Revanchist and his apprentice are leading a rogue Jedi faction in the fight. It's Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan, or maybe it's Obi-Wan and Anakin... anyway I'm drifting away from the topic at hand.

Even beyond that fanfic I seem to remember the idea of Episode I opening in the midst of the Clone Wars was a popular one here in Lit once upon a time. A Clone Wars that lasted more than three years. I don't know how relevant this post was to the thread but hey, it's what came to my mind!

 

Eckhartsladder and his friend Coreydatapad did some really cool videos about the Pre Prequels Clone Wars.





@Charlemagne19
You know, you probably had one of the best defenses of the Mind Chip thing I've seen, and I like it

 

There was? Any idea what happened to that fic?

 

Honestly I think the prequel movies as a whole just didn't really work timeline wise, even regarding the OT. The way Obi wan and other people talk about the clone wars in the OT make it sound like it happened a lot more than 20 years ago. Obi wan looks like he's aged way more than 20 years in between 3 and 4. Vader looks way older than 45 in ROTJ. And the fact that a galaxy wide war ended in only 3 years is kinda unbelievable. The whole timeline just kinda feels like a stretch, so I honestly try not to even think about it.