Heroes on BOTH sides?

"There are heroes on both sides. Evil is everywhere."

-RotS crawl

Where are the heroes on the other side? Grievous, Dooku, and Gunray are wholly villainous dudes, and they run an army of droids. Those words in the opening crawl suggest a moral ambiguity that never really shows up in the film. What's the point of making such a big statement if the film's not going to back it up?

 

They may be villians to the Jedi and the Republic, but they are heroes to the Seperatists. So what the opening sprawl says is true, from a certain pont of view.

 

Sort of reminds me of Padme's line to Anakin, asking if it had occurred to him that they might be on the wrong side.

Palpatine is the most evil being of all and he's leading the Republic.

That being said, I'm also not sure who on the Separatist side could be considered a hero. I can think of some I would describe as "less evil than others," but no real heroes.

 

I personally don't find anyone to be a hero either, but to a Seperatist sypathiser Dooku is a Hero because he's standing up to the oppressive Republic. Grievous is a hero because he's leading an army against the oppressive Republic. Gunray is a hero for braking away from the Republic and so on. Looka at it in terms of our world. Al Queda is evil to most of the world, right? But to those who follow the ideas of Al Queda they are heros. I don't agree with that sentiment, but to them that's the case. The same thing would be applied to those who are behind the CIS. I don't agree with it, I don't find any of them to be heroes, but to their side they are.

 

Yep, its a point of view thing.

I think there is a thread on this already or is it deja vue on my part ?

 

Eh, this moral ambiguity is never really shown. Yes, Palpatine is the leader of the Republic, but rarely do you see the Republic engaging in wholesale butchery like with Grievous. It's kind of foolish to put that in the opening crawl when the enemy commander is a card carrying villain.

Show, don't tell.

 

I have mixed feelings about this.

I agree it's just a reference to the different perspectives of people on different sides in the war.

And not everything has to be graphically illustrated, especially a fairly obscure throwaway line in the opening crawl. It's just back information about what's going on really. We are never shown the trade route taxation being pushed through the legislature either. I suppose "show don't tell" is a good policy to have, but you can't show everything. The movie would have been 5 hours long.

Still, they could have say thrown in a shot of people on some Confederacy world rooting for Grievous. That would have been nice. But then again, I imagine everyone would be complaining about how "confusing" that was and how you "need clearly defined villains" or whatever.

It's probably worth noting that in The Clone Wars show they haven't shown the Separatist leaders as heroes to people on Confederacy worlds yet either.

 

but rarely do you see the Republic engaging in wholesale butchery like with Grievous.

The Separatist army consists mostly of droids, while the Republic uses mostly human clones. To us, its silly to call destroying a droid "butchery", while destroying a clone could come under that classification.

If the droids had AI like 3CPO, I can see them considering Gen Grievous a hero.

 

There were no clear cut villians during the Clone War as far as the people were concerned. Their heroes were those who fought on their behalf during the war.

 

To me, the "heroes on both sides" comment in the crawl has always been totally out of step with what we are shown in the movies themselves.

Granted - some who were fighting for the Separatist cause COULD have had very noble motives. And granted, in any war, there are those who are either genuinely heroic, or who are at least SEEN as heroic, by those on that side. But I have to say, the movies sure made NO effort to bolster this notion. The cringing, conniving, cowardly Nute Gunray? The wheezing, cackling, hand-wringing, murderous General Grievous? The lying, two-faced, wicked Count Dooku? These guys don't even seem ambiguous - they are villainous. It wouldn't have been hard, at all, for Lucas to have thrown in some heroic, honorable, tragic "dupes", taken in by Dooku and company, but nope... all the Seperatists we see are portrayed (both visually and in action) as negative, as villains...

The crawl sure seems oddly out of synch. Found it jarring the first time, and every time since, to be candid...

Shadow

 

I actually saw Dooku as a tragic dupe, and Gunray to an extent. But they weren't heroes.

 

I think Dooku to a certain extent knew what he was doing, literally joining the Sith and all that.

On the other hand, the whole deal was a total whoosh for Mr. Gunray. I felt bad for him a bit, though I probably shouldn't, what with him being a murderous profiteering war criminal and everything.

 

Dooku joined the Sith because he thought the Jedi were corrupt and ineffective, and after Qui-Gon died, he was disgusted with them altogether. Sort of like Anakin in that respect, except that as far as we know, Dooku was not trying to save anyone's life.

I feel bad for him to a point because Sidious used him as a seat-warmer for Anakin and quickly dumped him when it became convenient to do so. But yes, he did make the choice and I can't feel sorry for him for that.

Gunray I kind of feel bad for, up to the point that he was actively trying to have Padme killed.

 

Grievous, Dooku, etc. These are the "star players" of the Separatists just as the Republic has Skywalker, Kenobi, etc. And, of course, at the same time evil is everywhere. The two lines spell out extremes that seem to cancel each other out, and in turn provide clear symbolism for the fact that both sides of the war will cease to exist by the film's end.

 

on both sides.
This can be considered wrong. There are really 3 sides. The Republics', the Separatists', and Sidious' side.

 

It's probably alluding to TESB with Luke saying about his father who was a great warrior and Yoda saying war's not make one great.

There are really no heroes in ROTS.

The closest to a hero is Obi-1, but he also gets caught up in some of the back-room Jedi intrigue, was saved by Anakin at start of film and ends up chopping him in pieces by end of film.

Obi and Anakin are the only two who really do stand-out heroic deeds in the film; Yoda, Padme and Bail Organa heoric moments being more of the do their best type feel in a resigned situation. Mace's heroic bit is really a hit job so less so...and he goes out the window having only understood at the very end of his death that had been completely mis-judging lots of stuff.

Anakin's heroic tragedy in his fall to the dark side is diminished because we really only see the political toll it's taken on him, so his heroics are only seen/felt in this backdrop.

I'd say it wasn't an oversight having this in start of opening crawl with it jarring with content of film, & i don't think it was meant to downgrade heroic acts that go on in wars either. Is cluing the viewer to transcend the war itself, & the sides therein, against a bigger narrative is perhaps the point.

 

IMHO, the movies, however, make no bones about it... Sidious is EVIL, not misunderstood or tragically "picked on" by the Jedi (although he is only too happy to use suggestions of the same to manipulate Anakin, who is chafing under Jedi restrictions); Dooku's motives are not presented in the movies but IN THE MOVIES he is presented as a haughty, arrogant, cruel - if elegant - villain; Grievious is most definitely portrayed (in appearance - an one has to remember that in movies, unlike real life, appearance is DESIGNED for effect!) as a murderous, dangerous villain; Gunray is a whining, murderous, lying coward; when Anakin turns, he turns to EVIL (as if slaughtering a group of kids wasn't clue enough!). The movies talk a good game at suggesting that "moral equivalence" is a legit, sophisticated worldview (frankly I don't agree!) but then the CONTENT of the movies present nothing of the sort.

And I have to take issue that there are NO heroes in ROTS. Heroes don't have to be flawless, just as villains can have SOME elements of good in them. Obi Wan, Mace, Yoda, Bail Organa, Qui-Gonn, the Jedi as a whole ... are, IMHO, clearly heroes, forces for good. They may not always be right, they may sometimes fail, they definitely make mistakes, but the SW movies are not about a contest between two equivalent philosophies or outlooks. They are a contest between the evil Sith, and the forces of GOOD. IMHO.


Shadow

 

The only hero in the Saga is R2-D2, who is put next to C3PO for 6 movies...

 

It's not really something seen in the films. Even the show hasn't gone there yet. The EU has certainly showcased the idea, though.

 

I think the line was really intended to remind the viewer that theres a moral ambiguity to the Clone Wars, that its not a simple good against evil fight because Palpatine is playing both sides and the Jedi should never really have got involved in the war in the first place.

However, a better way of getting this across might have been to say:

THERE ARE VILLAINS ON BOTH SIDES. EVIL IS EVERYWHERE

 

It's a good question, because the movie shows us the pro-Republic, pro-Jedi perspective on the events of the story. However, "evil being everywhere" also reminds us that neither side is all good; it's a hint at Palpatine's true identity and the fact that the Republic is about to become the Empire. But to be fair, there are heroes within the Republic and within the ranks of the Jedi. And it is also important to remember that there are multiple sides to every situation. There is not enough time to show us this specifically, but think about how many citizens on how many worlds are in support of their planets supporting the Separatists. These are not evil people, they are just people who believe (rightly or wrongly) that the Separatist cause is noble, and that the best interests of their own planets are not being met by the Republic. So characters like Count Dooku and the Separatist leaders could be seen as heroes to them. They don't see what we do about the darkness, greed, or cowardice of these characters... and nobody on either side sees early enough that the whole conflict is being orchestrated by one man, a Sith lord who is about to become Emperor with the support of the Senate.

 

Given that we never see any of these citizens and all the fighting is carried out by droids, it's entirely possible that the citizenry of the Separatist worlds are horribly oppressed. The leaders of the CIS are depicted as callous bankers and businessmen; it's entirely possible that they pulled out of the Republic because its rules about things like slavery were interfering with the bottom line.

For all we know, the only Separatists supporting the Separatists are the nasty bad guys on top.

 

Yes, I'm sure that is the case for many of the planets represented by the CIS. But I just think that with thousands of systems on that side, some of them must include planets that have unoppressed citizens who do believe in the cause. That doesn't mean, however, that many of them have not been fed misleading propaganda by the Separatist leaders (or their own local leaders who are in cahoots with the Separatist leaders).

 

The Clone Wars novels all support this. The CIS took over various worlds because they needed their resources, and implemented tyrannical practices on the populations, essentially enslaving some of them.

 

It comes down to showing vs. telling, which is something Lucas tends to have issues with. We're told that there are heroes on both sides, but nothing we're shown matches this. Leia tells us that "Somehow...[she's] always known" Luke was her brother, and that certainly doesn't match what we've been shown up to that point.