THE CLONE WARS... before the Prequels came out!

As much as I enjoy the Prequel EU and movies, I want to remember the time before the prequels, because it had many interesting stuff and ideas or speculations about what was to come, here some examples for discussion, add more if you wish!

Before the Prequels, the clone wars were longer than 3 years, taking place around 30 before ANH up to 20 before ANH. We knew there were clones involved, and we new of Mandalorian armies involved, but thought they would be opponents, not one and the same. (ok, the resurrected Mandalorians of spar worked for the separatists, but the clone army is mandalorian, too to some degree, but that aside for now).

We new of Boba fetts past, as stormtrooper and as Jaster Mereel. (no discussion about that please, enough other topics already do this!)

We knew of the dreadnaughts as main ships in the clone wars, and heard of Mandalorians purging the Jedi, helping with their mandalorian designed ships that can held jedi captives.

we heared of pellaeon and others who served in the clone wars.



I always imagined the clone wars as Mandalorians vs. Clones. a dark force, the mandalorians, attacking the republic out of conquering wishes and Senator Palpatine was a just man, who was not corrupted by power but driven by a dream of security. like anakin now dreams of being able to save everybody. Palpatine was given power and he took it to solve the crisis, creating a clone army. braveheart like jedi armies assisted by clone contingents against the mandalorians. palpatine saw that his plans worked, that he was able to end the clone wars after the long time, but he saw the galaxy returning to the injustices it had before the wars and so he didnßt give back power, but wanted his dream come true, and used every way availeable to reach his goal, total security, through total control. and so he attrackted during the wars the dark lord who gave him knowledge how to reach this goal, not knowing that the dark lord was behind the mandalorians. and so palpatine corrputed... anakin fell and was at his side. the sith lord killed by anakin. the jedi were purged because the sith had come from their order, no jedi means no possibility of future sith, besides palpatine and vader, who ensure power and security.


this was my theory back then, before the prequels came out.

 

I always thought Anakin would be the greatest of all Jedi.

I also thought Palpatine was always evil. Him as a Sith was confirmation of my beliefs.

I thought some side would be wielding clones but admittedly not the Jedi

 

Certainly not bad, but I prefer what we actually got. At least you didn't think the Jedi were going to be fighting against the clones, which a lot of people thought before Episode II despite the fact that in my opinion that would have defeated the whole purpose of the story.

 

I was very young when I heard about the prequals coming out(3rd Grade?). The main image I've always had was of a Jedi fighting a Dark Jedi in the rain on some sort of city planet.

Weird, yes, but that image has always stuck in my mind.

 

EDIT- that kinda spells out that spoiler to a degree, so i'm removing it

 

Another Galaxy, Another Time...

The Old Republic was the Republic of legend, greater than distance or time. And for a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. Before the Dark Times - before the Empire.

Obi-Wan Kenobi, General and Jedi Knight, fought in the Clone Wars, serving Bail Organa of Alderaan. Fighting with him, another Jedi, Anakin Skywalker - a cunning warrior, a good friend, and the greatest starfighter pilot in the galaxy.

When he met Anakin, Obi-Wan was amazed at how strongly the Force flowed in him. He thought that he could train him as well as Yoda, the Jedi Master who had instructed him.

Obi-Wan's brother, Owen Lars knew Anakin, but didn't hold with his ideals - he thought he should stay on Tatooine, and not get involved in the Clone Wars. Instead, Anakin followed Obi-Wan off on an idealistic crusade, and became a hero. The pilot who would fly as Red Leader at the Battle of Yavin, was awed to meet him when he himself was just a boy.

But Obi-Wan's pride had terrible consequences for the Galaxy. Anakin fell to the Dark Side. Obi-Wan thought that there was still good in him, but after a lightsaber duel, Anakin fell into molten lava, and became Darth Vader. He hunted down and destroyed the Jedi Knights. President Palpatine took absolute power, and the Republic was replaced by the Galactic Empire.

Obi-Wan took Anakin's son Luke back to Tatooine, where he was raised by Owen - who told him that his father had been a navigator on a spice freighter. The Jedi became a hermit, keeping his friend's lightsaber, which Anakin had wanted his son to have when he was old enough.

But there was another Skywalker, who remained safely anonymous: Princess Leia, adopted daughter of Bail Organa, whose real mother died when she was very young.

***

All that is based on scripts, filmed cutscenes, and matter in the ANH and RotJ novellizations - all of it, in other words, is from George Lucas himself... and while very little of it is categorically different from what we see in the Prequels, there are certain serious shifts of emphasis in there...

From the EU, we were led to expect that that the space navy and presidential palace of the Old Republic had been known as the "Imperial Fleet" and the "Imperial Palace" long before Palpatine took power.

The clone wars were underway thirty-five years before ANH, and by the last stages of the war, large numbers of clone warriors - grown too quickly by the Clonemasters in Spaarti Cylinders - had gone insane. The Mandalorian Shocktroopers from the planet Mandalore were enemies of the Jedi during the same conflict, and other disturbances around the same time involved Jedi Knights dealing with Dark Jedi at Bpfashh and with the Jensaari at Susevfi.

At Susevfi, Corellian Jedi Neeja Halcyon - a representative of a distinct Corellian tradition within the Order - was killed fighting alongside Tatooine-born "Desertwind" - Obi-Wan Kenobi. He left a young son, Valin, who was adopted by his friend, Intelligence officer Rostek Horn, and renamed as "Hal Horn" when the Jedi Purge began.

A leading officer of the Old Republic's military was Admiral Adar Tallon, whose flagship was the Batallion, a starfighter tactician who formed a deadly military partnership with the strategist and future Alliance General, Jan Dodonna...



Except for the dating faffle, which was always problematic, the exclusion of all the rest of that represents no more or less than the sacrifice of strict continuity for the sake of "kewl" but horribly twisted and problematic borrowing of plot-elements from the earlier EU...

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Of course, everyone forgets that there was also the story of Atha Prime, the "architect of the Clone Wars," before Lucas' vision made old Atha go bye-bye (unless you count the fact that concept art for Atha was resurrected for the Imperial Sentinels guarding the Byss cloning facility in "Dark Empire").

 

Atha Prime has been mentioned somewhere, I'm sure of it.

 

I think he was sneaked into the Fact Files - he's got a hand in the Betrayal storyline now.

 

I always saw it as a series of conflicts taking place at least fifty years before the original trilogy, fought by the Republic vs. several "Clone Masters," all of whom also fought against one another. I figured there were at least three distinct wars, with lulls of a few years in between, with the last one a war against hordes of insane clones. I figured there would be a handful of insane dark jedi clones thrown in, with the republic slowly being torn apart throughout the wars until at the end of the last one Palpatine declared the empire. I never saw palpatine as the creator of it.

To be honest I'm kind of disappointed with the current clone wars. I don't think it makes too much sense-- the clones are the good guys, the bad guys are droids, so why not call it the Droid Wars? Or the first Civil War? Also it doesn't explain why clones are now seen as bad... they were the good guys, you'd think that the public would look at them all as heros. Although it does explain why many in the OT and afterwards hate droids. Personally, I never liked that Palpatine started the whole thing in so convoluted a way, it makes the whole conflict seem completely pointless and the jedi look like idiots. And the "Clone Wars" are only three years long? Why the heck are they called Wars then? Most earth wars were longer than that... I wanted to see a long, devastating war like the hundred years war. Not some three year skirmish.

 

What on earth does the length of a war have to do with the scale of it?

The first world war lasted 4 years and 20,000,000 people died, but I suppose because it only lasted 4 years it was just a skirmish...

Its called the Clone wars because it contained many individual conflicts within the overall war. I mean all it really is hundreds (possibly thousands) of individual wars on different planets, with a few massive campaigns like Durge's lance. Id imagine the term "clone wars" came about afterwards, at the time everyone probably did what everyone always does, just call it "the war."

 

1 thing I critic most about the clone wars is the numbers of clones. every source states total only about 3 million clones or less and that is too few to cover a galaxy at war. that is even few compared to earths world war numbers

 

largely everyone assumes the Clone Wars are a reference to a BAD thing.

It occurs to me it could be a mention of PRIDE amongst the people of the Star Wars galaxy.

For example its usually called the "Rebellion"

Even by the Rebels.

And let's not forget the Napoleonic Wars.

 

Well, I always had this idea of Jedi and the Republic versus the clones, no droids. I figured it was just an alliance of cloners that wanted to conquer the galaxy, and the only thing really keeping the Republic from losing was the insanity issue with the clones.

Eventually, the cloners are defeated, and the galaxy is in ruins. Out of the chaos, Palpatine arises, promising to rebuild the galaxy, and establish peace and order.

 

Three million clones are NOTHING. Hell, there were two battles in World War I that had casualties of over a million soldiers; three million clones would barely be enough to be the total police force of a backwater planet like Tatooine.

Personally, I definately would rather have seen the Clone Wars turn out the way they were hinted at being in the older EU, especially The Thrawn Trillogy. Compared to what I had imagined, the actual Clone Wars are completely tame.

 

The problem with 3 million clones is I think people misinterpret how they were utilized.

"Tarkin, the enemy has 10 billion troops."
"Ah good to hear. Nuke the planet."
"Yessir."

Next one

"Sir, the enemy is providing fierce fighting."
"Clone Commander, secure the city by destroying the stuff that can hurt us then rapel in and take the president."
"Yessir."
"Then nuke the planet."

 

before the prequils and before i got into the eu i always thought the clone wars were fought between jedi and clones of dark jedi.

 

And the fact that the clones aren't the only ones fighting. As seen on Jabiim and the Freedom Sons there are potentially billions of people in this conflict.

 

"before the prequils and before i got into the eu i always thought the clone wars were fought between jedi and clones of dark jedi."


That had always been my thought. I thought that the Jedi got wiped out by the Sith and a lot of Dark Jedi that had been cloned. I had no idea these were Jedi an Troops fighting droids and some other human soldiers.

There was no way I ever saw this being a Battlefield war, but I was mistaken. The only thing I ever knew was that Obi-Wan and Anakin got into a duel and Anakin became Darth Vader, that was about it. The Attack of the Clones came out and I was shocked. Well not shocked, but suprised.

 

true, but I always thought that...

there where the 3 million Jango clones

and during the war the cloners of kamino and other worlds opend more cloning centers like Khomm, Mount tantis etc. where they created aditional forces. the 3 million could only mean the kaminoan created. but there would be much more clones, maybe even of other warriors besides jango.

and adding to these massive forces the local forces, like freedoms suns, then it would indeed make sense. yes.

maybe clone madness was "bad clones" because they had no more genetic samples of jango and started cloning the clones from clone dna. that went not as planned and they got clones turning mad and dying faster than the original ones. for we know the original clones don´t die as fast and don´t get mad, only few did.

we have retired clones as of ANH, and clones still alive on backwater worlds that got left behind! (see Hard Contact and the new Jabiim Empire comic)

 

I thought of the battles as Braveheart style massive lightsaber battles hehe... *dreaming* oh well that would be fun, Geonosis arena just hinted at something like that

 

That would be Rusaan... [face=silly]

 

we need a PC game about the ruusan battle, the comic was great, but cutscenes and Jedimissions seem to sound cool.

 

Am I the only one that sees the Clone Wars that we got as being tame compared to what we were told?

According to much of the older EU, the Clone Wars "devestated the galaxy" and destroyed "countless worlds". But what we've seen, both in AOTC and the EU, seems nothing like that whatsoever. Dammit, I wanted to see planets dying by the dozens, billions of refugees fleeing the planets, fleet engagements with thousands of capital ships fighting at a time, planets covered in soldiers fighting, etc.

As for the three million clones, it certainly seems implied that the Clones are the backbone of the Republic army; which is sad, considering that the U.S. Army alone contains close to four million troopers. Seriously, one would expect a lower number of three hundred billion or so clonetroopers in a galaxy-spanning battle; and even that means that there'd only be one Clonetrooper for ever four or so planets. In reality, a galaxy wide war would take several trillion soldiers on both sides.

Which is why I tend to ignore most of the things Lucas says. Even if it is his story, some of the things he says are so implausible that there's simply no buying them.

Take this mathematical exercize, for example:

Let's say that Kamino miraculously began producing ten million Clonetroopers a year for the twenty five years Palpatine was in power {meaning they are producing three and one third times as many soldiers in one year as they did in the ten years between TPM and AOTC}

10,000,000 x 25= 2,500,000,000 + the 3,000,000 they already had comes out to 2,503,000,000 troopers; or roughly a third of the population of one Earth-like planet.

Now take the number of stars in their galaxy {there are one hundred billion stars in ours, so we'll use that number} and multiply it by, say, nine {highly conservative} to derive the number of planets in their galaxy:

5,000,000,000 planets {assuming that all star systems have but five planets; when it seems like the number of planets in our star system, nine, is fairly small compared to recent extra-solar discoveries of planets}

This means that there'd be roughly one soldier for every two planets in their galaxy; not accounting for security forces, troopers stationed aboard ships, SpecForces, etc.

Which goes to show that the three million as per AOTC is inanely random. Either there are hundreds of thousands of other cloning facilities on Kamino or other worlds, or fresh recruits make up ~99% of the ranks of "Clonetroopers".

Yes, yes, I know; it's "George's story"-- but I come from a family with a history of military tradition dating back to the American Revolution, and this infuriates me. Three million? One country on one PLANET is having problems keeping its military large enough to be operable with a relatively equal number of troopers. Osama bin Laden would have better chances coming to the United States by himself, defeating the U.S. army, and holding the States by force than the Republic would at taking and holding even half a galaxy with nary three million troopers.

Hence, I definately believe the Stormtroopers are almost entirely recruits. It explains the height differences in the OT, and the numbers simply do not make any sense otherwise. I hate to say it, but Lucas be damned.

[/rant]