How can any decent person be a SW stormtrooper fan?

Lucas states in the AOTC DVD commentary that the stormtroopers were clones in the OT. I've read a few novels written after ROTS was released which feature stormtroopers that were recruits.

 

I think it was about 2/3rds clones and 1/3rd recruits in ANH. After the clone rebellion on Kamino, the Empire lost its reliable cloning technology and was going to use Spaarti cloning technology, but it made the clones too unstable.

 

Really? Come on...

 

Yea, gotta have some explanation for how pathetic the OT Stormtroopers' aim is, and Recruits vs Clones is as good as any other explanation.

 

I wonder if he's also as upset about Roddenberry's atheism creeping into the Trek narrative?

In in Roddenberry's case it was actually deliberate whereas with Lucas it's pure conjecture that he modeled the empire after Nazism.

 

The Spaarti cloning technology was never used for the production of clone troopers during Palpatine's rule. He used it exclusively for the production of his own personal clones to extend his life since like you said the accelerated process created mental instability. It was only Thrawn who started to use the cylinders to crank out Imperial troops for his campaigns.

 

A lot of the EU seems to legitimize the Empire between Thrawn and Jagged Fel & Jagged being so competent and cool (I haven't read much of the latter two), the Emperor's apprentice Mara Jade being a likable villain-turned-hero who marries Luke, Pellaeon being so reasonable and non-immoral and the New Republic only surviving in an altered form by incorporating it.

Liking villains' costumes is one thing but it seems some fans do like actual bad guys, or admire major aspects of them, as long as they weren't the worst of the worst.

It's a minority view but there are some suggestions Palpatine was motivated by and/or would have done better against the Vong.

 

If Lucas said it, it is. That's how Star Wars canon works. The question is whether or not someone can grab a quote of Lucas saying such a thing (although if memory serves all the stormtroopers in the original trilogy have had their dialogue redubbed by Temeura Morrison, which suggests that this is the case).

That's true (especially because Palpatine, the Trade Federation and so on are cartoonishly villainous) but there are issues about how the Jedi are handled in those films.

They're not the bad guys, but there are bigger moral issues you can charge the Jedi with then you can charge the Rebel Alliance with, and of course the enemy isn't as clear cut as 'the Empire' - they're tricked into fighting phantom menaces and strawman coalitions while the real threat uses these excuses to amass more power to himself.

I did see the Ryloth arc, and the 'political discourse' wasn't exactly that nuanced or complex to the point I felt it was shooting for something other an eight year old's head. There's this assumption that if something isn't phenomenally bland or idiotic it's not truly children's entertainment* (with the postscript THEREFORE IT IS OKAY FOR ME TO LIKE THIS). One can see this argument trotted out for pretty much every other Pixar film.

Now I did like the series and still have half a mind to catch up on it (it looked great in HD) but I don't have any illusions as to what its primary target audience is.

Nor do I think admitting what it is requires one to feel that the show is bad (which I don't) or that you can't enjoy it (which I did). But I just think then deciding that clearly this is not aimed at eight year olds is silly... and besides, what age were most of us, exactly, when we first watched Star Wars?

*Can also conflate children's entertainment with entertainment for toddlers. Clone Wars is definitely targeting an older audience than Sesame Street, but Sesame Street isn't a catch all 'children's entertainment' program.

 

I've read through this whole thread, and I have to admit, I find it fascinating. Immediately, everyone jumped on the original poster and mercifully made fun of them, and I myself, of course, agree with everyone that the opening poster's point of view is wrong and untenable. But I do think the question is more interesting than a lot of people here have given it credit for.

Our sense of morality in fiction is different from our sense of morality in real life. In other words, we feel different, morally, about the things that take place in fiction than we do about real-life equivalents. For example, we sympathize with Darth Vadar at the end of Return of the Jedi, simply because he turns good at the last moment. He dies a good man.

But IF Darth Vadar and the Empire were real, I don't think, frankly, that we would give a flying fuck whether Darth Vadar changed his mind at the last moment - he's a genocidal maniac, he's guilty of murdering billions of innocent people, and we would never forgive him.

In Silence of the Lambs, we actually like (or at least respect) Hannibal Lecter because a) he's the smartest guy in the room, and b) because we sense, somehow, that he will never eat Clarice.

But if Hannibal were a real person, in real life, regardless of his intelligence or his lack of desire to eat the cop who's been sent to question him, we would still despise him, fear him, and wish him dead. There would be no respect or sympathy or admiration wasted on this inhuman monster.

There are countless examples of this. We tend to forgive evil in movies, even within the context of the world of the movie, if there are any sympathetic elements to the character, or if they are terribly interesting or intelligent or funny or charming....whereas, in real life, even with those same characteristics, there would be no sympathy from us, or forgiveness.

It's as if fiction gives us permission to sympathize with or even enjoy a bit of evil, in a way that we can't, shouldn't, and wouldn't in real life. That's an aspect of art that I believe the opening poster has not taken into account. We are all unconsciously aware of this distinction because, as I said, there are countless examples of characters in films that we sympathze with, or even like, that, if they had real-life counterparts, we would despise (Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, Darth Vadar, perhaps even the Doctor himself in Doctor Who....)

So -if people admire or enjoy fictional characters who have evil aspects, this in no way reveals anything about how they would feel if those fictional characters had real-life counterparts. As soon as they become real, people's moral views of them change - if Darth Vadar or the stormtroopers were real people, I promise you, opening poster, that people would not be prancing around dressed up as them.

 

My gosh, he's a Sith Lord. That's almost as bad as being a Kenyan Muslim.

I'm sorry, but his religious affiliation, even if it's true, has no bearing on his fitness to serve in the office of Supreme Chancellor.

 

That did not happen. Boba's dialogue was redubbed.

I don't know if it's that cut-and-dried. Do the presumed Jedi misdeeds outweigh the thing about Death Star construction workers?

 

Very well. Even so, if Lucas says that all stormtroopers ever are clones of Jango Fett, then that's what it is. If such a quote can be found.

That's absolutely true, but in fairness it's a distinction that has been brought up in the thread. The issue is Ian Keldon takes an undisputed point - the Empire was an evil organization guilty of mass murder and genocide in the fictional universe of Star Wars - and reaches the conclusion that not only should nobody dress up as members of this evil organization, doing so implicitly endorses them as the good guys of that narrative.

I mean honestly, do you think anyone who dresses up as a stormtrooper was rooting for Luke to miss his shot and for the Death Star to blow up Yavin when they first saw that movie?

People can definitely talk about the issues with Star Wars' morality in general (and the redemption of Vader is part of this - indeed him dying implicitly for his sins is a conveinent way to sidestep any long term ramifications of his redemption) but the way Keldon is framing it is a little... much.

They're a lot murkier.

If you accept the premise that there can be a just war, and that the cause the Rebels support is just, then you also accept there are circumstances where civilian casualties are acceptable, like with the destruction of a massive planet-exploding military installation.

On the other hand, accepting the premise that there is a just war to be fought does not require you to accept that you must fight it with an army of intelligent beings that has been expressly bred for this purpose and has literally no choice in the matter. You can argue that using the clones is the right call to make, sure, but it is something that requires a little further argument beyond 'can there be a just war.'

So yeah, one can fairly make arguments about the Rebel Alliance and the Jedis, but the case against the Jedi is a little stronger than it is against the Rebel Alliance.

 

I don't think he went so far as to specifically say they were all Jango clones, but it does look like he said stormtroopers were clones "early on" and he does seem to say they're clones in the present tense during sort of a quasi-comical association he makes at one point. I thought there was a comment floating around somewhere official that said they were a mix of clones and recruits, but I can't find it.

 

Exactly. Beyond the whole fiction/reality thing, there seems to be some confusion here between being a "fan" of something and seeing them as the good guys. The world is full of Godzilla fans who don't necessarily approve of stomping on entire cities.

But wait. Godzilla was originally a big, scaly metaphor for the A-bomb, so clearly, by the OP's reasoning, people who collect Godzilla toys are endorsing nuclear devastation . . .

 

^^^ Plus, how many Trek fans dress up as Klingons. Most Klingons are cold blooded murderers as depicted in Trek - in fact Worf is the exception to the rule.

 

^
I believe he's conflating the attitudes of the Army in the 1920s and early 1930s - when the Nazis were just a far-right political party in the German political landscape - to the attitude of the army in the 1940s.

 

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By comparing SS Totenkopfverbände to lousy Stormtroopers, Ian Keldon insults each and everyone who fought against them.

 

I wish we could insert some sophisticated CGI into Ian's argument so it'd make a whole lot more sense, but alas even that is beyond the skills of the greatest effects and graphics artists in the business. I've gotta go with Jarod on this...comparing fictional space soldiers with Adolf Hitler's SS is incredibly insulting to the collective memory of surviving veterans of the European campaigns as well as one of the most absurd arguments I think I've ever read in more than a decade on the TrekBBS.

And if you've seen some of the board arguments I have that's saying a lot.

 

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