Spoilers The Controversial Star Wars Opinion Thread
- Thread starter fireproof78
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It's sad that this was abandoned. Even the ROTS novel had Dooku as a human supremacist and his ideas of the New Order were so incredibly interesting in terms of his motivation. It would have been an interesting dramatic take to see more of in the Prequels.
I've honestly never been a fan of that whole idea (see also: the EU's "No Girls Allowed!" Imperial policy), and for three basic reasons: -
1) It's pretty redundant considering the Empire and Rebellion were already both visually coded as supremacist all-white Imperialists and diverse, respectively. If you have to spell it out, you're missing the point!
2) It explicitly limits both the storytelling and casting potential if 99% of the characters on one side of a conflict *have* to be a specific ethnicity/gender. Representation needs to apply to heroes, villains and everything in-between. Evil has many faces.
3) Making it that specific form of evil diminishes the morality play aspect of the story. Again, evil comes in many forms after all, and making the villains in a morality play a direct 1-to-1 analogy to anything so historically specific makes it all too easy to pigeonhole and dismiss the underlying message as something as simplistic as "racism: bad!"
It needs to be more fundamental than that, and I think the clear message Star Wars gives when it comes to defining the ultimate villains is that they're always the ones that treat people as things. Evil takes may forms, like I said, but that's usually where it all starts, and the Empire most certainly does exactly that. Not just to the heroes of the tale, but even and perhaps most especially it's own people, which is itself a message carried over from Lucas's THX-1138. Is there a more dehumanised image in Star Wars besides that of Darth Vader and his Stormtroopers? You literally can't tell they're even people anymore.
I see the point, though personally I think it would add a different little flavor to Dooku and Palpatine in a sense. I think they the transactional relationship in their use of people would be more predominant as the war unfolded, and reflected a bit in the idea that instead of continuing to use a droid army they instead rely on a impersonal army made of people. Even if they are nonhumans serving you can't necessarily tell.
But the whole point of a prequel is to "spell things out." I'd say that if one were doing a drama about how the Weimar Republic turned into the Nazi fascist regime, and didn't prominently feature the Nazis' anti-semitism, one would be "missing the point."
I have nothing against women and non-white Imperials. A human supremacist movement can be cast with all kinds of humans. The only casting potential "limited" by keeping the Empire/First Order all-human would be fictional species.
I never found the idea of planets wanting to secede from the Galactic Republic a compelling or plausible reason to start a war. Not without highly important other factors (such as the United States' leaders wanting to stop the westward expansion of slavery, and their fears that a successful Confederate States would inevitably go to war with them sooner or later). YMMV.
I'd say the blatant evil of the Empire makes it more important for them to have offered a "positive" vision in their ascendant period, before they won total power, and like I said, in fascist ideologies, that "positive" vision always includes an Other. In the proto-fascist Confederacy, the "positive" vision was ensuring the permanence of slavery. In Mussolini's Italy, it was conquering and plundering "lesser" nations such as Ethiopia. In Nazi Germany, it was conquering and plundering the "lesser" Slavic people, and eliminating the Jews, Roma, "social deviants," etc. In North Korea, it's preserving the survival of the nation against the Americans and South Koreans, who will allegedly destroy the country at the first chance they get.
As depicted in the Prequel Trilogy, however, Palps and the Empire pretty much skip all that. There's a vague and undefined war against separatists, then some Jedi try to (allegedly) assassinate Chancellor Palpatine, and then, despite looking like a total ghoul and offering no discernible "positive" vision, apart from "the Jedi tried a coup!," democracy dies to thunderous applause. (The Jedi don't work as a viable other here, because there's zero apparent build-up to the Republic turning on them. For millennia, they're heroes, then Palps makes one speech, and they're suddenly The Other? Nah.) It's weak sauce, I'm afraid.
That misses the whole point of that war though. Neither side is supposed to "win", just grind down the galaxy's moral, consolidate control over resources (including people), and justify an unprecedented military build-up to impose a police state in the name of "stability and security."
Using droids and clones allows the Sith to more easily manipulate the be and flow. Droids after all don't think, just do what they're told, and with clones; the casualties don't matter to anyone. They have no families, no advocacy, no voice of their own; a disposable population.
As for the "flavour" of those particular characters: Dooku is an idealist corrupted by ambition. Someone that geninly cared about the state of society, sacrificed everything to acquire the power needed to affect the change he believed was right and needed in the galaxy, to the point where the acquisition of more power for it's own sake became the only thing he cared about anymore.
As for Palpatine; he's the devil. By design, he's a deeply uncomplicated character. The embodiment of selfish greed and ruthless cunning. To him, the only thing that means anything is having power over others, and he'll do anything to take and keep hold of that power.
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Apparently the Underworld series George Lucas was making would have explored Palpatine more making him more complicated, I'm glad that never happened.
If you stick to just the movies, sure, but the Clone Wars series helps flesh out all of this. Still no racism though.But the whole point of a prequel is to "spell things out." I'd say that if one were doing a drama about how the Weimar Republic turned into the Nazi fascist regime, and didn't prominently feature the Nazis' anti-semitism, one would be "missing the point."
I have nothing against women and non-white Imperials. A human supremacist movement can be cast with all kinds of humans. The only casting potential "limited" by keeping the Empire/First Order all-human would be fictional species.
I never found the idea of planets wanting to secede from the Galactic Republic a compelling or plausible reason to start a war. Not without highly important other factors (such as the United States' leaders wanting to stop the westward expansion of slavery, and their fears that a successful Confederate States would inevitably go to war with them sooner or later). YMMV.
I'd say the blatant evil of the Empire makes it more important for them to have offered a "positive" vision in their ascendant period, before they won total power, and like I said, in fascist ideologies, that "positive" vision always includes an Other. In the proto-fascist Confederacy, the "positive" vision was ensuring the permanence of slavery. In Mussolini's Italy, it was conquering and plundering "lesser" nations such as Ethiopia. In Nazi Germany, it was conquering and plundering the "lesser" Slavic people, and eliminating the Jews, Roma, "social deviants," etc. In North Korea, it's preserving the survival of the nation against the Americans and South Koreans, who will allegedly destroy the country at the first chance they get.
As depicted in the Prequel Trilogy, however, Palps and the Empire pretty much skip all that. There's a vague and undefined war against separatists, then some Jedi try to (allegedly) assassinate Chancellor Palpatine, and then, despite looking like a total ghoul and offering no discernible "positive" vision, apart from "the Jedi tried a coup!," democracy dies to thunderous applause. (The Jedi don't work as a viable other here, because there's zero apparent build-up to the Republic turning on them. For millennia, they're heroes, then Palps makes one speech, and they're suddenly The Other? Nah.) It's weak sauce, I'm afraid.
In the novels, source books and comics there was shown propaganda against the CIS because it made up of mostly non-human species.
I mean, not entirely. The people fighting it would feel there has to be some purpose despite the machinations of the Supreme puppet master.
Indeed. How does the conversation go, exactly?
Several planets: "We're not sure we want to be part of the Republic anymore. We'd rather be independent, because of... trade route taxation disputes, or something vague."
Trade Federation: "Great. Why don't all you Separatist planets ally together, in common cause? And, we just happen to have massive amounts of droid armies to fight your fight for you. That won't indebt you to us or infringe upon your independence in any way, so don't even worry about it."
Several planets: "Sure, we don't see anything suspicious about that."
Republic: "Oh, look, we just happen to have found this massive clone army that was created years ago for no apparent reason. Instead of negotiating a peaceful secession from the Republic with the planets that want to be independent, let's go to war with them, but since the clones will mainly be fighting corporate droids, there won't be too many stakes, apart from general environmental destruction, and the slow killing of lots and lots of Jedi."
Jedi: "Sounds good, we don't see anything suspicious about any of this."
Palpatine: "Hey look, everybody, I made a fascism! Without even an Other to demonize, or a vicious but selectively positive vision of the future to sell people! The fascism just happened, and maybe the Jedi were the Other, but they're all dead now, so, moot point! And all those separatist planets are apparently cool with being part of this new Empire of ours, for some reason. And also, I look like a total demon, but don't worry about that, it's fine!"
Galaxy: "Sounds good; none of this sounds at all suspicious. Let's tolerate a police state and the loss of our freedoms, despite the fact that there are no apparent threats to our security anymore. So glad nobody did a space racism along the way!"
That all... doesn't exactly seem like compelling worldbuilding to me.
And why would he want them to feel that? He wants people on the loyalist side to feel unsafe so he can ratchet up security and strip away liberties, resentful towards the Jedi so any ire is directed in a more useful direction. For the people on the Separatist side, he wants them to resent both the Jedi and the Senate. It's no accident that this war was orchestrated to be fought by two disposable armies that could be easily controlled.
Remember though, that there were non-Clone and non-Droid forces involved in the war, but they all seemed to have been defensive forces, while the Droids and Clones made up the vast majority of the expeditionary forces.
This has a number of upshots: 1) It guarantees that when actual citizens of either the Republic or the Confederacy do face the enemy, it will always be while they're protecting their homes from invaders. 2) It makes it much easier to distort and obfuscate what's actually going on out there from the general public, allowing both sides to again be fooled into thinking that the other is the main aggressor and they're just defending themselves. 3) It keeps casualties in populations that matter to Sidious relatively low, thus managing any anti-war sentiment and reducing political pressure from people getting sick of seeing friends and family coming home in body bags; thus allowing him to spin the war out as long as he needs it to last.
^ If the only way a story's worldbuilding makes coherent sense is "basically, everyone in the galaxy is an uncurious idiot, and thus doesn't really matter, except for literal Satan, who's a near-perfect evil genius," said worldbuilding may not be particularly accomplished or meaningful. 
Star Wars has never really had good worldbuilding. Everything in it was taken from whatever floated around in George's head at the time.
That's where the EU content Star Wars: (Cartoons + Novels + Comics + Games + Reference Manuals) comes in.
They help fill out the universe & build on the lore so much.
This is true. And many books and contradictions are written to try and sort out what is ultimately because George said so.
To focus on an attacker so they're blind to other things that are going on. You illustrate this quite well but miss the idea that people might need a reason to fight and to give up liberty or to fight against the Republic.
Values and beliefs drives as conflict as much as anything else.
Historically, you don't convince people to give up liberty by giving them a reason to fight. Indeed, they're more likely to fight FOR their own liberty than against it. How you get them to surrender liberty like that is to frame it as a necessary sacrifice in the name of security. To make that seem like a good idea you must first make them feel afraid, vulnerable, and powerless. Like say bombarding them with propaganda of a distant conflict that could come knocking at their door anytime, and by scapegoating a particular group as being the primary cause of all of this fear and doubt. You don't get that if you make them feel empowered and galvanised by a rallying call to arms.
Ultimately, what most populations tend to value above all else is stability. Doesn't matter so much if the situation is horrifying, so long as it's stable, people will cope and adapt since there's a certain predictability. One only has to upset the status-quo to introduce a little of that instability and doubt, and people will jump into the arms of the first people that promise to make it stop. To fix the economy. To get the buses running on time again. It's a very well known pattern, one that authoritarians like to take full advantage of.
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How I wish he'd hired Timothy Zahn to write the PT.
Right. So, why did the separatists want to secede so badly they'd fight a war to do so, and why didn't the Republic peacefully let them separate once they saw that they would? "Gee, we could resolve this diplomatically, but we just happen to have a massive and free droid/clone army, so, what the heck?" Not very satisfying, especially when it makes complete morons of the Jedi.
The Separatist crisis seems to have been going on for several years before the Clone Wars began. Palpatine was already a few years over his term limits to deal with it. Meaning diplomatic solutions were possibly attempted. It might also be that Palpatine was running a no break way planets policy.
Before the war started the film depicts that the Senate is debating the Military Creation Act. This is entirely without the Republic knowing about the Clone army, nor confirmation about the major corporations lending their military forces to Count Dooku.
After that things spiral out of control quickly as the Jedi find both the Clone army ordered by a dead Jedi Master ten years prior, and that the Separatist has a massive droid army. More powers were given to Palpatine, the Jedi are given the Clone Army and the wars starts. After that the two Sith Lords don't let the pressure off the Galaxy while laying an under current of it being the Jedi who started the war and are progressing said war.
After Order 66 and the birth of the Empire to replace the Jedi and later clones military with citizens of the new Empire. The Separatists still don't want to be part of the Republic/Empire, but now the Droid Army is shutdown and the Imperial Army and Navy arrive to a lot less resistance. The Empire spends the next maybe decade suppressing the Separatist planets, than occupy and suppressing resistance until the rebel groups organize and fight back. Results in the Galactic Civil War.
Before the war started the film depicts that the Senate is debating the Military Creation Act. This is entirely without the Republic knowing about the Clone army, nor confirmation about the major corporations lending their military forces to Count Dooku.
After that things spiral out of control quickly as the Jedi find both the Clone army ordered by a dead Jedi Master ten years prior, and that the Separatist has a massive droid army. More powers were given to Palpatine, the Jedi are given the Clone Army and the wars starts. After that the two Sith Lords don't let the pressure off the Galaxy while laying an under current of it being the Jedi who started the war and are progressing said war.
After Order 66 and the birth of the Empire to replace the Jedi and later clones military with citizens of the new Empire. The Separatists still don't want to be part of the Republic/Empire, but now the Droid Army is shutdown and the Imperial Army and Navy arrive to a lot less resistance. The Empire spends the next maybe decade suppressing the Separatist planets, than occupy and suppressing resistance until the rebel groups organize and fight back. Results in the Galactic Civil War.
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