Phantom Menace is the best Prequel.

[TheLobes]

Some of you are grabbing the wrong end of the stick and beating around the bush with it. Nowhere in the OT does Han claim to have never heard of the Jedi--you're making a straw man out of that nonsense. His exact quote is:

"Kid, I’ve flown from one end of this galaxy to the other; I’ve seen a lot of strange stuff, but I’ve never seen anything to make me believe there’s one all-powerful force controlling everything. There’s no mystical energy field controlling my destiny. It’s all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense."

To use a real-world analogy, I'm sure we've all heard of feats of physical and mental discipline that Buddhist monks are capable of....Does this mean that we must believe in Buddhism?

The difference is that buddhism isnt controlled by midichlorians...

The thing is, maybe there is no news service or whatever, and maybe Han just didnt move in the right circles. However, when you get right down to it, what Han says about the Jedi gives a totally different impression than one which is right at the centre of warfare and politics, with some kind of documented scientific evidence for its existence. Yeah, maybe the jedi kept that a secret... whatever. And maybe lightsaber fights were all fast in the PT because 'oh, well, this was the jedi at the height of their power'. Snore.

You can jury rig any explanation you want about where all the battle droids went, why lightsaber fights were different then, or why Han didnt believe in the force. Ive said it before, and Ill say it again: the OT and PT are completely different, except for a few words which occur in both trilogies.

 

[TremblingBluStar]

You can jury rig any explanation you want about where all the battle droids went, why lightsaber fights were different then, or why Han didnt believe in the force. Ive said it before, and Ill say it again: the OT and PT are completely different, except for a few words which occur in both trilogies.

I have to agree. I never thought about the battle droids. Why would it be better to have a clone army than a battle droid army?

 

[Whofan]

^The reasons are outlined in AOTC when Obi-Wan is touring the Clone factory.

That and the Battle Droids, with some exceptions (The Droideka), are shown to be incredibly stupid and fragile.

 

[EnsignRicky]

It also serves to illustrate how Palpatine literally fabricated the whole thing. Man-made Man against Man-made Machine. And the poor Jedi dumb enough to get caught in the middle.

All in all, that's actually pretty clever.

 

[TheLobes]

^The reasons are outlined in AOTC when Obi-Wan is touring the Clone factory.

That and the Battle Droids, with some exceptions (The Droideka), are shown to be incredibly stupid and fragile.

Seems like kind of a half assed explanation though. Again, numerous parts of OT make no sense if there was a robot army, or all stormtroopers were clones.

It also serves to illustrate how Palpatine literally fabricated the whole thing. Man-made Man against Man-made Machine. And the poor Jedi dumb enough to get caught in the middle.

All in all, that's actually pretty clever.

Well, why was the war even necessary at all?

 

[Kegg]

Palpatine's plan is pretty simple (if a little baroque, but then he is basically a pulp villain).

He engineers problems which require people to give him more power to solve them. Thus his creation of those problems allow him to go from a somewhat powerless representative of Naboo in a frustated democracy to the despotic Emperor of the entire galaxy.

First he makes the Trade Federation attack Naboo, a problem which the Chancellor cannot solve satisfacorily, which means a vote of no confidence from a source he cultivated - the Queen - which in turn means he is one of the candidates for Chancellor (probably he sewed up a ton of votes on the sides, but moving on). Phantom Menace is so called because the entire conflict is a charade and, the purpose of the invasion being to make Palpatine Chancellor, it succeeds marvellously.

Stage two of the same plan is more of the same but on a bigger scale. The Trade Federation who had been such excellent dupes the first time are thrown together with a bunch of other corporate influences and pitch a galactic war. This war is another charade, a interstellar bit of smoke and mirrors. Just as the Chancellor could not handle the Naboo crisis, the Jedi are simply too small a force to handle a galactic war. Conveinently he's prepared an army behind the scenes, which he can now have deployed - and using the crisis to both give himself extraordinary powers and an army personally loyal to him, giving him the political foundation to progress from Chancellor in a democracy to something more.

Now as to why clones are better than droids... that's almost besides the point in this superscheme. The important thing isn't that it's a clone army, but that it's an army that is loyal to him in his role as Chancellor. He needs the droid army - which is controlled by corporate forces he is duping as to his true intentions, and thus is not something he has direct control over - to attack the Republic to drum up the threat for him to get an army loyal to him.

The pulp plotting of the prequel trilogy's politics, when distilled to their elementals, really weren't so terrible, frankly. (Once we go past the elementals we run into maddening poorly explained loose ends like Sifo-Dyas...)

 

[Trekker4747]

^The reasons are outlined in AOTC when Obi-Wan is touring the Clone factory.

That and the Battle Droids, with some exceptions (The Droideka), are shown to be incredibly stupid and fragile.

Which is pretty dumb.

Yeah they're fragile, I could see that. But when you're talking about an entity that can easily build spaceships the size of cities, or moons, then them being fragile doesn't matter because you could swarm an enemy with sheer volumes of combatants.

Them being stupid is just really shitty programming which doesn't follow when you've got the Protocol Droids and Astromechs out there that are remarkable in their "intelligence" and ability to do their job along with all of the battle-type droids we see (like the rolling, shielded, droids we see in TPM.) In stead of investing so much money and resources into a clone army (an army that's got to be fed and treated so they come with all of the draw backs as any other army consisting of living beings) they Empire, Republic or whoever should have just gotten a new defense contractor.

And if we're going to invoke the EU in this, look at the HK-47 assassin droid in KOTOR. Something that existed 5,000 years before these movies according to its own canon. Tell me an army of those things wouldn't be a force to be reckoned with.

 

[TheLobes]

But if both armies are loyal to Palpatine, why bother having the war in the first place? He could have just done the Order 66 thing right away.

You say Palpatine's plan is clever, but its only clever because it relies on the totally idiocy of every other character in the story. In fact by leaving it so late he came pretty damn close to just losing everything.

 

[Kegg]

The entire droid army is clearly the property of the Trade Federation though, hence the problem I said above. They're not loyal to Palpatine. They're loyal - owned - by people who are working with Darth Sidious who Sidious needs to scare the galaxy with and then dispose of.

Unless you're saying that instead of contracting cloners to make Palpatine's army Palpatine should have found and contracted a rival droid company... well. Perhaps, but Kamino's extremely conveinent isolation and no-questions-asked-ever policy makes them an ideal candidate site for constructing a secret army.

 

[Trekker4747]

An Army of fleshy humans that have to fed, given a few hours of rest once a day, allowed to use the bathroom and presumably some-sort-of outlet, entertainment, or "down time" over the course of their use. Not to mention they don't have to be killed to become useless just struck by an errant shot to a limb that breaches their armor. As we see they're prone to being lured from their post, having their heads knocked together like Moe and Curly to get knocked out and having their post compromised.

As opposed to building a competent and powerful droid army where you can make metric fucktons of them and they can operate for nearly endless lengths of time with no trouble. (I presume they'd operate off of a power source that wouldn't need to be recharged.)

In a universe where building technological things obviously has now hindrances given the size and number of ships they have then building a vast, competent, army of HK-47s, for example, should be no trouble at all and well worth it and it wouldn't come with the vast drawbacks a living army would.

 

[TheLobes]

The entire droid army is clearly the property of the Trade Federation though, hence the problem I said above. They're not loyal to Palpatine. They're loyal - owned - by people who are working with Darth Sidious who Sidious needs to scare the galaxy with and then dispose of.

Unless you're saying that instead of contracting cloners to make Palpatine's army Palpatine should have found and contracted a rival droid company... well. Perhaps, but Kamino's extremely conveinent isolation and no-questions-asked-ever policy makes them an ideal candidate site for constructing a secret army.

So, Palpatine can cloud the minds and lower the abilities of all the jedi, trick the entire senate, and build a huge clone army without anyone noticing... but he cant just kill the head of the trade federation? The Trade Federation take orders from him without question, even though they dont know who the hell he is.

Even if the trade guys did keep control of the droids, wouldnt they much prefer not having a war? Trade depends on shipping and shipping lanes... Why would Palpatine wait until the war was just about over? He nearly got killed for that! Was his plan to wait for Mace Windu to come and nearly kill him, and only then execute order 66? When you actually think about it, Palapatines plan made no sense. It only seems to make sense because the story makes it.

As for Kamino's 'extremely conveinent isolation and no-questions-asked-ever policy'... If any character has access to this, his plan stops being clever and just becomes a plot device.

The main point is that in a world where you can create droidika or personal shields which deflect blaster fire... you go ahead and create them. There is no sign of those droids in the OT, and it doesnt make sense for them not to be there. You can come up with explanations, but then youre just doing the movies job. The PT basically had no other aim than to get Anakin in the Vader suit.

PT and OT are totally seperate.

 

[Kegg]

In a universe where building technological things obviously has now hindrances given the size and number of ships they have then building a vast, competent, army of HK-47s, for example,

The HK-50s weren't really that competent.

But anyway. The secrecy bit is important there. It could be that Palpatine wasn't able to find any droid producing planet as conveinently obscure as the Kaminoan cloners - and the comparative value of machines as opposed to clones may have been the reason for Kamino's handy low profile, if one wanted to ramble wildly.

So, Palpatine can cloud the minds and lower the abilities of all the jedi, trick the entire senate, and build a huge clone army without anyone noticing... but he cant just kill the head of the trade federation?

Why would he want to (before it's his time, obviously, he eventually kills them by proxy)?

Palpatine does not begin the series as the single Emperor ruling the galaxy with an iron fist. He is a representative and then a Chancellor. His aim is to transform the existing galactic bureaucracy into one that he controls utterly, rather than attempt to conquer it. And to take control of that bureaucracy he needs to present it problems that he can solve.

Even if the trade guys did keep control of the droids, wouldnt they much prefer not having a war? Trade depends on shipping and shipping lanes...

Same mercantile powers often fight wars: Trade's good now, trading will be better after you've won... or at any rate you're richer. To try and pin it down, the notoriously vague taxation of trade routes that got the Federation in a tizzy in Phantom Menace presumably wouldn''t matter after they win.

Why would Palpatine wait until the war was just about over? He nearly got killed for that!

Like I said the plan distilled to its elementals makes sense - in a pulp villain, riddles within engimas within crossword puzzles sort of way. The point by point details certainly have problems.

As for Kamino's 'extremely conveinent isolation and no-questions-asked-ever policy'... If any character has access to this, his plan stops being clever and just becomes a plot device.

Yes, but no plan is foolproof. Building an army secretly in this context is better than just 'I, Palpatine, representative from Naboo, hereby place an order for a huge army with funds I do not legally have.' This thing's being billed to the Republic, after all, not the right honourable nobody.

He needs a big army, he needs it to be secret, and Kamino may well have been the best solution for those two needs.

You can come up with explanations, but then youre just doing the movies job.

I'm mostly spelling out the basic over-arc plot of Palpatine coming to power, though. That Phantom Menace is about a cooked up proxy war to make Palpatine Chancellor is... pretty much what the backgroubd, political story of that movie is about.

 

[Mach5]

But if both armies are loyal to Palpatine, why bother having the war in the first place? He could have just done the Order 66 thing right away.

Because quite simply, he wouldn't have won the support of the people that way. He'd be just another "usurper to the throne", but this way, he is practically hailed as a savior. He needed the people of the Republic to be afraid of the evil Separatists, so HE could be the one to relieve them of that fear with his strength and resolve. He wanted to make them wish they had a leader like that all the time, not just in wartime.

This is how liberty dies, with a thunderous applause. I was under the impression that Palpatine was actually very popular at the time, and wasn't until years later that the people started to feel oppressed and become disillusioned.

 

[EnsignRicky]

The Clone Wars was also the perfect way for Palpatine to strategically place his new grand army all across the galaxy. Not to mention spread out, exhaust and very effectivly thin the Jedi. Order 66 and the shutting down of the Droid army was just the final endgame.

 

[hamudm]

Yep. Im not saying its the most entertaining, Im saying its the best of a bad lot. None of my friends will hear any of this, so I thought Id ask a few people on here what they think.

I actually get the impression that George worked pretty hard on TPM, that was genuinely surprised at the critical reaction, and after that he just filled the next two with constant CGI and sped up fighting.

Dont get me wrong, TMP wasnt good, but it had a story which followed a sequence of events in which every character played some sort of role. Theres only two lightsaber duels, one is very brief, and the other is the big fight that has been built up throughout the movie, and the battles actually meant something within the story, lame though it was. Theres also a LOT more dialogue than the other movies. To me this indicates more effort on Lucas' part, trying to actually tell a story.

I can watch TMP with more patience because at least every part of the story is trying to mean something, and isnt just filler. The story itself is pretty Star Warsy, band of misfit heroes get stuck in a situation too big for them and have to improvise a solution. 90 percent of the second two prequels was filler, and theres almost no dialogue scenes in ROTS. Its just things fighting, and Anakin 'turning evil'.

Hell, even Anakin was better in TPM. Yes, he was totally annoying, but at least he somewhat demonstrated a maturity greater than his age. Hayden Anakin was just a psychopath with no smarts or maturity to suggest he could become Darth Vader.

It always annoys me when people say: 'yeah the first two sucked, but I really loved the third one.' ROTS is even higher rated on rotten tomatos than ROTJ! Nothing happens in ROTS!

I agree with this.

TPM felt closer to the originals (sans stupid Jar Jar and little "Annie") than the next two. AOTC and ROTS were too heavy-handed for such pulpy material.

 

[Set Harth]

What gets me about The Force thing in light of the Prequels is that there's a scientific explanation for it! The infamous midichlorians. It's no longer this magical or mystical thing that may or may no exist and is something you have to see to believe.

The Force unquestionably existed in the OT.

theres almost no dialogue scenes in ROTS.

That is not literally true.

 

[Holdfast]

On the question upthread of why Palps wanted the clone army, rather than simply finding a way of commandeering the droid army: Palpatine is a totalitarian dictator, but like all intelligent totalitarian dictators, he knows the art of staying in power is not brute force and oppression but maintaining popularity among the people. He knows some people will always rebel, but tries hard to keep these groups small and disparate so he can keep crushing them. That's why it took him decades to finally abolish the Senate, for instance. After all, he could - technically - have done it in ROTS, but he didn't because popular resistance would have been too high.

He manipulates everyone, but tries his hardest to ensure his wider public image as the strong saviour of galactic order remains intact. The droid army was clearly known to the general public as the army of the Trade Federation. If he just found way to commandeer it, a fairly large chunk of the public would consider his interests to be aligned to the Trade Federation, which as we see in the prequels, isn't a popular or respected organisation. In fact, by pretending to fight against the droid army, he boosts his own popularity among the general public, rather than risking unpopularity.

It's a mark of the hubris of the man that he doesn't just want to be Emperor, he wants to stay Emperor for a very, very long time. Using a Clone Army rather than a Droid Army, and fighting the Trade Federation with it, increased his popularity. Even by ROTJ, the Rebel Alliance is still relatively small... despite his blowing up a large populated planet recenlty - because Palps keeps paying attention to the PR part of being in charge.

 

[Nightdiamond]

It was genius; The Jedi never saw it coming. Anyone would have thought Sidious would have conquered the Republic with brute force using the Droids.

That's what I thought when I first started watching this series.

Instead he turned the Republic inside out, while making everything legal.

He had legions of programmed soldiers bound to mindlessly obey him, all legally.

 

[TremblingBluStar]

^The reasons are outlined in AOTC when Obi-Wan is touring the Clone factory.

That and the Battle Droids, with some exceptions (The Droideka), are shown to be incredibly stupid and fragile.

I haven't seen Clones in quite a while, but I don't recall this ever being explained. The tougher droids were never shown as being less reliable than the clones, who were cut down by the thousands.

I suppose it doesn't really matter anyway. Star Wars has always been pretty silly when it comes to war and combat. Why, for example, given their level of technology would any army on army battle ever be necessary. When you can bombard planets from orbit, it kind of makes you look dumb when you have thousands of individuals standing there in formation shooting each other in the face.

 

[Trekker4747]

It seems the orbital warfare ability in SW is pretty limited. In ANH Han says that the entire fleet couldn't wipe out a while planet. So it seems that the weaponry technology in SWs isn't greatly useful. It could cause some damage but, perhaps, a mano y mano battle carries with it a greater chance of success than orbital bombardment. (Perhaps lasers of the ships are inaccurate due to refraction when going through the atmosphere of the target planet?)

If anything, this put a bit of tilt to Trek in the great Star Wars/Star Trek debate as it was shown that the ships in Star Trek do have the capability of decimating a planet through an orbital attack.