Star Wars: The Clone Wars S4
- Thread starter Mysterion
- Start date
Ian Keldon
Fleet Captain
I never had a problem seeing the Republic as hopelessly incompetent/corrupt even before Clone Wars. They made it pretty plain in Phantom Menace that the Senate was deliberately gridlocked by corrupt Senators who took advantage of the general inability of the rest to agree on anything to get their way.
And there's the issue of just how "good" a society can claim to be when it acquiesces to the creation of 10s of millions of genetically conditioned slaves to fight their wars for them.
I don't get to watch CW on a consistent basis and have to resort to reading about it and the occasional plot summary, so forgive me if this has been asked:
Have they made any plot milage out of the anti-Jedi sentiment that was prevalent in many parts of the Republic?
Ian Keldon
Fleet Captain
Technically, he belongs to her as the Senator for Naboo anyways.
Oh, that's right -- in TPM, R2D2 was originally a repair droid aboard Padme's royal yacht, wasn't he? So he's basically a Naboo "subject." (What's the demonym for people from Naboo? Naboonian? Nabonite? Nabooster? Naboolean? Nabob?)
I'm in favor of "Nabob"-- but in this case I think the correct term is "property."
That didn't say "hopelessly" corrupt to me, because, hey, my own government works that way!
That's not corruption, that's politics as usual.But the bigger factor is that the Separatists were not depicted as having legitimate grievances. I had the impression they were just a bunch of greedy businessmen plus Sith. If decent people were leaving the Republic because of its corruption, then that validates the idea that the Republic may not be worth salvaging.
Otherwise, why were good people like Padme and Bail trying to salvage it? Why couldn't they see that it was "hopelessly" corrupt? TCW has established that the Republic may be unsalvageable, but it's a judgment call. That's the right note to strike so that everyone looks reasonably smart - you could take either side and not be a total idiot.
Yet that issue was never raised in the PT and still hasn't been raised in TCW. It should be, but I'm not holding my breath.
Not that I've noticed, no. There are some powerful forces like Deathwatch who fight the Jedi, but that's to be expected because the Jedi have a habit of getting in their way.
Ian Keldon
Fleet Captain
Both can be true. Some people can have legitimate grievances AND the Separatists (as led by the Neimoidian Trade Federation) can be a bunch of greedy businessmen plus Sith.
Fair point.
Me neither.
Too bad. It would have helped make the point a broader one than Lucas presents.
It's good that "both are true." Because that means that Padme and Obi-Wan can jump one way, and Anakin can jump the other, and nobody needs to be stupid or easily misled. But the way it was presented in the PT, I saw no reason why anyone would side with the Seppys. Even if the Republic was corrupt (in an oh so very familiar way
), the Seppys were worse, so what's to be gained?It would have helped make the point a broader one than Lucas presents.
I'm not sure what point you have in mind, but TCW is making the point that the Republic vs Separatists was a political fight in which neither side was obviously wrong. The situation is being taken advantage of by Palps for his own power grab, and even if the civil war could have been brought to a peaceful conclusion by both sides, they had no chance because a Sith was frakking it all up.
So the point is, to try to look at the politics of the situation is pointless. The core conflict is good vs evil, light and dark sides, that kind of stuff. Good people with good intentions are helpless when that's going on behind the scenes.
In the Tartakovsky cartoon, she gave R2 to Anakin as a gift. The idea was that they exchanged droids. However, I don't know if this is still supposed to be canon, and if it is, I'm not certain where it fits in the timeline.
Christopher said:
Nubian. Either that or Naboobian.
The Separatists are only worse because they've been co-opted by Dooku to serve the Sith's agenda. In theory, they have a legitimate difference of opinion. Remember, the corruption on both sides ultimately arises from Palpatine. He manipulated both factions into ever greater conflict in order to maneuver himself into a position of ever greater power and ultimately bring down the old order. Essentially everyone in the entire prequel trilogy is a pawn of Palpatine/Sidious's ambitions.
A parliament is no guarantee of anything. Dictatorships often incorporate sham elements of democracy.
In the PT, there were people like Obi-Wan, Yoda, Padme and Bail, who supported the Republic. Since they were self-evidently good people, and presumably not total idiots (which turned out to be more of a debatable point than it should have been
), that mean the Republic was at least sorta good.There was no parallel for the Separatists - no characters who seemed to be good people who supported it. That's why TCW's introduction of people like that was a big change to the portrayal of the political landscape, making it more complex and sophisticated, and also making it far more understandable that the main characters would behave in a confused or "stupid" manner.
For instance, in the most recent episode, Padme and the Seppys tried to negotiate a peace. Well, that was doomed from the start, with elements on both sides sabotaging it. They didn't even have to show that part - it's obvious that would happen. Which means that no shame for incompetence, stupidity or corruption needs to descend on the people on either side who were negotiating in good faith. The game is rigged and they don't know it.
If that was part of the PT, they didn't get that point across at all. In The PT, it looked like the Separatists were a grotesque alliance of greedy businessmen and Sith. Maybe the greedy businessmen didn't know about the Sith, but that doesn't make them good.
ReadyAndWilling
Fleet Captain
the seppies and republic were both pawns. neither one stood a chance to last.
Right, but my point is about what the characters knew. Not what the audience knew.
"This scheme of yours has failed, Lord Sidious."
**********
"My lord, it's impossible to locate the ship. It's out of our range."
"Not for a Sith."
**********
"The plan has gone as you had promised, my lord."
"You have done well, Viceroy. When my new apprentice, Darth Vader, arrives... he will take care of you."
That didn't say "hopelessly" corrupt to me, because, hey, my own government works that way!
But the bigger factor is that the Separatists were not depicted as having legitimate grievances. I had the impression they were just a bunch of greedy businessmen plus Sith. If decent people were leaving the Republic because of its corruption, then that validates the idea that the Republic may not be worth salvaging.
Otherwise, why were good people like Padme and Bail trying to salvage it? Why couldn't they see that it was "hopelessly" corrupt? TCW has established that the Republic may be unsalvageable, but it's a judgment call. That's the right note to strike so that everyone looks reasonably smart - you could take either side and not be a total idiot.
Yet that issue was never raised in the PT and still hasn't been raised in TCW. It should be, but I'm not holding my breath.
Not that I've noticed, no. There are some powerful forces like Deathwatch who fight the Jedi, but that's to be expected because the Jedi have a habit of getting in their way.
About why Padme and others try to save the Republic, it might be because they fear what would happen without it. In the ROTS novelization, Mace worries about what would happen without the Republic. He says he's seen it and it's not pretty. Chaos, slavery, etc. I agree the Republic needs to be replaced but that can be a very messy, very bloody process.
Just because there was corruption within the Republic government, that doesn't mean the entire Republic had to be replaced. I mean, the US government has been mired in corruption many times in the past, but the solution was to expose the corruption and replace the politicians engaged in it, not to tear down the whole nation. It's simplistic to treat a government as a singular entity rather than remembering that it's made up of many different people with many different agendas. Sometimes a government can be intrinsically corrupt, but sometimes it's just the people currently in charge who have abused a basically sound system.
The problem was of course the corruption prevented the Republic from effectively governing and it instead became a rallying cry for secession movement. In fact in Darth Plagueis and Cloak of Deception, they trace the problems leading to TPM and the Clone War to a number of flawed compromises and policy failures that had been brokered by a corrupt Senate to personally enrich themselves.
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