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Your first impression of "The Clone Wars"

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In Episode IV when you first heard Luke say, "You fought in the clone wars?" what did you first think the clone wars was?

i thought of Aliens at first. At the time i was a kid of course.

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 (Edited)

A war involving the Republic/Jedi fighting against evil clones - who all dress like snowtroopers, only with open-faced helmets - and Mandalorians.

 

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DuracellEnergizer said:

A war involving the Republic/Jedi fighting against evil clones -

Me too - I'm guessing a lot of people thought this.

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I thought of Alec Guinness fighting alongside a bunch of clones.

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TV's Frink said:

DuracellEnergizer said:

A war involving the Republic/Jedi fighting against evil clones -

Me too - I'm guessing a lot of people thought this.

 never thought of it like that. Might of made an interesting movie if that's how it was.

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That's exactly what I thought, too.  "Clone wars" = "wars against clones."

Also, there was more than one Clone War, not just one long one that they decided to pluralize for no good reason.

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I always imagined it as a series of mostly unrelated small scale wars that all involved clones. The jedi would be mediators or something to the various conflicts.

I certainly didn't imagine "clones vs droids", with the clones being the good guys.

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TV's Frink said:

DuracellEnergizer said:

A war involving the Republic/Jedi fighting against evil clones -

Me too - I'm guessing a lot of people thought this.

Yep. And possibly some "Are you the real Obi-Wan?" type of situation At some point. And, honestly, I was never very intrigued about it.

Quackula said:

I certainly didn't imagine "clones vs droids", with the clones being the good guys.

Yeah, I think GL thought he was being clever by turning what we all assumed would be the bad guys into the good guys... then into bad guys again. Didn't work very well as I just can't invest any emotional connection or even interest into disposable, replaceable people.

Ray’s Lounge
Biggs in ANH edit idea
ROTJ opening edit idea

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I was only 15 back in 1977, so I didn't give it a great deal of thought.  I imagined it as the Jedi against a bunch of evil, cloned people.  As I've mentioned before, I was deep into The Star Wars story and didn't really care about what came before.  Occasionally pondered it, but not to the point of piecing together some sort of past for any characters or events.

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Anchorhead said:

I was only 15 back in 1977, so I didn't give it a great deal of thought.

First "Make Frink feel young" post in a long time.

;-)

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Anchorhead said:

I didn't give it a great deal of thought.

Me neither. Although I loved a reference to an in-universe historic event. Little things like that make us even more involved with that movie's universe.

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I gave it a lot of thought, especially for a 5 or 6 year old.  To the point where I would act out the Clone Wars using my Star Wars and my uncle's G.I. Joe action figures.

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lol, i used to take my figureines and act out the movies

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The idea that there would be CLONES involved never really occured to me as a lad, even though I knew what the word meant. It was just a cool sounding name with no hint of meaning to me.

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TV's Frink said:

Anchorhead said:

I was only 15 back in 1977, so I didn't give it a great deal of thought.

First "Make Frink feel young" post in a long time.

;-)

I'm here to serve.  ;-)

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Alexrd said:

Anchorhead said:

I didn't give it a great deal of thought.

Me neither. Although I loved a reference to an in-universe historic event. Little things like that make us even more involved with that movie's universe.

I agree.  The mention of some history between the characters, a reason why the princess has come looking for this guy, a reason why she's trying to get the robot to him gives the story depth, even if we don't know what she's talking about.  In fact, to me, that unknown part of the story helps create tension, it engages us in the story.  It did for me, anyway.

I think unknowns are something George has never understood the value of.  Star Wars77 is full of mysterious pasts and unknowns.  They help give the movie some depth and darkness.

It didn't take him long to abandon that mystery & depth and commence with over-explaining every possible detail, no matter how unnecessary.  That's what caused me to jump ship 30 years ago.  It wasn't magical anymore. 

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Anchorhead said:

Alexrd said:

Anchorhead said:

I didn't give it a great deal of thought.

Me neither. Although I loved a reference to an in-universe historic event. Little things like that make us even more involved with that movie's universe.

I agree.  The mention of some history between the characters, a reason why the princess has come looking for this guy, a reason why she's trying to get the robot to him gives the story depth, even if we don't know what she's talking about.  In fact, to me, that unknown part of the story helps create tension, it engages us in the story.  It did for me, anyway.

Couldn't have said it better myself. But I understand your point regarding the mystery and the unknown being lost with the rest of the episodes (both sequels and prequels).

Personally, I didn't mind loosing part of the mystery and get more scope/depth to both the characters and the universe itself. Once again, I understand your position.

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I thought that "The Clone Wars" was the "damned-fool idealistic crusade" that Obi-Wan was talking of.

  • It was "damned-fool". Considered pointless.
  • It was "idealistic". To spread the rule of law, peace and prosperity outside the pre-Empire.
  • It was a "crusade". A fight against non-believers. There was a strong enemy that did not share their ideology or religion.
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I thought it was clones vs clones.

Obi-Wan's old name sounded so much like (as in Artoo) a phonetic transcription of a registry code, that maybe OB1 was a clone too.

I thought could have resulted in the official outlawing of clone technology to mass produce slaves and armies resulting in droids taking their place (like the Butlerian Jihad in reverse)

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I don't remember what I had imagined back then, so I'll say this:

It could've been ANYTHING, and WAS nothing. The "before it became dark in the galaxy" is a better case, because we can all relate to a state turning from a good kingdom, or a democracy, into an evil kingdom or reich or dictatorship from real life, but the "clone wars" bit was every bit as lacklustre and random as the PT's equivalent of "the oppression of the Sith".

The "prophecy" obviously gets at least two fat, large minus points for a) being a central plot point and b) retconning itself in the process of the trilogy.

It was just a cool sounding cliff note. That's all it was, and nothing in the rest of the series gave it any substance or basis for speculation.

Doesn't mean we can't try to make up cool, interesting ideas and what-could-have-beens, but in the movie, it was just that, an unnecessary cliff note in one expository line.

Couldn't the story instead been about Luke's father fighting against the evil empire and succumbing to the evil guys at the end? Why did they need to have some sort of separate "clone wars" in the backstory? Except, of course, the stormtroopers were clones, and the clone wars were where the Empire took over the Republic using... the clone troopers.

But hey, still a useless cliff note.

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Well I had to differentiate it from the perfume. Because the "Eau de Cologne" Wars would just be silly.

"Well here's a big bag of rock salt" - Patton Oswalt

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see you auntie said:

"Eau de Cologne" Wars

I must find a use for this.