When the prequels came around, the Clone Wars had been off limits for the Expanded Universe for a while to tell stories in directly, but that hadn't stopped a lot of background lore from being built up. This caused a few problems with recollections about who was fighting whom, and even when exactly the wars were.
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Wonder what people in the '80s who were curious about the mentioned Clone Wars would have said if someone told them that the conflict was fought by millions of Boba Fetts. 😅
It would have been a facepalm for me... One of the things I had a hard time with in the PT was George's insistence on making all the unlikely connections he did among the OT characters. Like Anakin building C3PO, and Chewbacca fighting alongside Yoda. Millions of Boba Fetts fighting the Clone Wars would have seemed as likely to me as Luke and Leia being twins did back in 1983... i.e. "Are you effing kidding me?" 😅
@@BarefootPeasant Some connections were justified IMO. It makes sense that a Mandalorian like Jango Fett would be used as a clone template. And while I don't like C3PO being built by Anakin, it makes sense that him and R2D2 would appear in the prequels.
@@cantnevercould9660 Technically speaking, Anakin didn't ''build'' CP30. In the sense, that he never existed before Anakin. He did have owners before Anakin. It is that Anakin reassembled him from parts.
@@cantnevercould9660 Yes, it was George's assertion from the start that R2D2 and C3PO were a constant thread throughout the saga. So no surprise there.
When I was a kid and saw Star Wars for the first time in 92, I knew all the Mythos behind it at the time just from cultural osmosis. But when Obi-Wan said Luke's father fought in the Clone Wars, I imagined a large war between countless Jedi and Sith. In the war, all Jedi wore the same uniform almost to the letter and same with the Sith. The war resulted in all but Obi-Wan, Yoda, Vader, and the emperor being killed.
Before the prequels, I thought the clone wars were fought by trillions of clones on both sides, so citizens didn’t have to fight and eventually cloning was banned for this reason because the existence of fully expendable soldiers caused more wars.
This is the conclusion my 7 yo brain came up with as well.
Well, you were half-right. And canonically, the reason we hardly see any battle droid post-Clone Wars is bc of pretty the same stigma you described.
My kid brain assumed the Republic was under threat by clones. I also thought Jedi Knights were expected to find and send prospective you Jedi trainees to Yoda or maybe other masters. That it wasn’t a group 10,000 or more strong, but maybe dozens at best. They were more like ronin samurai. Living by a code to defend the Republic but independent of them. And because Obiwan misjudged his skills to identify evil or the wisdom to be a good teacher at that age, Darth Vader betrayed the Jedi and joined the emperor, an evil wizard took over the Empire. Later based on ESB and ROTJ I then thought Anakin tried to challenge the emperor on his own, under estimated his power and was defeated and tortured within an inch of life, and turned to serve the Emperor. Barely alive. Barely a man. Fearful of the emperor and willing to do anything he demands, no matter how horrid to stay alive. And over time it became easier and easier to do evil things. Anyways. I wasn’t sure how the clone wars fit into that but I assumed it was a threat to the republic and Darth Vader was more like how Revan turned out. Seemingly twisted by the war. Later I just figured he was a war hero that thought he could take on the emperor, who might not have been emperor yet, and failed. I was so very wrong on all of it.
To me, it sounded like some ancient forgotten war. I'm not even sure I knew what a clone was when I was 7.
That would have been interesting and added depth and reason to the prequels. So I sure GL was against it.
The way ObiWan talked about the clone wars in a New Hope always made me feel like it was 40 years ago.
Yeah George really fucked up imo making the Clone wars only last 3 years. How tf does a galaxy spanning war only last 3 years?!? Shit wars on planet earth between bordering countries last longer than that.
Also because of the age he had
Also because he looked like 60 at the time.
When ep 4 was made it was technically a diff continuity, Darth and anakin were two separate people, man I wish that was what Lucas went with. I Imagine hayden christensen as anakin and sebastian shaw from the 1930s as Darth, sign me up
@@jacobwest7stupid take
Worth mentioning that, in the rough drafts of _Empire Strikes Back,_ Lando Calrissian was a clone who survived the clone wars, and Leia was also distrustful of him because of anti-clone prejudice. There's an alternate history where we'd see countless Billy Dee Williamses throughout the prequels.
To be fair, an army of Donald Glovers would have the charisma to conquer just about anything.
@michaelramon2411 Personal opinion, I can't make Donald Glover fit in my mind as young Lando any more than I can with Alden Ehrenreich as Han. To me, Bill Dee's Lando is charismatic, whereas Glover's Lando was more swagger. But, that idea about Lando being a clone from the Clone Wars sounds pretty cool to me. They really pigeonholed themselves making ALL the clones be Temuera Morrison, harder to do as the actor ages, whereas if there'd been multiple clone templates it would've been much easier to introduce new actors as clones in stories set in or after the Clone Wars.
@@MRF1983Honestly, I can see Swagger -> Charisma with a decade and change of age. That's just how swagger ages gracefully.
An Army of Lando's... being used as a disposable army... But Lando is Black.... *OH SWEET MERCIFUL CHRIST ON A SPEEDER-🤯🤯🤯*
@@michaelramon2411Lando Calrizzian
The Zahn books always gave me the impression that the Clone Wars weren't a single war, but a set of conflicts over several decades.
makes sense since its called the clone wars and not the clone war, pretty weird that ive never questioned why its called wars but in the prequels its only 1 war
I always interpreted the Clone Wars being referred to in the plural as a means of properly conveying the scale of the conflict. Even as I kid I saw the logic of this sort-of play-on-words very clearly; if our wars on Earth, which involve millions of souls, are considered a "single war", then surely a conflict which involves so many more lives and so many more planets would have to be provided a new, invented term. Plainly referring to such a large conflict as "a wars" so-to-speak, it's very Star Wars-y; it's simple and it fits well enough to work within the context of the story, even if it isn't perfect language for the situation 'technically'. But I digress, it's completely logical to assume there were several Clone Wars, too. No official explanation was ever given for the discrepancy in grammar iirc, so chances are that George simply changed his mind on what he wanted to do with the prequel storyline yet felt obligated to keep the now-decades-old "clone warS" title by the time Episode 2 was being drafted. Edit: Shit, I forgot that the OG trilogy's war was called the Galactic Civil War, singular. Well...I liked my idea, at least. lmao
Interestingly, Lucas' original crawl for Star Wars, before it got cleaned up by a Brian De Palma, had a "period of civil wars in the galaxy" not singular civil war. So we would probably be calling the Galactic Civil War in the plural too if that change in the crawl hadn't been made.
@@umpxfajmzannI mean, even today, people use both the singular and plural interchangeably.
This guy gets some things wrong about Thrawn take on the clone wars. He’s correct in that Thrawn’s version saw the clones as bad guys in that cloning got out of control and the clones suffered from “clone madness” causing them to essential go rogue and wreck chaos as they deteriorated. But they weren’t everyone cloning themselves. It was instead stated in the book The clones were of various military officers or commanders to have all the armies/navies staffed of the best military minds (instead all being of one man like Jango) But due to clone madness they went rogue effectively making the republics army turn against itself. This led to a very long war since you had the Jedi and then just what was left on the conscripts who weren’t clones fighting against a literal army of the best and brightest soldiers. However with respect to Jedi Master Jorus Cboath, the Emperor had him unwillingly cloned. It’s plainly stated that Jorus died on the Outbound flight which happened before the clone wars. And this clone was unaware he was clone, yet was guarding the Emperor’s secret storehouse. That’s because the Emperor had Cboath killed (since he bested his dark Jedi) and then collected tissue from his dead body to clone him and have him guard the planet the storeroom was on without Cboath 2.0 realizing it. This is also kept as canon (well pre Disney anyway) with Zahn’s later novel Outbound Flight. As for what George Lucas envisioned, he was actually really upset with what Zahn wrote. According to George, the clones were supposed to be the good guys, not the enemies of the Republic. They also weren’t supposed to go mad. What’s also interesting is that The Dark Empire comics in the 80s brought Palpatine back via cloning but his clones kept deteriorating because they couldn’t handle all his dark side energy. George also hated this because A) he never envisioned Palpatine using clones and once he was dead that was it, and B) clones wouldn’t deteriorate from “dark side energy”. Between Zahn and Dark Empire’s take on the clones, this prompted Lucas to take a much more active role in the prequel content especially with regards to anything dealing with clones (like the clone wars shows and force unleashed games).
It's pretty fascinating to see material made before the prequels depicting that Era in their own unique way. For example, there's an art from a cancelled 90's card game that shows baby Leia being protected by her unnamed mother from a young and unburned Darth Vader, having Anakin here the appearance of Mark Hamill Truly mindblowing
Could you point me to where I could find that?
@@animore8626 A Reddit post called "A 1993 depiction of Anakin and Padme from a cancelled Topps card game."
@@CreatureoftheNight1981 Thanks, that’s really really cool!
That's due to the novelization of RotJ
So many of the Topps cards are hard to find images of online. I used to be able to find one of Jabba fighting multiple Jedi, referencing the line from the rough drafts and novel where he says to Luke "I killed many Jedi in my time, boy" or something. But a few years later, I can't track it down. Apparently the boga that Obi-Wan rides in _Revenge of the Sith_ was also taken from a Topps card, but I think a Stormtrooper rode it.
Lucas sprang a lot of surprises on the EU authors. Another big one was the Jedi Order's "no attachments" policy. Because the OT had established that Anakin Skywalker had been married and fathered children, and no mention was made by Obi-Wan or Yoda about this having been forbidden, authors assumed that there were entire Jedi extended families with long histories in the Order and that the Jedi were not as monastic as the PT would establish them as being. There were also lots of little things, like Obi-Wan supposedly keeping a low profile on Tatooine - by wearing what would turn out to be standard Jedi uniform. Also, his apparent age.
with the "standard jedi uniform" thing I think it's easy to forget everyone on tatooine was wearing the same sort of thing, and that wouldn't have been the only planet. The tunic is just a humble set of clothing. that's completely unassuming, especially after the Jedi are wiped out.
@@cyanimation1605 - Dude, we're not talking *similar* attire here, we're talking *exactly* what turned out to be Jedi uniform! On top of that, he was not only wearing a lightsaber, but he drew it and used it openly in the cantina! So, let's see here.... Standard Jedi uniform, wields a lightsaber...you seeing the trend here yet?
I read somewhere that you age faster on tatooine
@@TheMerts14 - We all reached that conclusion after the prequels. The OT had been vague about how long ago the Clone Wars had been and how long since the Empire came to power. They implied 30-40 years. The PT firmly established that it was only about 20 by the time of ANH. At which point an explanation was needed for why Obi-Wan, Owen, and Beru all looked so old for people their ages. Apparently the two suns and harsh climate must sterilize people too. In the PT, Owen and Beru were very young, but they were quick to adopt a child handed over to them by a fugitive Jedi they'd never met before. Despite their youth, they never had any other kids over the subsequent 20 years.
@@TheMerts14 yea that was a half-baked explanation to explain why Obi Wan, Owen and Beru looked 30 years older in ANH than they did in ROTS (even though ANH takes place 19 years after ROTS). Also if Tatooine makes you age faster, how come Anakin in TPM looks like a normal 8-10 year old boy? How come his mom Shmi looks like a normal 40-45 year old in TPM and a normal 50-55 year old in AOTC?
Well, it's hard to build a whole universe off what was essentially a throwaway line.
Throwaway lines always seem to end up becoming the basis for worldbuilding expansion in this galaxy...
One of Mon Mothma's throwaway lines made everyone want to know about Bothans once
@@InhabitantOfOddworldpoor Manny Bothans, he didn’t deserve such a fate
@@CobaltSanderson please, Manni Bothans was my father. I'm Severol Bothans.
epic kotor moment
“The Prequels Changed Everything.” That’s an understatement both on the canon and meta level.
Well for something to „change“ there has to be an existing consensus in the first place, which wasn’t really the case.
Don't forget the earlier idea of The Emperor as well. In the A New Hope novelization (so before any more than 1 single Star Wars movie was a reality), The Emperor was a decent politician who rose to power and was made Emperor, but then the military performed a quiet coup, setting the Emperor up as a figurehead while men like Tarkin actually ruled the Galaxy. That idea quickly changed in Empire Strikes Back.
Huh…that could be interesting for a separate project 👀 Wouldn’t that have been especially hard to pull off considering that the Emperor is said to have dissolved the Senate IN Episode 4? Tarkin says it AMONG the top officials
@@harrambou9468 Well, of course if Tarkin was one of the actual rulers, he'd shift the blame to the emperor, to cover his own tracks...
@@harrambou9468 Maybe those guys weren't in on it, considering they lack faith.
This reminds me of an old Star Wars fan theory I once heard about from the original release of "A New Hope", possibly the first major fan theory in the franchise. It was that the Obi-Wan we see in the movie is actually clone with the designation 0B1, which he then changed into his name after the war. Funny how that circled back around into the cannon depiction of the clones, with clones like CT-5555 taking the name "Fives" in the same manor. I think it's an interesting part of the fandom's history for sure.
The theory I heard, relating to this also used the original names for jedi and the force: Ophuchi and Bendu. . Which suggested that Obi Wan was actually a clone with the designation OB1.
The "Episode IV: A New Hope" bull$#!+ came later. When I attended the premier in 1977 it was just Star Wars.
@@proto-geek248it’s not bullshit just because he thought the movies would have potential for prequels in 1980, it’s that no one was to change his script in any way like they did in the original trilogy
@@Bluemantopvids I was excited when I heard there was going to be a Darth Vader origin story. Imagine my disappointment when they served up the plate of $#!+ that is The Phantom Menace. You may not think it's bull$#!+, but I certainly do.
@@proto-geek248 Still not a valid reason to being triggered by a new name (the movie subtitle more precisely) and numerals.
For anyone wondering why Ben was older than he should be after watching the prequels; well this is the "why". He was intended to be older because the Clone Wars were set longer ago, before the prequels happened. Why Lucas changed this concept is a fact that he only knows.
It would've made more sense time-wise if Anakin became Darth Vader decades after the clone wars because Obi Wan is pretty old but Luke still has to be 19 in a new hope. There still needs to have been a lot of time between the height of the jedi and the galactic empire because of how they describe the force as an "ancient religion" but Anakin would've had to become Darth Vader only 19 years before the events of the OT. It's pretty clear the Lucas wanted the clone wars, rise of the empire *and* the birth of Luke and Leia to be in the same trilogy but star wars lore would make so much more sense if he wrote it literally any other way
@@nicksiegfried4906especially if the prequel trilogy could basically just replace the sequel trilogy and put the original trilogy as the final one
Yeah that would have made a hell of a lot more sense. I know living on a desert planet would be tough on your skin but he aged 60 years in 15
Alec Guinness was 62 during filming of ANH. Obi-Wan was 57. The timeline checks out.
@@christophertaylor9100 If he aged 60 years, he would be around 90 - 100 years old. Also, ANH is set 19 years after ROTS, not 15.
One aspect I think gets overlooked a lot, even by Lucas and Star Wars, is that it's called the Clone WARS. As in more than one war. Multiple players, multiple fronts, multiple factions, and a much longer span of time. In a lot of the older material, they even speak of the Clone Wars as practically its own era or generation, as an ongoing thing of such horror and brutality that it's basically scarred everyone.
Yknow technically we could still see that acknowledged in a way We had the clone rebellion in Legends and we got a good number of rebellious clones in canon… I mean 😂 The only weird bit is how close it would be to the original trilogy
Not only that but if you look at typical naming conventions for wars/conflicts is if it names a group then that is usually who they were fighting against. For example, French & Indian War, Gallic Wars, or the Trojan War. Of course it is one sides name for the war but we don't typically name it for who we fight with. So I always took that the Clone Wars was fights against clones.
Oh yeah, like how the Mandalorian Wars in KOTOR don't just mean the one Revan was in but all the other ones from the Tales of the Jedi comics preceding it
I mean, hate to be "that guy" but there were dozens of different wars throughout the clone wars. The republic and the CIS were quietly and loudly annexing neutral planets and on top of that both sides were funding rebel groups in the others territory. I believe there was a power grab by the Hutts as well. It wasn't exactly its own "era" like the galactic civil war was, encompassing numerous wars over the course of over a decade, but nonetheless it was undoubtedly a period of great upheaval, particularly after 1000-some odd years of relative peace/
I still love the theory that one of Lucas' earlier ideas was that jedi were the clones, supported by C'Baoth later with Zahn's novels. That Obiwan was actually a clone of Ben Kenobi called OB-1; his name spelled like that in the same way Artoo and Threepio get spelled in the novels.
wow this is crazy
I mean definitely crazy, just a fun theory is all. A New Hope had like a dozen different rough draft versions like the one they made the 'The Star Wars' comic adaptation from, so there's no telling how much Lucas flipflopped on the Clone Wars before settling on appeasing the Fett fans by making them all Boba brothers X3@@thestarforge6058
Aw man, that explains the strangeness of a number being part of Ben's name and that's really cool! That's great, if there's actual credence to this theory as being part of his OG concept for the Jedi, I'll need to do some digging later myself as I'm now curious!
Oh man that's a cool idea!
The Return of the Jedi novelization had Ghost Ben saying Owen Lars was his brother. So OB-1 and O-1 were brothers, clone brothers. Or so the speculation went in those days.
As it was presented it's less likely that the galaxy would call the conflict "the clone wars" and would probably refer to it as "The Galactic Civil War"
I'm not entirely sure how I didn't even notice that but you're 100% right
I've always assumed it's called different names in different parts of the galaxy for different parts of the war. Just like WWII ( The European War, The Winter War, The Continuation War, The Great Patriotic War, The Pacific War, The East Asia War), it probably depends on where you are and what side your area was. In the current cannon, many worlds went into civil wars on who to support, I'd assume they'd call it the civil war. People in parts of unaffected Hutt Space might call it The Succession Wars, or The Confederacy Wars, you get the idea.
Ironic.
And it's literally like the American civil war with the Republic and Confederacy... far more of a civil war than the Rebellion.
When exactly was the Clone Wars museum on Coruscant supposed to have been founded? If it was during the Empire, the idea that the Jedi went as far as to install a puppet ruler of the Republic could have been propaganda.
The museum was definitely built with the intention of spreading Imperial propaganda (this was before the planet had been retaken by the New Republic). Wedge notes that its accounts of events like the Battle of Endor are radically different from what actually happened and spun to be as pro-Imperial as possible. Suffice to say that its narrative of the Clone Wars and Palpatine's rise to power is very questionable at best even within the context of the book.
If I recall correctly the museum was built during the Old Republic as something like the US Smithsonian
It was propaganda! Wedge visited the museum while undercover to liberate Coruscant from Isard's Empire. If I recall, there was a secret part to that museum that Palpatine had sealed off so he could privately revel in/gloat at all the factual Jedi artifacts.
it was. "Back in the days of the Old Republic, there were three more chambers that extended back there with memento's of famous Jedi Knights and their exploits." Uella shrugged. "It's been sealed up for over thirty standard years." Direct copy from the second X-wing book, Wedge's Gamble, when he, Iella Wesseri, and Pash Cracken toured the museum.@@DarkPuppy9
My thought, exactly
Growing up as the prequels came out, I've always been pretty fascinated with what things were like or how people thought the prequel era and the clone wars might have gone.
As a kid when Obi-Wan mentions the clone wars it wasn’t clear to me he was saying “clone”. I thought it might be klowen, cloen, klo-en. Since the naming in the movie was “alien”. There was no real backstory in the original movie. Not a lot of re-watch opportunities and certainly no subtitles. I remember standing in line for return of the Jedi, and being very excited (8 yrs old). I vaguely recall watching ESB in the same theater. I drew crossed red and blue light sabers for what felt like weeks. I still have a few stashed away. It’s fun to be my age and sort have been able to experience the movies first hand but still be young enough to get into the clone wars cartoon. It certainly was formative. I probably learned to work on cars because I thought it was so cool that even Princess Leia helped fix the falcon. Everyone was always repairing their janky shit. Both of my parents grew up on farms and I close to many. It resonated in a clear way the desire to get off the farm and see the wider world. Also to know how to fix shit and be self sufficient as well as contribute.
For me, I got heavily involved in the Star Wars RPG by West End Games. As far as I know, these are the people that gave EVERYBODY in the first three movies that you see for any length of time a background, personality, and a character. Timothy Zahn was given a bunch of sourcebooks and told; "Here's your source materials, now get writing." I hated what George did in the prequel movies, so I still use them as my Star Wars canon. But that's just me. You can find them online if you want to take a look.
I saw all 5 (at the time) films between AOTC and ROTS. My dad told me what he'd read in a magazine in the 80s, that "Ben" had thrown "Vader" "into a volcano." this was also mentioned in the ROTJ novelization. So when the ROTS publicity started prominently featuring lava it was like "OHHHH SHIT IT'S ABOUT TO HAPPEN"
@@Benjamin0111I've played that for years, and it's a shame that Lucas destroyed all the work WEG and the EU did to flesh out his universe. WEG was given full access to original materials and Lucas greenlighted what they were doing. It helped keep the franchise alive and put money in his pocket. I try to run the RPG without assumptions from the other movies. I also ran both D20 versions and even a brief Clone Wars campaign for my friends. But I prefer to run classic Star Wars the way that universe worked in the original trilogy. Ben never owned a droid. Good jedi don't push people using the force or run at super speed. Boba Fett is not a clone of anyone. The Force is not governed by microbes in your blood. Stuff like that. Here's my "Bible" of sorts lol: starwars-thewayweremember.blogspot.com/2023/09/d6-star-wars-unlearning-what-you-have.html
@@sethfg finally, somebody with the same acoustic problem! I am from a german-speaking country, and I am pretty sure Obi-Wan says "Klan Kriege" ("Clan wars") in the german version. And I, too, thought nothing of it, just some fancy name for some unimportant piece of lore.
Growing up, all the way until I saw episode 2 in theaters, I assumed the clones would be the bad guys. My thought was that at some point in the war, the "president" of the republic was replaced with a clone, along with Clone Jedi - installed by Senator Palpatine. When the good jedi overthrew the bad clones, Palpatine was able to declare in the chaos that the Jedi had installed a puppet leader and needed to make an empire in the name of peace.
I remember reading that in the original script, the emperor wasn't bad, he was just aloof and the governors and bureaucratswere running the show. And that the empire had existed for millenia, not a republic. The republic was a different country (star-state, galactic-state?)
Before the Prequels, I'd always figured the Clone Wars was more of an espionage-based conflict with the clones being spies and assassins and because there were so many of the same faces floating around it was hard to tell just who was on what side. Seems just as likely as any of the other theories, given there were no details to be had.
I assumed they were civil wars between cloned heads of state backed by rival powers...
Yeah, same, like the Dominion War kind of, from ST DS9. Attack of the Clones even got me excited for that in the first part of the movie when I saw the changeling assassin. Of course I wasn’t really thinking about changelings being different from clones, I was just ready for some kind of body snatcher activity one way or another.
@@pinkfloydguy7781 Yeah a war where people were getting cloned and replaced could have been really interesting... And the idea of Obi-Wan being a clone kinda echoes the later bits about how Sheev Palpatine tried to clone himself.
In the older novels, it was strongly hinted that the 'clone wars' were actually wars between different warlords, each with their own army of clones, and the Republic was just caught in the middle and powerless to stop their worlds being conquered and ravaged until the Jedi broke their neutrality and started organizing a fight back. Senator Palpatine supported them, using them as a tool to seize political power and restructure the republic into an empire, while secretly being one of the 'Clone Masters' who had perpetuated the wars, until he could use the jedi and republic to wipe out his enemies, seize power, and wipe out the jedi all at once. That would have made a much better prequel trilogy, in my opinion.
That sounds a hell of lot more interesting than what we got.
How? People say "it's much more interesting than what we got" but they don't explain *how* it's more interesting.
@@cantnevercould9660 What we got was a stilted sociopathic love story with a bunch of ewok-stand-ins (first gungans, then clones) blowing up mildly dangerous crash test dummies in the background. The CIS was set up to fail from the beginning and the audience knew it. There was no tension, no real existential danger to the conflict. Because the separatists were just that. Separatist. They weren't a conquering army for the most part, just an option that people could join if they thought they had a better deal there than in the republic which had clearly outlived its usefulness. In the end, the CIS were in the moral right, despite their vilain-coding. What the older writers, and I when I wax poetic about my prequel re-write, propose is a significantly larger and more sociologically impactful series of conflicts that threatens the entire population of the galaxy with refugee status and the horrors of war. It offers band-of-brothers gritty warfare, death and trauma on a massive scale, and real changes to an existing setting that make sense.
@@mitchhaelann9215 *There was no tension, no real existential danger to the conflict* It's a prequel story. Some things are predetermined. For example, there's no danger to Anakin or Obi-Wan because they both have to be alive in order for them to be in the Original Trilogy. *The CIS was set up to fail from the beginning and the audience knew it. Because the separatists were just that. Separatist. They weren't a conquering army for the most part, just an option that people could join if they thought they had a better deal there than in the republic which had clearly outlived its usefulness* Right, it's meant to represent how far the Republic has decayed to the point of falling into a civil war. *In the end, the CIS were in the moral right, despite their vilain-coding* Just ignore all the war crimes they do like killing innocent civilians... *What the older writers, and I when I wax poetic about my prequel re-write, propose is a significantly larger and more sociologically impactful series of conflicts that threatens the entire population of the galaxy with refugee status and the horrors of war. It offers band-of-brothers gritty warfare, death and trauma on a massive scale, and real changes to an existing setting that make sense* Which is already what the current Clone Wars is.
@@mitchhaelann9215 The gungans definitely were ewok stand ins, but calling the clones ewoks feels a bit much.
The retcon for Leia in the marvel comic was that she was swapped out for Padme
Well, it's convenient that the characters are so similar. Would have been hard to do that retcon if Lucas decided to make Padme something more original lol
Waiting for an author to slip in a Clone Trooper named Jaango.
Unchained, too
While I was way too young to think about it the first time I watched Star Wars, on later viewings when I heard about the Clone Wars and Clones in A New Hope I automatically assumed that the Stormtroopers were Clones. It just sort of made sense. Then when I saw the Clone Army in Episode 2 I was like, I KNEW IT! I remember being really shocked the first time I saw on a forum that many people assumed the Clones were on the other side.
Yes it seems obvious they were the clones because they all were seemingly the same size
lol I was a dumb kid, I didn’t put it together until revenge of the sith. I was like “ the clones look similar to storm troopers but they’re cool and the good guys so they can’t be. “ and I really didn’t know what happened to all the Jedi. Order 66 was a gut punch. I remember seeing all the Jedi on geonosis and thought it was the coolest, look at all the Jedi!! I think I was like 8 or 9 when I saw Episode III in theatre. It was the first form of media where I really experienced an adult theme like that.
Ngl i didn't realise Clonetroopers and stormtroopers helmet is different as a kid, the fact that stormtroopers is actually human is more suprising to me
see the idea that the clones were the bad guys was actually something I had thought too before the prequels came out
It all comes from the fact that people in identical armour were considered "robot like" by the censors and killing them off without a thought was fine. The clones had to be less-than-human somehow, and when they went to a full on war... well droids vs clones means they can have tons of carnage and death one both sides without making viewers feel bad (or at least that was the theory). The Clone Wars series upended all that (in a very good way IMO) by making the clones actual people who were very much not "robot like". Though SW has never really dealt with the fact that at least a fair number of droids are clearly people (as in sentient individuals) too.
I like the idea that many legends books presented of a more diffuse Jedi order. Correllia had a somewhat unique Jedi philosophy in “I Jedi” for example. Jedi masters could travel the galaxy and collect students like a wandering sage or rabbi, and there was more diversity because of it.
I always assumed the Jedi were like wandering knights errant- the centralised Jedi bureaucracy where everyone knows each other makes the galaxy seem so small
I kinda like both. Maybe there is a formal Jedi Order in the same where that there is "A" Catholic Church, but like your idea of it operating at arm's length from the bulk of the actual Jedi. This could explain why the Jedi Purge took so long, whereas in the films, it was really just an overnight thing since Papa Palpatine had tabs on everyone.
@@ScooterinABActually in Legends there are other Jedi cults besides the main Jedi Temple on Coruscant, such as the one Callista Ming it's from. Of course several were created as retcons to explain certain inconsistencies between books
Of course, the other thing that was a missed opportunities is that they were the Clone WARS, plural; could have been several different, possibly simultaneous, conflicts involving clones to delve into- instead of a single (rather short) war.
Considering the size of the galaxy, one sector creating clones for some reason and other sectors following suit for other reasons and finally they go to war against each other for yet other reasons could have been interesting. The era of the Clone Wars could have still been short. Jedi and Republic forces trying to take out the numerous clone facilities, while the clones get wiped out because they are seen as replaceable until the supply runs out. Which also resulted in devastated continents and planets. Negotiations between some opponents to stop on their own. And so on. This could have been very interesting.
Napoleonic wars, plural doesn't imply anything really, and in canon the wars were portrayed as a major conflict with many minor conflicts on neutral planets influenced by both sides
There's also the Jedi purge which could be considered a distinct war, it ended quickly and was more of a massacre but order 66 was a war between the republic and Jedi, even if it was a fairly quick one
@@Jiub_SN The War of the Third Coalition, War of the Fourth Coalition, War of the Fifth Coalition, War of the Sixth Coalition, War of the Seventh Coalition, the Peninsular War, and the French invasion of Russia; I mean, sounds kinda plural to me.
To be honest, when you're dealing with the Scale of Star Wars every major battle is basically a war unto itself. The Battle Of Christophis for example should have been called "The Christophis War" instead because were talking about planetary invasion. Kind of like how 40k does it.
Ah, the early Marvel comics. Reading them nowadays is wild, particularly the early ones that only had ANH to go off of (or just a semi-final script of the film for the earliest issues). Anakin and Vader were two separate people, Jabba the Hut (one "t") is a bipedal alien with a walrus-like face, Jaxxon the green alien rabbit makes his debut and, most relevant to this topic, there's an issue set during the Clone Wars featuring a younger Obi-Wan rocking a ripped bod and a black bodysuit. The story itself doesn't reveal much of anything about the state of the galaxy though, as it's set on a space liner under attack by some random pirates. It's a shame that copyright law has been extended so egregiously over the years. I'll be long dead when the Clone Wars era of Star Wars media becomes public domain, and I would love to see what people could do with these alternate takes on the event.
For some reason I think one of the biggest missed opportunities is having the "Jedi uniform" be something other than what was originally intended to be Tatooine farmer clothing. I like the black body suit of Obi-Wan in that comic, or even Luke's black shirt from the end of Return of the Jedi, as Jedi clothing more. I don't like the idea that just because the Jedi are an ancient order, they have to look "ancient" by Earth standards. I mean, there's nothing ancient-looking about a lightsaber (to us). No need to make lightsaber blades look like Excalibur.
@@coreyander286 my thoughts exactly
_Anakin and Vader were two separate people_ those where the days...
Back in the day there was a pretty prominent theory that Obiwan was actually a clone designation OB-1. Consider, apart from Lukc saying it to his ghost, he never responds to the name other than he hadn't heard it in a long time.
George also changed the Timeline Multiple Times between ROTJ and TFM, according to Zahn, who has known him for Decades, and who George Commissioned to Write the "Heir to the Empire" Series. in the Metallic-covered 20th-Anniversary Edition of "Heir to the Empire," Zahn reveals George often gave him incorrect dates, times, ages, etc., due to his misremembering Which Version of the Timeline Zahn was supposed to be working with, as he had Already Decided the Dates and was working on TFM when working with Zahn to give him the needed info for the "Heir to the Empire" Series.
I really wonder who early post-endor could change if writers knew at least all exact Clone Wars related dates🤔
It is spelled Phantom. TPM, not tfm Also, maybe try seeking knowledge of spelling.
This kind of thing is so well know. Lucas never had a plan for anything. Vader was never going to be Luke's father, and Leia never Luke's sister. I think the story goes that Leia only became Luke's sibling after Jedi started filming and that character was ultimately cut. I can absolutely see Lucas' timeline being completely made up and wildly inconsistent until he started filming Phantom Menace.
@@ScooterinAB Lucas' star wars timeline was inconsistent through times: -First he thought about OT being part of 12 movies. -Then, he thought about 9 movies, and OT is in the middle of it. -After he finished OT, he went like "ah no sequels, i'll do prequels one day though" and also decided that EU may fill the gaps with how succesful Thrawn Trilogy was, at the point that he was also inspired by it's politics and stuff like Coruscant. -Iirc, after he finished Prequels he was like "no sequels" for a while, until around 2010s he revealed his plans for sequels or something. Weird ass plan with suddenly alive Darth Maul and for some reason Darth Talon (who shouldnt even be born at this point) as rulers of crime syndicate vs Luke's jedi order and Leia who is now the Chosen one.
@@aaronmcmillen8140 And use of capitals and punctuation. Reading the OP had my head spinning!
In the beginning of The Paradise Snare by A.C. Crispin, there’s a callback to Han being teased as a kid by Garris Shrike and the rest of the crew of the Trader’s Luck after he says he wants to be a pilot when he grows up. Shrike mockingly calls him “Captain Han of the Imperial Navy.” Han Solo was born in 29 BBY and was said in the book to be about 5 years old when this took place. So it would’ve been around 24 BBY; 5 years before the rise of the Empire and even the Clone Wars hadn’t started yet.
As someone who grew up in the prequel era, I had always wondered what pre-prequel lore about the Clone Wars was like. I especially started wondering this when the sequels came in and started changing the established lore I was more familiar with. I'm glad I now know a little more about it!
For the Horn inconsistency, I think a simple fix would be if Hal Horn's age is moved to 17/18 during the end of the clone wars.
It makes sense, as it was already somewhat Retconned in another Story, where Hal covertly uses the Force to prevent Ysanne Isard from killing Moranda Savich, whom he was attempting to capture in his quest to catch Booster Terrik. Not what it could have been, but Close Enough for now.
Or the kids were married off very young, like what happened in some ancient cultures. 😵💫
It's worth pointing out that all of the Extended Universe material was based off of the West End Game Star Wars RPG material, as when they started doing novels in the 90s, this was the best source of Star Wars info out there. It's a shame they strayed away from that.
Personally, as I was a kid and voraciously read those books when they were coming out in the 90s, they are my head canon. Their version of the last years of the Old Republic hinted at a vast, multi-polar catastrophe/power struggle, perfect epic and tragic background for the fall of a government and destruction of the Jedi--and gave space to make it believable why a relatively young commander on the first Death Star would basically treat the Force like it was some kind of propagandistic myth. Even the hints that, initially, the Jedi were even collaborators or functionaries within the early Empire communicated how dire and radicalized the whole situation had become before the end.
Yeah, imo every time new official Star Wars movies or media has come out, it leads to a more developed plot and character depictions for the main story, at the expense of making the Galaxy seem far smaller and less real. What was a sprawling space adventure has now become a 9 movie story about the Skywalker and Palpatine bloodlines lol
I theorise that Anakin and Obi-Wan were initially both written to be a little bit older than they ended up being in the prequels, and that's why certain dates in Legends don't quite match up with the ones in Canon.
Sebastian Shaw's age supports this. It was probably imagined that Anakin was 30 or 40 when he traitored, not 22.
@@jonathanmarkoff4469 exactly! If Anakin was always supposed to have turned traitor at 22, he probably would have died looking not too much older than Hayden Christiansen does NOW. Obi-Wan's aging from the prequels to the original trilogy was a lot more reasonable, because Alec Guinness was a 63-year-old playing a 57-year-old Obi-Wan. Sebastian Shaw on the other hand was a 78-year-old playing a 45-year-old Anakin.
Yeah in Luke's lifespan, Old Ben Kenobi went from around 30 to 68
@@pelmeni_va I think Sebastian Shaw was a miscast. It's clear that even in the OT Obi-Wan was meant to be substantially older than Anakin.
@@jonathanmarkoff4469 Sebastian was a miscast. Anakin was always meant to be fairly young when he turned to the dark side.
It's amazing how, aside from the Jedi's puppet leader, that paragraph from X-Wing: Wedge's Gamble aligns perfectly with RotS.
Actually that bit still works, as after the Purge Dooku was oficially labeled as a Jedi double agent and a puppet of the Jedi to play on both sides of the war.
It is interesting how the timeline for Star Wars changed through the decades. After the special editions were released but before the prequels they put out a Star Wars Encyclopedia. It covered just about everything from the movies, comics, books and games. They even mention Chewbacca's family but make no mention of the Holiday Special. lol At the front of the book is a time line covering all the Star Wars media made up until that point. In that time line is says the Anakin became Darth Vader two years after Luke and Leia are born. That's pretty wild to think that at one time there we might have got to see pre-Vader Anakin with the wife and kids.
There's a scene in Return of Jedi when Luke ask Lea if she remembers of his real mother and Lea answers "I was too young when she died"; so Amigdala was alive at this time and Anakin/vader knew they are his sons.
@@joseeduardobolisfortes Amigdala
@@TheRogueJedii Amiga Dala
It was originally supposed to be Mandalorians cloning themselves and attacking the republic, where both sides ended up cloning themselves (jedi included) and ultimately cloning would be banned across the galaxy. I read that in a few different Star Wars legends books back in the day.
Which? It seems like everyone has Mandela about EU.
@@user-yq9im9dk9z The book I, Jedi references it
@@user-yq9im9dk9z Mandalorela
I'm glad there's someone covering more of the early speculative history of things in legends we'd later see elaborated on. I've wanted to see more content covering the later retconned or softly rewritten elements about the clone wars, darth vader (pre-anakin reveal) Boba Fett, etc.
GJ Corey, its always been difficult to talk to younger pple about pre-prequal star wars clone wars who never really lived without prequels.
Why? I was always curious about it myself. I'm glad I know more about it now.
Timothy Zahn.... Timothy Zahn. Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time, a long time.
These old ideas makes me have my own ideas if I ever touch on writing
Just do it. Doesn't matter if it is good. But do it. Don't talk about it
Yeah lately I've been taking inspiration from rejected drafts/beta features in media
Do your own stuff totally unconnected with Star Wars, or you'll just end up giving royalties to Disney.
I always found it funny reading everyone's shocked reaction in Heir to the Empire: "Palpatine had a secret cloning facility?" After the prequels, the reaction would have been more of a "Yeah, makes sense, of course he does!"
Would it really? Was Kamino ever tied to Palpatine directly by the public?
@@user-yq9im9dk9z He was the chancellor employing a clone army that ultimately sided with him against the Jedi. I'm certain especially someone only superficially familiar with the events would make the connection.
@@dschehutinefer5627Well, considering the events of Dark Empire that takes place after HttE, it's actually quite surprising as it's not the same situation. One thing is, as a politician, employ a race of clonemasters who owns a clones facility, in the name of a government (which actually was already comissioned by a third party) to use in defense of that government and another is to own a private facility for obscure pourposes, such as living forever and rule as a tyrant using Sith shenigangs as DE confirmed.
This is why I have some problems with the humanization of the clones since the Clone Wars show. Earlier sources portrayed the clones as following orders very strictly and were at this point barely used to empathy. Something which supported the idea that non clone people like Pellaeon could have a negative view on them.
See, I don't think "the bigoted prejudices have a point" is a good writing trope.
@@PosthumanHeresyAnd that's why you'll never make great art like 40k Star Wars or literally any work of space age sci fi ever written.
The chips ruined it. The Clones were better being pretty much mindless puppets that did whatever the Emperor ordered, with a few Clones exhibiting free will.
@@LedZedd LMFAO okay boomer. Also, how telling that your idea of "great art" is mass market franchise made to sell sell sell. Disney-brained.
@@PosthumanHeresy Disney brained is saying that creative writing has to be limited because it might seem too close to a real life issue, but you wouldn't get that.
I read in a Star Wars magazine back in the 90s about this subject: the Old Republic banned cloning, not just for warfare purposes, but also having an unlimited supply of forced labor for some governments. Then the wars were fought and mamy systems fought fore or against it, with Clones in some of the fighting regiments in the fore category. It was a hard fought war, but the Republic and Jedi came out the victors and cloning was heavily banned to the point that execution was prosecuted in most cases to deter others.
I like CRACKED’s theory they come up with: the Clone Wars was where they were cloning Jedi. That brings up a whole list of wacky, sinister implications that would have been WAY more interesting as the backbone of the prequel trilogy than what we got. Imagine the morality of individual lives and souls being questioned if Jedi themselves were complicit in pumping out clones of themselves to fight a Sith menace. Sounds pretty hardcore to me.
I don't see how that's anymore interesting than what we have. The Jedi are still complicit in pumping out the Jango Fett clones.
@@cantnevercould9660 because that would mean that the Jedi would essentially be putting force sensitive users on a factory line. It would bring up SO many different dark implications about the Star Wars universe. It’s honestly a whole can of worms i can’t even go into
@@dylanbuchanan6511 And the current version we have isn't just as dark?
No@@cantnevercould9660
@@cantnevercould9660The current version is just one manufactured thing fighting another manufactured thing. I feel nothing when a Clone or a Droid gets shot. They can just make more.
To be fair, you could argue that the American Civil War started as far back as Bleeding Kansas. So while the first official battle of the Clone Wars happened on Genoiss, there had been issues building up long before the Battle of Naboo in the Phantom Menace. The Separatist Crisis was bound to happen at some point however it was sped up by 20 years due to Sith interference.
The idea of both sides using the same same sets of clones is crazy and I would've loved to see that.
After the revelation in ESB, my theory was that Vader was Luke’s father’s clone from the war versus being his actual father.
Funny, I had the same thought back in the day. Vader was Luke’s father from his point of view, that he truly believed he was his father.
I mean, I knew Palpatine was evil. But I had no idea he was "didnt like and subscribe" evil.
The much longer timeline makes so much more sense that it's frustrating.
Welcome to stupid Star Wars problem of shrinking scales for reasons. Excibit A: Clone Wars. Excibit B: End of the Galactic Empire. Excibit C: Birth of the Sith Order. And on... And on... No one wants to leave room for more stories, just suffocate the timeline.
MCU is this times 100, after phase one every movie was earth changing events and no they have nowhere else to go but stupid multiverse bullshit @@user-yq9im9dk9z
I had put together a RPG campaign based on the original plan, with the Separatists using Clones, while the Jedi lead a desperate Republic army against them. I also had the Z-95 Headhunter as the most popular Republic Starfighter, and the V-series: Acclamator, Venator, Vindicator, Victory
Z-95 Headhunter my beloved
@@baneofbrot8652 the predecessor to the X-Wing.
In an old comic the Seperatists did have a prototype clone army. Just googled it, its the Morgukai Shadow army. Its pretty silly but cool
Still don't understand the popularity of that obsolete fossil the Zed-95.
@@michaelandreipalon359 Obsolete by Yavin. State of the art in the Clone Wars. Unlike those starfighters that came through a time vortex from 25ABY that appeared in the prequel movies.
The Weird Al "The Saga Begins" video ended with the humorous suggestion that a Clone army would be based on Obi-Wan.
While I love the Clone Wars we got (which is my favorite TV show and was the topic of my thesis on military strategy in science fiction) this other clone wars seems super interesting and I feel like some elements could fit into existing canon as a previous war against Republic Security Forces
Is it bad that I want to read that thesis? 😂
@@cousin_x_caps7347 Same. OP should link it (though I'd get not wanting to dox yourself lol).
That would make sense if there was another war with the clones decades before The Phantom Menace. It's called the Clone *Wars* after all.
There was a battle with an army of Separatist Clones on Saleucami. The Conflict was to prevent the large-scale use of a "Shadow Army" army of Kajain'sa'Nikto Clones, trained as Morgukai Jedi Hunters by their Genetic Donor, Bok. The costs of killing this Shadow Army were Immense on both Sides. There is also the "Unofficial" Clone Rebellion of "Anti-Troopers" seen in Battlefront II (The Real One, from Lucasarts).
@@cantnevercould9660 Clone War 2: Cloned Again
I still miss the Bantam era. The '90s EU (novels, comics, games) continues to be what I think of first when I hear "Star Wars". My happy place.
You can always watch and read the material.
As a Belgian, I grew up with the French dubbed version of Star Wars. In the dubbed version, "The Clone War" was dubbed "La Guerre Noire" meaning "The Black War". This sounded way more menacing than what we finally got. Reminiscing of "The Black Plague".
Anybody ever wonder what happened when Luke Skywalker found the mask of his ancestor Revan? Or when his New Jedi Order had to defeat the spirit of Dark Jedi Exar Kun? Both happened on that little moon in the Yavin System. Not a story Disney would tell you. It's a Legend.
Luke never found revan mask
1. Luke and Revan aren't related. There's a character named Deena Shan from the Dark Horse comics that might be descended from him, though. 2. Exar Kun was a Sith Lord, not a Dark Jedi.
I always preferred some of the earlier versions. And the Clone Wars (plural) were not just one mega conflict, but a series of conflicts of a longer period of time. The 20 years between the Clone Wars and A New Hope always seemed too short. We have Obiwan as an old man, still following the beliefs of his knightly order implies the clone wars were some 40 years before Yavin, not 20. It also makes more sense that the slide to empire was over several decades, not practically instantaneous. If anything I saw it as Darth Vader became a Jedi after the Clone Wars. Sort of Vader and Luke's father were brothers (Cain and Able story). They came to blows, perhaps over a woman and infidelity (which could explain the "I am your father" and Obiwan's statement of "Vader killed your father" without the twisting of "certain point of view." No one knew except Vader, the woman, and the one thought of as Luke's father. They come to blows and in a fit of passion Vader kills his brother, and falls to the dark side. Then we can get the whole storyline of Vader betraying the Jedi, fighting Obiwan, etc. Just seems a much cleaner timeline than what we got.
It's cleaner from a lore perspective, but cinematically, it's probably a lot harder to make a smooth film set over multiple eras. The first three films all have the feel of occurring over a few days. That's explicit in A New Hope, where Vader says, "This will be a day long remembered, it has seen the end of Kenobi, now it will see the end of the Rebellion." I bet Lucas would not have relished going from that direct, zippy storytelling to doing a Star Wars movie told like _Citizen Kane,_ where we have to age Anakin and Obi-Wan five or ten years within the same movie, rather than between movies.
Not everything needs a love triangle. The OT already had that.
One of the fun aspects of the time between the OT and the PT was how the lack of knowledge about things like the Clone Wars and even the Jedi were given an in-world explanation: a combination of destruction of records by the Empire and Imperial propaganda was so pervasive that people didn't know the true history anymore. That us also part of why the Clone Wars were placed a bit earlier in the SW timeline, to grant enough passage of time to muddle memories and have enough new people to be born that they would not have direct knowledge of these things.
As a kid growing up in the 80s watching the OT, I didn't even know what a clone was - just thought "The Clone Wars" sounded cool lol...
Same with George.
I’ve literally been looking for a video breaking this down for years 😭 Thx Corey
I think when Leia refers to it, mentioned at 6 minutes, she might not be completely clear on its exact start and finish date, and they might include incidents with the trade federation as part of the clone wars. so its possible it wasn't the clone wars that caused the issue but "round that time" and it could've just been a large group of pirates they don't really know, the trade federation did have to battle pirates and other groups.
I mean the trade federation wasn't even an idea until well after the OT
The way Ben described the clone wars sounded more fascinating when it wasn’t explored
he never described the clone wars. he just said he fought in it with luke's father.
@@Fr3k3 Yeah wrong word choice. He described his relationship with Anakin during the clone wars not so much the actual Clone Wars which is why it was so fascinating because we didn’t even know what it was. I wish it was kept more shrouded in mystery. It’s like it’s this grand backstory that held a lot of weight when it was simply referenced with excellent line delivery from Alec Guinness. You get the sense that there’s a larger galaxy out there and it feels larger the less it’s explored. Not everything has to be explored honestly. Then it becomes over saturated and less interesting. That’s my take on it. The film industry has a major issue with franchise fatigue. At the very least if you’re going to explore it execute it well and give it a reason to exist as a trilogy. I felt like personally the prequels felt like an afterthought and even more so the sequels, shows and new expanded canon. I think Star Wars is nearly a perfect trilogy on its own without having seen anything else
@@fatherlucid4995 tbh I think the EU stuff from the late 90s to 2006 is great too and I think had Star Wars just been the OT, Star Wars would've faded into obscurity or been an afterthought like Wizard of Oz, Flash Gordon, Avatar, TRON and other fantasy franchises that were never explored did. So while I'm disappointed with how the prequels and Sequels turned out, you should still respect the EU for expanding the Star Wars universe and keeping Star Wars exciting and relevant. Some of the best Star Wars content came from the EU, just look at the 2 KOTOR games or the Thrawn books.
@@fatherlucid4995 idk, I think Star Wars having more movies was good for the franchise, even though the Prequels and Sequels were disappointing. Had Star Wars just been the OT, it would've been an obscure franchise like TRON, Wizard of Oz, and Avatar all are. Besides, the original Clone Wars Multimedia Project from the the early 2000s makes the Clone Wars interesting. Also I disagree heavily on "the less explored, the bigger the galaxy seems". A New Hope has the worst worldbuilding of any Star Wars movie and it makes the galaxy feel more like a solar system tbh.
@@dtxspeaks268 The OT was too massive to fade into obscurity on its own. Plenty of one off films less popular than Star Wars still resonate today and still popular enough to captivate new fans
Another look at a different timeline is in The Farlander Papers/X-Wing Strategy Guide, where it says that Palpatine didn't *start* his rise to power until well into or even after the rebuilding period after the Clone Wars.
If Lucas banned describing the Clone Wars, how authors thought it was a good idea to even indirectly give any dates or details about it? It seems like someone at Lucasfilm didn't vet the novels enough.
I doubt anyone working at Lucasfilm as a job could really imagine how much fans would care about the continuity of spinoff material back in the early '90s, when the EU was still in an embryonic form anyway.
Easiest retcon I think it just to say there were several conflicts that are retroactively called "The Clone Wars" (note the plural). If we consider The Phantom Menace, since its one of the prequels, to be part of "The Clone Wars"; albeit a very early part of them it really opens up what a historian could call "The Clone Wars". If we say the Battle of Naboo is part of them the Stark Hyperspace War is part of "The Clone Wars" as well since there we have (although people wouldn't know it at the time) a Trade Federation proxy fighting the Republic to increase Trade Federation power and autonomy. Easy for a historian to point at the Stark Hyperspace War as "the first of The Clone Wars" since its a war to wrestle power away from the central government and would be why the CIS' droid army would effectively exist. "The Clone Wars" would in that case be better off called "The Droid Wars" but there were other droid uprising and the name would be confusing; however the clone army is the defining feature of the final war that lead to the rise of a Sith empire (and the Galactic Empire is just a Sith empire with a different storefront) so "The Clone Wars" gets stamped retroactively on all the shooting wars that lead to Palpatine coming to power; which would be the Stark Hyperspace War, the Battle of Naboo, and the Clone Wars itself. So that puts us at about 44 BBY. Now there is the issue of the clone army itself. Its a bunch of Mandalorian clones, with Mandalorian training, and Manalorian inspired equipment. The clone army is a Republic controlled Mandalorian army; so interestingly a historian could say that the Clone Wars is actually the "last of the Mandalorian Crusades". That opens up a lot of points where a historian could draw a line saying that this was the beginning of "The Clone Wars"/"The Last Mandalorian Crusade". The Mandalorian Excision might count but I think that would mark the end of the previous Mandalorian Crusade but it would definitely start with the Mandalorian Civil War since that would lead to Jango Fett abandoning his position as Mand'alor and falling in league with the Sith. So that would put the start at about 60 BBY, more than enough time for there to be several generations of Horns to be born. With those two dates I could see the lazy historian drawing the line for "The Clone Wars" as EVERY conflict after the Ruusan Reformation to the declaration of the Empire. This would make the Unification Campaigns and Mandalorian Excision all part of "The Clone Wars" because to those historians the "The Clone Wars" is just the collection of wars to hold the Republic together between the Ruusan Reformation and the Empire forming. Connecting all those conflicts together would help shady historians sell more history holos if they can say their writings about the obscure defeat of Darth Syphilis at the 12th Battle of Farbog in 714 BBY is "the untold story of greatest battle of The Clone Wars era!" because the person buying the holo will connect that with the images of clone troopers fighting droids even though it would have none of that and it only considered part of "The Clone Wars" for academic purposes.
nice
Historian here, fucking accurate.
It is common for a war to have a misleading name. The 100 Years War was not a continuous 100-year war, the French and Indian War was not French vs Indian, and the First World War was not the first globe-spanning war. Many wars are called the Civil War, an oxymoron if ever there was one.
@@jonathanmarkoff4469”French and Indian” is an almost entirely American specific term; everyone else uses “7 years war.” Also, “civil” in “civil-war” refers to “city, civilization, etc.” not the adjective of being a civil person.
@@tfan2222 The French and Indian War was a North American war which lasted 9 years. In its third year it was absorbed into the nascent 7 Years War whose main theatre was in Europe, but had an outpost in Asia as well - a conflict between Britain and France over India, which might also be called the French and Indian War!
I thought is was going to be two clones army’s fighting each other.
I love how the official Clone Wars throws expectations on their head. Prior to the prequels, SW fans and eu authors envisioned this evil army of clones as like a plague, but Lucas made them the good guys fighting alongside the Jedi, and he made it so the Jedi are also fighting _for_ Palpatine...but wait, they really are the bad guys, and so is Palpatine, and doing this led to their destruction. Whoever came up with the separatist movement/droid army/civil war vs Republic clones/jedi, etc, whether Lucas himself or someone else, it's absolutely brilliant
I think that evil clones may have been the intended plotline up until around 2001, but he realized that a decent amount of fans had pieced together the clone plotline and he shifted gears. My theory is that in about 1995, when he wrote the second draft of Episode I and introduced the concept of Midi-Cholorians, he did this with the intent of setting the stage for discussion of cells and science and things like that. This was done because in Episode 2 or 3 it would be revealed that cloning does something to the Midi-cholorian count, which would help the heroes defeat the clones. This became too convoluted so he made the clones good guys.
When I saw the droids as the antagonists, my mind went to Starchaser: The Legend of Orin. Yes, Starchaser is a Staw Wars knock off, but they had the droid army first.
To be honest, the entirety of the prequel trilogy turned expectations on their head. I doubt anyone was expecting Darth Vader to have been a conflicted teenager with issues during his Jedi Years, I bet most people expected him to have been a badass Jedi Master before he fell to the dark side. The entire prequel trilogy just wasn't what fans were expecting it to be, which I think is one of the reasons why it was hated.
@@ShinDangaioh Huh. Puts a fascinating spin on the line 'with electronic mind control' for Starchaser, concerning the villains backstory. Up until the 'inhibitor chip' retcon there was no connection, but suddenly it would fit. Just an amusing thought on parallels.
I like what George made but I think these other ideas for what the clone wars might have been sound pretty good too. In the Zahn books, I thought that the Sparti cloning cylinders which grew the clones who went mad must be produced by some competitor to the Kaminoans, but with inferior quality.
I like to think of alternate storylines as what people on some random planet think it went down, it would also be really hard to get an exact timeline because your local planets time is probably all you would worry about
7:10 It's pretty curious that the whole plot of the separatist Clone Spar from the Karen Traviss' books was written only to reconcile with the main continuity a flashback about the Clone Wars, shown in a comic from the dubiously canonical Marvel series from the 80s, that shows the Mandalorians helping Palpatine destroy the Jedi. The bad thing here is that Duchess Satine from TCW, a show that has too many major contradictions with all previous material to be considered canon within Legends appears in Spar's story, which sadly means that book caused a ton of continuity issues trying to fix a small one probably no one even cared about at this point
TCW kinda created its own continuity anyways. It completely ignored the EU timeline, so what happened was that all of the EU writers had pretty.much go back and reconcile the show w everything that had already been written about the clone war. Keep in mind, the show came out AFTER the Clone War MultiMedia Project, which had already pretty much told the story of the war day-by-day TCW pretty much changed the whole story of the clone wars even more than the early prequel era already had For example: anakins arc on jabiim, how and when he got his scar, how and when he became a knight, the existence of ahsoka tano, barriss offee's fate, depa billaba's fate, general greivous entire personality, all type of shit that had already been established changed just from the TCW show alone, and EU writers had to reconcile ALL of that somehow. How did books and comics for 3 years tell the story of anakin getting knighted one month before revenge of the sith, and now all of a sudden this show is saying he's knighted one month INTO the war? The EU writers had to figure out a way to make that make sense
@@cloudmaster182the thing with tcw was it was how Lucas and filonia (under Lucas supervision) wanted the story to be told. Also it kinda makes more sense for Anikan to be knighted early in the war as many knights died at genosis, and why he would feel screwed over if he had been a war hero knight for 3 years to not be a master by the revenge of the sith.
@jakeryan152 I'm not arguing abt which version of events is better or worse, I think they both have various strengths and weaknesses in comparison to one another I'm just saying the 2 versions are almost completely incompatible and that yea, most attempts to reconcile TCW with CWMMP are doomed from the start
@@cloudmaster182 I get it, not trying to argue too much either.
@jakeryan152 I do agree that ome makes sense in terms of why he's mad. In legends he was mad abt it for the same reasons. he was still known as a war hero, probably the biggest war hero ever in the galaxy, in the legends version. Just was a padawan for most of it But what ended up happening was the EU writers had to make it seem like everything anakin went thru in the original version all happened within like, I wanna say 6 months after geonosis, and then at the same time, everything else that was happening simultaneously happened at different times. Then as the show went om it just got worse. Then Darth Maul returned from the dead. And dk get me wrong. I like the show. And i think he becomes a much more interestong character after he returns. It's just a completely different version of events tho, and like I said, each has pros and cons Anakin himself os a perfect example. The old version mostly showed him as a young, immature, rebellious teenager (19-21 yr old, but ykno) from attack of the clones. It heavily foreshadowed the anger, rage, fear, attachment that would lead to his fall. He gradually matured into a more composed version of himself, but all of that stayed present underneath. It wasn't until right before revenge of the sith, after he was knighted, that he seemed to finally mature and start to learn to control his emotions and impulses (before things go terribly wrong in episode 3), which is where he starts out in TCW, where he then slowly gets WORSE, and more aggressive as the show goes on. But the old version doesn't show a very compassionate character. It's like it ignores the caring person he was in the Phantom Menace, and only focuses on the negative aspects of his personality. But there's not much that relates back to his full arc in Return of the Jedi, it all seems to revolve around his fall to the dark side. TCW is different in that it focuses on the positive aspects of his personality, and shows that Anakin was a loving person, he cared deeply about others, sometimes to a fault. Etc. So it made him much easier to sympathize with in terms of relating it back to episode 6 and his redemption. Also, clone wars anakon is just anakin in the first 15 minutes of Revenge of the Sith. People act like they're somehow different characters. Everything in that opening sequence, aside from killing dooku, and up until Padme tells him she is pregnant (notable exceptions for a reason) is pretty much a clone wars episode
This is one of the reasons why my own "Star Wars" tabletop RPG games are actually played in a alternate reality that is very close, but not exactly Star Wars. It lets me change a few things to make it more playable, as well as a few plot points that I prefer over the official ones.
I like the implied story of the Clone Wars from Legends over what we got, because why call the canon events the Clone Wars? It feels more justifiable to call it that if the Clones were the source of the antagonism, such as rising up because they were treated as second class beings or some such.
Your terminology is a bit awkward. All the post-prequel-trilogy Clone Wars stuff before the Disney purchase was Legends, too. The Genndy Tarkovsky Clone Wars series, the Republic Commando novels, the video game with the Force Harvester, all Legends.
the Tartakofsky Clone Wars is kinda... on it's own, because it does not fit within Legends. Same with that video game. not sure about the novels, haven't gotten around to reading them yet, but they likely fall into that category too. things that are not in the Disney canon, but don't fit with the rest of Legends because of the timeframe being used. @@coreyander286
I think the foundation of most of the EU was the Star Wars RPG sourcebooks produced in the late 80's - and wouldn't be surprised at all if Lucas gave those authors hints at what he had in mind for the prequels. Using the name 'Coruscant' in Episode 1 was the one concession he made to keep continuity with the EU, although Shadows of the Empire suggested the planet has changed names before - being officially called 'Imperial Center' following Plapatine's rise to power.
When I first saw the orig trig i just imagined that at a previous point in the SW galactic history cloning yourself & having your clone do things you didn't want to do was common place. & that the clone wars started because the clones didn't like being used as disposable slaves for the jobs no one wanted to do & so rose up & fought back, ultimately losing but succeeding in stopping cloning being used as a way to make disposable slaves anymore. & that the Jedi fought against the clones because they thought that the clones where some kind of false life that shouldn't exist in the first place or something like that. I think it was kind of better when the clone wars were a mysterious thing from the past & we didn't actually know what they were or what happened in them.
As a kid in the 90s, I was convinced the Clone Wars involved Jedi fighting evil Jedi clones. When the Phantom Menace came out, I was convinced Palpatine was trying to overtake Naboo with the Trade Federation to get control of Naboo's hidden clone tech. Yeah, I was a dumb kid, but it made sense back then.
I think around the time Revenge of the Sith came out, Lucasfilm took some effort to reconcile some of the inconsistencies with how the Clone Wars had played out in the prequels with pre-prequel hints at what the war was like with some of the ancillary materials for the movie like Incredible Cross-sections and the visual dictionary books. I vaguely remember those ancillary reference books/cross sections/etc mentioning that near the end of the clone wars the republic had started to supplement the Jango clones in their forces with new clones made from other stand-out non-clone soldiers in their army as genetic templates. So over time my head canon for explaining things like the Spaarti cylinders and Pellaeon's leeriness around clones with how mentally unstable they tended to be versus the Jango clones we saw in the movies was that by the end of the clone wars, the republic army had had its reputation and the reputation of the Jango clones sullied by Spaarti cylinder clones of Republic Judicial Forces troops that had been brought in as a lower quality and more unstable short term stop-gap to supplement the Republic army and replace the heavy losses of the better Jango clones during the outer rim sieges who were harder, more expensive and took much longer to replace via Kaminoan cloning methods, especially as the Kaminoans started to run out of good quality gene samples of Jango Fett.
I still have my original comics of Star Wars from the 70's and 80's from when I was a kid along with Indiana Jones and Howard the Duck comics from the early 80's.
Those were AWESOME. I loved how they were produced from the original script, & like Foster's novelization, contain scenes that didn't make the final cut. Wormy lol 😆
I find it funny that many expected the Clone to be an army made by the villains to fighte against the Jedi, and technically that did end up happening, since it was the Sith who commissioned their creation (by hijacking Sifo Dyas's plan) and used them to wipe outnthe Jedi. It may have not been in the way many expec, but it did happen, from a certain point of view.
Heck yeah speculative “pre-canon” material are always fun
Best SW channel. Always concise and to the point, well researched content with excellent visuals.
Exactly! It has always bothered me a lot. Even discounting what was hinted at in the EU. When hearing "Clone Wars", the mental image one gets is a war AGAINST someone who uses Cloned armies to fight, not a fight against an army of battle droids where YOU are the one using Clone armies.
Battle Droids are clones. They're just not clones of a person 😁
I like how taken out of context, the Clone Wars seems to imply a more intricate cloak and dagger sort of conflict ala the Cold War where multiple people could’ve been cloned for deceptive ends or use as proxies, but in reality, the millions of clones are all just based on Some Guy.
Not really. The comments Obi-Wan, Luke, & Leia made would imply a more direct conflict.
you can take anything out of context and make stuff up. but IN context, it was very much implied that it was a direct conflict. "...you fought in the Clone Wars?" "...your father was the best starfighter pilot in the galaxy..." ...he was a cunning warrior..." All of these sort of imply that it was in fact a hot conflict.
Before the prequels i always assumed the Clone Wars were both sides using human clones against each other in a kind of endless meat grinder. Clones vs Droids doesnt have quite the same gravity imo
Still an endless grinder, just one side is for meat and the other for metal
Right now I'm trying to remember everything I "knew" about Star Wars before TPM, and for the life of me I can't tell which bits came from official LFL sources and which came from the fan fiction community I was part of at the time.
I don't consider the Marvel Comics original series to be a "lower tier of canon" as I was constantly impressed with what storylines the authors came up with. The Crimson Forever. Han Solo's background in the early issues. Jaxxon and Amaiza Foxtrain. Beilert Valance. Lumiya, Dark Lady of the Sith. The Tagge family. It's all a great creative surge in those books.
One of the first jobs we see Han and Chewie pull was gunrunning carbines that Han describes as "obsolete when the Clone Wars were news".
That's how every author should have treated the Clone Wars. Who tf allowed Zahn to mention dates? 😂
When I was a kid in the 80s, I didn't know what clones were. It was well into the 90s before I realized that the Clone Wars were NOT a trade war about Cologne. Star Wars never smelled the same after I found out.
The "Clone Wars" was clearly a reference to the "Eugenic Wars" mentioned in Star Trek as well, and I actually liked that GL made it a giant US Civil War reference. The Clone Wars is one of the best things to come out of the Prequels, and the Genndy Tartakovsky mini-series really made it even better. That series is still canon in my heart because screw Disney and it's also too damn good to not be canon.
To be fair to all parties involved. The fact the 3D Clone Wars cartoon overridden the 2D one was pretty firmly placed long before Disney bought Star Wars. Both in the case that George Lucas just doesn't consider that stuff he only overlooked as parts of his universe Vs having pretty major involvement in the 3D show. And the Lucasfilm management that reordered the "Canon tiers" Star Wars used to have as having the 3D Star Wars Clone Wars cartoon it's own tier above everything but the live action movies. You look far back enough in time and can see the 3D Clone Wars cartoon itself was a harbinger for the end of the Canon tiers
I always liked the imagery from early Ralph M art, showing the stormtroopers as knights w/lightsabers + shields. There were no prequels yet or any real expanded universe. I had imagined that the clone wars mentioned, had the jedi fighting enemies that looked more like that and that some of the jedi battled with armor - a bit like Samurai amor.
My head canon is that clones were used in more than one conflict leading up to the Clone Wars. In this way, it provides a reason for way the Jedi were so quick to cast aside any concerns and control of the Clone Army in AotC. Since Clones had been used for such matters in during the High Republic era. Without a centralized military and with Jedi being used for policing actions, a reserve of Clones were seen as one of two acceptable alternatives to traditional standing military groups of either conscripted or volunteered service members, the other alternative being war droids.
Ok. But you have to ignore the prequels entirely to make that work. So this only makes sense if you don't like the prequels at alll.
@@pedrokantor3997 The point is to make it fit with the prequels and to make that prequel plotline make sense.
Might explain why it's called The Clone *Wars* since there would be at least two conflicts involving clones.
@@eds1942 So you prefer the High Republic continuity then over George Lucas's vision?
@@pedrokantor3997 prefer Lucas canon. He wanted everything else to fit in an expanded continuity. That said, additional conflicts where clones were employed, as implied in the old EU, during this era doesn’t contradict Lucas Canon. It does however provide reasons for why the word ‘war’ is used in the plural, and for why the Jedi were so quick to take control over the clone army that they had been investigating only to find more red flags beyond the one that started them down that line of questioning.
Given the current state of media such as the Bad Batch, it wouldn't surprise me if some of this stuff could be seen in canon as an anti-clone propaganda campaign by the Empire resulting from the uprising of clones such as those featured in the series. Just an interesting way of making it all fit together imo
When I saw the original trilogy back when it came out, I assumed "clone wars" was just a throwaway reference to establish a pretext for Leia's plea to Obi-Wan, since it wasn't elaborated upon in the subsequent movies. I am still not convinced that it was anything more than that at the time that Lucas made the first movie. When I saw the way that Lucas fleshed out the "clone wars" in the prequel films and made them an integral turning point in the rise of the Empire, it all struck me as rather silly 🤣
a lot of the timing discrepancies could be explained by characters including the separatist crisis when they refer to the clone wars era
Isn't that just two years?
I wish we get New Novels of the Clone Wars if it's Depicted in the Early 90's Mindset.
That would be really cool.
@@Spec_tisum Star Wars should be like mainstream Marvel and DC, and allow multiple continuities to be published concurrently.
@@jonathanmarkoff4469 that would be rad
@@Spec_tisum Dark Horse had a small showcase for noncanon stories in SW Tales. I don't know whether Marvel has an equivalent.
One thing g I never loved about thr prequels is that there's a 10 year time jump between ep 1 and 2, but the clone wars only lasts 3 years. I would have had another 10 year jump between 2 and 3, and have a galaxy wide war not last half the time of world war 2.
I'm glad I am not the only one who remembers all the offhand references especially in the WEG sourcebooks... Thank you for this!
It seems like sometimes it is hard for younger fans that they just made all this up as they went along. There was no real full story in George’s head. Leia and Luke were not even brother and sister in the first movie. There was certainly a period during the EU where stuff was all over the place. Simply because many different artists were making the stories, games, etc. Honestly no one really had this dying need for everything to fit together. It just didn’t matter. It seems like a newer frame of mind where this is really desired and I think it has a lot to do with the internet and the ability to rewatch any time you want and watch endless videos and analysis. It’s kinda fun that they did do a somewhat decent job of making the new cannon work. The only thing that bothers even a tiny bit is the clone wars only lasted three years. That is a little odd. However you want to see it is cool. However for a long time it was hard to consume that much media from any one franchise on purpose. It involved finding the books and all that other stuff separately. As in getting in a car and going to multiple stores. Knowing something was even coming out. You had to buy the magazine that would tell you there was going to be a book or game etc. If you lived in a small town it might not even be possible. So much different world and way of consuming the media. It was a lot harder to see the big picture. Also had to walk up hill both ways to the movie theater in a snow storm. 😂. I am a big fan of the clone wars personally but never got into the eu stuff. I was into more classic science fiction that was easy to get in the school library.
Like, ten different storytellers came up with ten different stories of how the Death Star plans were stolen, and one of the canon-organizer-guys had to stitch them into a narrative where those ten different portions of the Death Star plans wind up on the Tantive IV before it flies over Tatooine. 😮💨
The EU got better and started making more sense in the late 90s-2006, and that's also when the best EU stuff came out
@@coreyander286 for me, I prefer Dark Forces' telling of the Death Star plans story as it makes the most sense.
Agree liked the Clone wars, always hated the EU.
@@garydawson6346 so you like Lucas' garbage over something like KOTOR or the Thrawn books? Let me guess, you think the Prequels are Shakespearean too? Or Disney's movies are cinema?
Crazy thing is Lucas made sure that he was the only one that would officially flesh out the clone wars making it seem like he had a great vision for the Clone Wars which he clearly didn’t and ended up just writing something over a weekend Just imagine if Lucas had just sat down with one or two veteran Star Wars writers and at the very least come up with a detailed outline for the clone wars.
I think the bigger problem is that, even if he did sit down and get debriefed on what EU writers had come up with, he wouldn't want to be tied down to fit his own story to that timeline. He'd be like, "Okay, but if I go with that Anakin and Obi-Wan would be really old. I want it to start with a 10-year-old Anakin and end with a 20-something heartthrob Anakin, even if back when I was writing the original trilogy I too imagined Anakin to be older when he became Darth Vader. Young Anakin is better for marketing."
Thank you so much. Just finished the prequel & original trilogy, and was searching exactly for something like this. The irl gap between the two trilogies made me so curious about how other writers chose to tackle the Clone Wars.
Before the prequels, my head cannon was half right. I always thought that the clone masters were bankrolled by Darth Sidious in a bid to start a war to destroy the Jedi and the Republic, but that the clones were going to be the bad guys from the very start. The droid army at that point never occurred to me. I thought it was going to be Jedi vs clones, not Jedi and clones vs droids.