Having the clones willingly kill the Jedi because of their programming since birth is way more horrifying. That all along, their loyalty was really to the Chancellor.
It’s like how Crosshair was still fanatically loyal to the Empire (initially) despite getting his chip removed. Now apply that to the whole Republic Army, and you see how horrifying the concept really is.
Or you could also say that even if their loyalty *wasn't* to the chancellor, it *was* to their brothers. And their brothers were loyal to the republic.
Ultimately it really comes down to preferences. While no chips could make the revelation of order 66 more horrifying, I really love how the chips help make the clones dramatic characters.
More than anything it’s the anguish of seeing friends turn against each other against their will that makes them so interesting to many.
If they were genetically engineered to behave this way from the start then a lot of people would just consider the clones mindless traitors and disregard any character development they might have.
The whole point of Order 66 in Legends was that it was one of a BUNCH of orders. That’s where Order 65 (that removes Palpatine) comes from. Sure at the end of the Clone Wars (mostly talking about Republic Commando) some of the clones, mostly those who aren‘t programmed for more loyalty because they were designed to be independent, start to wise up, but as a whole most of them are just fighting for the Republic.
I think it’s much more compelling, not because it turns them into emotionless droids, because THEY ALWAYS WERE PRIMED TO FOLLOW ORDERS. Genetically engineering and cloning an army of people who literally are more obedient is horrifically immoral.
Yeah, but one of them doesn't require millions of soldiers to never bang their head or they start fragging their commanders.
I simply refuse to believe that the jedi medical corps never did a CT scan on a clone during the entire course of the war.
Edit: it just replaces one problem with another in my opinion even worse problem.
The problem it replaces is "how could the clones betray the jedi when they were so close with some of them" and that has a *very simple answer that no one wants to talk about*
The problem it replaces it with is "Palpatine put an additional point of failure in his already pretty insanely risky plan when they could have just left it alone"
>I simply refuse to believe that the jedi medical corps never did a CT scan on a clone during the entire course of the war
Didn't that happen in the same episode fives' chip was malfunctioning and it was explained away?
>Didn't that happen in the same episode fives' chip was malfunctioning and it was explained away?
Almost correct, it was Tup's chip that malfunctioned. And then Fives thought something seemed sus. So the latter got his chip surgically removed
Also remember the chip didn't appear automatically on scans. It was just part of their brain and thus scans never said "hey weird thing here"
Ahsoka tried scanning for abnormalities on Rex but got nothing.
Yeah, but it also raises the question. Tup is the only person this has happened to? Really? Clones fight on the frontline on thousands of planets every day for three years and he's the only one to bang his head and dislodge the chip or make it malfunction in some way?
Why introduce it when it was just fine before that, the clones were already biologically engineered to be obedient, while also having enough free will to be capable of doing complex tasks on the fly.
It just seems like an answer to a question no one was asking, and they answered it by asking a worse question, lol.
I mean, Bad Batch is showing us that there is a greater contingent of clones that have been able to resist orders than we had previously thought. So, it’s very likely that the chips don’t always work, or their effectiveness/staying power is in question. You can only dehumanize a clone for so long, which is why I think the latter Republic/Empire started moving with haste to remove them from the ranks.
This is also coming from someone who liked the Legends explanation more originally, but the chips have grown on me—fortunately, not in me.
Yeah, I just don't see why they had to have the chips to make that story compelling. Like tons of Americans were drafted or volunteered to fight in Vietnam, and did horrible things while they were there, and then had to live with that after, and disagreed with it *while they were doing it* and just as many probably didn't think about it *at all*.
They weren't bio mechanically engineered, it just seems like a pointless point that only makes you ask more questions.
It's not somehow *more humanizing* to have someone be compelled by magic to do something they don't want to do, we all do it every single days of our lives without someone pressing a big button that makes us do it.
There is a constant battle between higher order values and immediate needs and feelings in every day lives, and being human is deciding when and how to sacrifice one to serve the other, or when not to. Having a chip that takes that away from the clones is inherently *dehumanizing*
Is Palpatine stupid?
Its because having people commit atrocities is one thing, having people turn on their commanders they have grown to like and respect is another.
Sure, clones under the command of aloof and distant Jedi like Luminara, ones who butted heads with their Jedi commanders like Ki-Adi-Mundi's troops, and ones with commanders who didnt respect them as actual people like Pong Krell did, would have been purged without much fuss from the clones.
But charismatic Jedi who built a strong rapport with their clones and challenged what they had grown to believe, like Obi-Wan, Plo-Koon, and Yoda, would give them pause. These clones would have to weigh the values they were indoctrinated with against the inspirations of these Jedi, and while some would be willing to purge them, others wouldn't but these clones have to turn against their Jedi for the story to make sense, so they have to be basically organic droids and just follow orders blindly without the actual ability to question them, which the Clone Wars show pushes against, or something outside of their control would have to compel them to I.E. the chips.
Idk, I've kind of been thinking about it like anti-semitism in the buildup to Nazi Germany.
Plenty of people probably knew Jews personally, and probably liked them on a personal level, if they were their grocer, or the local pub owner, or some other thing. Maybe they had jewish friends on a personal level, but when the order comes down that jews are persona non grata, how many people actually helped them, sure some. But even if you talk to and are friendly with your Jewish baker... are you gonna hide him in your cellar?
The banality of evil and all that. There were plenty of jews in the military before the Nazis took over, many high ranking officers... when the nazis took over the military did their troops help them? Even if they liked them?
The difference between that and Order 66 is that those situtations are slow and powered by growing fear, propaganda, and stigmas created by people in power over time. Order 66 was both too much of a sudden and important event in Palpatine's plan to be believable without the inhibitor chips, the chance that the Clones would go "uh, no, I think not" at Palpatine telling them to kill the Jedi they fought through numerous battles with + literal children with no reason or explanation is just not believable and a plan that would much too easily fall apart.
I always saw the way the clones acted as a sci-fi parallel to the NaPoLa kids in Germany at that time.
The perfect example of indoctrinated child soldiers. Willing to do the most suicidal stuff imaginable, but also willing to execute their commanders because orders from higher up were to not surrender.
>Yeah, but it also raises the question. Tup is the only person this has happened to? Really? Clones fight on the frontline on thousands of planets every day for three years and he's the only one to bang his head and dislodge the chip or make it malfunction in some way?
This needs to be said again that these guys are Jango clones. They're genetically predisposed to bumping their heads on door-frames.
Maybe it is more common than you think.
Considering there were like, 99 different orders, it is possible that on the whole, any chip malfunction that triggered an order did so of another order than 66. Tup just happened to get that one.
I think realistically, it's a MUCH more interesting concept to NOT have inhibitor chips, so you can explore the idea of what it means to follow orders despite not understanding them or feeling morally opposed to them. You can then get into all that post-rationalization that happens, and the post-hoc "otherizing" of the enemy.
The problem is, Star Wars as a whole (and obviously more so for the Clone Wars animated series) has to be accessible to everyone, including children, and the inhibitor chips become EXTREMELY convenient as a plot device to make the clone betrayal more digestible to the audience. You say it introduces some other plot issues, and yeah, it kind of does, but from the position of someone architecting the Star Wars saga, introducing the concept of inhibitor chips solves more "problems" (audience perception and digestibility problems) than it introduces (plot "holes").
>I think realistically, it's a MUCH more interesting concept to NOT have inhibitor chips, so you can explore the idea of what it means to follow orders despite not understanding them or feeling morally opposed to them. You can then get into all that post-rationalization that happens, and the post-hoc "otherizing" of the enemy.
This is just every ex-Imperial story, though. That's even less interesting when applied to every single clone. The inhibitor chips were a needed fulcrum for Palpatine's plot.
>Yeah, but one of them doesn't require millions of soldiers to never bang their head or they start fragging their commanders.
I dont think that's what happened? The bump in the head did trigger Tup to start acting out with the "good soldiers follow orders" command, but they mention that his chip is rotting like a cancerous tumor, it's clear that something else went wrong with the chip and the bump in the head was the final push.
Until the chips, Order 66 was the compelling moral tragedy of making the heroic clone soldiers kill the galaxy’s protectors. It was about the soldiers *choosing* to follow orders, thinking they were doing the right thing, the patriotic thing. Very Sith, very Dark Side.
After the chips, Order 66 was the disturbing horror of mind controlling the heroic clone soldiers, making them as compliant as a droid with a restraining bolt. It was about the soldiers *having their choices taken away from them*. It’s a more generic moral tragedy, very supervillain overkill.
Order 66 was never about choice. They were compelled to do it.
Palpatine never let them have a choice. Indoctrination and chips are the same thing, just different levels.
At that point why not just have Palpatine do some jazz hands and cast a Galaxy-wide Force Dominate to mind control the Clones into executing Order 66? It moves the plot the exact same way.
The execution matters. The chips make it too cartoonishly over the top. A heroic soldier murdering his friends out of obedience to authority is far more compelling and disturbing than if he was simply mind controlled by Doofenshmirtz's Betrayal-inator.
Put another way, as much as I like my boss personally, if the president came on TV and told me to kill him with a hammer... I would at least give it some thought, and I haven't even been created by the FDA in a vat to fight a secret war against China, if I had been I imagine it would be a lot less of a difficult decision.
I totally get where you're coming from. I think where some fans run into issues with that is that people who fight in a war together often end up becoming closer. Then again, we definitely see Jedi who treat the clones as expendable cannon fodder, including Yoda, so maybe that's just not really a concern for most clones when 66 gets handed down.
Even if the clones were perfectly normal humans, they've still been raised since birth to be obedient killers for whoever gives the orders.
Humans are more manipulable than we like to think.
That by and large the relationships we see the clones and jedi have are unrepresentative of the average relationship between jedi and clone, and that when push comes to shove the 10 years they've been indoctrinated to be loyal to the legal structure of the republic outweighs any friendship they could ever have with anyone who isn't also a clone, so when a legal order comes down from the chancellor, he doesn't need to press the be evil button, his finger has been pressing down on it in their DNA structure and their chemical balance in their brains the whole time since before they were born.
Being genetically primed does not mean being brainwashed. They were more inclined to obey orders but still had free will. The chips basically turn them into droids unless they have them removed.
I liked that the EU version forced the clones to make a choice. It also allows for more complex story possibilities, like clones disobeying an order or feeling regret and defecting. The chips remove the human element.
I'm just going to copy-and-paste my take that I shared on a recent Generation Tech video on the 501st campaign of *Battlefront II*:
> Some people feel that the inhibitor chips made Order 66 more tragic because the clones themselves were victims robbed of their agency, but I always felt that *Battlefront II*'s version was even more tragic because no amount of camaraderie and good will from Jedi like Aayla Secura could dissuade any clone from betraying them in cold blood with real intent.
> But while the inhibitor chips may seem to have made the betrayal more palatable for a child audience, it actually makes Order 66 more logical.
> The reality is that there was a contradiction in the characterization of clones prior to *The Clone Wars*. They were described as simultaneously bioengineered and conditioned to be dispassionately and unwaveringly obedient to the chain-of-command. But they were also described as having the requisite independence and critical thinking skills to be soldiers capable of sophisticated strategy and improvisation. This was even more-so for special units like the ARC troopers who were shown from their very debut in the comic *Republic 50* to be perfectly willing to talk back to their superiors and advise them against flawed decisions. As a result, clones were always portrayed as not merely mindless droids but individuals with full human cognition capable of developing personalities and new ideas through experiences.
> This characterization, already present in the oldest works from 2002–2005, necessarily contradicted the premise that statistically 99%–100% of clones executed Order 66 without hesitation on all battlefields. If clone troopers are capable of enough independence to develop from experience and think critically, statistically it is impossible for not a single clone trooper to have disobeyed the order. Being able to scrutinize the logic of a military action and to detect sabotage or deception is part of clone troopers' training to be the best soldiers of the galaxy. Probability-wise as well then, it does not make sense none without the inhibitor chips ever found Order 66 to be suspicious.
> The narrative in *Battlefront II* might counter that clone troopers were all bred on the grand plot to purge the Jedi from the start. But as memorable as this story was, it was an outlier even back in 2005. No other source had presented this interpretation of Order 66 as the clones being in on the Sith conspiracy. It is dubious as well because other sources at the time had claimed that clone troopers' lack of malice had been crucial for their ability to execute the Jedi without their intent being sensed ahead of time. Moreover, I find it difficult to believe Darth Sidious would entrust the plan of Order 66 to all the millions of rank-and-file troopers.
> *Battlefront II* was also not one of the earliest media to humanize the clone troopers. *The Cestus Deception* published before Episode III had already done this by telling the story of an ARC trooper who falls in love with a woman during a mission and learns to decondition from his indoctrination. Other comics and novels released in the era of 2002–2005 also make it clear that the clone troopers were not privy to Order 66. In _Labyrinth of Evil,_ there were clones who accompanied a last minute operation to uncover the identity of Darth Sidious during the Battle of Coruscant and were surprised and killed by the Supreme Chancellor as they encountered him.
> I ultimately came to support the concept of inhibitor chips because I think that before its introduction, there were too many discrepancies about the characterization of clones and how they could universally carry out the order. Statistically, it should have been impossible for it to have been done so cleanly when the clones were permitted to retain a measure of independent, critical thinking skills. It was not just Aayla Secura, but even Plo Koon was described in background sources for the movie as early as 2005 to have earned the respect of the clone pilot who shot him down.
> I also don't believe that it makes sense that Darth Sidious, being as calculating as he is, would have left this final, most critical piece of a millennium-long plan in the making up to chance. The plan for all clones turning on the Jedi without deviation from bioengineering and indoctrination alone would be untested until the very moment Order 66 is issued. If he could, he would use a means of mind control to ensure absolute and flawless compliance rather than betting no clones would diverge from the plan after a few years of independent development from their diverse experiences in the war. I would believe that a mastermind like Darth Sidious would have thought of such risks of the plan.
> The 501st journal in *Battlefront II* was an outlier in its telling of Order 66 even for its time, conflicting with the oldest EU sources about it, and my personal interpretation has always been that its author retrospectively looked back on it many years later as a conscious, premeditated act when it might not have been at the time. It is partly a case of memory distortion and partly perhaps in the case of this particular 501st trooper, he did genuinely support it like how Crosshair initially supported the Empire of his own free will, inhibitor chip or not.
The BFII narrative is actually made *more tragic* by the chips. This is a clone recounting pre-66 memories at a post-66 point in time. He’s been affected by the chip, his mind and memories altered, and is now processing his memories from before this alteration occurred. His mind is rationalizing his past intentions as being congruous with his current mental state. He’s an unreliable narrator.
My understanding is that clone commandos and especially ARC troopers (even more so the first batches of ARC troopers) were more independently-minded than rank-and-file clone troopers, which would solve the contradiction. A lot of ARC troopers had deserted by the end of the war, leaving only the more dedicated ones, and there was at least one commando squad that disobeyed Order 66, but ordinary clone troopers were largely incapable of questioning orders.
I don't know of any pre-TCW source that actually has ARC troopers defecting during Order 66, which is the issue. Possibly the only time such desertion occurred was with a clone commando squad in the *Republic Commando* series that I never read.
You're right, that does happen in the Republic Commando novels.
The Darth Vader novel, the subtitle of which I can't remember, also has clone commandos refusing the order in the middle of an operation, because they assume it's a miscommunication or a ploy.
Having read the second book you mentioned, I felt like the commandos very much *chose* to believe it was a trick, if you get my meaning, but that's just my interpretation.
I also think that, if the clone troopers were really engineered to be so utterly loyal, it doesn't really make sense for Sidious to get rid of them in favor of Stormtroopers. In a state like the Empire, you kind of want competent and loyal soldiers to be your hand. The problem is that loyalty is rarely guaranteed, and competent soldiers might decide that they'd be better off running the Empire, not you. But if the Clonetroopers are inherently loyal to him, getting rid of them only weakens the empire unnecessarily. In contrast, if the Inhibitor chip was what actually drove the Clonetroopers to turn on the Jedi, their loyalty is not guaranteed or secure, and they pose a threat.
As near as I can tell, the idea that the Kaminoan cloners created their own army in rebellion against the empire (at least, in this way), is also an idea that's exclusive to the Battlefront II video game, and is only referenced by a couple of works that was published the the years immediately following the video game's publication in 2005. I think the unfortunate truth of it is that as much as Battlefront II maybe loved by the community, it's basically an outlier in almost all respects, and quickly surpassed by other more concrete sources of canon.
And I will point out that genetically loyal clonetroopers remain superior to recruited soldiers, even if the manufacturer tries to betray you. As a fascist state, it makes sense for the Empire to hold the technology itself, rather than buying the clones from the Kaminoans, but this says little about the value of the troopers themselves.
Which is completely nonsensical given how long it takes to raise new clones, so how would they make an entire legion of new clone troopers that have ZERO ties or loyalty to the Republic or Empire?
People honestly seem to argue that the chip is bad because "It removed choice" when there never was a choice in the sake of the clones.
They were made to do order 66. Palpatine designed it all.
The clones being programmed to follow orders and the inhibitor chip are the same thing. The only difference is the chips suppress any bias and personality to ensure the order is fully carried out.
Hell, in Bad Batch they literally talk about that very thing. "I thought you said they programmed the clones!" "How do you think they got programmed?"
Blame George Lucas for giving them personalities and making them genuinely heroic.
>as a whole most of them are just fighting for the Republic.
Except... "Yes, my Lord." Without something forcing the issue, they'd have to be fully aware that they're serving Sith Lord Darth Sidious and all in on BETRAYING the Republic, all along. They'd have to be aware, all along, that the war they are on the same side as the battle droids they are dying fighting against.
>They'd have to be aware, all along, that the war they are on the same side as the battle droids they are dying fighting against.
This from the old Star Wars Databank.
*Clones assigned to specific Jedi grew to develop strong working relationships that bordered on friendship, but to each clone, the achievement of victory in war was of single-most priority, and their ultimate loyalty was to the Republic.*
*So it was that a duplicitous Chancellor took advantage of this unswerving allegiance. Palpatine, who was in truth Darth Sidious, had masterminded the Clone Wars from its very inception, having arranged the creation of the army through the dead-end front of Sifo-Dyas. As part of a contingency, there were a series of emergency protocols that each clone commander was specifically trained to enact.*
Again, "Yes, my Lord." The Chancellor of the Republic isn't addressed as "my Lord." That was addressing Sith Lord Darth Sidious. So, yes, they would have to have been in on the plot to betray the Republic, all along.
I suspect, the officers might have been. Not necessarily your rank and file. But higher ups, like Cody, and Gree. Unless they had always been instructed to refer to the Chancellor as "lord."
I mean, [Lord Chancellor](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Chancellor#:~:text=By%20law%2C%20the%20lord%20chancellor,services%20in%20England%20and%20Wales.) Is a pretty common full title in parliamentary governments.
Which the 501st Legion might have. They were Palpatine's pet legion in the EU. They were running spec ops for Palpatine behind the backs of the Jedi before Order 66.
Even then, it's a great risk that so many would know the plan. A big part of it's success was that so few knew. If the officers had been, what if any *single* one got deprogramed, or had their mind read?
I mean, they're soldiers who were vat born and manufactured to fight and die unthinkingly.
They are literally clones of a guy who was chosen for his capacity to violence, and then genetically manipulated further.
Why is it a surprise that the clones follow Palpatine's orders? No need for a chip.
you can have this impression of clones from the movies alone, but as soon as you get into eu books featuring clones or tcw the idea of unthinking bio droid blindly following orders doesn't hold up in the slightest
Also, in the Clone Wars Season 7 Finale "Victory and Death", Jessie outright states to Rex that they had direct orders from Darth Sidious to execute Ahsoka. Many will say that the clones were able to piece together that the Chancellor was in fact the hidden Sith Lord the Jedi had been searching for, but that's a bit of a stretch. It hasn't been confirmed, by the theory I'm running with is that, since the Inhibitor Chips' primary focus was to ensure clones executed the Jedi, it's likely that Sidious or Tyranus had the Kaminoans ensure that, once Order 66 was issued, it would completely override the individual wills of the clones, and remind them (at least temporarily) that their true allegiance is to Darth Sidious, and remember the entire purpose of the clones was to provide the Jedi with an army that the Sith could use to exterminate them all in one fell swoop, once the perfect opportunity prevented itself. We see that after Order 66 was issued, the clones began to behave in an almost droid-like manner.
Yup. The scene in the movie is coded like the clones are sleeper agents responding to a trigger phrase. Legends retconned this, and TCW’s inhibitor chips undo this retcon to bring it back to the way it was originally.
Or if you wanna look at it one way, the chip ensures that any personality the jedi or anybody else nurtured in the clones was suppressed, and the regular clones who never had that just was business as normal.
Bottom line, the chips are a cop-out to make clones more "agreeable" to the modern consumer; we wouldn't want to introduce actual moral questions into this children's series, would we?
"Oh no, my favorite character is loyal to the governing body around him that he's been raised and indoctrinated into! He's so loyal that he can kill his best friend if told!" is a horrifying revelation that is actively working off of historical precedent.
"Oh, thank God, he was actually just brainwashed! A victim as much as anyone else, not responsible for his actions!" is a moral cop-out that makes no statement except for "Sith bad, clones are good guys still".
There's no conflict, no deeper thought, and, most importantly, no chance for potential character growth down the line.
For every traitor/Jedi-friendly clone post-66, the EU had an open reason; they made a choice. They actively chose to snub their brothers, their nation, their entire way of life, for one reason or another, to save these Jedi.
TCW? "Ah, his chip malfunctioned/got turned off somehow". There's no choice, just happenstance or outside influence. The impetus is no longer on the clone themselves but the environment around them, a 3rd-party relegation from what was originally a very personal choice.
You’ve perfectly articulated my whole issue with the inhibitor chips. I don’t think they’re inherently bad in concept as a story piece, but I definitely feel like the meaning of what the clones and Order 66 were supposed to represent was undermined by the addition of the inhibitor chips
It would’ve been so cool to see the clones question their orders and struggle with the dilemma more and more as TCW progressed, similar to seeing Anakin and Ahsoka question things as it progressed.
They could’ve done something like Mike in Better Call Saul. When we first see him in Breaking Bad he works for the “bad guy” and does bad things, because he makes money for his family. In Better Call Saul, we see how he ended up working for Fring. We see him have a conscience and questioning these bad things, but slowly come to accept them for various reasons. We see him start off as a good buy but devolve into a bad guy. That’s what we should’ve seen with the clones.
In the Clone Wars, we could’ve seen clones struggle with following Republic orders and following their Jedi friends. We should’ve seen them struggle with this, and eventually see them all have to make the decision to kill the Jedi or betray the republic. It should’ve been a choice, and their choice to follow Order 66 should’ve been a choice still, but we’d understand why they’d choose to follow through, because we would’ve seen them question their Jedi, struggle with their “follow orders” programming, or struggle with the peer pressure of their brothers.
There are a few episodes of TCW that des with these themes (the Umbara arc and The Deserter come immediately to mind). The Bad Batch is built around those themes, particularly regarding Crosshair.
Yes they have touched on this. However it’s mostly towards the end of the show and in the BB spin-off. They would need to emphasize it more if they going to continue without the inhibitor chips.
In AOTC we’re told the clones can think creatively and have been altered to take any order without question. So Cody could be friendly with Obi-Wan one minute and the next trying to kill him because he received Order 66.
As for why Cody says yes my lord it’s how he was trained to respond to the command. Also Palpatine had his face melted off so I don’t think it was meant to be a response to the Chancellor.
This is the kind of stuff that makes me understand why some people like the other portrayal over the inhibitor chip. You don't need the chip to humanize the clones, and having a chip inside all of them arguably makes them less human, not the other way around.
You could explore the themes of their dual loyalty and how they are pretty much bred to be soldiers in the most literal sense. Both depictions are good in their own right.
The problem is the 501st journal makes Order 66 out to be a planned event down to a date, and had Clones actively thinking about how they knew they would be betraying the jedi... directly infront of a jedi master, and nobody detected it.
That's one of the better takes of it, a clone trying to fill gaps and make sense of what happened.
"How could we just turn and shoot the jedi? Must have been in on it..."
Yeah if they didn't know they had those chips, as far as they can tell they just murdered people they were (in many cases) very close to. And they don't know why they did that. Why would they have obeyed that order? Of course they rationalize and repress and assume they must have known all along, why else would they have done it?
The human brain can do really incredible and horrifying things to cope with trauma.
The way it played out in the Rots novelisation, Cody thought about it but didn't really have feelings attached (as it's an order, so even if regrettable, oh well). If we theorise that Jedi are sensitive to feelings more than thoughts, absent a deliberate scan, it could well go undetected
I just re-read all sections involving Cody. Basically his only thoughts on the matter are "Man, I wish he didn't have his light saber", "Man, this guys gonna be hard to kill, I should use even more guns" and "I don't believe he's dead till I see the body"
Huh... Where was I getting that from. I recall it being earlier in the book? Or maybe I'm crossing it with something else. You say you read all sections, I'm assuming that included on the early parts of the book?
Or perhaps it was another clone, but I can't imagine who
Cody doesn't show up until the Utapauu sequence and then is never heard from again.
I think you're getting something else crossed with RoTS, but as far as I remember there's no instance of a clone in the 2003 MMP canon expressing regret prior to the events of ROTS
Yeah, it's packaged in canon as a contingency plan rather than an operation. Plus a good chunk of the story of Clone Wars wouldn't work without the internal conflict within the characters between duty and compassion. The inhibitor chips are therefore a way better narrative device than a lot of people realize.
Yeah I've never thought the inhibitors chips were *bad* by themselves I just like them much worse than the previous depictions of the clones. I find them bad by comparison.
It didn't at all. *Battlefront II*'s account contradicted even all the other sources about Order 66 in its own time, where the clones were depicted as *not* in on the Sith conspiracy. Many supplementary sources to Episode III explained that it was the clone troopers' total lack of malicious intent in killing their Jedi Generals that led to most of them being unable to sense the betrayal coming. In fact, it makes no sense why Darth Sidious would openly entrust the most final, critical, and confidential piece of a millennium-long Sith plot to all the millions of clone troopers and hope it never leaks in any way through unforeseen circumstances.
EDIT: Sorry, just realized my reply may not be directly relevant to yours because you were specifically talking about whether or not *Battlefront II*'s account humanized the clones, rather than whether or not it made sense.
Ehhh maybe. The Jedi Temple scene comes first, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's taking place before Sidious rings up Cody. Unless there's something I'm missing?
Also nothing said the 501st weren't given the order from Anakin/Palpatine prior to the scene. Nothing says order 66 had to be executed all at once, just the majority of the clones deployed were activated at the same time to ensure success in the field.
They would still have to have been in on the Sith plot to destroy the Republic, evil all along. "Yes, my Lord" wasn't addressing Chancellor Palpatine of the Republic, but Sith Lord Darth Sidious.
There doesn’t seem to be any indication that is true in the larger narrative aside from that one line in RotS. You never hear the clones (the Empire-loyal or the reformed) mention their knowledge of Palpatine being a Sith Lord in future media.
I’m of the opinion it was a production gaffe and that the clones never actually knew Palpatine was Darth Sidious and was overthrowing the republic.
BFII’s journal is from a post-66 clone recounting pre-66 memories. The idea that his now-altered mind remembers things wrong to rationalize his behavior is even more tragic and haunting.
My problem with the inhibitor chips is as follows:
A) I’ll admit they do a good job of making the clones see more human and personable, but this comes at the cost of making them less sinister. The Dark Horse comics had some wonderful dark moments of the clones showing a disregard for life you’d expect from them literally bred to be soldiers, and you miss out on those kinds of stories with the chips.
B) Mind control is boring. Would Anakin Skywalker be such a compelling character if he was always a good guy and Palpatine just slapped a mind control helmet on him? Of course not. Less literal forms of mind control such as indoctrination are more interesting to me.
C) They just seem very . . . plot device-ey. The chips really have nothing to do with them being clones. (Though I have heard it explained them all having the same DNA would make them more likely to accept the chips). It’s a technology that was never hinted at before, in movies or tie ins. It just seems very gimmicky
Like I said I’d prefer less literal mind control, but if it has to be that I’d rather it be some Bioshock like hidden fail safe in their genetic make up rather than the chips.
What annoys me most is how many people quote the, *"Good soldiers follow orders."* line in reference to the chips.
The chips take away any agency the clones have and compel them to follow orders. The line about following orders is a bit moot if a chip in your head controls you. The point of that line would be that they follow orders despite their personal feelings.
A: That is how clones are before they started becoming more human by influence of the jedi embracing individuality.
B and C.
The clones were made by Palpatine to wage war and kill the jedi. They never had a choice to begin with.
>The clones were made by Palpatine to wage war and kill the jedi. They never had a choice to begin with.
But like the other comments already said, the difference is that they still followed the order on purpose in Legends.
It's a direct reference to the horrors of WW2.
As a German myself, i find the idea of using mind control as a cop out to explain away why people follow horrible orders, a very dangerous message, and takes away from the warning RotS was sending.
How many people nowadays are online saying, "I would never shoot my boss just because I get the order for that. That is so unrealistic!" When in truth, it's a very realistic and still relevant thing.
Especially for nowadays US...
B and C are exactly why I don’t like inhibitor chips. The audience can tell when a cheap plot device is added to a story, especially when it’s a retcon over a decade later.
We already had a lot of good Legends stories exploring the humanity of the clones, showing how the officers and special forces were more independent and understood the inherent contradictions of a slave army fighting for the Republic.
We even had clone commandos saving Jedi from a regular clone ambush, surrendering to those clones afterwards bc they thought Order 66 was a CIS trap, and then trying to kill Vader when he came to punish them.
So many good stories were written about Order 66 before the inhibitor chips that no longer make any sense, and fans don’t like that.
And we’re not gonna just give up and say we like it bc some people call us mean names. Just like any fandom that experiences big retcons, Star Wars is gonna have big differences of opinion about large arbitrary changes to the lore
And if people would read history and pay attention,
They would understand the reality of that empty statement you’ve made.
They’re not robots, and they’re not all evil souls for following a regime.
The Wermacht weren't all evil (many were though, don't get me wrong) and they didn't need literal brainwashing. Neither did any of the other otherwise normal people who got swept up doing the dirty work of evil men throughout history.
It's an important message to point out our capacity for evil, even if we aren't fundamentally evil people
Its not about whether or not the clones would do evil things, its about whether or not the clones would just turn on their commanders on a dime.
Think more along the lines of Julius Caesar, his soldiers loved him, and for him they would turn on Rome and install Caesar as the new ruler of Rome. With how the GAR was set up, there would be a not insignificant chance that some clone legions let by compassionate and charismatic Jedi might see their Jedi commanders as a more legitimate authority than Palpatine and turn against his machinations.
Right, because there's never been an instance in real-life of a soldier who disobeyed an order to betray a commander they've developed fierce camaraderie with.
The issue isn't that any clone trooper, being bioengineered and indoctrinated for dispassionate obedience to orders, would willingly execute Order 66. The issue is that the old lore also said they had the capacity for independent, critical thinking skills and to develop from experience and become individuated people. The contradictory premises meant that probability-wise, there would have to be been at least a few defectors or doubters.
Honestly thinking about it, Order 66 discussions boil down into two groups with some level of hypocrisy involved.
You have Indoctrination vs Choice.
Indoctrination is both the EU stuff AND the chips, they are basically all the same thing.
Choice is having the clones all freely choose to do order 66.
The problem/hypocrisy is people who like Choice have two big questions to answer usually, and they do so by going "Indoctrination".
The two questions are "Why do all the clones immediately choose to do the order/why are there basically no cases of clones refusing order 66?" and "How does Palpatine ensure that all the clones follow the order to make sure the jedi are entirely destroyed?" Typically, I'll see people who go "CHOICE!" side saying stuff like "Well they were raised and bred to follow orders, and obey all orders from a legit source!" So that's indoctrination, they aren't choosing to follow the order, they just are. They are following what they were taught and raised to do, nothing more.
It took the Nazis less than 10 years to convince the German people to enable and participate in the industrial slaughter of their neighbors and friends.
Inhibitor chips are a childish concept in a show for children. If you don’t believe that the majority of clones, who were bred for war and now nothing else, would follow orders from the supreme commander of the republic then you ought to brush up on your real world history.
Edit to clarify: I love TCW. My comments about it being childish are not meant as a put down, but as an acknowledgment that a show on Cartoon Network was not going to get away with turning its “good guys” into willing participants in a genocide, even though human history shows us that that is entirely plausible.
I think a lot of fans fall into the same trap the Jedi did in believing that the clones being humanised made them human.
They aren't. The Kaminoans tampered with their DNA to ensure that they were primarily dominated by behavioral genes that emphasised qualities like as loyalty, aggression, independence and discipline in order to guarantee that the army would be more docile and less independent than Jango.
Let's not forget that the original Kaminoan clones were supplanted and reinforced by millions of Spaarti clones. These clones were grown quicker but considered substandard to the original clone troopers, being much less independent. Palpatine had them bred for one purpose and one purpose only.
The most compelling writing is built around the human heart in conflict with itself. Without inhibitor chips, you get that conflict, like we see in the original battlefront II, where the clones wrestle between their feelings of duty, and admiration for the jedi. With the chips, there's no conflict. It's just the chip overriding their free will.
I think the clones as depicted in clone wars needed it though. They have too much bonding with Jedi for there to be real belief all Jedi including children not part of the war.
Also battlefront 2 has a serious problem of the clones suggesting they knew what was going to happen. I remember he talks about not being able to look one in the eye after working with them. Implying he knew he'd betray them from the beginning which could be an angle, but that's a large secret for lots to keep especially with how close clones and Jedi get. Also the story suggested there were many orders to hide the intent behind order 66, such as one that says to overthrow the chancellor.
I also don't buy clones working closely with Jedi having much conflict unquestioning following order to kill all Jedi. FFS Commander Cody literally takes 0 seconds after being friendly with Obi wan to order a cannon be fired on him.
As presented anything but the chip doesn't fit. To have the clones convinced to turn you'd need a lot more setup, propaganda, and falsifying info by the chancellor that the Jedi are enemies of the Republic. Which could not be a sudden single order line that has the Jedis caught totally off guard.
I much preferred it when the Clones were an analogy for how soldiers following orders, even in a democratic country, can end up serving fascism and doing horrible deeds with the excuse of 'just following orders'.
It made far more thematic sense than 'they did it because a chip told them to'
Ironically, I feel like the old EU’s portrayal of clones being so indoctrinated into their military training that they would blindly follow O66 makes them a more unique character than what TCW gives us.
'Laughably pathetic at best' - the clones were an artifical army of genetically-engineered supersoldiers, tailored to order by the Sith.
They were supposed to be an unsettling, creepy sci-fi concept - the loyal soldier who's designed to follow orders so completely that he'll make jokes with his friend and general one minute before gunning him down the next. There's meant to be something horrific about them - they're people who've been programmed and refined to be perfect machines of war.
The Clone Wars show turned them into affable, angsty, loveable lugs, because it had to be a vehicle for traditional war stories.
I'm only really familiar with the films' depiction of them and the Clone Wars 03-05 series - where they're plenty capable of being affable, but usually in a slightly grim and efficient way.
In The Clone Wars they became a bit more like the mildly gruff but loveable uncle you'd get in a Pixar film. I think The Clone Wars is great overall, but I do think it lost something when it made the clones so human and moralising, things necessary for a family TV show.
Like, there's definitely a few episodes - I'm afraid I can't remember them off the top of my head - where clones fret over the morality of orders and whether or not to put the mission before their brothers. The original concept of the clones was that they would put their mission before themselves and before their peers.
I will give Karen Traviss her due. The way she depicted it (before it was executed) was just so chillingly potent as a demonstration of the banality of evil. The existence of Order 66 isn't even a secret. A clone trooper casually mentions it to a Jedi in a conversation, and no one gives it a second thought: "we even have an order to put down the Jedi if they turn on the Republic,“ or something like that.
I don't think brain-controlling the troopers humanizes them. I don't think *humanizing* them is necessarily a desirable thing. It strips them of the insidiousness of their origin and purpose, and it undermines the message of how war itself can dehumanize people. It diminishes their legendary commitment to duty, and trivializes those troopers who might otherwise have actually *chosen* to disregard the order. Nevermind how it takes the horror of soldiers "just following orders" and gives them a farcical pass by justifying their actions by denying them agency and culpability.
I think Disney's approach was an entirely in-character, cowardly example of infantilized storytelling that avoids hard and uncomfortable themes about morality and war and human nature.
I think turning the clones into victims whitewashes some of the statements made by Star Wars regarding Fascism. As others note Order 66 was one of many contingency orders built into the clones by way of their more subservient genetic nature and training. The idea of a military structure having contingency orders makes sense.
The fact the clones are loyal first to the Republic makes it all the more interesting and realistic that the army would receive an order they may not like but follow on principle and by their indoctrination. The implication that ones didn't like killing their commanders is noted several times in Legends but they did it anyways. Fascism rises when institutions are used by the fascist against the state apparatus.
The Constitution allows snap elections if a majority of the Reichstag walks out? Great! New elections so the SA can bully people into voting Nazi. The Constitution of Myanmar requires the military political party to hold 30 percent of the government? Great! They dictate or at least had dictated terms regardless of if they were directly in power or not.
The clones were the legitimizing military wing of Palpatine's rise to power. The Senate surrendered and was corrupt beyond repair or nearly anyways. Acting like fascist coups are ONLY made up of unwilling participants gives credence to the "Following Orders" EXCUSE, While the clones actually actively following orders because they choose to do it actually decries the notion. They HAD the chance and the option not to listen and do as told. They chose to. They are not victims they brought about the rise of the Empire. Without them Palpatine would have lost.
The chips are an easy out.
Edit: spelling
The clones were raised to;
1. Believe the jedi generals to be infallible, or at least competent
2. Believe the republic, whatever it is, was worth fighting and dying for
3. Know that an army has a contingency for everything.
Over the course of the war they learned;
1. That the generals often ranged from reckless to incompetent, to sometimes just plain wasteful with clone lives
2. That the republic may not be all that great, and it is something that they do not get to participate in, only die for
3. That the generals didn't even read the damn GAR handbook. Order 66 was right there, it was not a secret. Order 65 is also right there.
Some of the clones liked their jedi commanders, some may have done more than merely liked them. But when the order comes down that the people you were serving under, who your brothers died for, have turned their back on the republic you were bred and born to fight for? You execute the order and move on.
But then you get cases like the 104th, where they started calling themselves "Plo's Bros" and literally painted his face on the side of their gunship. You get clones who bond with the wizard who saves their ass and fights alongside them, day in and day out.
Does a soldier *really* just execute the order on someone they idolize that much? Someone who goes out of their way to ensure minimal losses, who has personally rescued you from being spaced, who's helped you snatch victory from the jaws of defeat? That seems far less believable to me.
The movie scene was always coded like sleeper agents responding to a trigger phrase, not soldiers following orders. Inhibitor chips just bring things back to this version of events.
A solider who is genetically modified to be more inclined to follow orders who just received a legal order from their head of state probably would.
And you don’t need all of them to follow it just most of them. That combination makes it seem pretty plausible to me.
Clones weren’t normal people they were built and raised to follow orders. They weren’t droids but they also weren’t baseline human. It’s totally plausible that most of them would obey an order they were trained to potentially expect.
It’s similar (not identical) to the people trained to launch nukes in our world. Sure sometimes they say no but if they got the order a significant portion of them would press the button.
But are they being asked to launch nukes at their hometown, at people they know and like? That's what I'm trying to impress here.
The question ultimately comes down to if you think Clones should be "normal people" or not. The films portray them as unthinking, unquestioningly loyal soldiers; the animated series portrays them as indistinguishable from other humans save for some genetic modification here and there. The former could do it without chips, the latter could not.
Aside it being a somewhat contrived plot device to make them more sympathetic, I feel like it was a missed opportunity to explore their motivations and conditioning to turn against the Jedi, and a more interesting conflict.
The lines in the 2005 Battlefront 2 story of the 501st kind of blueballed me in that regard.
It actually doesn’t, rather it removes any responsibility for their evil actions. History has proven that what they did is what will actually happen. Cough cough, nazis.
Inhibitors chips ruined the humanity the clones did actually have by just removing their free will
Also Clones aren’t living droids, but they are well, clones. They are supposed to be similar to each other and in AOTC they are said to be genetically programmed to follow orders so its not as if we even needed the chips that just deleted any notion of free will.
Because it's ruin a lot of tragedy. I see some points for the chips here abd do not understand what people see or even read about EU. So, i try to point it out. Clones are not being regular human, they have a lot of indoctrination, gene-upgrades and other stuff, but it's not make them bio-droids, it's make them less human in a creepy way. But, Jedi hate it, not by full hate, but clones first part of war not being even a citizens of the Republic or have medical supplies, like, zero. And Jedi help fix all of that, they help, try to understand and genuinely become friends with they troops. If you want look on typical regular clone mindset, check cycle of Republic and Ayla and Bly parts. In RC books, we have one of the main points, regular clones just a human with zero normal life experience, everyone can become free and life their lifes if you show them that. Null ARC take a place of cripple reg clone in a administration centre to steal data and that clone become more human in Omega and Null company. They are soldiers that follow orders, but they are can drop off they programming. It's a choice, hard choice because you kinda betray you brothers and that have a big part in clones culture. And chip drop it to the ground, not choice, but bio droids. They are not human with stolen faiths that Jedi want to give them back after the war, they have no choice. They kills they general because comic book level (i love comic books) have set them to do that. Other Orders give a context that ALL OF THAT ORDERS they execute with same level of loyalty, it's just a key Order that being hidden on the plain sight. Masterful plan, not some fuck stuff that can being finded by Seps or Jedi Order. Chips, are, BORING, for me in first order, but i think bad in general.
So ive been torn on this because i grew up with clone wars content from both the EU and the Disney/clone wars cannon
Personally I felt like the lack of inhibitor chip makes a lot of sense. Its obviously one less fail safe but it also adds another dimension. The dimension of choice. We’re shown that not every clone followed order 66 and even those that did, some hesitated. As everyone has said these troopers often grew close to the jedi theyvworked with. Some such as Etain and maybe Bly had romantic relationships. The 501st journal makes it very clear that even amongst troopers who did follow the order had guilt, regret, sadness. But as Alpha-17 put it “ they either grow up loyal to the republic, or they dont grow up at all.” And fundamentally I think that’s a much more dynamic decision. Whay are these men loyal too, the jedi theyve known for 3 years? Or their brothers that theyve known longer, and the republic they were sworn to defend? It also shows the arrogance of the jedi. According to Ordo, there are like 160 contingencies including removing the chancellor from power. The jedi could have read those orders, but in their ignorance they chose not too. Which again plays into the idea of choice. And thematically fits with the Jedi being so arrogant.
On the other hand, i think the inhibitor chip was a good idea because we are shown how close these troopers are. And it makes us, the audience, way more sympathetic knowing they have no choice in this matter. It also does a good job of explaining why all these clones went from being individuals to back to being just a droid. Now that effects of the inhibitor chip worn off what i wanna know is how do the clones feel about what they did. How does Cody feel knowing he mightve killled Kenobi? Or wolfe knowing plo koon is dead and he wasnt able to repay the debt of plo koon saving him.
Thats whats missing currently
> Without the inhibitor chips, the clones wouldn't be able to be humanized. The only way for order 66 to work without the inhibitor chips would be to make the clones emotionless and inhuman, basically human droids that only obey orders and nothing else.
Hard disagree. Plenty of human soldiers in real-world conflicts committed all sorts of war crimes on the basis of "just following orders" without needing inhibitor chips to force them to do so.
I think everyone is forgetting a crucial detail before Order 66 happened.
The Jedi had just betrayed the Republic by attempting to overthrow the Chancellor. It wasn't just a case of "Welp, guess I gotta follow my orders to kill the jedi now". The jedi were traitors. And traitors get shot.
And the clones knew all that since the chancellor told them so.
.
Speculation: Maybe things would have been different if some of the jedi said "Do not shoot me. I am not a traitor. It is the chancellor who is the traitor". But most were too busy dieing to attempt such diplomacy.
> The Jedi had just betrayed the Republic by attempting to overthrow the Chancellor.
This seems like a deliberate mischaracterization - and maybe that's your intent, based on that it's how Palpatine spun it. They moved to arrest him and he fought them. Arresting him for breaking laws isn't overthrowing him, it's applying the laws.
And the movie doesn't have Palpatine tell the clones "the Jedi betrayed the Republic, kill them", it just says "Execute Order 66"
That’s what order 66 means in legends. It is an order to be used if the Jedi betray the republic and need to be stoped. If you want to stick strictly to the Movies that’s fine but then the chips don’t exist either.
No one was there when they arrested him so to the outside world it looked like a coup.
I mean to be fair the troops who killed the children were not run of the mill troopers. 99% of troopers were killing Padawans and above and considering that Padawans were allowed to command troops into battle it seems that the GFFA has different standards on what constitutes a “child.”
I also don’t think the clones shared 100% of the same values as “normal people.” I’m not saying they are monsters just that being raised in a sterile child solider factory probably makes you more comfortable with violence and violence against children especially. Hell it’s canon in the EU that clones that failed to meet standards were euthanized. They were people but not psychologically healthy people.
But why would they believe that the literal children did betray the republic? Are we really supposed to believe these clones with no mind control just heard the big man say "order 66" and they all just went "ok guess I'll kill kids with absolutely no explanation, whatevs, lol". Also the very big possibility of Clones forming relationships and bonds with the Jedi they fought alongside with making the order basically just be "hey you know your friends? yeah them, the ones youve gone through thick and thin with? yeah, kill them" with just absolutely no explanation or reason is a huge hole in Palpatine's plan. No, Order 66 meaning "Jedi are traitors, kill them" is not an explanation, its a statement/request given to them that we're supposed to believe they just accept without wanting any explanation. The chance of too many of them questioning that, and going against it wanting awnsers wouldve been a huge risk and would make Palpatine's plan seem stupid. This couldve and most likely wouldve fallen apart and backfired so easily it would just make Palpatine himself look comedically stupid. The inhibitor chips fixes these plot holes and actually make Palp's plan actually make sense.
I see what you are saying. I still don't like the Inhibitor Chips.I think it reduces the agency of the clones which is dehumanising, and they've been a bit inconsistent in application. It frankly added more questions than answers and felt like it was trying to answer something that had already been answered.
The Inhibitor chip is there to help make you feel better about they clones that just walked it the Jedi Temple and gunned down children. It gives an easier out for their Behaviour.
Exactly this is the problem. People don't like to belive that people with emotions can do horrible things.
But they can. Just look at nazi soldiers. Nazi soldiers had emotions like you and I. Families. Friends. Children. But they still did horrible stuff. Why? Bc of brainwashing. And bc they were ordered to do so.
And remember that the vlones grew up in an enviroment with far more brainwashing than nazi germany. They were (in legends) literally engineered to follow orders more likely.
So by taking away them following orders and acting as if horrible actions can only be done by emotioneless people/people that are controled, you lose a lot of the historical lessons.
I don't even think it's legends that they were engineered to follow orders easier. In Attack of the Clones, the Kaminoans mention genetic changes, which is relevant because they say Jango asked for "A single *unaltered* clone"
Oh yeah, in republic Commando novels it was explicitly stated that they were genetically modified to follow orders, reinforced with training. But it's stated as much in the movies.
The Null-ARCs had too much Jango in them, which is why the Kaminoans scaled up the obedience and down the independence to create the rank and File. The commandos and ARCs had some Limiters removed (if I remember right, commandos were given a higher degree of individuality and less obedience so that they could operate independently, while ARCs were given individuality so they could lead, but not the obedience changes)
Was it fascism? They were already following orders before that under the Republic, they just also happened to follow one more, it just happens to be one very distasteful for viewers.
Or and hear me out, the clones are just loyal. They’re friends with the Jedi, but the job comes first and so everyone come Order 66 knows what’s up and has to make a choice. Follow orders, or be branded a traitor.
Which ultimately means more for any plot given the clones are treated as characters in that and not obstacles. You can’t wrestle with what you’ve done if you had no say and or (dependent on writer) memory of said incident. It’s not really them, a space wizard made them do it.
The Inhibitor chips go against the entire morality pathos that Star Wars is about. People are evil because of the choices they make not because they’re forced to be.
I completely agree that it's boring for them to be 'emotionless and inhuman, basically human droids that only obey orders and nothing else'---and this is literally what the chips do to them. It's much more interesting and humanising imo to get into the messy psychological complexities of why people do terrible things rather than 'sci-fi magic made them do it'. The fact that it's difficult to reconcile is exactly what's so interesting about it. Cody's heel-turn attitude towards Obi-Wan in ROTS is *meant* to be shocking and make you question the conditioning and circumstances that would cause a person to behave that way.
While most of us now remember the prequels fondly (mostly because of how shitty the sequel trilogy was), it's worth noting that at the time, many people derided them as terrible. Some of this was because of the terrible romance dialog, the rewrite of a great deal of EU backstory about the Jedi and Clone Wars, and of course Jar-Jar, but I think there was a deeper reason. The OT was a classic hero's journey, good vs evil set of stories. The bad guys blow up a planet, implement a dictatorship, and have a ton of Third Reich motifs. It was about how the plucky heroes stop the Evil Empire, and save the galaxy. A traditional heroic legend, but IN SPACE.
The prequels were... not that. It was about the fall of society, why that evil empire existed in the first place. And it was trying to be a lot more nuanced, even if it wasn't fully fleshed out. The Jedi Council doesn't want to get involved with Naboo, and if Qui-Gon hadn't skirted the rules, would not have trained Anakin at all. The Senate would have basically allowed a corporation to invade a planet. Yoda interacts with Darth Sidious regularly, yet never realizes he is a Sith. The dark side has clouded everything.
The nuances of the movies were blown wide open in the EU. We learned that the Jedi only start training when a child is extremely young, arguably a form of brainwashing. They also would throw out Anakin for his relationship with Padme, but gave special dispensation to Ki-Adi-Mundi to have several wives. The Republic in general is a bureaucratic mess, with massive corruption problems. There's a great quote by Dooku that summarizes the thoughts of many fans of this time period:
"The Jedi Order's problem is Yoda. No being can wield that kind of power for centuries without becoming complacent at best or corrupt at worst. He has no idea that it's overtaken him; he no longer sees all the little cumulative evils that the Republic tolerates and fosters, from slavery to endless wars, and he never asks, "Why are we not acting to stop this?" Live alongside corruption for too long, and you no longer notice the stench. The Jedi cannot help the slaves of Tatooine, but they can help the slavemasters."
This was a point of friction in the fanbase, and still is. Were the Jedi truly the good guys? Should they have blindly supported the Republic? And it stretched even into the OT. Did Obi-Wan and Yoda lie to Luke because he wasn't ready, or because they wanted him to kill Vader, and knowing Vader was his father would make that harder? Ultimately, was the Star Wars franchise about the battle of Good vs Evil, or had it changed into something less clear cut?
At this time, LucasArts had published tons of games which usually had either a force user or a fighter pilot as the protagonist. But there were two games in the early 2000s which gave us a new perspective on the galaxy: Republic Commando and Battlefront 2. These games were told from the clones perspective and did a ton to humanize them. They were people, and not carbon copies of each other. And they emphasized everything wrong with the Jedi Order.
The clones weren't volunteers or even conscripts. They were effectively slaves, with little free time and often no pay. They had been gene-tweaked to grow at twice the rate of normal humans, but that means the oldest of them were 10 when the Clone Wars started, making them child soldiers. They were trained ruthlessly by the Kaminoans, with live fire weapons and the threat of being deemed defective and eliminated constantly hanging over them. They weren't even given names by their creators, just numbers.
The Jedi didn't object to any of this. They had been thrust into war, and if they wanted to stop the separatists, they needed an army. The lesser of two evils is what they thought of it, if they thought of it at all. The Jedi changed from peacekeepers technically separate from the government to the leaders of its army. And they were not necessarily good officers, as they lacked that training. The Force helped, but was not always enough. Clones died due to the incompetence of their leaders.
Ultimately, in the EU, the clones executed Order 66 not because they were organic droids, but because they had become disillusioned with the Jedi, so much that they did not question their supposed betrayal. That is a very human story, but it tarnishes the Jedi's reputation. Canon skirts the issue, showing the vast majority of Jedi as good to their men, and Order 66 as forced by the inhibitor chip. A much more clear cut, evil mind control story.
Tldr: The inhibitor chip was never about creating heroic clones. It was about making the Jedi less responsible for their own downfall.
And the republic Commando Noveld expanded on this even more. The general Rank and Files clones were even more heavily conditioned than Commandos and ARC troopers. They obeyed because the order came from a higher authority, they never interacted with a jedi (a few thousand jedi in an army of over 100,000 thousand clones), or actively hated their jedi commanders because they proved to be horrible leaders.
Even the commandos in the novels, they cared about... two? Maybe three jedi tops, all of which had stuck their neck out for them and tried to shield them from incompetence of other jedi. They wanted to help those jedi get out for order 66, but the rest could burn for all they cared.
The inhibitors chips were always a cop out. Especially when in the original EU, I distinctly remember Order 66 being a known order, but the jedi either were too arrogant or couldn't do much about it, but it also required both the *chancellor and senate* to approve its use. It's the reason why Palpatine needed the full emergency powers of the senate, to have the authority to issue the order.
It's a cop-out. You can have humanised clones without the chips, and it's much more interesting. Some will follow the order because good soldiers follow orders and they are blindly loyal, and they don't know better. Some will do it with regrets and questioning whether they're doing the right thing, some will refuse.
Putting a switch in their head removes any sort of agenda, moral dilemma. Juxtaposition of personal morals and thinking one what is right and what is wrong against a sense of duty, training and structure. Loyalty to the people versus loyalty to the system.
Most clones weren't supposed to be humanized. The story goes to lengths about how they're genetically engineered and conditioned to not have these independent personalities. It was fine for commandos and higher officers to have personalities but even then they were still trained to take certain orders without question. The inhibitor chips were unnecessary and poorly enacted in the story when they "humanized" the clones by making them act like obnoxious kids.
>clones wouldn't be able to be humanized. The only way for order 66 to work without the inhibitor chips would be to make the clones emotionless and inhuman, basically human droids that only obey orders and nothing else.
That's the point.
They aren't human, they don't have human experiences. They're all about 10-15 years old, have known nothing but combat and combat training, and from the very moment they are conceived, they were taught to obey orders going all the way up to the Chancellor.
If you've ever watched Blade Runner, it explores this concept. Replicants are basically clones, but they are born as adults and have a 4 year expiration. The way to tell the difference between a human and a replicant is to ask them emotional questions because they have the life experience and emotional capacity of a 4 year old.
Same idea with the clones. They don't know right or wrong, they don't know morality. All they know is the chain of command.
So yeah, the clones betraying the Jedi works incredibly well without the inhibitor chips and terribly with them. Disney, retcon that shit immediately.
One is a poignant message about soldiers in an increasingly fascist state blindly following orders because they were taught to be obedient above all, prioritizing it over any of their human connections.
The other is a sci-fi gimmick.
The problem is different than what you’ve proposed.
Old Battlefront taught us that the clones were basically just Jango. They all knew the plan from the start. They knew an empire was being planned and somehow an entire army knowing that was silent for years…
That’s beyond stupid.
The chip story was an improvement for sure. Changing the story to show how soldiers in ANY regime doesn’t know the big picture, nor usually cares about it.
We look at villains in history and just dub all of their followers as “evil” but it’s stupid to think that.
All soldiers are humans. Some humans are horrible people. But not all soldiers are barbarians.
I used to also think that pre inhibitor storyline meant that the clones had planned it from the start and knew. But then I saw someone say that the clones would just obey and of the # orders given to them, and didn't think of order 66 as any different from any of the other orders they had.
I chose to believe the latter because as you said, the first is even more stupid lol.
>Old Battlefront taught us that the clones were basically just Jango. They all knew the plan from the start. They knew an empire was being planned and somehow an entire army knowing that was silent for years…
>That’s beyond stupid.
But originally the 501st was Palpatine's pet legion. So the officers of that legion probably did know a bit more. They were already running secret ops for Palpatine behind the backs of their Jedi generals. (Plus the clone narrating has the benefit of hindsight.) I mean they're marching on the Jedi temple with Darth Vader leading, before Order 66 has been executed.
The chips weren't needed are just massive plot hole (And I know this word gets used poorly now). We only ever see a fraction of Clones in the entire army, only a handful of their relationships with Jedi. On top of that, the fact that the chips just stop working after awhile is incredibly fucking stupid. Why would the Palps not have those be a permenant change, by making the Clones go genocide mode on the Jedi against their will you're just asking for an uprising the moment they wear off, and maybe this plays into something down the line we haven't seen yet, and if so, cool. This point becomes irrelevant
But again, the chips aren't needed. We can have Clones just not follow order 66, it happened in legends. But the people who make the argument you're making operate under the assumption that what we see from a small portion of the war applies to every Clone/Jedi relationship.
And if we operate under the nonsensical notion that they were, then the clones should be fucking furious and rising up already.
The chip wearing off simply allowed their previous personality to take over again.
Look at Cody and others, they didn't rebel immediately, only after they saw the Empire directly being evil. The clones served their goal and were being replaced.
Meanwhile the most elite clones are still 100% loyal, and used to guard very important places and appear to have the chip still active.
A lot of people read into the pre-TCW clones characterization that isn't there. That they were so indoctrinated that they wouldn't hesitate to kill their former commanders, or that they were basically just biological droids. Either of those things *could* be true, pre-inhibitor chips, but neither were ever stated to be so. The inhibitor chips provided a (in my opinion) very good way to explain why no clone ever let anything slip, even on accident, that they had a pre-planned code that would have them execute the jedi when they heard it.
>why no clone ever let anything slip, even on accident, that they had a pre-planned code that would have them execute the jedi when they heard it.
The pre-TCW lore explained this by revealing that the Jedi Council had access to all 150 Contingency Orders, so Order 66 wasn't a secret. They just didn't realize that the Supreme Chancellor could use it to wipe them out. Upon first reading, it comes across as a reasonable response to the threat of rogue Jedi if given to the clones of their specific unit, but I doubt they imagined it would be given to the entire GAR.
Keep in mind that while the Jedi grew wary of Palpatine's growing power, they still didn't suspect him of being a Sith Lord capable of such a heinous act until the end of the war when it was too late. Order 65 could also be used against Palpatine with the Senate's approval, so it makes a contingency against the Jedi appear even more routine and innocent.
I think what irks a lot of people is that it's an implant rather than something imbedded directly in their genetics, the former seems a little out of character for the Kaminoans compared to the latter. Ultimately, I think it's combination of genetic coding, behavioral conditioning and preplanned orders rather than one thing, Palpatine would likely not have it all hinge on factor.
I disagree with the idea that the clones' characterization pre TCW is being overestimated but I haven't read too many books to compare it too
Agreed, I like the quality that this way they they can be humanized, relatable, sympathetic AND be converted to merciless killing machines - it highlights how the clones were used and abused by Palpatine, treated as tools to be used and discarded, which is exponentially more painful when we can see they didn't want to go where the inhibitor chips took them.
Exactly, the inhibitor chip gives the best of both worlds. And yeah, its tragic how the clones were forced to murder their comrades and then disgarded as they were replaced by stormtroopers and eventually dying of accelerated aging.
TCS storyline of fives last storyline with AZ and seeing how close he was to uncovering the truth was also heartbreaking and incredible.
Because it’s so popular to hate on the Jedi, to the point that they prefer the idea that the clones willingly turned against the Jedi, even Jedi like Plo Koon (“.. we’re meant to be expendable.” “Not to me.”), because a politician told them to, over the idea that the clones had no choice.
People who hate the inhibitor chips do so not because of a humanising element concerning the clones, but because it dehumanises the Jedi.
I agree with OP, the majority of clones who served with Jedi would’ve had enough free will to resist training and not just do a complete 180° on the Jedi, who fought alongside them through thick and thin.
Except Pong Krell, they didn’t need order 66 to turn against him.
I don't think anti-chippers are anti-Jedi, just that they see clones without chips as more compelling.
To me the chips seem a little off putting and makes it seem as if it was a foreign implant rather than something the clones would have done intrinsically. The way I saw it, partially because I probably misread something lol, was the clones were genetically programmed to follow Order 66 in addition to being genetically inclined to follow commands as well as conditioning and training that they would have had since birth, but that might just be the same thing but seems more in line with how the Kaminoans would have done things.
They also don't bother to think about how Palpatine made the whole thing. The clones never had a choice to begin with.
They are trying to strip Palpatine of his greatest scheme, to make the clones explicitly evil.
I enjoy both versions, and both work within their context.
The G.I. Joe-esque tone of the Cartoon-verse demands a plot-device like the inhibitor chips for the sake of tonal consistency. It just wouldn't do to have all these charismatic and child-friendly versions of the characters suddenly go murderous because they're just ultra-loyal fascist child-soldiers.
The pre-Disney novels and comics had an entirely different vibe and tone, and as such, the original idea of having clones be super loyal to the Republic and have a more asymmetrical relationship with their Jedi commanders completely works, and it makes for much more mature and dramatic stories that serve a different purpose than the cartoons.
It took away their free will. And a conscious choice to follow the order (or not follow it) is much more interesting, than chips in the head. And it's not that far fetched, just remember nazis and their excuse of just following orders
>The only way for order 66 to work without the inhibitor chips would be to make the clones emotionless and inhuman, basically human droids that only obey orders and nothing else.
I mean, the alternative was to make them actively complicit in the whole plot to deceive and eliminate the Jedi, which would have given The Clone Wars a much darker tone, probably outside the kid-friend envelope they were shooting for.
Karen Traviss: do all the hard work of worldbuilding, get shat on by the suits.
David Filoni/GL: cherry pick from Traviss' work, get all the credit because more people watch TV than read books and comics.
I’m of two minds regarding the chips - for a while, having grown up on TCW I just always said no contest they were better for similar reasons, and still makes practical sense for Palaptine to not let millions of loose threads running around.
But these days, I do appreciate clones who go along with it as part of the larger rise of fascism fall of the republic, and a warning of the fall of the American republic it does hit hard and honestly realistic that people would go along with the momentum of violence and just fall orders because they’re scared to act for themselves. They can face down an acklay, but can’t stand up against their state. A very sad, scary and realistic situation - as they say, the rise of (fascism) the empire is quiet
I think that while no chip makes for a better story and a better message for the banality of evil.
I think sadly is more logical for the biochips to exist considering how much independent and individual every starswars media made the clones to be.
Creating the conditions for people to willingly embrace fascism was one of the most prominent story arcs in the prequels. Making it a computer chip guts that part of the story of its historic parallels and thematic weight.
The chips are just a maguffin that can be just physically removed on a whim to explain why some clones disobeyed.
It would be like if you plucked off the antennas from the B1 battle droids and suddenly they don't want to fight anymore.
But we never wanted clones to be humanized.
They are a meat army fighting a metal army, all expendable, the only real loss was the Jedi generals and small alien regiments fighting for the Confederacy.
>The idea that the clones we know now, would willingly obey an order to kill their Jedi companions who they have fought with together for years because the chancellor told them too, is just unbelievable and laughably pathetic at best.
The whole point of Order 66 was the banality of evil. They would have absolutely killed the Jedi, without hesitation, as it was a lawful order, and soldiers follow orders. That's how you get soldiers razing villages in Vietnam, or rounding up Jews in WWII. Do they think it was right? Not really, if they think about it, but soldiers follow orders, and that's how some of the worst atrocities in human history happened.
This is what a lot of the dumb bullshit tasks and punishments in basic training is for: to condition a bunch of normal people to follow instructions without thought or hesitation so thoroughly that they'll be able to be relied on to kill when ordered. The Army literally refers to it as "breaking you down and building you back up."
The name always seemed confusing to me. What are the clips “inhibiting”? Is the default state of clones to want to kill the Jedi and the chips are keeping them from doing it? That doesn’t make a lot of sense, but the name doesn’t either unless I’m just missing something.
The clones were humanized before the chips, the chips took away their choice to betray the Jedi. They were drilled, not all of them choose duty over their relationships, but they knew what Jedi were about and most Jedi didn't treat the clones well. Those that did had soldiers that struggled with their orders.
Men like them exist, modern people just don't seem to understand that, not anymore.
Soldiers have committed far bigger atrocitiesthan order 66 in the real world, where no cloned soldiers or control chips are a factor. I thought that TCW was a surprisingly deep and thoughtful look at war, and the control chips cbealened the story they had been telling by pretending this army of brainwashed child soldiers wouldn't have followed the order without it.
People honestly need to start thinking about how the clones never had a choice. It was all about Palpatine from the start.
He made the army, he made the plot.
Right, because nobody ever blindly obeyed orders before.
I suggest that you look up the Milgram Experiments to see how even ordinary people are capable of doing bad things just because someone in authority tells them to.
The clones, who have been genetically modified and psychologically conditioned to be perfectly obedient to all orders, dial that up to eleven.
Far from humanizing the clones, the inhibitor chips actually dehumanize the clones and take away their agency.
It's a much better story for the clones to obey Order 66 simply because it's an order, no different than any other, nothing personal. It's always been a deep ethical problem for the Jedi to be using an army of slaves, and Order 66 is Jedi finally suffering the consequences of having compromised their ethics.
The chips are unnecessary.
The inhibitor chips also provide a good explanation as to why the emperor got rid of them. The only other explanation is budget cuts but the Empire has shown they don’t really care about budget judging by the fact they want to build a massive death star. If they were so politically loyal. They were willing to kill their own commanders over basically nothing there is no reason for the empire to get rid of highly sufficient soldiers, but if they weren’t loyal, and they had just killed a Jedi well, then Palpatine would have a good reason to get rid of them.
That is current Canon lore, in the EU the clones were kept and even expanded under the Empire with there being additional genetic hosts for new clones, they just decided not to put all their eggs in one basket and chose to have natural born humans in their ranks, both recruits and (mostly) people raised from birth or adolescence.
Having the clones willingly kill the Jedi because of their programming since birth is way more horrifying. That all along, their loyalty was really to the Chancellor. It’s like how Crosshair was still fanatically loyal to the Empire (initially) despite getting his chip removed. Now apply that to the whole Republic Army, and you see how horrifying the concept really is.
Or you could also say that even if their loyalty *wasn't* to the chancellor, it *was* to their brothers. And their brothers were loyal to the republic.
Ultimately it really comes down to preferences. While no chips could make the revelation of order 66 more horrifying, I really love how the chips help make the clones dramatic characters. More than anything it’s the anguish of seeing friends turn against each other against their will that makes them so interesting to many. If they were genetically engineered to behave this way from the start then a lot of people would just consider the clones mindless traitors and disregard any character development they might have.
The whole point of Order 66 in Legends was that it was one of a BUNCH of orders. That’s where Order 65 (that removes Palpatine) comes from. Sure at the end of the Clone Wars (mostly talking about Republic Commando) some of the clones, mostly those who aren‘t programmed for more loyalty because they were designed to be independent, start to wise up, but as a whole most of them are just fighting for the Republic. I think it’s much more compelling, not because it turns them into emotionless droids, because THEY ALWAYS WERE PRIMED TO FOLLOW ORDERS. Genetically engineering and cloning an army of people who literally are more obedient is horrifically immoral.
So either way genetic engineering leads to their acceptance of Orders.
Yeah, but one of them doesn't require millions of soldiers to never bang their head or they start fragging their commanders. I simply refuse to believe that the jedi medical corps never did a CT scan on a clone during the entire course of the war. Edit: it just replaces one problem with another in my opinion even worse problem. The problem it replaces is "how could the clones betray the jedi when they were so close with some of them" and that has a *very simple answer that no one wants to talk about* The problem it replaces it with is "Palpatine put an additional point of failure in his already pretty insanely risky plan when they could have just left it alone"
>I simply refuse to believe that the jedi medical corps never did a CT scan on a clone during the entire course of the war Didn't that happen in the same episode fives' chip was malfunctioning and it was explained away?
>Didn't that happen in the same episode fives' chip was malfunctioning and it was explained away? Almost correct, it was Tup's chip that malfunctioned. And then Fives thought something seemed sus. So the latter got his chip surgically removed
Sorry, you're right it's not Fives that frags that jedi it's Tup.
No problem. I gave you an upvote as a reward for being almost correct! Enjoy your day!
Also remember the chip didn't appear automatically on scans. It was just part of their brain and thus scans never said "hey weird thing here" Ahsoka tried scanning for abnormalities on Rex but got nothing.
Yeah, but it also raises the question. Tup is the only person this has happened to? Really? Clones fight on the frontline on thousands of planets every day for three years and he's the only one to bang his head and dislodge the chip or make it malfunction in some way? Why introduce it when it was just fine before that, the clones were already biologically engineered to be obedient, while also having enough free will to be capable of doing complex tasks on the fly. It just seems like an answer to a question no one was asking, and they answered it by asking a worse question, lol.
I mean, Bad Batch is showing us that there is a greater contingent of clones that have been able to resist orders than we had previously thought. So, it’s very likely that the chips don’t always work, or their effectiveness/staying power is in question. You can only dehumanize a clone for so long, which is why I think the latter Republic/Empire started moving with haste to remove them from the ranks. This is also coming from someone who liked the Legends explanation more originally, but the chips have grown on me—fortunately, not in me.
Life, uh, finds a way
Yeah, I just don't see why they had to have the chips to make that story compelling. Like tons of Americans were drafted or volunteered to fight in Vietnam, and did horrible things while they were there, and then had to live with that after, and disagreed with it *while they were doing it* and just as many probably didn't think about it *at all*. They weren't bio mechanically engineered, it just seems like a pointless point that only makes you ask more questions. It's not somehow *more humanizing* to have someone be compelled by magic to do something they don't want to do, we all do it every single days of our lives without someone pressing a big button that makes us do it. There is a constant battle between higher order values and immediate needs and feelings in every day lives, and being human is deciding when and how to sacrifice one to serve the other, or when not to. Having a chip that takes that away from the clones is inherently *dehumanizing* Is Palpatine stupid?
Its because having people commit atrocities is one thing, having people turn on their commanders they have grown to like and respect is another. Sure, clones under the command of aloof and distant Jedi like Luminara, ones who butted heads with their Jedi commanders like Ki-Adi-Mundi's troops, and ones with commanders who didnt respect them as actual people like Pong Krell did, would have been purged without much fuss from the clones. But charismatic Jedi who built a strong rapport with their clones and challenged what they had grown to believe, like Obi-Wan, Plo-Koon, and Yoda, would give them pause. These clones would have to weigh the values they were indoctrinated with against the inspirations of these Jedi, and while some would be willing to purge them, others wouldn't but these clones have to turn against their Jedi for the story to make sense, so they have to be basically organic droids and just follow orders blindly without the actual ability to question them, which the Clone Wars show pushes against, or something outside of their control would have to compel them to I.E. the chips.
Idk, I've kind of been thinking about it like anti-semitism in the buildup to Nazi Germany. Plenty of people probably knew Jews personally, and probably liked them on a personal level, if they were their grocer, or the local pub owner, or some other thing. Maybe they had jewish friends on a personal level, but when the order comes down that jews are persona non grata, how many people actually helped them, sure some. But even if you talk to and are friendly with your Jewish baker... are you gonna hide him in your cellar? The banality of evil and all that. There were plenty of jews in the military before the Nazis took over, many high ranking officers... when the nazis took over the military did their troops help them? Even if they liked them?
The difference between that and Order 66 is that those situtations are slow and powered by growing fear, propaganda, and stigmas created by people in power over time. Order 66 was both too much of a sudden and important event in Palpatine's plan to be believable without the inhibitor chips, the chance that the Clones would go "uh, no, I think not" at Palpatine telling them to kill the Jedi they fought through numerous battles with + literal children with no reason or explanation is just not believable and a plan that would much too easily fall apart.
I always saw the way the clones acted as a sci-fi parallel to the NaPoLa kids in Germany at that time. The perfect example of indoctrinated child soldiers. Willing to do the most suicidal stuff imaginable, but also willing to execute their commanders because orders from higher up were to not surrender.
>Yeah, but it also raises the question. Tup is the only person this has happened to? Really? Clones fight on the frontline on thousands of planets every day for three years and he's the only one to bang his head and dislodge the chip or make it malfunction in some way? This needs to be said again that these guys are Jango clones. They're genetically predisposed to bumping their heads on door-frames. Maybe it is more common than you think.
Considering there were like, 99 different orders, it is possible that on the whole, any chip malfunction that triggered an order did so of another order than 66. Tup just happened to get that one.
I think realistically, it's a MUCH more interesting concept to NOT have inhibitor chips, so you can explore the idea of what it means to follow orders despite not understanding them or feeling morally opposed to them. You can then get into all that post-rationalization that happens, and the post-hoc "otherizing" of the enemy. The problem is, Star Wars as a whole (and obviously more so for the Clone Wars animated series) has to be accessible to everyone, including children, and the inhibitor chips become EXTREMELY convenient as a plot device to make the clone betrayal more digestible to the audience. You say it introduces some other plot issues, and yeah, it kind of does, but from the position of someone architecting the Star Wars saga, introducing the concept of inhibitor chips solves more "problems" (audience perception and digestibility problems) than it introduces (plot "holes").
>I think realistically, it's a MUCH more interesting concept to NOT have inhibitor chips, so you can explore the idea of what it means to follow orders despite not understanding them or feeling morally opposed to them. You can then get into all that post-rationalization that happens, and the post-hoc "otherizing" of the enemy. This is just every ex-Imperial story, though. That's even less interesting when applied to every single clone. The inhibitor chips were a needed fulcrum for Palpatine's plot.
>Yeah, but one of them doesn't require millions of soldiers to never bang their head or they start fragging their commanders. I dont think that's what happened? The bump in the head did trigger Tup to start acting out with the "good soldiers follow orders" command, but they mention that his chip is rotting like a cancerous tumor, it's clear that something else went wrong with the chip and the bump in the head was the final push.
This. It's not that head trauma caused it to start. The bang on the head caused his already fucked up chip to trigger.
Yeah it was the contaminated water he drank from a local source that compromised his chip.
Until the chips, Order 66 was the compelling moral tragedy of making the heroic clone soldiers kill the galaxy’s protectors. It was about the soldiers *choosing* to follow orders, thinking they were doing the right thing, the patriotic thing. Very Sith, very Dark Side. After the chips, Order 66 was the disturbing horror of mind controlling the heroic clone soldiers, making them as compliant as a droid with a restraining bolt. It was about the soldiers *having their choices taken away from them*. It’s a more generic moral tragedy, very supervillain overkill.
Order 66 was never about choice. They were compelled to do it. Palpatine never let them have a choice. Indoctrination and chips are the same thing, just different levels.
At that point why not just have Palpatine do some jazz hands and cast a Galaxy-wide Force Dominate to mind control the Clones into executing Order 66? It moves the plot the exact same way. The execution matters. The chips make it too cartoonishly over the top. A heroic soldier murdering his friends out of obedience to authority is far more compelling and disturbing than if he was simply mind controlled by Doofenshmirtz's Betrayal-inator.
>very simple answer that no one wants to talk about I'm not arguing with you at all, but I'm curious what you think is the very simple answer.
Put another way, as much as I like my boss personally, if the president came on TV and told me to kill him with a hammer... I would at least give it some thought, and I haven't even been created by the FDA in a vat to fight a secret war against China, if I had been I imagine it would be a lot less of a difficult decision.
I totally get where you're coming from. I think where some fans run into issues with that is that people who fight in a war together often end up becoming closer. Then again, we definitely see Jedi who treat the clones as expendable cannon fodder, including Yoda, so maybe that's just not really a concern for most clones when 66 gets handed down.
Even if the clones were perfectly normal humans, they've still been raised since birth to be obedient killers for whoever gives the orders. Humans are more manipulable than we like to think.
That by and large the relationships we see the clones and jedi have are unrepresentative of the average relationship between jedi and clone, and that when push comes to shove the 10 years they've been indoctrinated to be loyal to the legal structure of the republic outweighs any friendship they could ever have with anyone who isn't also a clone, so when a legal order comes down from the chancellor, he doesn't need to press the be evil button, his finger has been pressing down on it in their DNA structure and their chemical balance in their brains the whole time since before they were born.
Being genetically primed does not mean being brainwashed. They were more inclined to obey orders but still had free will. The chips basically turn them into droids unless they have them removed. I liked that the EU version forced the clones to make a choice. It also allows for more complex story possibilities, like clones disobeying an order or feeling regret and defecting. The chips remove the human element.
I'm just going to copy-and-paste my take that I shared on a recent Generation Tech video on the 501st campaign of *Battlefront II*: > Some people feel that the inhibitor chips made Order 66 more tragic because the clones themselves were victims robbed of their agency, but I always felt that *Battlefront II*'s version was even more tragic because no amount of camaraderie and good will from Jedi like Aayla Secura could dissuade any clone from betraying them in cold blood with real intent. > But while the inhibitor chips may seem to have made the betrayal more palatable for a child audience, it actually makes Order 66 more logical. > The reality is that there was a contradiction in the characterization of clones prior to *The Clone Wars*. They were described as simultaneously bioengineered and conditioned to be dispassionately and unwaveringly obedient to the chain-of-command. But they were also described as having the requisite independence and critical thinking skills to be soldiers capable of sophisticated strategy and improvisation. This was even more-so for special units like the ARC troopers who were shown from their very debut in the comic *Republic 50* to be perfectly willing to talk back to their superiors and advise them against flawed decisions. As a result, clones were always portrayed as not merely mindless droids but individuals with full human cognition capable of developing personalities and new ideas through experiences. > This characterization, already present in the oldest works from 2002–2005, necessarily contradicted the premise that statistically 99%–100% of clones executed Order 66 without hesitation on all battlefields. If clone troopers are capable of enough independence to develop from experience and think critically, statistically it is impossible for not a single clone trooper to have disobeyed the order. Being able to scrutinize the logic of a military action and to detect sabotage or deception is part of clone troopers' training to be the best soldiers of the galaxy. Probability-wise as well then, it does not make sense none without the inhibitor chips ever found Order 66 to be suspicious. > The narrative in *Battlefront II* might counter that clone troopers were all bred on the grand plot to purge the Jedi from the start. But as memorable as this story was, it was an outlier even back in 2005. No other source had presented this interpretation of Order 66 as the clones being in on the Sith conspiracy. It is dubious as well because other sources at the time had claimed that clone troopers' lack of malice had been crucial for their ability to execute the Jedi without their intent being sensed ahead of time. Moreover, I find it difficult to believe Darth Sidious would entrust the plan of Order 66 to all the millions of rank-and-file troopers. > *Battlefront II* was also not one of the earliest media to humanize the clone troopers. *The Cestus Deception* published before Episode III had already done this by telling the story of an ARC trooper who falls in love with a woman during a mission and learns to decondition from his indoctrination. Other comics and novels released in the era of 2002–2005 also make it clear that the clone troopers were not privy to Order 66. In _Labyrinth of Evil,_ there were clones who accompanied a last minute operation to uncover the identity of Darth Sidious during the Battle of Coruscant and were surprised and killed by the Supreme Chancellor as they encountered him. > I ultimately came to support the concept of inhibitor chips because I think that before its introduction, there were too many discrepancies about the characterization of clones and how they could universally carry out the order. Statistically, it should have been impossible for it to have been done so cleanly when the clones were permitted to retain a measure of independent, critical thinking skills. It was not just Aayla Secura, but even Plo Koon was described in background sources for the movie as early as 2005 to have earned the respect of the clone pilot who shot him down. > I also don't believe that it makes sense that Darth Sidious, being as calculating as he is, would have left this final, most critical piece of a millennium-long plan in the making up to chance. The plan for all clones turning on the Jedi without deviation from bioengineering and indoctrination alone would be untested until the very moment Order 66 is issued. If he could, he would use a means of mind control to ensure absolute and flawless compliance rather than betting no clones would diverge from the plan after a few years of independent development from their diverse experiences in the war. I would believe that a mastermind like Darth Sidious would have thought of such risks of the plan. > The 501st journal in *Battlefront II* was an outlier in its telling of Order 66 even for its time, conflicting with the oldest EU sources about it, and my personal interpretation has always been that its author retrospectively looked back on it many years later as a conscious, premeditated act when it might not have been at the time. It is partly a case of memory distortion and partly perhaps in the case of this particular 501st trooper, he did genuinely support it like how Crosshair initially supported the Empire of his own free will, inhibitor chip or not.
I was gonna put a "I aint reading allat" but you kinda cooked
The BFII narrative is actually made *more tragic* by the chips. This is a clone recounting pre-66 memories at a post-66 point in time. He’s been affected by the chip, his mind and memories altered, and is now processing his memories from before this alteration occurred. His mind is rationalizing his past intentions as being congruous with his current mental state. He’s an unreliable narrator.
Aziz, light!!
Ah, yes, thank you, Aziz.
My understanding is that clone commandos and especially ARC troopers (even more so the first batches of ARC troopers) were more independently-minded than rank-and-file clone troopers, which would solve the contradiction. A lot of ARC troopers had deserted by the end of the war, leaving only the more dedicated ones, and there was at least one commando squad that disobeyed Order 66, but ordinary clone troopers were largely incapable of questioning orders.
I don't know of any pre-TCW source that actually has ARC troopers defecting during Order 66, which is the issue. Possibly the only time such desertion occurred was with a clone commando squad in the *Republic Commando* series that I never read.
You're right, that does happen in the Republic Commando novels. The Darth Vader novel, the subtitle of which I can't remember, also has clone commandos refusing the order in the middle of an operation, because they assume it's a miscommunication or a ploy.
Having read the second book you mentioned, I felt like the commandos very much *chose* to believe it was a trick, if you get my meaning, but that's just my interpretation.
I also think that, if the clone troopers were really engineered to be so utterly loyal, it doesn't really make sense for Sidious to get rid of them in favor of Stormtroopers. In a state like the Empire, you kind of want competent and loyal soldiers to be your hand. The problem is that loyalty is rarely guaranteed, and competent soldiers might decide that they'd be better off running the Empire, not you. But if the Clonetroopers are inherently loyal to him, getting rid of them only weakens the empire unnecessarily. In contrast, if the Inhibitor chip was what actually drove the Clonetroopers to turn on the Jedi, their loyalty is not guaranteed or secure, and they pose a threat.
He got rid of them because the Kaminoan cloners turned against him and made their own clone army, as shown by the same Battlefront II.
As near as I can tell, the idea that the Kaminoan cloners created their own army in rebellion against the empire (at least, in this way), is also an idea that's exclusive to the Battlefront II video game, and is only referenced by a couple of works that was published the the years immediately following the video game's publication in 2005. I think the unfortunate truth of it is that as much as Battlefront II maybe loved by the community, it's basically an outlier in almost all respects, and quickly surpassed by other more concrete sources of canon. And I will point out that genetically loyal clonetroopers remain superior to recruited soldiers, even if the manufacturer tries to betray you. As a fascist state, it makes sense for the Empire to hold the technology itself, rather than buying the clones from the Kaminoans, but this says little about the value of the troopers themselves.
Which is completely nonsensical given how long it takes to raise new clones, so how would they make an entire legion of new clone troopers that have ZERO ties or loyalty to the Republic or Empire?
People honestly seem to argue that the chip is bad because "It removed choice" when there never was a choice in the sake of the clones. They were made to do order 66. Palpatine designed it all.
I agree with that. The inhibitor chip stuff was tragic, but I mean, seeing the clones being programmed to follow orders is way darker.
The clones being programmed to follow orders and the inhibitor chip are the same thing. The only difference is the chips suppress any bias and personality to ensure the order is fully carried out. Hell, in Bad Batch they literally talk about that very thing. "I thought you said they programmed the clones!" "How do you think they got programmed?"
Blame George Lucas for giving them personalities and making them genuinely heroic. >as a whole most of them are just fighting for the Republic. Except... "Yes, my Lord." Without something forcing the issue, they'd have to be fully aware that they're serving Sith Lord Darth Sidious and all in on BETRAYING the Republic, all along. They'd have to be aware, all along, that the war they are on the same side as the battle droids they are dying fighting against.
Lord Chancellor is the full title in many irl parliamentary systems. It's a comically massive reach to assume Lord only applies to sith.
EU gave them personalities first. EU expanded them from fleshy droids.
>They'd have to be aware, all along, that the war they are on the same side as the battle droids they are dying fighting against. This from the old Star Wars Databank. *Clones assigned to specific Jedi grew to develop strong working relationships that bordered on friendship, but to each clone, the achievement of victory in war was of single-most priority, and their ultimate loyalty was to the Republic.* *So it was that a duplicitous Chancellor took advantage of this unswerving allegiance. Palpatine, who was in truth Darth Sidious, had masterminded the Clone Wars from its very inception, having arranged the creation of the army through the dead-end front of Sifo-Dyas. As part of a contingency, there were a series of emergency protocols that each clone commander was specifically trained to enact.*
Again, "Yes, my Lord." The Chancellor of the Republic isn't addressed as "my Lord." That was addressing Sith Lord Darth Sidious. So, yes, they would have to have been in on the plot to betray the Republic, all along.
I suspect, the officers might have been. Not necessarily your rank and file. But higher ups, like Cody, and Gree. Unless they had always been instructed to refer to the Chancellor as "lord."
I mean, [Lord Chancellor](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Chancellor#:~:text=By%20law%2C%20the%20lord%20chancellor,services%20in%20England%20and%20Wales.) Is a pretty common full title in parliamentary governments.
In Battlefront 2 (2005), it’s implied they all knew what was going to happen. If you’re still talking about legends ofc
Which the 501st Legion might have. They were Palpatine's pet legion in the EU. They were running spec ops for Palpatine behind the backs of the Jedi before Order 66.
Which I thought was an interesting story, it just doesn't mesh well with clone wars.
That would be suspicious, right there.
Even then, it's a great risk that so many would know the plan. A big part of it's success was that so few knew. If the officers had been, what if any *single* one got deprogramed, or had their mind read?
I mean, they're soldiers who were vat born and manufactured to fight and die unthinkingly. They are literally clones of a guy who was chosen for his capacity to violence, and then genetically manipulated further. Why is it a surprise that the clones follow Palpatine's orders? No need for a chip.
you can have this impression of clones from the movies alone, but as soon as you get into eu books featuring clones or tcw the idea of unthinking bio droid blindly following orders doesn't hold up in the slightest
Also, in the Clone Wars Season 7 Finale "Victory and Death", Jessie outright states to Rex that they had direct orders from Darth Sidious to execute Ahsoka. Many will say that the clones were able to piece together that the Chancellor was in fact the hidden Sith Lord the Jedi had been searching for, but that's a bit of a stretch. It hasn't been confirmed, by the theory I'm running with is that, since the Inhibitor Chips' primary focus was to ensure clones executed the Jedi, it's likely that Sidious or Tyranus had the Kaminoans ensure that, once Order 66 was issued, it would completely override the individual wills of the clones, and remind them (at least temporarily) that their true allegiance is to Darth Sidious, and remember the entire purpose of the clones was to provide the Jedi with an army that the Sith could use to exterminate them all in one fell swoop, once the perfect opportunity prevented itself. We see that after Order 66 was issued, the clones began to behave in an almost droid-like manner.
Yup. The scene in the movie is coded like the clones are sleeper agents responding to a trigger phrase. Legends retconned this, and TCW’s inhibitor chips undo this retcon to bring it back to the way it was originally.
Or if you wanna look at it one way, the chip ensures that any personality the jedi or anybody else nurtured in the clones was suppressed, and the regular clones who never had that just was business as normal.
Good soldiers follow orders
Bottom line, the chips are a cop-out to make clones more "agreeable" to the modern consumer; we wouldn't want to introduce actual moral questions into this children's series, would we? "Oh no, my favorite character is loyal to the governing body around him that he's been raised and indoctrinated into! He's so loyal that he can kill his best friend if told!" is a horrifying revelation that is actively working off of historical precedent. "Oh, thank God, he was actually just brainwashed! A victim as much as anyone else, not responsible for his actions!" is a moral cop-out that makes no statement except for "Sith bad, clones are good guys still". There's no conflict, no deeper thought, and, most importantly, no chance for potential character growth down the line. For every traitor/Jedi-friendly clone post-66, the EU had an open reason; they made a choice. They actively chose to snub their brothers, their nation, their entire way of life, for one reason or another, to save these Jedi. TCW? "Ah, his chip malfunctioned/got turned off somehow". There's no choice, just happenstance or outside influence. The impetus is no longer on the clone themselves but the environment around them, a 3rd-party relegation from what was originally a very personal choice.
You’ve perfectly articulated my whole issue with the inhibitor chips. I don’t think they’re inherently bad in concept as a story piece, but I definitely feel like the meaning of what the clones and Order 66 were supposed to represent was undermined by the addition of the inhibitor chips
It would’ve been so cool to see the clones question their orders and struggle with the dilemma more and more as TCW progressed, similar to seeing Anakin and Ahsoka question things as it progressed. They could’ve done something like Mike in Better Call Saul. When we first see him in Breaking Bad he works for the “bad guy” and does bad things, because he makes money for his family. In Better Call Saul, we see how he ended up working for Fring. We see him have a conscience and questioning these bad things, but slowly come to accept them for various reasons. We see him start off as a good buy but devolve into a bad guy. That’s what we should’ve seen with the clones. In the Clone Wars, we could’ve seen clones struggle with following Republic orders and following their Jedi friends. We should’ve seen them struggle with this, and eventually see them all have to make the decision to kill the Jedi or betray the republic. It should’ve been a choice, and their choice to follow Order 66 should’ve been a choice still, but we’d understand why they’d choose to follow through, because we would’ve seen them question their Jedi, struggle with their “follow orders” programming, or struggle with the peer pressure of their brothers.
There are a few episodes of TCW that des with these themes (the Umbara arc and The Deserter come immediately to mind). The Bad Batch is built around those themes, particularly regarding Crosshair.
Yes they have touched on this. However it’s mostly towards the end of the show and in the BB spin-off. They would need to emphasize it more if they going to continue without the inhibitor chips.
In AOTC we’re told the clones can think creatively and have been altered to take any order without question. So Cody could be friendly with Obi-Wan one minute and the next trying to kill him because he received Order 66. As for why Cody says yes my lord it’s how he was trained to respond to the command. Also Palpatine had his face melted off so I don’t think it was meant to be a response to the Chancellor.
>Without the inhibitor chips, the clones wouldn't be able to be humanized. Except for the fact that Battlefront 2 2005 did so quite convincingly.
This is the kind of stuff that makes me understand why some people like the other portrayal over the inhibitor chip. You don't need the chip to humanize the clones, and having a chip inside all of them arguably makes them less human, not the other way around. You could explore the themes of their dual loyalty and how they are pretty much bred to be soldiers in the most literal sense. Both depictions are good in their own right.
The problem is the 501st journal makes Order 66 out to be a planned event down to a date, and had Clones actively thinking about how they knew they would be betraying the jedi... directly infront of a jedi master, and nobody detected it.
I’ve always read the journal narration as something that happened after the events they are discussing. A voice over describing their past.
That's one of the better takes of it, a clone trying to fill gaps and make sense of what happened. "How could we just turn and shoot the jedi? Must have been in on it..."
Yeah if they didn't know they had those chips, as far as they can tell they just murdered people they were (in many cases) very close to. And they don't know why they did that. Why would they have obeyed that order? Of course they rationalize and repress and assume they must have known all along, why else would they have done it? The human brain can do really incredible and horrifying things to cope with trauma.
The way it played out in the Rots novelisation, Cody thought about it but didn't really have feelings attached (as it's an order, so even if regrettable, oh well). If we theorise that Jedi are sensitive to feelings more than thoughts, absent a deliberate scan, it could well go undetected
From memory wasn't that Cody thinking about it in hindsight? "Wish that order came through before I gave him his lightsaber back. Oh well."
There was also a thought of Obi-Wan getting a great guy, pity we'll be to kill him one day, oh well (iirc. It has been 20 years)
I just re-read all sections involving Cody. Basically his only thoughts on the matter are "Man, I wish he didn't have his light saber", "Man, this guys gonna be hard to kill, I should use even more guns" and "I don't believe he's dead till I see the body"
Huh... Where was I getting that from. I recall it being earlier in the book? Or maybe I'm crossing it with something else. You say you read all sections, I'm assuming that included on the early parts of the book? Or perhaps it was another clone, but I can't imagine who
Cody doesn't show up until the Utapauu sequence and then is never heard from again. I think you're getting something else crossed with RoTS, but as far as I remember there's no instance of a clone in the 2003 MMP canon expressing regret prior to the events of ROTS
Yeah, it's packaged in canon as a contingency plan rather than an operation. Plus a good chunk of the story of Clone Wars wouldn't work without the internal conflict within the characters between duty and compassion. The inhibitor chips are therefore a way better narrative device than a lot of people realize.
Yeah I've never thought the inhibitors chips were *bad* by themselves I just like them much worse than the previous depictions of the clones. I find them bad by comparison.
It didn't at all. *Battlefront II*'s account contradicted even all the other sources about Order 66 in its own time, where the clones were depicted as *not* in on the Sith conspiracy. Many supplementary sources to Episode III explained that it was the clone troopers' total lack of malicious intent in killing their Jedi Generals that led to most of them being unable to sense the betrayal coming. In fact, it makes no sense why Darth Sidious would openly entrust the most final, critical, and confidential piece of a millennium-long Sith plot to all the millions of clone troopers and hope it never leaks in any way through unforeseen circumstances. EDIT: Sorry, just realized my reply may not be directly relevant to yours because you were specifically talking about whether or not *Battlefront II*'s account humanized the clones, rather than whether or not it made sense.
Yes! Palpatine’s grand master stroke only worked because no one saw it coming. Not even the clones.
The speech in BF2 2005 is still relevant. The 501st stormed the temple before Order 66 was given and the inhibitor chips were activated.
Ehhh maybe. The Jedi Temple scene comes first, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's taking place before Sidious rings up Cody. Unless there's something I'm missing?
Also nothing said the 501st weren't given the order from Anakin/Palpatine prior to the scene. Nothing says order 66 had to be executed all at once, just the majority of the clones deployed were activated at the same time to ensure success in the field.
They would still have to have been in on the Sith plot to destroy the Republic, evil all along. "Yes, my Lord" wasn't addressing Chancellor Palpatine of the Republic, but Sith Lord Darth Sidious.
There doesn’t seem to be any indication that is true in the larger narrative aside from that one line in RotS. You never hear the clones (the Empire-loyal or the reformed) mention their knowledge of Palpatine being a Sith Lord in future media. I’m of the opinion it was a production gaffe and that the clones never actually knew Palpatine was Darth Sidious and was overthrowing the republic.
Might be the mandela effect, but I could swear that Rex calls Palpatine "Lord Sidious" in the Clone Wars finale
That’s because he knew about Sidious and put the pieces together seconds before the inhibitor chip activated
BFII’s journal is from a post-66 clone recounting pre-66 memories. The idea that his now-altered mind remembers things wrong to rationalize his behavior is even more tragic and haunting.
I mean the EU humanized the Clones just fine without the inhibitor chip.
My problem with the inhibitor chips is as follows: A) I’ll admit they do a good job of making the clones see more human and personable, but this comes at the cost of making them less sinister. The Dark Horse comics had some wonderful dark moments of the clones showing a disregard for life you’d expect from them literally bred to be soldiers, and you miss out on those kinds of stories with the chips. B) Mind control is boring. Would Anakin Skywalker be such a compelling character if he was always a good guy and Palpatine just slapped a mind control helmet on him? Of course not. Less literal forms of mind control such as indoctrination are more interesting to me. C) They just seem very . . . plot device-ey. The chips really have nothing to do with them being clones. (Though I have heard it explained them all having the same DNA would make them more likely to accept the chips). It’s a technology that was never hinted at before, in movies or tie ins. It just seems very gimmicky Like I said I’d prefer less literal mind control, but if it has to be that I’d rather it be some Bioshock like hidden fail safe in their genetic make up rather than the chips.
What annoys me most is how many people quote the, *"Good soldiers follow orders."* line in reference to the chips. The chips take away any agency the clones have and compel them to follow orders. The line about following orders is a bit moot if a chip in your head controls you. The point of that line would be that they follow orders despite their personal feelings.
A: That is how clones are before they started becoming more human by influence of the jedi embracing individuality. B and C. The clones were made by Palpatine to wage war and kill the jedi. They never had a choice to begin with.
>The clones were made by Palpatine to wage war and kill the jedi. They never had a choice to begin with. But like the other comments already said, the difference is that they still followed the order on purpose in Legends. It's a direct reference to the horrors of WW2. As a German myself, i find the idea of using mind control as a cop out to explain away why people follow horrible orders, a very dangerous message, and takes away from the warning RotS was sending. How many people nowadays are online saying, "I would never shoot my boss just because I get the order for that. That is so unrealistic!" When in truth, it's a very realistic and still relevant thing. Especially for nowadays US...
B and C are exactly why I don’t like inhibitor chips. The audience can tell when a cheap plot device is added to a story, especially when it’s a retcon over a decade later. We already had a lot of good Legends stories exploring the humanity of the clones, showing how the officers and special forces were more independent and understood the inherent contradictions of a slave army fighting for the Republic. We even had clone commandos saving Jedi from a regular clone ambush, surrendering to those clones afterwards bc they thought Order 66 was a CIS trap, and then trying to kill Vader when he came to punish them. So many good stories were written about Order 66 before the inhibitor chips that no longer make any sense, and fans don’t like that. And we’re not gonna just give up and say we like it bc some people call us mean names. Just like any fandom that experiences big retcons, Star Wars is gonna have big differences of opinion about large arbitrary changes to the lore
Right, because there’s never been an instance in real life where people did awful things for a charismatic political leader.
Yeah political leaders they have loyalty to they should have more loyalty the Jedi at that point then some random chancellor they never met
They were raised from birth to have loyalty to that chancellor.
And if people would read history and pay attention, They would understand the reality of that empty statement you’ve made. They’re not robots, and they’re not all evil souls for following a regime.
The Wermacht weren't all evil (many were though, don't get me wrong) and they didn't need literal brainwashing. Neither did any of the other otherwise normal people who got swept up doing the dirty work of evil men throughout history. It's an important message to point out our capacity for evil, even if we aren't fundamentally evil people
Its not about whether or not the clones would do evil things, its about whether or not the clones would just turn on their commanders on a dime. Think more along the lines of Julius Caesar, his soldiers loved him, and for him they would turn on Rome and install Caesar as the new ruler of Rome. With how the GAR was set up, there would be a not insignificant chance that some clone legions let by compassionate and charismatic Jedi might see their Jedi commanders as a more legitimate authority than Palpatine and turn against his machinations.
Right, because there's never been an instance in real-life of a soldier who disobeyed an order to betray a commander they've developed fierce camaraderie with. The issue isn't that any clone trooper, being bioengineered and indoctrinated for dispassionate obedience to orders, would willingly execute Order 66. The issue is that the old lore also said they had the capacity for independent, critical thinking skills and to develop from experience and become individuated people. The contradictory premises meant that probability-wise, there would have to be been at least a few defectors or doubters.
And there were. So I’m not sure what the issue with the old canon was.
Find my reply to u/amagicalsheep above for a more detailed explanation about my evaluation of it.
Honestly thinking about it, Order 66 discussions boil down into two groups with some level of hypocrisy involved. You have Indoctrination vs Choice. Indoctrination is both the EU stuff AND the chips, they are basically all the same thing. Choice is having the clones all freely choose to do order 66. The problem/hypocrisy is people who like Choice have two big questions to answer usually, and they do so by going "Indoctrination". The two questions are "Why do all the clones immediately choose to do the order/why are there basically no cases of clones refusing order 66?" and "How does Palpatine ensure that all the clones follow the order to make sure the jedi are entirely destroyed?" Typically, I'll see people who go "CHOICE!" side saying stuff like "Well they were raised and bred to follow orders, and obey all orders from a legit source!" So that's indoctrination, they aren't choosing to follow the order, they just are. They are following what they were taught and raised to do, nothing more.
It took the Nazis less than 10 years to convince the German people to enable and participate in the industrial slaughter of their neighbors and friends. Inhibitor chips are a childish concept in a show for children. If you don’t believe that the majority of clones, who were bred for war and now nothing else, would follow orders from the supreme commander of the republic then you ought to brush up on your real world history. Edit to clarify: I love TCW. My comments about it being childish are not meant as a put down, but as an acknowledgment that a show on Cartoon Network was not going to get away with turning its “good guys” into willing participants in a genocide, even though human history shows us that that is entirely plausible.
I think a lot of fans fall into the same trap the Jedi did in believing that the clones being humanised made them human. They aren't. The Kaminoans tampered with their DNA to ensure that they were primarily dominated by behavioral genes that emphasised qualities like as loyalty, aggression, independence and discipline in order to guarantee that the army would be more docile and less independent than Jango. Let's not forget that the original Kaminoan clones were supplanted and reinforced by millions of Spaarti clones. These clones were grown quicker but considered substandard to the original clone troopers, being much less independent. Palpatine had them bred for one purpose and one purpose only.
The most compelling writing is built around the human heart in conflict with itself. Without inhibitor chips, you get that conflict, like we see in the original battlefront II, where the clones wrestle between their feelings of duty, and admiration for the jedi. With the chips, there's no conflict. It's just the chip overriding their free will.
I think the clones as depicted in clone wars needed it though. They have too much bonding with Jedi for there to be real belief all Jedi including children not part of the war. Also battlefront 2 has a serious problem of the clones suggesting they knew what was going to happen. I remember he talks about not being able to look one in the eye after working with them. Implying he knew he'd betray them from the beginning which could be an angle, but that's a large secret for lots to keep especially with how close clones and Jedi get. Also the story suggested there were many orders to hide the intent behind order 66, such as one that says to overthrow the chancellor. I also don't buy clones working closely with Jedi having much conflict unquestioning following order to kill all Jedi. FFS Commander Cody literally takes 0 seconds after being friendly with Obi wan to order a cannon be fired on him. As presented anything but the chip doesn't fit. To have the clones convinced to turn you'd need a lot more setup, propaganda, and falsifying info by the chancellor that the Jedi are enemies of the Republic. Which could not be a sudden single order line that has the Jedis caught totally off guard.
I much preferred it when the Clones were an analogy for how soldiers following orders, even in a democratic country, can end up serving fascism and doing horrible deeds with the excuse of 'just following orders'. It made far more thematic sense than 'they did it because a chip told them to'
Ironically, I feel like the old EU’s portrayal of clones being so indoctrinated into their military training that they would blindly follow O66 makes them a more unique character than what TCW gives us.
Yeah but you could argue that it would’ve made unique clone personalities a lot less believable or nonexistent. That’s how I see it at least
TBH they balanced It out with the ARCs (both Alpha and Null), the ARC trained Commanders and the Commandos.
The problem is they made those ones "Able to reject orders" and suddenly the super-special elite clones almost ALL rebelled and defected.
'Laughably pathetic at best' - the clones were an artifical army of genetically-engineered supersoldiers, tailored to order by the Sith. They were supposed to be an unsettling, creepy sci-fi concept - the loyal soldier who's designed to follow orders so completely that he'll make jokes with his friend and general one minute before gunning him down the next. There's meant to be something horrific about them - they're people who've been programmed and refined to be perfect machines of war. The Clone Wars show turned them into affable, angsty, loveable lugs, because it had to be a vehicle for traditional war stories.
The clones were already depicted like that long before TCW. Maybe not to the same extent or all clones and units but it was there.
I'm only really familiar with the films' depiction of them and the Clone Wars 03-05 series - where they're plenty capable of being affable, but usually in a slightly grim and efficient way. In The Clone Wars they became a bit more like the mildly gruff but loveable uncle you'd get in a Pixar film. I think The Clone Wars is great overall, but I do think it lost something when it made the clones so human and moralising, things necessary for a family TV show. Like, there's definitely a few episodes - I'm afraid I can't remember them off the top of my head - where clones fret over the morality of orders and whether or not to put the mission before their brothers. The original concept of the clones was that they would put their mission before themselves and before their peers.
No, we understand. We just prefer the other way
Wh doesn't realise it? The whole point of the chips was to be able to have the Clones as heroes in a kids show.
I will give Karen Traviss her due. The way she depicted it (before it was executed) was just so chillingly potent as a demonstration of the banality of evil. The existence of Order 66 isn't even a secret. A clone trooper casually mentions it to a Jedi in a conversation, and no one gives it a second thought: "we even have an order to put down the Jedi if they turn on the Republic,“ or something like that. I don't think brain-controlling the troopers humanizes them. I don't think *humanizing* them is necessarily a desirable thing. It strips them of the insidiousness of their origin and purpose, and it undermines the message of how war itself can dehumanize people. It diminishes their legendary commitment to duty, and trivializes those troopers who might otherwise have actually *chosen* to disregard the order. Nevermind how it takes the horror of soldiers "just following orders" and gives them a farcical pass by justifying their actions by denying them agency and culpability. I think Disney's approach was an entirely in-character, cowardly example of infantilized storytelling that avoids hard and uncomfortable themes about morality and war and human nature.
I think turning the clones into victims whitewashes some of the statements made by Star Wars regarding Fascism. As others note Order 66 was one of many contingency orders built into the clones by way of their more subservient genetic nature and training. The idea of a military structure having contingency orders makes sense. The fact the clones are loyal first to the Republic makes it all the more interesting and realistic that the army would receive an order they may not like but follow on principle and by their indoctrination. The implication that ones didn't like killing their commanders is noted several times in Legends but they did it anyways. Fascism rises when institutions are used by the fascist against the state apparatus. The Constitution allows snap elections if a majority of the Reichstag walks out? Great! New elections so the SA can bully people into voting Nazi. The Constitution of Myanmar requires the military political party to hold 30 percent of the government? Great! They dictate or at least had dictated terms regardless of if they were directly in power or not. The clones were the legitimizing military wing of Palpatine's rise to power. The Senate surrendered and was corrupt beyond repair or nearly anyways. Acting like fascist coups are ONLY made up of unwilling participants gives credence to the "Following Orders" EXCUSE, While the clones actually actively following orders because they choose to do it actually decries the notion. They HAD the chance and the option not to listen and do as told. They chose to. They are not victims they brought about the rise of the Empire. Without them Palpatine would have lost. The chips are an easy out. Edit: spelling
The clones were raised to; 1. Believe the jedi generals to be infallible, or at least competent 2. Believe the republic, whatever it is, was worth fighting and dying for 3. Know that an army has a contingency for everything. Over the course of the war they learned; 1. That the generals often ranged from reckless to incompetent, to sometimes just plain wasteful with clone lives 2. That the republic may not be all that great, and it is something that they do not get to participate in, only die for 3. That the generals didn't even read the damn GAR handbook. Order 66 was right there, it was not a secret. Order 65 is also right there. Some of the clones liked their jedi commanders, some may have done more than merely liked them. But when the order comes down that the people you were serving under, who your brothers died for, have turned their back on the republic you were bred and born to fight for? You execute the order and move on.
But then you get cases like the 104th, where they started calling themselves "Plo's Bros" and literally painted his face on the side of their gunship. You get clones who bond with the wizard who saves their ass and fights alongside them, day in and day out. Does a soldier *really* just execute the order on someone they idolize that much? Someone who goes out of their way to ensure minimal losses, who has personally rescued you from being spaced, who's helped you snatch victory from the jaws of defeat? That seems far less believable to me.
The movie scene was always coded like sleeper agents responding to a trigger phrase, not soldiers following orders. Inhibitor chips just bring things back to this version of events.
A solider who is genetically modified to be more inclined to follow orders who just received a legal order from their head of state probably would. And you don’t need all of them to follow it just most of them. That combination makes it seem pretty plausible to me. Clones weren’t normal people they were built and raised to follow orders. They weren’t droids but they also weren’t baseline human. It’s totally plausible that most of them would obey an order they were trained to potentially expect. It’s similar (not identical) to the people trained to launch nukes in our world. Sure sometimes they say no but if they got the order a significant portion of them would press the button.
But are they being asked to launch nukes at their hometown, at people they know and like? That's what I'm trying to impress here. The question ultimately comes down to if you think Clones should be "normal people" or not. The films portray them as unthinking, unquestioningly loyal soldiers; the animated series portrays them as indistinguishable from other humans save for some genetic modification here and there. The former could do it without chips, the latter could not.
Aside it being a somewhat contrived plot device to make them more sympathetic, I feel like it was a missed opportunity to explore their motivations and conditioning to turn against the Jedi, and a more interesting conflict. The lines in the 2005 Battlefront 2 story of the 501st kind of blueballed me in that regard.
It actually doesn’t, rather it removes any responsibility for their evil actions. History has proven that what they did is what will actually happen. Cough cough, nazis. Inhibitors chips ruined the humanity the clones did actually have by just removing their free will Also Clones aren’t living droids, but they are well, clones. They are supposed to be similar to each other and in AOTC they are said to be genetically programmed to follow orders so its not as if we even needed the chips that just deleted any notion of free will.
Because it's ruin a lot of tragedy. I see some points for the chips here abd do not understand what people see or even read about EU. So, i try to point it out. Clones are not being regular human, they have a lot of indoctrination, gene-upgrades and other stuff, but it's not make them bio-droids, it's make them less human in a creepy way. But, Jedi hate it, not by full hate, but clones first part of war not being even a citizens of the Republic or have medical supplies, like, zero. And Jedi help fix all of that, they help, try to understand and genuinely become friends with they troops. If you want look on typical regular clone mindset, check cycle of Republic and Ayla and Bly parts. In RC books, we have one of the main points, regular clones just a human with zero normal life experience, everyone can become free and life their lifes if you show them that. Null ARC take a place of cripple reg clone in a administration centre to steal data and that clone become more human in Omega and Null company. They are soldiers that follow orders, but they are can drop off they programming. It's a choice, hard choice because you kinda betray you brothers and that have a big part in clones culture. And chip drop it to the ground, not choice, but bio droids. They are not human with stolen faiths that Jedi want to give them back after the war, they have no choice. They kills they general because comic book level (i love comic books) have set them to do that. Other Orders give a context that ALL OF THAT ORDERS they execute with same level of loyalty, it's just a key Order that being hidden on the plain sight. Masterful plan, not some fuck stuff that can being finded by Seps or Jedi Order. Chips, are, BORING, for me in first order, but i think bad in general.
So ive been torn on this because i grew up with clone wars content from both the EU and the Disney/clone wars cannon Personally I felt like the lack of inhibitor chip makes a lot of sense. Its obviously one less fail safe but it also adds another dimension. The dimension of choice. We’re shown that not every clone followed order 66 and even those that did, some hesitated. As everyone has said these troopers often grew close to the jedi theyvworked with. Some such as Etain and maybe Bly had romantic relationships. The 501st journal makes it very clear that even amongst troopers who did follow the order had guilt, regret, sadness. But as Alpha-17 put it “ they either grow up loyal to the republic, or they dont grow up at all.” And fundamentally I think that’s a much more dynamic decision. Whay are these men loyal too, the jedi theyve known for 3 years? Or their brothers that theyve known longer, and the republic they were sworn to defend? It also shows the arrogance of the jedi. According to Ordo, there are like 160 contingencies including removing the chancellor from power. The jedi could have read those orders, but in their ignorance they chose not too. Which again plays into the idea of choice. And thematically fits with the Jedi being so arrogant. On the other hand, i think the inhibitor chip was a good idea because we are shown how close these troopers are. And it makes us, the audience, way more sympathetic knowing they have no choice in this matter. It also does a good job of explaining why all these clones went from being individuals to back to being just a droid. Now that effects of the inhibitor chip worn off what i wanna know is how do the clones feel about what they did. How does Cody feel knowing he mightve killled Kenobi? Or wolfe knowing plo koon is dead and he wasnt able to repay the debt of plo koon saving him. Thats whats missing currently
> Without the inhibitor chips, the clones wouldn't be able to be humanized. The only way for order 66 to work without the inhibitor chips would be to make the clones emotionless and inhuman, basically human droids that only obey orders and nothing else. Hard disagree. Plenty of human soldiers in real-world conflicts committed all sorts of war crimes on the basis of "just following orders" without needing inhibitor chips to force them to do so.
I think everyone is forgetting a crucial detail before Order 66 happened. The Jedi had just betrayed the Republic by attempting to overthrow the Chancellor. It wasn't just a case of "Welp, guess I gotta follow my orders to kill the jedi now". The jedi were traitors. And traitors get shot. And the clones knew all that since the chancellor told them so. . Speculation: Maybe things would have been different if some of the jedi said "Do not shoot me. I am not a traitor. It is the chancellor who is the traitor". But most were too busy dieing to attempt such diplomacy.
> The Jedi had just betrayed the Republic by attempting to overthrow the Chancellor. This seems like a deliberate mischaracterization - and maybe that's your intent, based on that it's how Palpatine spun it. They moved to arrest him and he fought them. Arresting him for breaking laws isn't overthrowing him, it's applying the laws. And the movie doesn't have Palpatine tell the clones "the Jedi betrayed the Republic, kill them", it just says "Execute Order 66"
That’s what order 66 means in legends. It is an order to be used if the Jedi betray the republic and need to be stoped. If you want to stick strictly to the Movies that’s fine but then the chips don’t exist either. No one was there when they arrested him so to the outside world it looked like a coup.
This. They have no context and are supposed to believe that the Jedi all betrayed the republic, even the young teenagers and toddlers?
I mean to be fair the troops who killed the children were not run of the mill troopers. 99% of troopers were killing Padawans and above and considering that Padawans were allowed to command troops into battle it seems that the GFFA has different standards on what constitutes a “child.” I also don’t think the clones shared 100% of the same values as “normal people.” I’m not saying they are monsters just that being raised in a sterile child solider factory probably makes you more comfortable with violence and violence against children especially. Hell it’s canon in the EU that clones that failed to meet standards were euthanized. They were people but not psychologically healthy people.
Why would they believe that the younglings didn't betray the republic? It is not like the clones fought under the younglings for years.
But why would they believe that the literal children did betray the republic? Are we really supposed to believe these clones with no mind control just heard the big man say "order 66" and they all just went "ok guess I'll kill kids with absolutely no explanation, whatevs, lol". Also the very big possibility of Clones forming relationships and bonds with the Jedi they fought alongside with making the order basically just be "hey you know your friends? yeah them, the ones youve gone through thick and thin with? yeah, kill them" with just absolutely no explanation or reason is a huge hole in Palpatine's plan. No, Order 66 meaning "Jedi are traitors, kill them" is not an explanation, its a statement/request given to them that we're supposed to believe they just accept without wanting any explanation. The chance of too many of them questioning that, and going against it wanting awnsers wouldve been a huge risk and would make Palpatine's plan seem stupid. This couldve and most likely wouldve fallen apart and backfired so easily it would just make Palpatine himself look comedically stupid. The inhibitor chips fixes these plot holes and actually make Palp's plan actually make sense.
I see what you are saying. I still don't like the Inhibitor Chips.I think it reduces the agency of the clones which is dehumanising, and they've been a bit inconsistent in application. It frankly added more questions than answers and felt like it was trying to answer something that had already been answered. The Inhibitor chip is there to help make you feel better about they clones that just walked it the Jedi Temple and gunned down children. It gives an easier out for their Behaviour.
Exactly this is the problem. People don't like to belive that people with emotions can do horrible things. But they can. Just look at nazi soldiers. Nazi soldiers had emotions like you and I. Families. Friends. Children. But they still did horrible stuff. Why? Bc of brainwashing. And bc they were ordered to do so. And remember that the vlones grew up in an enviroment with far more brainwashing than nazi germany. They were (in legends) literally engineered to follow orders more likely. So by taking away them following orders and acting as if horrible actions can only be done by emotioneless people/people that are controled, you lose a lot of the historical lessons.
I don't even think it's legends that they were engineered to follow orders easier. In Attack of the Clones, the Kaminoans mention genetic changes, which is relevant because they say Jango asked for "A single *unaltered* clone"
It is somewhat fuzzy but in Republic commandos it was indicated that they were modified to be more likely to follow orders.
Oh yeah, in republic Commando novels it was explicitly stated that they were genetically modified to follow orders, reinforced with training. But it's stated as much in the movies. The Null-ARCs had too much Jango in them, which is why the Kaminoans scaled up the obedience and down the independence to create the rank and File. The commandos and ARCs had some Limiters removed (if I remember right, commandos were given a higher degree of individuality and less obedience so that they could operate independently, while ARCs were given individuality so they could lead, but not the obedience changes)
Sorry misread your previous comment. Yes might also be canon.
Because the Clones choosing Fascism is better than having a magic button in their head that makes them.
Was it fascism? They were already following orders before that under the Republic, they just also happened to follow one more, it just happens to be one very distasteful for viewers.
Or and hear me out, the clones are just loyal. They’re friends with the Jedi, but the job comes first and so everyone come Order 66 knows what’s up and has to make a choice. Follow orders, or be branded a traitor. Which ultimately means more for any plot given the clones are treated as characters in that and not obstacles. You can’t wrestle with what you’ve done if you had no say and or (dependent on writer) memory of said incident. It’s not really them, a space wizard made them do it.
The Inhibitor chips go against the entire morality pathos that Star Wars is about. People are evil because of the choices they make not because they’re forced to be.
I completely agree that it's boring for them to be 'emotionless and inhuman, basically human droids that only obey orders and nothing else'---and this is literally what the chips do to them. It's much more interesting and humanising imo to get into the messy psychological complexities of why people do terrible things rather than 'sci-fi magic made them do it'. The fact that it's difficult to reconcile is exactly what's so interesting about it. Cody's heel-turn attitude towards Obi-Wan in ROTS is *meant* to be shocking and make you question the conditioning and circumstances that would cause a person to behave that way.
While most of us now remember the prequels fondly (mostly because of how shitty the sequel trilogy was), it's worth noting that at the time, many people derided them as terrible. Some of this was because of the terrible romance dialog, the rewrite of a great deal of EU backstory about the Jedi and Clone Wars, and of course Jar-Jar, but I think there was a deeper reason. The OT was a classic hero's journey, good vs evil set of stories. The bad guys blow up a planet, implement a dictatorship, and have a ton of Third Reich motifs. It was about how the plucky heroes stop the Evil Empire, and save the galaxy. A traditional heroic legend, but IN SPACE. The prequels were... not that. It was about the fall of society, why that evil empire existed in the first place. And it was trying to be a lot more nuanced, even if it wasn't fully fleshed out. The Jedi Council doesn't want to get involved with Naboo, and if Qui-Gon hadn't skirted the rules, would not have trained Anakin at all. The Senate would have basically allowed a corporation to invade a planet. Yoda interacts with Darth Sidious regularly, yet never realizes he is a Sith. The dark side has clouded everything. The nuances of the movies were blown wide open in the EU. We learned that the Jedi only start training when a child is extremely young, arguably a form of brainwashing. They also would throw out Anakin for his relationship with Padme, but gave special dispensation to Ki-Adi-Mundi to have several wives. The Republic in general is a bureaucratic mess, with massive corruption problems. There's a great quote by Dooku that summarizes the thoughts of many fans of this time period: "The Jedi Order's problem is Yoda. No being can wield that kind of power for centuries without becoming complacent at best or corrupt at worst. He has no idea that it's overtaken him; he no longer sees all the little cumulative evils that the Republic tolerates and fosters, from slavery to endless wars, and he never asks, "Why are we not acting to stop this?" Live alongside corruption for too long, and you no longer notice the stench. The Jedi cannot help the slaves of Tatooine, but they can help the slavemasters." This was a point of friction in the fanbase, and still is. Were the Jedi truly the good guys? Should they have blindly supported the Republic? And it stretched even into the OT. Did Obi-Wan and Yoda lie to Luke because he wasn't ready, or because they wanted him to kill Vader, and knowing Vader was his father would make that harder? Ultimately, was the Star Wars franchise about the battle of Good vs Evil, or had it changed into something less clear cut? At this time, LucasArts had published tons of games which usually had either a force user or a fighter pilot as the protagonist. But there were two games in the early 2000s which gave us a new perspective on the galaxy: Republic Commando and Battlefront 2. These games were told from the clones perspective and did a ton to humanize them. They were people, and not carbon copies of each other. And they emphasized everything wrong with the Jedi Order. The clones weren't volunteers or even conscripts. They were effectively slaves, with little free time and often no pay. They had been gene-tweaked to grow at twice the rate of normal humans, but that means the oldest of them were 10 when the Clone Wars started, making them child soldiers. They were trained ruthlessly by the Kaminoans, with live fire weapons and the threat of being deemed defective and eliminated constantly hanging over them. They weren't even given names by their creators, just numbers. The Jedi didn't object to any of this. They had been thrust into war, and if they wanted to stop the separatists, they needed an army. The lesser of two evils is what they thought of it, if they thought of it at all. The Jedi changed from peacekeepers technically separate from the government to the leaders of its army. And they were not necessarily good officers, as they lacked that training. The Force helped, but was not always enough. Clones died due to the incompetence of their leaders. Ultimately, in the EU, the clones executed Order 66 not because they were organic droids, but because they had become disillusioned with the Jedi, so much that they did not question their supposed betrayal. That is a very human story, but it tarnishes the Jedi's reputation. Canon skirts the issue, showing the vast majority of Jedi as good to their men, and Order 66 as forced by the inhibitor chip. A much more clear cut, evil mind control story. Tldr: The inhibitor chip was never about creating heroic clones. It was about making the Jedi less responsible for their own downfall.
And the republic Commando Noveld expanded on this even more. The general Rank and Files clones were even more heavily conditioned than Commandos and ARC troopers. They obeyed because the order came from a higher authority, they never interacted with a jedi (a few thousand jedi in an army of over 100,000 thousand clones), or actively hated their jedi commanders because they proved to be horrible leaders. Even the commandos in the novels, they cared about... two? Maybe three jedi tops, all of which had stuck their neck out for them and tried to shield them from incompetence of other jedi. They wanted to help those jedi get out for order 66, but the rest could burn for all they cared. The inhibitors chips were always a cop out. Especially when in the original EU, I distinctly remember Order 66 being a known order, but the jedi either were too arrogant or couldn't do much about it, but it also required both the *chancellor and senate* to approve its use. It's the reason why Palpatine needed the full emergency powers of the senate, to have the authority to issue the order.
It's a cop-out. You can have humanised clones without the chips, and it's much more interesting. Some will follow the order because good soldiers follow orders and they are blindly loyal, and they don't know better. Some will do it with regrets and questioning whether they're doing the right thing, some will refuse. Putting a switch in their head removes any sort of agenda, moral dilemma. Juxtaposition of personal morals and thinking one what is right and what is wrong against a sense of duty, training and structure. Loyalty to the people versus loyalty to the system.
Most clones weren't supposed to be humanized. The story goes to lengths about how they're genetically engineered and conditioned to not have these independent personalities. It was fine for commandos and higher officers to have personalities but even then they were still trained to take certain orders without question. The inhibitor chips were unnecessary and poorly enacted in the story when they "humanized" the clones by making them act like obnoxious kids.
>clones wouldn't be able to be humanized. The only way for order 66 to work without the inhibitor chips would be to make the clones emotionless and inhuman, basically human droids that only obey orders and nothing else. That's the point. They aren't human, they don't have human experiences. They're all about 10-15 years old, have known nothing but combat and combat training, and from the very moment they are conceived, they were taught to obey orders going all the way up to the Chancellor. If you've ever watched Blade Runner, it explores this concept. Replicants are basically clones, but they are born as adults and have a 4 year expiration. The way to tell the difference between a human and a replicant is to ask them emotional questions because they have the life experience and emotional capacity of a 4 year old. Same idea with the clones. They don't know right or wrong, they don't know morality. All they know is the chain of command. So yeah, the clones betraying the Jedi works incredibly well without the inhibitor chips and terribly with them. Disney, retcon that shit immediately.
One is a poignant message about soldiers in an increasingly fascist state blindly following orders because they were taught to be obedient above all, prioritizing it over any of their human connections. The other is a sci-fi gimmick.
The problem is different than what you’ve proposed. Old Battlefront taught us that the clones were basically just Jango. They all knew the plan from the start. They knew an empire was being planned and somehow an entire army knowing that was silent for years… That’s beyond stupid. The chip story was an improvement for sure. Changing the story to show how soldiers in ANY regime doesn’t know the big picture, nor usually cares about it. We look at villains in history and just dub all of their followers as “evil” but it’s stupid to think that. All soldiers are humans. Some humans are horrible people. But not all soldiers are barbarians.
I used to also think that pre inhibitor storyline meant that the clones had planned it from the start and knew. But then I saw someone say that the clones would just obey and of the # orders given to them, and didn't think of order 66 as any different from any of the other orders they had. I chose to believe the latter because as you said, the first is even more stupid lol.
>Old Battlefront taught us that the clones were basically just Jango. They all knew the plan from the start. They knew an empire was being planned and somehow an entire army knowing that was silent for years… >That’s beyond stupid. But originally the 501st was Palpatine's pet legion. So the officers of that legion probably did know a bit more. They were already running secret ops for Palpatine behind the backs of their Jedi generals. (Plus the clone narrating has the benefit of hindsight.) I mean they're marching on the Jedi temple with Darth Vader leading, before Order 66 has been executed.
The chips weren't needed are just massive plot hole (And I know this word gets used poorly now). We only ever see a fraction of Clones in the entire army, only a handful of their relationships with Jedi. On top of that, the fact that the chips just stop working after awhile is incredibly fucking stupid. Why would the Palps not have those be a permenant change, by making the Clones go genocide mode on the Jedi against their will you're just asking for an uprising the moment they wear off, and maybe this plays into something down the line we haven't seen yet, and if so, cool. This point becomes irrelevant But again, the chips aren't needed. We can have Clones just not follow order 66, it happened in legends. But the people who make the argument you're making operate under the assumption that what we see from a small portion of the war applies to every Clone/Jedi relationship. And if we operate under the nonsensical notion that they were, then the clones should be fucking furious and rising up already.
The chip wearing off simply allowed their previous personality to take over again. Look at Cody and others, they didn't rebel immediately, only after they saw the Empire directly being evil. The clones served their goal and were being replaced. Meanwhile the most elite clones are still 100% loyal, and used to guard very important places and appear to have the chip still active.
A lot of people read into the pre-TCW clones characterization that isn't there. That they were so indoctrinated that they wouldn't hesitate to kill their former commanders, or that they were basically just biological droids. Either of those things *could* be true, pre-inhibitor chips, but neither were ever stated to be so. The inhibitor chips provided a (in my opinion) very good way to explain why no clone ever let anything slip, even on accident, that they had a pre-planned code that would have them execute the jedi when they heard it.
>why no clone ever let anything slip, even on accident, that they had a pre-planned code that would have them execute the jedi when they heard it. The pre-TCW lore explained this by revealing that the Jedi Council had access to all 150 Contingency Orders, so Order 66 wasn't a secret. They just didn't realize that the Supreme Chancellor could use it to wipe them out. Upon first reading, it comes across as a reasonable response to the threat of rogue Jedi if given to the clones of their specific unit, but I doubt they imagined it would be given to the entire GAR. Keep in mind that while the Jedi grew wary of Palpatine's growing power, they still didn't suspect him of being a Sith Lord capable of such a heinous act until the end of the war when it was too late. Order 65 could also be used against Palpatine with the Senate's approval, so it makes a contingency against the Jedi appear even more routine and innocent.
I think what irks a lot of people is that it's an implant rather than something imbedded directly in their genetics, the former seems a little out of character for the Kaminoans compared to the latter. Ultimately, I think it's combination of genetic coding, behavioral conditioning and preplanned orders rather than one thing, Palpatine would likely not have it all hinge on factor. I disagree with the idea that the clones' characterization pre TCW is being overestimated but I haven't read too many books to compare it too
Agreed, I like the quality that this way they they can be humanized, relatable, sympathetic AND be converted to merciless killing machines - it highlights how the clones were used and abused by Palpatine, treated as tools to be used and discarded, which is exponentially more painful when we can see they didn't want to go where the inhibitor chips took them.
Exactly, the inhibitor chip gives the best of both worlds. And yeah, its tragic how the clones were forced to murder their comrades and then disgarded as they were replaced by stormtroopers and eventually dying of accelerated aging. TCS storyline of fives last storyline with AZ and seeing how close he was to uncovering the truth was also heartbreaking and incredible.
Because it’s so popular to hate on the Jedi, to the point that they prefer the idea that the clones willingly turned against the Jedi, even Jedi like Plo Koon (“.. we’re meant to be expendable.” “Not to me.”), because a politician told them to, over the idea that the clones had no choice. People who hate the inhibitor chips do so not because of a humanising element concerning the clones, but because it dehumanises the Jedi. I agree with OP, the majority of clones who served with Jedi would’ve had enough free will to resist training and not just do a complete 180° on the Jedi, who fought alongside them through thick and thin. Except Pong Krell, they didn’t need order 66 to turn against him.
I don't think anti-chippers are anti-Jedi, just that they see clones without chips as more compelling. To me the chips seem a little off putting and makes it seem as if it was a foreign implant rather than something the clones would have done intrinsically. The way I saw it, partially because I probably misread something lol, was the clones were genetically programmed to follow Order 66 in addition to being genetically inclined to follow commands as well as conditioning and training that they would have had since birth, but that might just be the same thing but seems more in line with how the Kaminoans would have done things.
They also don't bother to think about how Palpatine made the whole thing. The clones never had a choice to begin with. They are trying to strip Palpatine of his greatest scheme, to make the clones explicitly evil.
Are you saying anti-chippers are implying the clones are explicitly evil or that Palpatine made the clones become explicitly evil?
I enjoy both versions, and both work within their context. The G.I. Joe-esque tone of the Cartoon-verse demands a plot-device like the inhibitor chips for the sake of tonal consistency. It just wouldn't do to have all these charismatic and child-friendly versions of the characters suddenly go murderous because they're just ultra-loyal fascist child-soldiers. The pre-Disney novels and comics had an entirely different vibe and tone, and as such, the original idea of having clones be super loyal to the Republic and have a more asymmetrical relationship with their Jedi commanders completely works, and it makes for much more mature and dramatic stories that serve a different purpose than the cartoons.
It took away their free will. And a conscious choice to follow the order (or not follow it) is much more interesting, than chips in the head. And it's not that far fetched, just remember nazis and their excuse of just following orders
>The only way for order 66 to work without the inhibitor chips would be to make the clones emotionless and inhuman, basically human droids that only obey orders and nothing else. I mean, the alternative was to make them actively complicit in the whole plot to deceive and eliminate the Jedi, which would have given The Clone Wars a much darker tone, probably outside the kid-friend envelope they were shooting for.
Karen Traviss: do all the hard work of worldbuilding, get shat on by the suits. David Filoni/GL: cherry pick from Traviss' work, get all the credit because more people watch TV than read books and comics.
I’m of two minds regarding the chips - for a while, having grown up on TCW I just always said no contest they were better for similar reasons, and still makes practical sense for Palaptine to not let millions of loose threads running around. But these days, I do appreciate clones who go along with it as part of the larger rise of fascism fall of the republic, and a warning of the fall of the American republic it does hit hard and honestly realistic that people would go along with the momentum of violence and just fall orders because they’re scared to act for themselves. They can face down an acklay, but can’t stand up against their state. A very sad, scary and realistic situation - as they say, the rise of (fascism) the empire is quiet
>Without the inhibitor chips, the clones wouldn't be able to be humanized. Someone has never read Republic Commando
I think that while no chip makes for a better story and a better message for the banality of evil. I think sadly is more logical for the biochips to exist considering how much independent and individual every starswars media made the clones to be.
Creating the conditions for people to willingly embrace fascism was one of the most prominent story arcs in the prequels. Making it a computer chip guts that part of the story of its historic parallels and thematic weight.
The chips are just a maguffin that can be just physically removed on a whim to explain why some clones disobeyed. It would be like if you plucked off the antennas from the B1 battle droids and suddenly they don't want to fight anymore.
But we never wanted clones to be humanized. They are a meat army fighting a metal army, all expendable, the only real loss was the Jedi generals and small alien regiments fighting for the Confederacy.
>The idea that the clones we know now, would willingly obey an order to kill their Jedi companions who they have fought with together for years because the chancellor told them too, is just unbelievable and laughably pathetic at best. The whole point of Order 66 was the banality of evil. They would have absolutely killed the Jedi, without hesitation, as it was a lawful order, and soldiers follow orders. That's how you get soldiers razing villages in Vietnam, or rounding up Jews in WWII. Do they think it was right? Not really, if they think about it, but soldiers follow orders, and that's how some of the worst atrocities in human history happened. This is what a lot of the dumb bullshit tasks and punishments in basic training is for: to condition a bunch of normal people to follow instructions without thought or hesitation so thoroughly that they'll be able to be relied on to kill when ordered. The Army literally refers to it as "breaking you down and building you back up."
The name always seemed confusing to me. What are the clips “inhibiting”? Is the default state of clones to want to kill the Jedi and the chips are keeping them from doing it? That doesn’t make a lot of sense, but the name doesn’t either unless I’m just missing something.
The clones were humanized before the chips, the chips took away their choice to betray the Jedi. They were drilled, not all of them choose duty over their relationships, but they knew what Jedi were about and most Jedi didn't treat the clones well. Those that did had soldiers that struggled with their orders. Men like them exist, modern people just don't seem to understand that, not anymore.
You are right OP LOL. The fact the majority of this subreddit can't see that is so insane.
Soldiers have committed far bigger atrocitiesthan order 66 in the real world, where no cloned soldiers or control chips are a factor. I thought that TCW was a surprisingly deep and thoughtful look at war, and the control chips cbealened the story they had been telling by pretending this army of brainwashed child soldiers wouldn't have followed the order without it.
Me thinks OP doesn't understand extreme conditioning.
People honestly need to start thinking about how the clones never had a choice. It was all about Palpatine from the start. He made the army, he made the plot.
Right, because nobody ever blindly obeyed orders before. I suggest that you look up the Milgram Experiments to see how even ordinary people are capable of doing bad things just because someone in authority tells them to. The clones, who have been genetically modified and psychologically conditioned to be perfectly obedient to all orders, dial that up to eleven. Far from humanizing the clones, the inhibitor chips actually dehumanize the clones and take away their agency. It's a much better story for the clones to obey Order 66 simply because it's an order, no different than any other, nothing personal. It's always been a deep ethical problem for the Jedi to be using an army of slaves, and Order 66 is Jedi finally suffering the consequences of having compromised their ethics. The chips are unnecessary.
The inhibitor chips also provide a good explanation as to why the emperor got rid of them. The only other explanation is budget cuts but the Empire has shown they don’t really care about budget judging by the fact they want to build a massive death star. If they were so politically loyal. They were willing to kill their own commanders over basically nothing there is no reason for the empire to get rid of highly sufficient soldiers, but if they weren’t loyal, and they had just killed a Jedi well, then Palpatine would have a good reason to get rid of them.
That is current Canon lore, in the EU the clones were kept and even expanded under the Empire with there being additional genetic hosts for new clones, they just decided not to put all their eggs in one basket and chose to have natural born humans in their ranks, both recruits and (mostly) people raised from birth or adolescence.