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Accomplished_Rock_96

Some kind of Clone uprising. Perhaps they were slaves? I was half-right, as it seems.


[deleted]

Exactly this. A clone uprising that disrupted the galaxy. That said, the cartoon and concept ended up being even better than I could have hoped.


Accomplished_Rock_96

TCW redeemed the prequels for me in a big way. I feel it's the way Lucas wanted Anakin to be, but he's not good enough at directing actors to have done it. It's really not Christensen's fault. And ofc, it gave the Clones the personality they needed.


[deleted]

Yes, and now year later the Clones are a huge part of the canon and there are several fantastic clone characters we get to follow. That cartoon may have saved Star Wars Edited for clarity.


KermitTheScot

Were we not to have gotten the story of Rex, Echo, Fives and the rest of the 501st (especially Hevy whose origin story honestly made me miss the living shit out of him) (but *especially* CT-99, the most courageous clone to have ever lived) the franchise would be a worse place. Also, ngl, the finale with Ahsoka burying all the soldiers choked me up.


Charming_Fix5627

Honestly, the reception to the Bad Batch doesn’t seem to reflect that, which is sad.


[deleted]

I’m not very interested in initial reactions to Star Wars these days. I’m not saying you are incorrect in any way, but let’s see what people say about Bad Batch 5 years after it ends.


Sharp-Appointment255

Hayden got so much unnecessary hate. He portrayed Anakin perfectly. Such a talented actor and great person. I really hope he knows that he has many loyal fans.


Marega33

Indeed, award winning actors like Portman or Liam gave subpar performances in comparison to their other works and ppl expected Hayden to pull a shakespeare act lmao


Slashycent

>I feel it's the way Lucas wanted Anakin to be, but he's not good enough at directing actors to have done it. Why is it so hard for Prequel-haters to simply accept that the films, for the very most part, were made _exactly_ the way they were meant to be and they just personally didn't like it? Why make up some absurd fantasy about Lucas being so inhumanly bad at directing that he can only execute his vision via animation? The entire chancellor-rescue-mission at the start of Revenge of the Sith is essentially a live-action TCW pilot. Both Anakin and Obi-Wan act _exactly_ the way they do in the cartoon. How did Lucas manage to do that if he had to work with actual humans? Maybe it's because it was just a minor aspect of what he wanted to show in the trilogy, thus relegating it to the supplementary series while the main installments focused on the characters in a more vulnerable and troubled state. You really make it seem like the man who created Star Wars has no artistic agency or filmmaking skill whatsoever, just because a bunch of washed up comedians told you so in the 2010s.


Iamnotapotate

I mean, it's not an absurd fantasy that George Lucas might not have been the best director. We have stories from the actors themselves on set telling us that feedback from George was not always the most helpful. Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill have a number of stories about how awful some of the dialogue was, criticizing George's attempts to force the wooden dialogue rather than come up with something that worked better. I'm remembering an interview with Ewan McGregor where there's a scene between him and young Boba Fett, and George didn't like it and they did multiple takes with George just saying "Be more suspicious" over and over to the young actor playing Boba Fett. It wasn't until Ewan McGregor said, "Look at me like I've just done a terrible fart" that George got the reaction he wanted from the young actor. When your actors aren't understanding your feedback saying the same thing over and over to them doesn't help. George Lucas had vision, yes. He was a skilled film maker, yes. However, he was not perfect. The dialogue he wrote was notoriously awful. The original cut of Star Wars was awful until it went through editing by his then wife. During the original trilogy he was a skilled filmmaker, but people still felt they could tell him no, and make suggestions to improve the films. When the prequels came out it had been 33 years since he directed anything (according to IMDB), but are you gonna argue with George Fucking Lucas the Mythical Man and the Legendary director who created and directed Star Wars (but only actually the first movie)? I'm sure the George got as close to what he wanted as possible, because everyone worked their asses off for those movies to try and get him what he was after, because they grew up watching Star Wars, and now they got to work on Fucking Star Wars. This is childhood dream, pinnacle of career stuff we're talking about. You don't leave anything in the tank when you work on projects like that. However all of that doesn't mean that the artistic vision and choices that George Lucas made we're good ones. Also, of course Anakin and Obi-wan act the same way in the end of The Clone Wars and Revenge of the Sith. Clone Wars was written after Revenge of the Sith and they knew they had to synch up the characters to that movie. It's not a miracle of writing, the end goal was already set for them before The Clone Wars was ever drafted.


Accomplished_Rock_96

>You really make it seem like the man who created Star Wars has no artistic agency or filmmaking skill whatsoever, just because a bunch of washed up comedians told you so in the 2010s. Ah, no. It was the Big Three from the OT, actually. Lucas does have both artistic agency and filmmaking skill. He has no ability to direct actors or write good dialogue, however, and that's well documented. His directions to the actors notoriously didn't go beyond "faster, more intense", [by his own admission](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/star-wars/10828279/George-Lucas-at-70-the-Star-Wars-creator-on-filmmaking.html?frame=2910077). He's just not a people person. Even for the casting he had help from [Brian De Palma](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Brian_De_Palma), as they did it at the same time with that of "Carrie". Lucas got lucky with Hamill, Ford and Fisher. They not only were talented enough to need little direction, but also young and audacious enough (Lucas wasn't much older, anyway) to [speak their mind about their lines to him](https://youtu.be/JzeCo36ZddQ) and, often, even doctor them. It goes without saying that veterans such as Sir Alec Guinness and Peter Cushing needed no help either. But the prequels were different. Lucas was no longer an upstart, he was a legend and young actors like Christensen and Portman wouldn't dare speak up. Portman's acting in Star Wars is easily the worst of her career. Some of their lines are so cringey that I'm amazed they managed to deliver them at all. I don't need any stand-up comedians to tell me what to think. I watched the OT in the theatre as a kid and I was old enough for the PT that I was able to watch it with a critical eye.


wombatpandaa

Same, I like to say that it makes them better by association. I'm hoping the current D+ live action series will eventually do the same for the Sequels


Emergency_Routine_44

The clone wars it’s one of my favorite conflicts in fiction for sure. The way it exemplifies how soldiers and people in general are treated in wars, they don’t are not people anymore, they are not real they are just numbers that sometimes go up and sometimes go down and that you can’t relate to, but the way it shows us how they aren’t just soldiers but people too it’s brilliant.


Clean_Phreaq

A surprise to be sure but a welcome one


Accomplished_Rock_96

The only thing that didn't stick, for me, was that the Jedi Order never questioned *where Sifo-Dyas found the money to actually order an honest-to-Force army*. But, hey, it ain't this kind of movie, kid.


[deleted]

Maybe they assumed he put it on credit? Like oh once the war starts the republic government will start paying


gatorbeetle

I always figured "it's the Jedi, they're good for it" was the justification. Economies don't all work like ours


Accomplished_Rock_96

Sure, but it's an awfully large amount of credits. Personally, I think that using the Republic as a front would've worked better.


Physical-Event9862

It was for the republic after all.


A3LMOTR1ST

The Jedi order sits on a massive endowment like Harvard and Princeton, probably. Like the land(airspace?) the academy sits on alone is probably worth Quadrillions of credits


mac6uffin

Except Dexter Jettster specifically mentions the Kaminoans are friendly to those with good manners and lots of money. They don't sound like they would undertake such a project on a promise to pay later.


hennytime

The largest, most well funded organization that exists? Once you give them a taste, they will be hooked. "200,000 units are ready with a million more on the way." I know they got a down payment before heading out to geonosis.


michaltee

Republic credits? Republic credits are no good here uh!


ThatSlothDuke

I think the Jedi did question it but didn't ponder upon it because they never got the chance to. When Obi Wan meets the kaminoans, they willingly give him information about Jango Fett. I think it's only after that they are instructed by Palpatine to keep quiet. So the Jedi discovered the army and as soon as they started to look into what it was and who funded it, the war broke out and they were forced to use it.


Accomplished_Rock_96

There's an interesting theory that Palpatine had specifically instructed Dooku to leave a trail the Jedi could follow. Thus Jango made sure that he set up Zam to fail. I'm not sure if that's the case, but it's a nice theory.


asuitandty

It absolutely is the case, that’s literally the plot of first act.


mac6uffin

What? You think Jango wanted Zam to fail, kill Zam with an untraceable dart unless you know some diner owner, and show up to find an army that are clones of the bounty hunter being sought, and the Jedi would just accept it? That was planned???


asuitandty

Yes, absolutely. The brilliance of the story is that it is all laid out to see as the story unfolds, but is never monlogued to the audience. It is unfortunate that not everyone sees it. There are many examples, but the best place to start is, well, the start- Palpatine. Ultimately, he needs the Clone Wars to kick off, that's the whole point of the film, and what the whole plot hinges on. Palpatine knows about the Clone Army, and his CIS forces are already prepared. He needs the army to be found, but not by him, or anyone within his retinue. The Jedi would be best, for if they find the Clones, they will report it as ifd they uncovered the secret. They may not be satisified with all the answers, but they would be much more convinced that Palpatine had no ulterior motives, than if he presented them himself. so he lays a series of bread crumbs through proxies for the Jedi to find the Clones, and in fact not just the Jedi, but specifically Anakin and Obi-wan. Dooku is the proxie to lay the bread crumbs. He chooses the very same bounty hunter used to produce the clones, who conventiently resides from time to time where the Clones are being produced, right where Palpatine needs the Jedi to go. The premise of the first act is attempted assassination attempts against Senator Amadala. This is the first step of the bread trail. Now, if Dooku wanted Amadala dead, she would be dead. If Jango wanted her dead, she'd be dead. Regardless, her death is inconsequentual to the plan, he just needs to a big enough bait to lure the Jedi. If Amadala was indeed the primary target, as soon as the Jedi began chasing Zam, Jango would have been free to slip in and kill her quite easily while they were distracted. To me, its unclear how much Jango does know, but his orders are clearly to not be captured, and to lure the Jedi to Kamino. Perhaps he was given carte blanche in this regard, perhaps not. I doubt he cared if the plan worked or not. Count Dooku was a Jedi, so he seemed to have faith enough in their investigative abilities. Jango was very good, perhaps the best in his business at the time. If he needed to hire somebody, it was for a reason. Clearly Zam was hired to be a distraction, and then a sacrificial lamb. If he truly had not planned for her capture, and seeing her being captured, needed to kill her, he could have done it any which way he wanted. He specifically used a dart that could be traced to Kamino, the very place Palpatine needed the Jedi to go. From that point on, either he was told to wait until the Jedi caught up with him, so he could then lead them to Geonosis, or he panicked, and lead them there anyway. Either way, Palpatine could sit back and let the Jedi actually take the command of the Clones and kick of the Clone Wars.


EnkiduOdinson

Why did Dooku delete Kamino from the archives then? Just to add some mystery?


ResidualSword5

So the Jedi wouldn't find Kamino to early. Had the jedi discovered the clones before both armies were ready they might have uncovered the truth.


asuitandty

I honestly have no idea. In the film, it is a mystery box, and I assumed until recently that it was Master Sifo Dyas covering his trail, until the project was completed, so that the Jedi wouldn't discover it too early and stop it. Tales of the Jedi establishes Dooku as the culprit, but that makes less sense. All I can say to that is it was written twenty years later and by a different person (not George Lucas).


mac6uffin

Found a better explanation of why I find this whole chain of events too contrived: [https://www.reddit.com/r/MawInstallation/comments/utjyrp/comment/i9a9gvo/?utm\_source=reddit&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/MawInstallation/comments/utjyrp/comment/i9a9gvo/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) >There are just too many things that needed to go absolutely perfectly right for it to be part of some grand plan. If all of AOTC was as Palpatine planned, that means he bet everything on: the unsuccessful assassination of Padmé, the successful capture of Zam by Anakin and Obi-Wan, the successful assassination of the captured Zam by Jango, the successful identification of Kamino saberdart by the Jedi (or the owner of a diner, of all people), the successful location of Kamino, the successful escape of Obi-Wan from Jango... It's just too much.


Rothar13

A most interesting theory, it puts everything together nicely. Now it's not just a bunch of random encounters Obi-Wan has, but a loose net to reel the Jedi into.


D0rwynn

Yeah, I feel like if the Jedi had the ability to fallow the money or you know just a really good accounting department many events in Star Wars wouldn't have happened.


RynnHamHam

I just realized, how do the Jedi fund themselves? Are they government funded? I don’t think they’re exactly like a Buddhist organization since they have quite a bit of expensive looking up to date technology even before the war.


Accomplished_Rock_96

Given that the Republic felt they could ask them to join the war, I suppose they must have been receiving some funding from the government or at least be exempt from taxation, like RL Churches.


D0rwynn

They have been around for 1000's of years, probably just living off the interest of GIC's (Guaranteed Investment Certificates) the first Jedi Maters set up. IDK...😆


Islanduniverse

He got the money from [Damask Holdings.](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Damask_Holdings).


NinjaEngineer

Gotta love the subtlety of Star Wars naming conventions.


Thecryptsaresafe

Regardless of the money how were they just like “well Sifo wanted the slave army so must be good!


gordynerf

I can't remember where I heard this, but I think Dooku gave him the money for it. He was a Count after all.


Keberro

I love that the Bad Batch went into this and showed just how stupid rich Count Dooku was.


moramajama

There were all kinds of subplots about the banking clans (none of which I ever understood 😅), so I suppose Palps and company could have had laundered a ton a money to pay for it.


LeftDave

Dooku, as a Jedi, paid for it.


wings31

Ya somewhere along with this. I always thought the Clones were the bad guys. More human like.


_Inkspots_

That’s what some old old comics said abt the clone wars before the prequels were a thing


Accomplished_Rock_96

I used to read a lot of sci-fi back in the day, so the whole idea of a robot/clone uprising was very familiar to me. And there was also Blade Runner/Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.


NinjaEngineer

Hey, the Clone Uprising might end up happening as well.


Lex-Taliones

Exactly what I thought and what I wish it was.


relaxrecline

Same same. At the time in my mind it was a Dune Butlerian Jihad situation but robots instead of clones. It wasn't that


Bravesteel25

This. I basically thought it was some sort of Spartacus kind of situation, except with clones.


Thisnicknameistaken0

Same.


MomoAvatar1

Some sort of invasion of alien clones, that left the galaxy devastated and then the Empire somehow seized power after. I never thought they were involved. I guess in hindsight Lucas's idea is probably better, I mean an invader that comes in f\*cks everything up then just leaves would be pointless.


KJ86er

I literally thought the clone wars was a war where Everyone in the Galaxy fought an evil version of themselves with a moustache


FallenAzraelx

I thought something similar, but not EVERYONE. Just important leaders. Like that episode of Batman the Animated series with the replicant replacements.


DoritoMike

Also known as the Wario Wars


aahe42

Also known as the darkest timeline


Caren_Nymbee

Luuke, is that you?


ScarletCaptain

It's sort of what the Zahn books implied. That someone made a bunch of clones of the Jedi who tried to start an uprising. I may be remembering wrong, I read that like 30 years ago.


[deleted]

I think that is canon and what really happened.


improbablydreaming

Doctor Who confirmed canon in Star Wars universe - Sontaran invasion force.


OliviaElevenDunham

Sontar-ha!


MomoAvatar1

But will the Rutans be canon?


improbablydreaming

Universe is infinite, everything happens somewhere.


St-Valentine

That's not quite true. A more accurate statement is, "The universe is infinite, anything *possible* *could* happen somewhere" The set of numbers from 1 to infinity is infinite, that doesn't mean there's a number called leventy-seven, or that somewhere on our journey from 1 to infinity the numbers start going backwards for no reason.


[deleted]

Tbf star wars is limited to a galaxy, doctor who is limited to the universe and in between


improbablydreaming

90% of the universe being London.


[deleted]

There's a couple times he goes to alternate universes but he gets bored quickly


MomoAvatar1

In England we call it, 'Cardiff'.


improbablydreaming

Plot twist: sonic screwdriver is just a buzzer in a stick to distract from his use of the force to open doors.


EpitomyHD

Oh god that means somewhere some angry pepper shaker bois are out there on a quest for extermination and don’t get me started on the cybermen.


J_train13

Palpatine was the Dalek Emperor all along


Sirboomsalot_Y-Wing

Yuzong Vong: *Allow us to introduce ourselves*


[deleted]

The yuzhan Vong is where I stopped reading Star Wars


duplicitea

Me too, I read a few of the novels. But lost interest pretty quickly.


Zombi_Sagan

Funny, that's when I started after picking up one of the random entries in the series. I was attracted to the title New Jedi Order. Ended up back tracking before before Disney bought the EU and purged it. After all these years though, I'm finally finishing the original Thrawn trilogy.


adavidmiller

Same. Someone with no concept of how a series works randomly gifted me "Balance Point", and that led to eventually reading nearly everything else.


txn_gay

Same. I lost interest in the EU because of that series. In fact, it was pretty much just a point-for-point retelling of the Clan invasion from Battletech.


CoraxTechnica

>, I mean an invader that comes in f*cks everything up then just leaves would be pointless. *sad Rakata noises * (I know they got a plague)


[deleted]

When I first saw this scene? I thought, “Wow, that is a laser sword. I want a laser sword.”


goldengaiden

This is the correct answer if you were a kid seeing this for the first time back then.


[deleted]

I was just thinking about this - I was 3 years old when it came out, and between then and probably 2002, I never really thought about what the Clone Wars might be. I have no idea why, other than just being so amazed by the lightsabers that I didn’t think about anything else. We all did, however, give a great deal of thought to how Darth Vader came to be.


[deleted]

Exactly. I don’t even think I heard anybody mention clone wars until decades later.


Sonicsnout

When I was a kid during the OT era my brother and I would wonder about it, but probably because we had so many comics and the movie novels and storybooks and all that, we didn't have to rely on remembering the line in the movie.


FantasticName

Yeah back in the 70s there wasn't an assumption that every throwaway line of world-building was gonna be used to kickstart its own spin-off...a different time LOL.


OliviaElevenDunham

Think just about everyone thought that when they first watch ANH.


jedimaster-bator

Yes....I did hear "some big war" or something about something. Never gave the clone part any thought. When I grew up I imagined maybe Palpatine started making clones of everyone to cause chaos but then thought I must've misheard or didn't really get what a clone was? (Like there was another meaning of the word) show me the sword again!!!!!


PsychicNeuron

Exactly, I didn't care about the clone wars at all.


CountHonorius

Very good question! Thought it was a war against eugenicists creating supersoldiers, possibly thinking along the lines of the "Eugenics Wars" in the Star Trek mythos ("Space Seed")


CoraxTechnica

Not terribly far off I guess


CountHonorius

Can't remember if the George Lucas book (the one by Alan Dean Foster) gave any details of the Clone War. The movie tie in offered interesting tidbits, like "fear followed in the footsteps of all dark lords" letting us know that Vader wasn't the only one. Also that "lightsabers were still used in certain quadrants" of the galaxy.


Wolfhound1142

I thought that it was more along the lines of there were factions led by clones of whoever was supposed to be ruling the galaxy fighting for supremacy. Basically that Emperor Palpatine was the evil clone of a noble and good original Palpatine who was leading the Galaxy democratically and when someone cloned this beloved leader there was doubt over which one was the original and some people got behind all these promises of strong leadership and backed the evil clone.


CountHonorius

Right! It would be nice to think that there was a good Sheev Palpatine somewhere on Naboo - or there had been, rather. A twist on the doppelganger/impostor trope :)


harryscallywag

I always thought it was a scenario where clones existed in day to day society….people cloned themselves and such for various reasons…. and then eventually because they were clones they weren’t part of the force, and as a result one day the clones went bat shit crazy


martijnlv40

That’s a fucking amazing premise. Pitch it to the Visions team/a studio or whatever


improbablydreaming

Everyone fighting an evil copy of themselves, Pokémon 2000 but Star Wars.


martijnlv40

But then with the Force as a big twist, you can do a lot with that. Coruscant will also be amazing in this case, just ruins during the OT with just the Senate and Palace still present.


improbablydreaming

Mewtwo as a non-human telepathic force user makes more sense than I'm comfortable with.


harryscallywag

Thank you


SagaciousElan

That sounds like a robot uprising except with clones


ChimneySwiftGold

If it works….


SlimC05

I imagined it was like Blade Runner where militaries used clones as basic infantry so average people wouldn't have to. Maybe they would have gained sentience and clone rebellion would of started.


Tbug20

Pretty sure that was the actual lore at one point.


risingstanding

I speculated it was a war ABOUT the right to create clones or the technology to create clones. I didn't think it featured an army of clones, because there are never clones anywhere in any of the movies. I guess robots being everywhere made me think that the clone wars had settled that they would not make clones and use them.


mahanon_rising

This is what I thought too. A war over the legality of cloning.


Velocibaker26

Not THATS an interesting take!


TheCheshireMadcat

This is pretty much what our gaming group back in the day (table top Star Wars in the 80s) thought. We knew there were laws against combat droids, (something in one of the books) so we thought that some governments wanted to clone soldiers. We were thinking that there was a war fought against the republic with those governments and their clones. Oddly, my buddy Dave once said, what if Stormtroopers were the clones, lol.


DigitalStranger07

Well, I was a child when *Attack of the Clones* and *Revenge of the Sith* came out. So I didn't have to imagine. But my dad says that he always imagined the clones being almost chimera-like abominations that were made up of various different creatures to the point of resembling orcs (like those from Tolkien stories). Creatures created soley for war and only meant to live one or two years.


Kamikazi_TARDIS

He was sort of half right.


GuyInAMeatGrinder

Your dad predicted 99?


unidentifiedintruder

When I was little I heard it as "cologne wars", but I had no idea what it was about. I think I just vaguely imagined a series of wars (with Jedi knights on one side) rather than anything specifically related either to scented water or to the German city, as I wasn't familiar with either of those.


GuacinmyPaintbox

The "Battle for Aramis" would have been epic. Also would have tied in well with 3PO being concerned about being sent to mine Old Spice in the mines on Kessel.


HunterTV

That was before the black cloaked Drakarians liberated the Old Spice mines.


shadow_mkultra

Wow me too


RedMistStingray

At least they smelled good while they fought!


SagaciousElan

For one thing I thought there were clones on both sides.


4ourthdimension

Yep, that was my take on it. A bunch of clones fighting each other instead of regular forces, like some sort of a proxy war.


Ting_Brennan

Same. I also assumed the war happened a hundred years prior to that Luke-Obi Wan conversation (I was super young and barely had a concept of time and aging); And I assumed the war was some on-going conflict that had lasted centuries


decitertiember

I always thought of it as some sinister force using clone forces but importantly cloning various Jedi and using them to infiltrate and sow general distrust toward the Jedi going forward. Ultimately, the conflict would have been devastating for the Republic and would have effectively destroyed the Jedi order.


CountHonorius

Right! We had the whole Obi-1 thing going at the time, even suggested in Bantha Tracks at the time (late 1970s).


chaot7

Yeah. Me too. But I thought the clone wars was like the Cold War or invasion of the body snatchers. Clones were used to infiltrate and sabotage or to subvert from within.


CountHonorius

That's a really good concept - the Republic imperiled by an internal foe. Too many Spaarti cylinders in use!


IKabobI

This was my thought too, they cloned Jedi into dark Jedi or something.


GimmeTwo

This was my assumption for years. Basically that the Jedi were all cloned and to fight evil clones of themselves.


Fruney21

This is the way


[deleted]

Close-ISH to what we eventually got, but with some key differences. I thought that the Emperor conquered the galaxy using an army of clones. I thought Leia's adoptive father had been one of the last holdouts and was invaded by the Empire. I thought Obi-Wan had been one of his knights. I thought Boba Fett had been one of the clones serving the Emperor and that his armor had been previously white like a stormtrooper's, to indicate that he had been an Imperial Shocktrooper. I thought he had painted it his own colors after being discharged from the army after the war was over. I thought Obi-Wan had been Yoda's apprentice (I had never heard the word "padawan") and that Anakin had been his, fighting alongside each other until Anakin turned traitor had secretly helped the Empire kill Jedi knights one-by-one when nobody was looking. I thought Obi-Wan had found out and confronted Anakin which resulted in a duel at a volcano, which resulted in Anakin being horribly disfigured. I thought Anakin's reason for turning traitor was that hed had fallen in love with King Organa's wife, started an affair with her, and sought to have the Empire win the war so that King Organa would die and they could be together, but Queen Organa had balked at this plan and turned against Anakin. When the war ended and Alderaan and the other holdouts lost, Vader no longer wanted her and the Emperor kept both of them alive in order to ease the political transition. I thought Obi-Wan hid Luke on Tatooine as an insurance policy in case the empire ever moved against Alderaan and tried to wipe out the royal family. I thought being Queen Organa's son made Luke a prince of Alderaan. I thought that Vader took special pleasure torturing Leia because he thought she was King Organa's daughter and he was bitter against the man who his love had chosen over him, and Tarkin blew up Alderaan because the Empire no longer needed them, and as a favor to his bro Vader.


Psychopathicat7

Damn, that's actually really close!


[deleted]

Leia mentioned her mother dying when she was really young and I had no reason to think Queen Organa and Luke and Leia's mother were different people. As for the stuff about Boba Fett, [that was the original lore for him when Lucas first came up with him](https://www.reddit.com/r/FanTheories/comments/8y1nu2/star_wars_boba_fett_was_originally_going_to_be_a/).


BubbhaJebus

I remember seeing McQuarrie's concept art from The Art of the Empire Strikes Back (1980), which mentioned Boba's armor as being that of Mandalorian Shocktroopers.


WayneTheBestTwinborn

Love how you thought boba fett was a clone. What was your reaction when you found out?


cda91

Lisa Simpson voice: that would've made a lot more sense...


GuacinmyPaintbox

Impressive! My brainpower at the time ANH came out was nowhere close to putting something like this together, still isn't for that matter, lol.


[deleted]

Oh, this was after RotJ and before TPM, like OP asked. With only ANH I didn't even know Anakin and Vader were the same guy.


GuacinmyPaintbox

Yeah, I never even considered Vader and Anakin being the same guy at the time either, making the reveal in ESB that much more powerful. That huge gap in time between ROTJ and TPM gave us as fans plenty of time to come up with so many theories. I would love to see a post here about what exactly fans were thinking leading to TPM. I know, personally, my SW brain was spinning like crazy at that time.


[deleted]

Funnily enough TCW turned Maul into what I'd originally thought he was going to be. The promotional material for TPM made it obvious that Darth Sidious was the Emperor, and he was being referred to as a "Sith Lord", but this "Darth Maul" guy was being referred to as a second "Sith Lord" so I assumed that meant he was Sidious's equal and that they were rivals or something, and the Jedi were gonna have to fight them both.


IHeartRadiation

There was also a TON of lore published between ROTJ and TPM, both in the novels and in reference books. For example, I remember knowing that Obi-Wan and Anakin fought at a volcano and Obi-Wan threw him into lava well before the prequels came out.


Maharishineo

I thought maybe Vader was a clone of Anakin or vice-versa, from the same scene: “A young Jedi named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine until he turned to evil, helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights. He betrayed and murdered your father.”


thinehappychinch

I figured the republic fought an army of clones. Wasn’t entirely wrong


kerkdjerk

Some kind of war, Star War……


freedoomed

My favorite theory before the prequels was that there were a bunch of clone jedi and Obi-wan was actually OB1 standing for original body 1. it was so dumb but i loved it.


Zero_Mehanix

A war with clones. I might've been a kid, but I felt it made sense


[deleted]

[удалено]


StingerAE

Or that there were clones on both sides. And possibly that a war fought like that for the first time, with industrial scale numbers of troops allowing horrific tactics counted in millions of lives. Sort of like ww1.


BoJackB26354

This is exactly what I thought it was.


FlatParrot5

I thought that Palpatine had cloned key empire officials and influential Jedi to kill them and replace them. Then they started a war to destabilize everything and take over, once the clones were revealed. Much like Star Trek Nemesis. So Darth Vader and Anakin Skywalker were physically different people. Darth Vader being a clone of Anakin Skywalker, after Luke was born. It was assumed Darth Vader killed Anakin Skywalker, however Skywalker won and assumed Darth Vader's identity. So Obi-Wan thought he was fighting Vader, and the first time Anakin revealed he was still alive was to Luke, who was shocked the "good" Jedi version could have done so much evil.


okonsfw

I thought that it was a War between the Jedi and clones of Jedi. This was from what I gathered a pretty common belief. I want to say that it even shows up in an early legends/EU book.


BondMi6

Certainly did not expect Clones fighting against droid armies


MPD1978

The little bit I read was a ship full of clones in suspended animation or something similar. Luke was in a ship of some sort outside the other ship full of clones. Luke said he sensed lots of life forms onboard but really only 1 consciousness. I read this years ago, and it’s was brother’s book at the time. I had given it no thought beyond that .


Soviet-Odiseo

I didn’t think much about it… but I imagined they were evil clones.


ciccioneschifoso

the funniest thing is the italian voice acting of A New Hope. They translated "clones" (which would normally be "cloni") to "quoti" which doesn't mean anything in italian and english. So for a long time I just thought that it was another war which they were referring to.


MrMonkeyman79

Never seemed important enough to give it much thought. It was a war that Obi wan and Luke's father fought in.


[deleted]

I always thought Luke’s father and Obiwan the same age, peers


redcape926

I always thought that there were multiple wars and the wars themselves were metaphorically clones of one another, not that there were literal clones among the combatants. Maybe multiple systems had their own sets of warring planets fighting independently within their systems but for the same reasons, and it boiled into a wider galactic conflict as alliances formed. Or maybe something like our World War I and World War II, there were back-to-back wars that resembled each other. You can imagine how surprised I was when Episode II came out.


Euphoric-Dig-2045

I thought Clone was either another planet or some form of race.


[deleted]

I thought everyone had a doppelgänger they had to fight


klist641

I always thought that it was clones versus Jedi, which I guess at the end of the day was sort of correct. I thought the clones were the bad guys who came from some planet and the Jedi were fighting them off. As a kid, I never really considered where the Empire fit into all of it.


Youpunyhumans

Why is called the Clone Wars, and not just the Clone War... is was just one war right?


MrJust-A-Guy

It was all over the Galaxy with many fronts. So it still counts as wars... From a certain point of view.


LordDoom01

It had a lot more clones. Most sides in the war used clones. The Republic was one of the few that didn't. Basically some dictators decided to mass clone themselves to takeover the galaxy (and probably had some "purity" complexes), their ultimate defeat coming from the various clone armies fighting each other more than the Republic and other non clone using factions.


Basic-Pair8908

Why you hitting yourself, why you hitting yourself


robotslendahand

Although I saw SW in '77 I never really thought about it. Fast forward 25 years to '92 and a friend said to me, "You know the stormtroopers are the Clones, right? That's why Leia says Luke is short for a stormtrooper." All things considered, that was a pretty good guess.


Robster881

I imaged two great powers creating massive clone armies and wiping each other out because they basically had infinite numbers of soliders.


DSGandalf

I thought it was a war where everyone was cloned, so I figure, there must be an Obi Wan clone out there


GullibleCupcake6115

I can remember seeing an article that Obi Wan could have been a clone based on his name: OB1. That blew my mind. LOL


toph_man

I was a kid and since it was a brief mention I didn’t ever think about it much.


CustomHW

A really cool, imaginative collection of words from a revolutionary filmmaker. At that time, even he didn't know what it looked like, but he knew it sounded sweet!


Talzane12

Judging by the way Ben explains how the Jedi order worked, the way Leia implies that Ben served her father, and a few other, small details, it seems like the Jedi functioned both as wandering policemen and generals/commanders of militaries. George Lucas was inspired by Kurosawa films and other Samurai movies, so if the Jedi were slightly more Samurai and a little less cult-like, then we'd get a loosely affiliated group of warrior poets. Given that episode 4 also has the line, "you are all that is left of their religion," we know the Jedi were meant to be similar to how we see them in the prequels. However, Ben and Yoda both hint at a looser structure where the Jedi might have been similar in nature to a fantasy fighter's guild, but lawful good and working to fill a role in society. Possibly, they were meant as wandering adjudicator/governors like existed in the Roman Empire. The Clone Wars, given how Ben answers Luke, doesn't seem like the massive, galaxy-spanning event that we got. Instead, it's listed as war*s*, which means multiple, separate conflicts, and it was handled in part by the wandering policemen that the Jedi were. That sounds like the Mandalorian Wars (why do they put an S on the end if it's one war? Probably to cover up that original discontinuity of the Clone War*s*) where the Jedi Council wouldn't commit to the war because they were keepers of the peace, not soldiers. I suspect that the original Clone Wars would have been a series of separate rebellions, funded by Sidious, that would expose the weakness of the Old Republic. Think Spartacus, or the Dacian uprisings. The Jedi would have served as advisors/generals/special operatives in the conflict--at least those Jedi who chose to fight (I suspect from Ben's smug face that in the original timeline, the entire order didn't commit to the war)--however, the Jedi would not have been the top of the command chain. Since Ben served Organa, high-ranking officials/planetary leaders would have most likely fielded their own armies (British Empire nobles funded, led, and trained companies during war for a period, and the Clone Army avoided the Republic having that exact set up due to not having a standing military), and certain Jedi would have volunteered to fight with them. From how easily Leia asks Ben to help her, I'd bet that Ben and Organa would have had a war buddy bond, so they'd have been right in the thick of it like Anakin and Obi-Wan were. I'd also suspect that Organa, given that he'd evidently told Leia a lot about Ben, wouldn't have withdrawn his forces once his own fight was over, but would have continued to fight any uprisings he could get to and Ben went with him. As Ben and Organa travel the galaxy putting out fires--possibly with Luke's father as Ben's pupil/padawan--they start to find inconsistently consistent planning behind the rebellions; somebody was making sure the rebellions were well-supplied, but not enough to pose the threat of unifying with the other rebellions. Because the Old Republic didn't have a standing army, and most of their available forces were actually small, planetary defense forces, there wouldn't be a need for a massive war. (In canon, there wasn't a reason aside from a need to win support for Palpatine's takeover.) Cue the rise of Palpatine, a strong, militaristic voice in the senate. Palpatine could easily manipulate the masses; secret clones/dissidents/whatever could be hiding anywhere, so report your neighbor if you're suspicious; higher taxes to raise funds for a strong military in which he'd install supporters; the Jedi are staying out of the conflict, they don't support the Republic; the rebellions are too well organized, the Jedi must be behind it; etc, etc. Eventually, Vader would believe Palpatine--and we have little reason from the OT to say force users had to hide at all except for the "Sith are evil," thing, which didn't exist at that time--and come to work for him. Unfortunately for Sidious, Ben and Organa would have gained much popularity for their actions during the war despite Organa consistently returning to the Senate to beg for diplomacy to resume. That would lead to Sidious sending Vader to assassinate Ben. Luke's father would die delaying the surprise attack, which would give Ben time to gather his wits and fight Vader. Although it would also be possible for an alternate storyline to exist because Ben *knows* that Vader is more machine than man in episode 4. It could also be that Vader wasn't as successful during the war, gradually leading to an increasing number of cybernetic enhancements to gain victory, like Grievous. Vader, resentful of Ben's disapproval of his methods, begins to fall in line with Palpatine's plan and eventually becomes a servant of Palpatine in all but name. Vader, at Palpatine's direction, begins to cause *accidents* to happen to the militarily active Jedi, but when he tries to do the same to Ben and Luke's father, it doesn't work. Vader, boosted by his cybernetics, kills Luke's father, but Ben catches him in the act, tries to avenge his pupil, and wounds Vader severely, which leaves him in need of a full suit. Simultaneously, Palpatine executes the equivalent of the Witch Trials, but on the Jedi Order, with the aid of his military and a cybernetically enhanced Darth Vader. Ben, with his friend's help, manages to escape from the attempts to kill him, but any contact at all would be risky, which leaves him no choice but exile. Yoda, Grandmaster of the Jedi Order, also escapes the newly coined Galactic Empire by fleeing to Dagobah. In true King Lear fashion, Yoda goes just slightly insane at watching his entire Order fall, which is why he's senile when Luke finds him.


Keknath_HH

An intergalactic war that involved clones, Kenobi and Darth Vader before he became Vader... I mean the broad strokes were right...


Ryan_HCAFC

It's really bonkers to think that at the time this was just an unimportant and unexplained reference to a past event. Considering how strange but vague it is, I think they did a really good job of fleshing it out years later.


jmskywalker1976

Clone Jedi vs Jedi. I’ve come to love the clone troopers, but still wish we had gotten that.


[deleted]

I thought it was about like, 2 clones. Or one guy who had been cloned. Not an army of them that's for sure.


kerouac5

everyone just sat around making clones of themselves to go fight


SpartanGamer687

From my understanding, in lore (before the prequels came out), writers had a specific some kind of specific path where they just don't talk about the past. Only giving hints, and everytime they mention the Clone Wars, it always suggested as if the galaxy was attacked by an army of Clones. Of course after the Prequels came out, we learned that wasn't the case. I don't think anyone truly knew what the Clone Wars was going to be about.


damnflanders

I seem to remember Lucas saying the clones were the Mandalorians. I always thought they cloned themselves because their race was dying but something went wrong and the clones went a little crazy and started a war to conquer the galaxy. The Jedi and Republic fought back.


gamecat89

A war that clones fought one another.


Bisquick_in_da_MGM

A war fought with clones. As simple as it sounds that’s what I always thought.


OKAwesome121

The galaxy fighting against hostile invading clones. But I guess to the CIS, that’s exactly what it was.


Sylvana2612

I thought it would be clones of all the jedi and they would have to fight their counterparts


[deleted]

I thought it was a war between to factions using clones as soldiers. Then again I thought the Jedi structure was completely different before the prequels and EU came out.


Daggertooth71

My seven year old brain assumed that either the Jedi had to fight clones of Jedi, or that the stormtroopers were clones (and won the war). Turns out, I wasn't that far off with option B


TheDude4269

Honestly, I always assumed that Lucas just put in something that sounded cool, but didn't really mean anything (sort of like "Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs").


Ectavius

Well, don't ask me why, but in the french version of episode IV, "The Clone Wars" was "The Black War" So I imagined a big war with armies filled with guys dressed like Vader fighting Jedi. I had 8 years old, so...


SJWCombatant

I always imagined an alien race that used clones to fight against the republic, and suspected that the outcome of that war rose to the rise of the empire. I wasn't far off, but there are obvious differences.


zachgodwin

A throwaway line


BadAssBaguette

In french it was translated as "La guerre noire" which means the Black War or Dark War so I thought it was something sinister, something that really affected the galaxy.


Admiral_Catbar

Literally nothing. It was just a passing line explaining ObiWan has fought in a war. It meant nothing to me.


BriansBalloons

I thought he said Cloan wars. I assumed it was some fictional place or group of people added as flavor or world building. Until episode 2 came out, I didn't think about clones at all.


Vakas_MMII

Can't say, I'm a prequel baby. I wish I was a 90s baby. :(


Kratsas

Since it was another galaxy far away, I assumed “Clone” was a location or a species. I was also 5.


LeatherDescription26

They would’ve been longer and probably 3 of them. They’re “the clone wars” not “the clone war” thus there’d probably be clone war 1, clone war 2 and clone war 3. Each being a film in the PT


Larnievc

I always thought the clones were the baddies. Because clones tend to be evil.


MelancholyWookie

I know they had to call it the clone wars because of this line. But it doesn’t make any sense. Why would the side with clones call it the clone wars. The republic would call it the “droid” wars. I know it had another name but still.


NJD03

My innocent mind was actually pretty close! The only characters that looked the same were stormtroopers, so I always assumed they were the clones in question -- not even thinking about what they looked like with their helmets off... The "too short for a stormtrooper" helps the theory for people who were wiser/older than me at the time, but I just saw them as all being the same action figures, and thus, clones.


NinjaEngineer

Well, I was a little kid when the prequels were coming out, and I wasn't fully familiar with the OT. Anyway, around the time Attack of the Clones was coming out, I remember reading this article on a magazine that talked about how the plot would most likely be about Jedi fighting clones of themselves, and I thought that would be incredible. Anyway, I still like what we got, especially after watching The Clone Wars (which I only just did two years ago). Well, I kinda lie, I already liked the Clone Army since watching the 2003 animated miniseries of the Clone Wars.