This is one of the many things that still make no sense to me, no information is ever given about the antagonists.
They want to seperate from the republic and…why exactly? Why does the average person support this? What is their motive?
The only seperatists we really see are that council in ROTS that Anakin “takes care of” and they seemed to totally understand the whole war was a scam. Was it intentional that there were no humans there, versus the republic which has a good amouint of humans?
They’re protesting excessive taxation and corruption in the Republic. And in terms of humans, there was Count Dooku.
I realize there are real world examples, but that would have to be some DAMN excessive taxation. I guess the movies did not show to my satisfaction the motivation for the sham war, I even wondered if Seperatists actually existed or were an invention of Palpatine. I mean its basically armies of droids lead by random malcontents he recruited.
Hell the republic uses human slaves(clones) as soldiers while the Seperatists use droids, the films never point out this issue.
The movies really didn’t flesh it out very much, probably because they felt the last thing a Star Wars needed was more dense politics. Even opening TPM with a trade dispute was a bit much for a lot of people.
I did read plenty of supplemental material in the guide books and such though. Basically Corusant had become so corrupt, mismanaged, and burdened by bureaucracy. That environment made it easy for Palpatine to prey on everyone’s growing frustration and distrust to play both sides. Pretty basic stuff.
The Clone Wars animated show also expands quite a bit on those kind of details. Most planets seem to be kind of neutral, but they get caught up in the politics of it when both sides offer them them different things.
I often wonder, after watching The Clone Wars, who are the good guys, and who are the bad guys. Am I supposed to root for the Separatist race that wants to rebuild its slavery empire? Is Jedi General Krell, who addresses his clone troopers by their batch number a “good guy?” (No need to spoil that one, I already know how it ends.)
Ultimately, any real Star Wars fanatic will tell me, it doesn’t matter … Palpatine is playing both ends for his purpose. No one is good or evil, they’re all just – to paraphrase D&D alignments – Lawful, Neutral or Chaotic Stupid.
Still, I’m left wondering – What is the proper government form for a galaxy? Democracy clearly doesn’t work, that senate chamber is so huge, everyone has to have a floating dais to take the floor – any issue will always die in committee, there are simply too many people. But what’s left?
It’s never said outright, but Palpatine is supposed to hate aliens and part of the push for creating the Empire was so that it could be humans-only.
The prequels have a lot of problems but one thing they do that I love is have a muddy morality. I think it’s great that in AotC, Dooku is trying to turn Obi Wan to evil but everything he tells him is the absolute truth.
You think that’s bad you should see the current Clone Wars animate series right now. They’re doing a story line about some great slave empire that’s part of the seperatists and how Anny is so pissed about slavery and slavers and everything. Of course it’s a little weird given he leads a slave army.(Hmm, hey is this an example of irony? I always get that mixed up.)
Visually, the show is amazing. From a moral standpoint, it’s a total mind trip.
There’s actually an episode where a deserter from the clone army is hauled away to prison screaming “We’re all just slaves you’re forcing to fight and die in a war we have no stake in!”
There’s a defective hunchbacked clone that they keep around to act as a janitor.
The Jedi take children at a very young age and raise them as warrior monks. The children are far too young to decide if they want to accept the risks, responsibilities, and limitations demanded by such a life.
The hero of the show is Darth Vader. When the show begins, he has already killed the wives and children of the bad guys who killed his mother.
I always thought it odd that they seemed to be going with a parallel to the U.S. Revolutionary War, yet the revolutionaries were presented as the bad guys.
There’s no reason a democracy needs to have all the senators together at the top level. You can have another tier where small groups of planets get together, and these groups elect representatives for all of them.
That said, I believe that planets need to be a lot more autonomous than terrestrial governments. This is why the Star Trek idea of a Federation has always appealed to me. I think you could pull off something where, as long as it doesn’t affect any other planet, you can do pretty close to what you want, barring civil rights violations (which would be discovered by undercover feds). You’d even have your own money. It’s just that the feds would also have their own money system as a separate entity.
Sure, there’s a lot of potential for problems, but this is the best government I can see. The large senate chamber in Star Wars is, I agree, ridiculous.
There’s no love lost between these two armies of emotionless automatons.
I can’t imagine anyone on Naboo or Tatooine or wherever caring about the political affairs on some planet light years away, capital or not. But I would expect that Coruscant, as a ecumenopolis (city planet) probably sucks a lot of resources from those planets. That would be the most likely source of interplanetary conflict IMHO.
Yes, but that doesn’t really answer the question about what they want. They are playing along with Palpatine’s plans (not knowing that it is Palpatine), but why? What did he promise them to get them to do what they did?
That’s one of the huge flaws with the prequels; nobody seems to be doing anything for any discernible reason.
It is isn’t? I mean I saw that one with the lady Jedi saying how she cares about the clones because she cares about all life. (My retort to that was “Yeah, I bet you do care about your slaves.”) Sometimes I get the feeling that they’re on the border to do something really good and then it gets all cliche and not thought out. (I mean I thought it was a little weird that a neutral planet in a blockade ends up with a black market.)
Of course nothing beats Obi Wan in the movies for total WTF moments. (Hmm, I’m not emotional so I use my friend’s wife to lead me to him and let him think we’re having an afraid. Too bad about the whole him choking her thing.)
Man I really should proof read this.
It is isn’t it? I mean I saw that one with the lady Jedi saying how she cares about the clones because she cares about all life. (My retort to that was “Yeah, I bet you do care about your slaves.”) Sometimes I get the feeling that they’re on the border to do something really good and then it gets all cliche and not thought out. (I mean I thought it was a little weird that a neutral planet in a blockade ends up with a black market.)
Of course nothing beats Obi Wan in the movies for total WTF moments. (Hmm, I’m not emotional so I’ll use my friend’s wife to lead me to him and let him think we’re having an afraid. Too bad about the whole him choking her thing.)
Oh well, at least characters die. (I was surprised to see that Jedi who looked like a midget pig samurai with vague eastern Europe accent die. Hmm, Midget Pig Samurai sounds like it’d be the name of one heck of a rock band. Feel free to use it, just credit me on your first album:) )
Well, under such a system pretty much anything people on Planet A do that people on Planet 2 don’t like would wind up getting classified as “civil rights” and bye bye autonomy.