I think most stories in general work better as TV shows, tbh.
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A Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy: The Star Wars Thread
And she was my favorite non Yoda, too.
Egarwaen
(He/Him)
After watching Rebels, I decided to go back and give the prequels another watch.
They're still not great Star Wars, or even particularly good Star Wars. At their best they approach good episodes of Clone Wars or Rebels. But there are definitely parts that are quality, and they're far from the worst Star Wars.
The biggest problem throughout all three films is that Palpatine's plans are over-complicated and make no damn sense. He never explains his agenda or objectives to us, so we're left trying to puzzle out what he's trying to achieve and what his plan is to achieve it from largely incidental action, and the end result is a baffling series of not-quite-Xanatos Gambits. A Xanatos Gambit, as you know, is a plan where all possible outcomes benefit the planner. That's absolutely not the case with Palpatine's plans. There's always outcomes that are catastrophic for him; they just... Never happen to occur, through no effort on his part and no particular failing on the part of his enemies.
In The Phantom Menace, Palpatine's apparent plan is to use the Trade Federation to destabilize the Old Republic and seize power for himself by getting Amidala to bring a no confidence motion against the chancellor - as the elected Queen of Naboo, she's apparently able to do this while neither Senator Palpatine nor any of his allied Senators are able to. Except... The stakes if Padme doesn't act are laid out quite clearly for us: the Senate will dither and fritter and wind up simply accepting Trade Federation control of Naboo, and things will basically go back to normal for everyone but the Naboo and the Gungans. One can argue that Palpatine can reasonably expect his Trade Federation allies to flub their plans, for the Force to lead the Jedi he's had dispatched to where they need to be, and so on. But Palpatine himself does nothing to ensure this; has no contingencies in place for a failure... And, were it not for Podracing, Amidala would be stuck on Tatooine with no way to obtain repair parts for her ship's hyperdrive. Heck, if not for an accident of timing, Darth Maul would have found the ship while Qui-gon was away, and we're told he intends to kill everyone on board.
Attack of the Clones gets even worse. Palpatine's apparent plan is to get everyone to accept his Clone Army - and the Jedi to agree to lead it - by having them swoop in and save the Jedi from a Separatist trap on Geonosis. The Jedi find their way into this trap by following the trail of an assassin who's made repeated attempts on Senator Amidala's life through:
Palpatine's got a bunch of failure states here. Amidala getting assassinated goes pretty well for him as long as Anakin isn't killed in the process; that drives Anakin to the dark side, de-fangs the anti-war movement in the Senate, and probably gives him the excuse he needs to establish his army. But he's got not no reasonable way to achieve his objectives through the entirely likely outcome where Amidala doesn't die and quickly returns to the Senate to rally the anti-war faction, while the Jedi foil his assassins and then get stymied at some point in the trail of clues before Geonosis. He's also hosed if too many Jedi get slaughtered before the clones get to Geonosis; his army needs generals, and the Jedi are the only ones in the Republic that fit the bill. And he's wrecked if the Jedi manage to add two and two and get four; his "your clones are actually my clones" scheme completely falls to pieces if anyone mentions the name "Darth Tyranus" to Obi-wan or anyone who got a run-down of his conversation with Fett, or the Jedi manage to capture either Jango or Boba, or...
Good thing Obi-wan prefers watching Gui-fi Eree's Diners, Fly-ins, and Dives to Masterpiece Mystery Holo-theater.
Revenge of the Sith ... has the best plotting, largely because Palpatine's basically gotten everything he wants, and his endgame is really just dependent on Anakin continuing to act predictably. Palpatine's "oh, coincidentally, a clone intelligence unit has found General Grievous, you'd better do something about that" is some of the best string-pulling in the trilogy. It's blatant and impossible to ignore; more manipulation like this would have done a lot to save the past two films.
Other miscellaneous gripes:
They're still not great Star Wars, or even particularly good Star Wars. At their best they approach good episodes of Clone Wars or Rebels. But there are definitely parts that are quality, and they're far from the worst Star Wars.
The biggest problem throughout all three films is that Palpatine's plans are over-complicated and make no damn sense. He never explains his agenda or objectives to us, so we're left trying to puzzle out what he's trying to achieve and what his plan is to achieve it from largely incidental action, and the end result is a baffling series of not-quite-Xanatos Gambits. A Xanatos Gambit, as you know, is a plan where all possible outcomes benefit the planner. That's absolutely not the case with Palpatine's plans. There's always outcomes that are catastrophic for him; they just... Never happen to occur, through no effort on his part and no particular failing on the part of his enemies.
In The Phantom Menace, Palpatine's apparent plan is to use the Trade Federation to destabilize the Old Republic and seize power for himself by getting Amidala to bring a no confidence motion against the chancellor - as the elected Queen of Naboo, she's apparently able to do this while neither Senator Palpatine nor any of his allied Senators are able to. Except... The stakes if Padme doesn't act are laid out quite clearly for us: the Senate will dither and fritter and wind up simply accepting Trade Federation control of Naboo, and things will basically go back to normal for everyone but the Naboo and the Gungans. One can argue that Palpatine can reasonably expect his Trade Federation allies to flub their plans, for the Force to lead the Jedi he's had dispatched to where they need to be, and so on. But Palpatine himself does nothing to ensure this; has no contingencies in place for a failure... And, were it not for Podracing, Amidala would be stuck on Tatooine with no way to obtain repair parts for her ship's hyperdrive. Heck, if not for an accident of timing, Darth Maul would have found the ship while Qui-gon was away, and we're told he intends to kill everyone on board.
Attack of the Clones gets even worse. Palpatine's apparent plan is to get everyone to accept his Clone Army - and the Jedi to agree to lead it - by having them swoop in and save the Jedi from a Separatist trap on Geonosis. The Jedi find their way into this trap by following the trail of an assassin who's made repeated attempts on Senator Amidala's life through:
- a poisoned dart manufactured by the cloners of Kamino, a planet Palpatine has erased from all archives, which can only be found by the knowledge of select outer rim prospectors, such as Obi-wan's old friend who owns a hole-in-the-wall diner.
- The cloners themselves, who believe they were commissioned by a Jedi named Sideous... Sorry, Sipho-dyas, who was an actual Jedi Master who died before the Naboo incident and thus is totally not suspicious in any way.
- The bounty hunter the cloners are using as a template, who was recruited by a man named Tyranus (actually Dooku, but no-one realizes this at any point in the intervening years of war) and immediately flees to Geonosis after escaping from a duel with Obi-wan.
- The Separatist leaders discussing the plot to kill Amidala with Count Dooku at a carefully-timed leadership conference while on a walk-about tour of their droid factory.
Palpatine's got a bunch of failure states here. Amidala getting assassinated goes pretty well for him as long as Anakin isn't killed in the process; that drives Anakin to the dark side, de-fangs the anti-war movement in the Senate, and probably gives him the excuse he needs to establish his army. But he's got not no reasonable way to achieve his objectives through the entirely likely outcome where Amidala doesn't die and quickly returns to the Senate to rally the anti-war faction, while the Jedi foil his assassins and then get stymied at some point in the trail of clues before Geonosis. He's also hosed if too many Jedi get slaughtered before the clones get to Geonosis; his army needs generals, and the Jedi are the only ones in the Republic that fit the bill. And he's wrecked if the Jedi manage to add two and two and get four; his "your clones are actually my clones" scheme completely falls to pieces if anyone mentions the name "Darth Tyranus" to Obi-wan or anyone who got a run-down of his conversation with Fett, or the Jedi manage to capture either Jango or Boba, or...
Good thing Obi-wan prefers watching Gui-fi Eree's Diners, Fly-ins, and Dives to Masterpiece Mystery Holo-theater.
Revenge of the Sith ... has the best plotting, largely because Palpatine's basically gotten everything he wants, and his endgame is really just dependent on Anakin continuing to act predictably. Palpatine's "oh, coincidentally, a clone intelligence unit has found General Grievous, you'd better do something about that" is some of the best string-pulling in the trilogy. It's blatant and impossible to ignore; more manipulation like this would have done a lot to save the past two films.
Other miscellaneous gripes:
- The Phantom Menace absolutely needs a Special Edition; Jar-Jar is much better than I remembered, but a lot of the other CGI scenes are not up to what the movie demands of them. The Coruscant city-scape is sometimes great and sometimes very not, and the plains of Naboo are outright awful.
- The casual use of racial caricatures in TPM, and to a lesser extent AotC.
- One of the most jarring things about TPM is how it doesn't even bother to name most of its cast. I've seen this movie a half-dozen times and only this viewing noticed that what I thought were a bunch of filler Naboo pilots are in fact one dude. Amidala's body-double never gets named. Amidala's grey-bearded advisor never gets named. Captain Panaka gets named, but almost never referred to by his name.
- The romance between Anakin and Amidala ranges from awkward to incomprehensible. It's almost entirely presented from Anakin's point of view, leaving Amidala as something of a cypher, with little agency to begin with and absolutely none once she gets pregnant. Her throw-away comment in AotC about how she wasn't the youngest Queen ever but was still too young is fascinating, and I really wish it had been unpacked more since it could explain a lot about why she felt such fierce affection for Anakin.
- The procession of disposable villains really does not work. I get that it's a pulp rocket ship serial thing, but I felt like it made the antagonists cheap and hard to engage with. Dooku shows up too late in AotC and dies too early in RotS, and doesn't do enough in-between.
- I do not buy for one second the idea that these movies are somehow critical of the Jedi Council. If anything, the Council makes only one mistake in the entire trilogy: they accept Anakin as Obi-wan's student despite all the warning signs that he's unsuitable and dangerous, and despite his continuous rejection of their guidance and doctrine. Even before his mother dies, Anakin's a little would-be tyrant with an egregiously inflated opinion of himself. Apart from that fatal mistake, the Council strives to uphold justice without interfering with democratic self-rule, to moderate the hubris of its members, and to counteract less ethical Force-users. They fail because their best efforts just happen to be the exact things that Palpatine needs to advance his plans.
- The back half of AotC does a fantastic job of selling the pulp rocket ship serial style. Amidala's silver bullet-ship, the way Dooku talks during his fight with Obi-wan and Anakin, the sprawling Geonosis architecture, the Clone army's weapons systems... It's really good.
- The "Only the Sith deal in absolutes" line bugged me far less once I realized that Lucas just fucking loves self-contradictory zingers like that. Once you know to look for it it's all over the damn place, and I find it far more forgivable as a stylistic tic than as a misfired attempt at insight. My favorite instance of this is "A death mark's not an easy thing to live with" from ESB.
- Ewan McGregor and Ian McDiarmid are incredible, though for very different reasons. McDiarmid constantly feels like he's having a blast. He just doesn't care, he's here to be a ham and isn't going to stop for anyone. McGregor feels like he's putting a ton of work into fleshing out Obi-wan and following his arc from student to master to peer; his grief for his teacher, his desire for peace, and his affection for his student.
- I adore the mechanical design. It's sprawling and ambitious and imaginative, and it doesn't always work, but when it does...!
Phantoon
I cuss you bad
I'd argue with the gripes in that the Emperor is on both sides.
In The Phantom Menace if the senate do nothing he'll just prod the emboldened Trade Federation to do something more provocative. He gets them to be full blown separatists by the time of the next film. Anyway, if the senate do nothing and they win, good for Darth Sidious, bad for Palpatine.
If Obi-wan doesn't find the clones he can arrange their finding later. He's the Chancellor, he can get "intel" - I'm fairly certain Obi-wan finding the army wasn't part of the plan. Also, the Kaminoans don't deal with Tyrannus, as far as they're concerned they're dealing with a Jedi (who is dead and therefore can't deny he set it up). The weak point being Jango, who knows of Dooku (but possibly not Tyrannus or Sidious).
Obi-wan doesn't need to find Geonosis either; the seperatists were about to start the war anyway. The Jedi weren't supposed to be there yet, but they were late enough that it made no difference. If the Jedi council die on Geonosis it makes Order 66 easier still later.
I don't think his plan is necessarily to have Anakin as his apprentice. It's a "want" versus a "need". He lost Darth Maul and Tyrannus is older than he is. And he's been working on Anakin for years, the Jedi are crap and he doesn't really have any friends outside of Palpatine. Padme was his way in here, but he have done something else otherwise; Anakin never bought into the Jedi way of coping with loss and doesn't Palpatine know it.
Revenge of the Sith is him realising his win on the Republic side. Once he's won (and I suppose the Battle of Coruscant was the real final battle of the war) he eliminates the other side. It doesn't go all his way though, he'd much sooner have Anakin with limbs and not on fire.
The way it played out is the way it played out. It wasn't the ideal plan but it ended up working.
And with that I've spent more time thinking about it than most people making the film
In The Phantom Menace if the senate do nothing he'll just prod the emboldened Trade Federation to do something more provocative. He gets them to be full blown separatists by the time of the next film. Anyway, if the senate do nothing and they win, good for Darth Sidious, bad for Palpatine.
If Obi-wan doesn't find the clones he can arrange their finding later. He's the Chancellor, he can get "intel" - I'm fairly certain Obi-wan finding the army wasn't part of the plan. Also, the Kaminoans don't deal with Tyrannus, as far as they're concerned they're dealing with a Jedi (who is dead and therefore can't deny he set it up). The weak point being Jango, who knows of Dooku (but possibly not Tyrannus or Sidious).
Obi-wan doesn't need to find Geonosis either; the seperatists were about to start the war anyway. The Jedi weren't supposed to be there yet, but they were late enough that it made no difference. If the Jedi council die on Geonosis it makes Order 66 easier still later.
I don't think his plan is necessarily to have Anakin as his apprentice. It's a "want" versus a "need". He lost Darth Maul and Tyrannus is older than he is. And he's been working on Anakin for years, the Jedi are crap and he doesn't really have any friends outside of Palpatine. Padme was his way in here, but he have done something else otherwise; Anakin never bought into the Jedi way of coping with loss and doesn't Palpatine know it.
Revenge of the Sith is him realising his win on the Republic side. Once he's won (and I suppose the Battle of Coruscant was the real final battle of the war) he eliminates the other side. It doesn't go all his way though, he'd much sooner have Anakin with limbs and not on fire.
The way it played out is the way it played out. It wasn't the ideal plan but it ended up working.
And with that I've spent more time thinking about it than most people making the film
Obi-Wan as a closet fan of foodie holo-TV is now official canon and you can never convince me otherwise.
I was just so excited when I got a 1999 Popular Mechanics issue that had all these cross-sections and descriptions of the Droid Army, including the Walker Fighters, and then all that turned to disappointment when the movie itself hardly used them
The Walkers only show up in force during the Ep 3 space battle and even then they don't really do much but pose and get blown up.
This is why I love Rebels so much.
Egarwaen
(He/Him)
I spent more time working out how to Star Wars-ize Guy Fieri than I did with almost anything else in the post so I'm glad the joke found an audience.
I was just so excited when I got a 1999 Popular Mechanics issue that had all these cross-sections and descriptions of the Droid Army, including the Walker Fighters, and then all that turned to disappointment when the movie itself hardly used them
Don't get me wrong, I love how the original trilogy lingers on its mechanical designs. But this watch through I was really trying to appreciate the prequels for what they were, and its high-speed "fling the toy box at the screen" approach kinda worked for me. I think it helped that I was watching on a tablet and could pause and skip back to appreciate a particular design even if it was only on-screen for a few seconds.
You really need to watch Rebels.
Phantoon
I cuss you bad
I was just so excited when I got a 1999 Popular Mechanics issue that had all these cross-sections and descriptions of the Droid Army, including the Walker Fighters, and then all that turned to disappointment when the movie itself hardly used them
I bought the Incredible Cross Sections books for the prequels and original trilogy and if you like looking at made-up engineering like me the experience is almost indecent
The ones for the sequels are pretty disappointing, I don't know why I was surprised.
Egarwaen
(He/Him)
But the films never tell us that, or even really hint at it. We don't know what Palpatine's aims are or how he's attempting to bring them about. We know that the protagonists' actions have advanced those goals, but only by looking backwards from the ultimate "and now he's the Emperor" end-point. And it's equally reasonable to conclude exactly the opposite - Palpatine isn't on both sides and never intends the Separatists to be anything but a catspaw. Is he improvising on the fly? Well, maybe, but there's also places where that can't possibly be true, when things happen entirely out of his reach. Is he shaping his plans based on prophetic foreknowledge? Sure would be nice to know!
The chain of evidence around the clone plot is really important because it highlights just how sloppy the whole mystery is.
The Kaminoans believe they're dealing with a Jedi who has a name that coincidentally sounds like "Sideous" on behalf of the Council. It doesn't matter that no one can prove that Sipho-dyas didn't make the arrangement, though the timeline of his disappearance and the cloning project as laid out in the film means it started several years after he died. Why bother? The Council knows they didn't sponsor the project, so unless you get them to buy in somehow (like the trap on Geonosis) they're just going to get suspicious and dig in their heels and refuse to go along.
And while Jango's not needed anymore (they keep making clones just fine after he dies), Palpatine still has Jango hanging out on Kamino. And Jango knows that he was contracted by Dooku / Tyranus, knows that Dooku is Sith, knows about Geonosis, knows about the plot to assassinate Amidala, and is for some reason using Kaminoan hardware with his more typical Mandalorian gear. There's no reason for any of that unless you're laying a trail of improbable breadcrumbs from Amidala to Geonosis. Otherwise it's just an enormous gaping risk; an even marginally more aggressive investigator than Obi-wan cracks your plot wide open.
I mean for that matter why bother with the entire clone army thing? The Republic has no military and no way to develop one; the Jedi bemoan this near the start of AotC. If Palpatine's plans really did work out no matter which side wins, the clone army is just a gigantic act of self-sabotage. Much better to just let the Separatists roll over the Republic, right? They kill all the Jedi, he steps out of the shadows, easy win. So whatever he's doing, he needs the years of grinding warfare to do it.
The most charitable interpretation is that Palpatine reveals his goal in RotS - he wants to rediscover the lost Sith arts of immortality. He needs the Chosen One of the Jedi prophecy to do it. And he needs to be Emperor so he's got the resources of an entire galaxy at his disposal while he works out the details. He has no idea Anakin exists at the start of TPM, but he can see the future and knows that Amidala fleeing Naboo winds up delivering a real live Chosen One to him. Qui-gon shows up with the boy in tow, his old apprentice gets bisected but takes Qui-gon out of the picture, he picks up Dooku and starts constructing a war to catapult him into power and shape Anakin into what he needs...
it's a nice outline for a villain's plot for a prequel trilogy. It'd be nice if it was shown on screen at some point.
And it's just as reasonable to conclude that Palpatine has no plot. Everything that happens is the foreordained destiny of the Skywalker family grinding the galaxy through the mill of fate. Palpatine's an impotent, hateful little man tugging at random strings and cackling, then nipping out front and declaring "ah-ha! I win! All according to plan!"
Phantoon
I cuss you bad
It's a good theory, but I suspect that's the usual Palpatine bollocks used to get Anakin to turn. I don't know if there are any Sith immortality rites to find. I think Sidious' goal is what he says to Maul - "At last we shall have revenge". His goal is to destroy the Jedi Order (and get power through any means necessary as a secondary thing). As you say, he didn't know Anakin would show up (although he had an inkling that somewhere out there there was an Anakin because of Plagueis's Force fiddlings) but at the end of The Phantom Menace he knows exactly what Anakin is - "We will follow your career with great interest" and becomes Anakin's father figure. Which, as stated by Filoni, wouldn't have been possible with Qui-gon alive showing how opportunistic Palpatine is and how good he is at improv.
Yeah, I'm certainly not going to argue about Attack of the Clones being a bit sloppy. It's not entirely clear why Padme needs to be executed at all - she's going to vote against the Chancellor getting new powers and killing her stops her, I guess? But that risks making her voice louder, not quieter. After all, she wouldn't be voting alone. If it had worked at the beginning, I guess the evidence would just be that the Federation did it - Nute Gunray hates her enough to be a prime suspect. I don't think it made sense letting Jango know about both armies. The Sifo-dyas thing is always going to be puzzling, I'm guessing Lucas wanted to make it clear to the audience that Sideous was behind it without giving Obi-wan the name (although none of the Jedi knew Sideous's name yet). Apparently The Clone Wars revealed that Sifo-dyas apparently *did* commission the clone army which I think is pretty silly. How much does the Clone Wars go into Dooku? He seems a potentially really interesting character. I think Attack of the Clones had too much to set up in its running time and tell a fully coherent story, basically.
However, the war (I think) is designed the Jedi from keeping a closer eye on what's going on on Coruscant under their noses. It's probably preferable to get power through the Republic than the Federation and to do that he needs the Jedi to get pulled into the war and stop paying attention. Get some of them killed, possibly shut down some of the recruitment (they certainly won't be able to do it on Federation worlds) and get them in position for Order 66. Three(?) years of war with the Droid Army failed to destroy the Jedi, he needed the Republic Army to turn on them as well to finally exterminate them.
I actually like Sidious's plan more than the usual Evil Masterplan nonsense. They're usually ridiculously specific and have the villain basically say stuff like "of course I knew you'd stop at the Kwik-E-Mart for a strawberry milkshake before you came to work this morning! Bwa ha ha haaaa" whereas Sidious's one seems more nebulous giving it more room for maneuver. Like most things in Star Wars, leaving certain details vague give people the headspace to fill in the gaps without having glaring contradictions in the way.
The big issue with the plotting in AotC is that it doesn't go anywhere. Obi-Wan uncovers this secret clone army commissioned under mysterious circumstances and then never follows up on that information for the entire war. Palpatine is only a good conspirator because nobody else in the galaxy has a brain.
Also, I don't think Sifo-Dyas is supposed to sound like Sidious, because I don't think the name Darth Sidious is actually mentioned at any point?
Also, I don't think Sifo-Dyas is supposed to sound like Sidious, because I don't think the name Darth Sidious is actually mentioned at any point?
4-So
Spicy
Pretty sure "Lord Sidious" was mentioned in the The Phantom Menace. Based on the communication - "I'm sending my apprentice, Darth Maul, ..." - we can assume Sidious is a Sith (Darth). I don't believe the Jedi are familiar with the name at the point in AOTC where Obi-wan visits Kamino, though. I always assumed "Sifo-Dyas" was originally intended as a wink to the audience because it sounds like Sidious.
I just checked the screenplays on imsdb and the word "Sidious" does not appear in dialogue until Grievous says it in the first act of RotS.
EDIT: I just watched a scene on Youtube and I guess they do say it.
EDIT: I just watched a scene on Youtube and I guess they do say it.
Phantoon
I cuss you bad
Apparently in earlier drafts it was "Sido-dyas" and Mace said that there was no Jedi with that name. At that stage in the story it was definitely Sidious behind it.
In the final canon (I hate that word) Sifo-dyas did indeed commission the Clone Army. Sidious had the programming altered slightly, but beyond that there isn't a mystery.
Palpatine wants power, unlimited power. He believes that deep down, everybody is evil. He basically states this aloud in Return of the Jedi. This isn't just a calculation, it's his religion. Luke refutes him when he throws away his lightsaber, and that's why that's when the temptation stops and the torture begins.
His plan in the prequels is informed by his faith in the wickedness of others. All he needs to do is give people a chance to do the wrong thing, and wait for them to take it. The details don't matter - Evil Providence will see him through. With wealth, power, and a reliable double identity, he can easily take advantage of however it shakes out. Rather than having a grand master plan, most of what he's doing is improvising and reacting to opportunities that arise. The first time the Trade Federation encounters a serious setback in The Phantom Menace, he says "This may work to our advantage" - it seriously doesn't matter whether Padme escapes, because either way he's already goaded Gunray into committing atrocities on his planet in such a way that he can blame Valorum for failing to prevent them.
In Attack of the Clones in particular, the complicated mystery that Obi-Wan is investigating is Dooku's plan, not Darth Sidious'. Palpatine just wants a war so he can seize war powers, and he knows you can't have a war without two armies. Dooku legitimately wanted Padme dead without it getting back to him, because that was the price Nute Gunray demanded for joining the confederacy. Her absence gave Palpatine an opportunity to escalate things further on the Republic side, and the Jedi discovering the conspiracy precipitated the first battle, but he didn't have a specific way he wanted the war to start. He's the chancellor of a powder keg and doesn't care which grain is the first to ignite.
His plan in the prequels is informed by his faith in the wickedness of others. All he needs to do is give people a chance to do the wrong thing, and wait for them to take it. The details don't matter - Evil Providence will see him through. With wealth, power, and a reliable double identity, he can easily take advantage of however it shakes out. Rather than having a grand master plan, most of what he's doing is improvising and reacting to opportunities that arise. The first time the Trade Federation encounters a serious setback in The Phantom Menace, he says "This may work to our advantage" - it seriously doesn't matter whether Padme escapes, because either way he's already goaded Gunray into committing atrocities on his planet in such a way that he can blame Valorum for failing to prevent them.
In Attack of the Clones in particular, the complicated mystery that Obi-Wan is investigating is Dooku's plan, not Darth Sidious'. Palpatine just wants a war so he can seize war powers, and he knows you can't have a war without two armies. Dooku legitimately wanted Padme dead without it getting back to him, because that was the price Nute Gunray demanded for joining the confederacy. Her absence gave Palpatine an opportunity to escalate things further on the Republic side, and the Jedi discovering the conspiracy precipitated the first battle, but he didn't have a specific way he wanted the war to start. He's the chancellor of a powder keg and doesn't care which grain is the first to ignite.
The mystery is why the army exists in the first place and why the Jedi agree to lead it without questioning its original purpose. Like, okay, Sifo-Dyas foresaw an upcoming conflict and wanted the Republic to be prepared. Who erased the records of his efforts and for what reason? This seems like something that would bug me if I was on the Council.
It's not even that the plan doesn't work the Palpatine's end, it's just that the mystery has no reason to exist.
Egarwaen
(He/Him)
This is a better theory than any I've managed to come up with, and I really like it because it gives Dooku a lot of depth. But there's a couple significant flaws, most notably that the Sith plot in AotC is, in part, about manufacturing an excuse to get the Death Star plans away from the Separatists. There's a whole bit where the Geonosian elder essentially says "we can't let the Jedi find these plans for the ultimate weapon; take them somewhere safe" and Dooku's all "why yes of course". Then he flies directly to Palpatine and hands him the plans, and the whole thing seems very pre-arranged.
The other flaw is that Palpatine seems to need someone else to find the clones. His whole ploy for getting them accepted by Republic is passing them off as a provident opportunity that the Republic would be foolish to not take advantage of. And the best way for him to do that is for the Jedi to find them, because everyone trusts the Jedi.
Yeah, the Sifo-dyas name is a very late edit; at least one adaptation wound up getting released with the original Sido-dyas exchange, and even with the new name the Kaminoan accent makes it sound like they're mispronouncing "Sideous". The Clone Wars Sifo-dyas episodes are atrociously bad and exist almost entirely to paper over exactly this problem... And even then they fail because, again, Jango tells Obi-wan he was recruited by a man named Tyranus - Dooku's Sith alias, which he could only have adopted after Maul's death, and after the Jedi Council thinks Sifo-dyas died.
The whole thing is nonsense, but I think it's really interesting nonsense because it highlights how much the action of the prequels hangs on Palpatine's sinister plotting... Which the movies themselves then don't bother to detail or elaborate on in any way, leading to the protagonists stumbling through what appears to be precisely the series of actions required by the Sith plot without any effort whatsoever on the part of the antagonists. It's a stark contrast with the original trilogy, which is loaded with scenes where the antagonists - usually Vader - dramatically lay out their villainous schemes and motivations, and adapt them to the protagonists' exploits. Such scenes were a staple of the rocket ship pulp serials that Star Wars is a deliberate homage to.
Seizing powerful separatist military assets isn't the goal of the plan. It's a nice benefit, but once again it's mere opportunism. Palpatine controlling both sides, through Dooku with one hand and through the Senate on the other, means he already has the plans for Poggle the Lesser's ultimate weapon. He doesn't need an excuse - either he has Dooku give it to him before the war, or he has Anakin go and pick it up after when he's cleaning up all the other loose ends.
The presence of Death Star imagery on Geonosis is a detail that reveals that the conspiracy goes deeper, and a reminder of how it all ends.
Palpatine knows about the clone army, so if the Jedi don't stumble on it in a convenient time frame, he can give them a clue at any time of his choosing.
The Jedi Order is effectively the Republic's CIA, and they clearly control plenty of cash, considering the size and spaciousness of the Temple. A member of the Jedi Council could conceivably have the authority to promise money from the Republic's budget. Meanwhile, Palpatine (the one who wants the army to exist) is the Chancellor and a very skillful politician, so hiding an expense like that in a paramilitary slush fund or whatever is quite plausible.
There's also an episode of Clone Wars that deals with the Senate deciding to borrow money in order to renew their contract with Kamino. The resolution is played as something of a farce since the audience knows the Banking Clans are separatists.
Like does it not strike Obi-Wan as fishy that the guy hired to be the template for the clone troopers is also directly working for the man leading the separatist army the clones have been conveniently built to fight
The template part can be... excused, I guess, even though Cloning Doesn't Work That Way. It's the fact he's STILL living there, with his own apartment and equipment, while under employment of etc etc etc.
I'm just befuddled the Jedi just... grabbed this sudden surprise army as their own without even the slightest investigation, and then went along with it for the war.
I'm just befuddled the Jedi just... grabbed this sudden surprise army as their own without even the slightest investigation, and then went along with it for the war.
Egarwaen
(He/Him)
But the audience already knows the conspiracy goes deeper; we're constantly reminded of it throughout both TPM and AotC. "Revealing" that to us with the pointed introduction of a new element is counterproductive; it only serves to draw attention to the new element and away from the overall theme. And the film doesn't tell us any of this; this is all pattern-matching an explanation back on to on-screen action that goes entirely unexplained and unremarked-upon. All that actually happens is the dialog:
So... Yeah, on review... Is this part of Palpatine's plans? Who knows! The Separatists designed the Death Star, Palpatine stole the plans under the cover of a Jedi raid and built it himself after betraying and murdering his erstwhile allies. There's no other direct evidence for anything else.
That's exactly the problem; why not keep Jango either away from the Kaminoans or away from Dooku? Why use your clone-template as an assassin? If these aren't intentional risks to lead the Jedi into a trap on Geonosis, they're bumbling mistakes that only don't blow up the entire plot and expose Palpatine because the protagonists lose interest For Some Reason. If they are intentional risks, they make sense, but only inside of a plan that requires an implausible series of coincidences entirely outside Palpatine's control.
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It's also weird that the Death Star plans were complete enough to be worth stealing before the Clone Wars but incomplete enough to allow Galen Erso to insert an intentional catastrophic design flaw years into the Empire (Whatever, it would take a long time to build a moon-sized space station)
Phantoon
I cuss you bad
Nah, the initial plans always have teething issues especially if it's something that's never been made before. They don't magically work first go, and I imagine that goes double for planet destroying super lasers
Also; it's a *really* big spaceship; sucker probably took a long time to build, especially with union contractors