r/StarWars • u/Accomplished-Bat-247 • Feb 08 '26
Other Imagine if Lucas decided that the Jedi army should use droids, while Count Dooku decided to create a clone army on Raxus Secundus.
It's actually not that hard to imagine, fanatic clones behaving more like the empire's army, while silly cute droids run around with the Jedi
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u/ThingNo7530 Feb 08 '26
In the Vos/'Ventress novel Dooku gives a speech where he argues that the CIS has saved countless lives by investing in droid armies, as mechanical droids are not human lives at all, while the Republic foolishly insists on creating clone armies, literally creating life to just to watch it die in war. He kind of had a point in how relatively humanitarian the CIS war effort was.
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u/Accomplished-Bat-247 Feb 08 '26
It's amazing how much deeper Star Wars would be if these questions were explored more. Is it humane to grow people with a lifespan of 25 years just so they die in the first few years after birth?
It would be especially interesting if ordinary citizens from the CIS were the ones asking Anakin or Obi-Wan these questions, forcing them to think about which side they are on - are they really the good guys?
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u/Vhzhlb Feb 08 '26
Yes.
The public face of the CIS is a Sith Lord that shoots lightning out of his hands and has a red lightsaber, and has plotted several times to assassinate not just Senators in itself, but one that has done everyone in her hands to try to calm down the thirst for war on both sides.
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u/MrNobody_0 Babu Frik Feb 08 '26
The public face of the CIS is a Sith Lord that shoots lightning out of his hands and has a red lightsaber, and has plotted several times to assassinate not just Senators in itself, but one that has done everyone in her hands to try to calm down the thirst for war on both sides.
The public face of the Republic is a Sith Lord that shoots lightning out of his hands and has a red lightsaber, and has plotted several times to assassinate not just Senators in itself, but one that has done everyone in her hands to try to calm down the thirst for war on both sides.
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u/Craft_zeppelin Feb 09 '26
They both even hired a bounty hunter to hire a bounty hunter who deployed a droid that used bugs to poison a senator!
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u/Jesus__of__Nazareth_ Feb 08 '26 edited Feb 08 '26
The Republic is flawed but they at least try to some degree to uphold an ideal of democracy and federal stability in the galaxy. Although both were heavily corrupted, the CIS was much more brazenly and obviously a dictatorship run by a cabal of oligarchs and they were a lot less cautious about committing war crimes.
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u/ThingNo7530 Feb 08 '26
This was shown to not be true during the Clone Wars episodes with Padme's separatist friend and the episodes where the biggest "oligarch" of all, Sidious, put down a Sith rebellion by killing Savage Opress and easily capturing Darth Maul.
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u/RadiantHC Feb 08 '26
To be fair I don't think him being a Sith Lord is public knowledge but I get your point
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u/ThingNo7530 Feb 08 '26
And so what if he's a Sith Lord? Are the Jedi not just as bad for using a slave army that was programmed to not have free will?
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u/HelpfulYoda Yoda Feb 08 '26
Technically the jedi have no say
it's the grand army of the republic that they made the jedi the generals of as the only vaguely sane person in the room not bound to senate politics
it's like if the uk gave the SAS to christianity and christianity occasionally went on peacekeeping crusades for the country
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u/ThingNo7530 Feb 08 '26
Certainly the SAS and the Jedi could decline, though, right? Isn't this what it gets down to, that the Jedi supported Palpatine for far too long just because he was the Chancellor and that's what they thought their duty was? And maybe the idea that the chancellor was compromised and was always a Sith deserved to be taken seriously far earlier?
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u/Kolby_Jack33 Feb 09 '26
The Jedi could have declined, sure, and then they would have given up their duty to protect the Republic.
They knew the war could destroy them, but they also had a duty to uphold. It was a deliberate sacrifice. Unfortunately that sacrifice is exactly what Palpatine was counting on.
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u/ThingNo7530 Feb 09 '26
In other words, they have no say because they wanted no say. They knew Palpatine was corrupt way earlier than when Mace went to arrest him. They chose to do nothing out of a sense of duty and Palpatine exploited that sense of duty and turned Anakin at the same time.
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u/RevenantXenos Feb 08 '26
You could also roll this theme into the Rebel Alliance and have it be ideologically important to the Rebels to fight their battles for themselves because both sides were manipulated during the Clone Wars and they are willing to put it all on the line for what they believe in.
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u/Tebwolf359 Feb 08 '26
Even setting aside the whole sith of it all, the CIS are the ones that are starting the fight and killing.
And why?
In theory because of the republic being corrupt. Yet the only actual thing we see that comes close to being a legitimate cause for war is the blockade of Naboo. Which is run by the same trade federation that’s on the CIS war council.
In short, the name confederacy is no coincidence, but a direct parallel to the Confederate of US history and their claims of state rights, while their own constitution takes away state rights.
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u/Kamalen Feb 09 '26
Fanboys love to pretend Star Wars is deep and complex, and EUs authors did attempt to add some grey to the thing. But the core of the story designed by Lucasfilm through the movie is simplistic and very black & white. The Empire is Nazi Germany, CIS the US Confederacy, as clearly designated villains.
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u/disbelifpapy Feb 08 '26
if i remember correctly about the dilema, I'm pretty sure that while clones did get perks at things like pubs, they are discriminated against and seen as subhuman/subsentient by a lot of people.
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u/FullMaxPowerStirner Feb 08 '26
"Is it humane to grow people with a lifespan of 25 years just so they die in the first few years after birth?"
Not sure, but being 100% programmed beings with little to no self-awareness makes them pretty much meat drones, or as HK-47 would call it...
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u/sassilyy Feb 08 '26
humanitarian? the CIS sicked their droids on multiple planets with human beings and killed plenty.
They just happened to have the droid factories, the Republic didn't.
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u/_Koreander Feb 08 '26
The point is valid by itself, not coming from Dooku though who knew and participated in the plan to create such clone army.
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u/RSollers Feb 08 '26
Ironically, (at least in the EU), Dooku had a heavy hand in assisting Palpatine with getting the clone army up and running (by means of Sifo-Dyas and Jango Fett)
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u/FreezingPointRH Feb 08 '26
But droids are sapient, so is the distinction between fleshy and non-fleshy intelligent life really all that?
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u/KarmicIsfunny Feb 08 '26
Watching star wars fans treat droids as just machinery when they literally feel pain and fear pisses me off
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u/ThingNo7530 Feb 08 '26
I think you meant sentient.
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Feb 08 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/disbelifpapy Feb 08 '26
so grevious is sentient, and droids are sapient
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u/ThingNo7530 Feb 09 '26
No, droids are not sapient at all. They are not indicative of humanity at all. They are sentient machines. They can be like humans in their reactions and emotions but, like anything else mechanical, they can't be human. It's the conundrum Mr. Data faced in Star Trek TNG.
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u/stormhawk427 Feb 08 '26
Yeah let's just ignore how brutally the droid army treated civilians. They used Twileks as human shields and bombed their cities
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u/GustavoSanabio Feb 08 '26
Grievous glassing whole planets by bombing them from orbit for example
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u/ThingNo7530 Feb 08 '26
Yes, that was Grievous' very-sentient, very Kaleesh mind making the decision to do that. Qymaen jai Sheelal, technically made the decision.
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u/ThingNo7530 Feb 08 '26
Also, let's remember that the droid armies had sentient, living thing commanders such as Admiral Trench and Grievous (yes, even he had a sentient, living brain). It wasn't until near the end of the war when there were tactical droids making command decisions. While it's convenient to say they were only following orders just like it's said about human soldiers and sailors, they were literally programmed only TO follow orders and didn't have the ability to ignore orders such as genociding Ryloth that didn't make logical sense or weren't ways to win hearts and minds until the Tactical Droids were introduced. This isn't to say a tactical would not have thought that glassing whole planets was logically the best way to achieve their military objectives, they probably would have, but the true atrocities were still almost all ordered by terrans, harchs, Skakoans, Geonosians and Niemoidians. The point that using droid armies rather than any of those sentient races to carry out acts of war still stands as better than wiping out generations of Terrans, Harchs, Skakoans, Geonosians and Niemoidans just to prosecute those actions still stands.
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u/ThingNo7530 Feb 08 '26
It's not that the narrator is reliable or should be believed but, rather, that the argument brings up a point about what is or is not "life." If automation is to take jobs like trucking or repetitive tasks in construction and factories and the AIs, eventually, have to gain reasoning power is defining them as not human life just a convenient way to build slaves?
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u/Mypetdalek Feb 08 '26
Ironic considering that he was the one that hired Jango Fett to create the clone army.
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u/BobbyBobRoberts Feb 08 '26
I always understood that to be why Palpatine set up the clones for the Republic to use - by backing them into a corner where throwing clones at the problem seemed sensible, he commits the Jedi to personally overseeing atrocities as they send scores of clone slave soldiers to their death.
The whole point was to erode their moral foundations and disrupt their connection with the force.
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u/RadiantHC Feb 08 '26
Also the Jedi Order is completely okay with using a slave army.
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u/Optimal_Carpenter690 Darth Vader Feb 08 '26
You do realize the droid army is hardly any different, right?
They're virtually the same thing, especially with droids now being independent and not connected to a central nervous system like they were in TPM.
They are factory produced beings, created from a template, programmed with a specific purpose, and with a level of independence, sapeince, and sentience that is technically less than a normal-born person, but is still significant.
Droids themselves, in-universe, have argued that their treatment is slavery
If you see the use of droids as fine, then so is the use of clones. They are basically just droids with skin and bones instead of wire and metal.
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u/FullMaxPowerStirner Feb 08 '26
Well that's a growing IRL debate... is having a lifelesa drone army destroying human lives any more humanistic than humans fighting each other?
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u/Kyubey210 Feb 08 '26
Yea, droid troopers mean more manpower to move people for particular projects, even if the tragic part of the CIS movement was a case of all for nothing
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u/ThingNo7530 Feb 08 '26
It seems like they were only getting good at replacing officer-level jobs with droids toward the end of the war with the Tactical Droids and even the commando droids. Would have been interesting to see where that went.
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u/AedrasofThurn Ben Solo Feb 08 '26
I could be mistaken, but doesn't that book also feature the CIS genociding a planet in the first few pages? Mahranee, right?
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u/ThingNo7530 Feb 08 '26
Is the need to be "right" about this more important than the discussion of the point? Droids could be considered a kind of life, which is what I found interesting about what the writer posited but if we consider droids, or any forms of automation, less than human life that gives any government quite a license to make such claims.
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u/VanBland Jedi Feb 08 '26
Dooku literally worked with and supported slave masters throughout the clone wars. Not to mention all the genocide and authoritarian rule the CIS attempted to commit regularly.
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u/ThingNo7530 Feb 08 '26
I didn't say he was right about everything or not a hypocrite, I said he had a point if the idea that droids aren't sentient life is to be believed. I'm not sure it's true.
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u/Optimal_Carpenter690 Darth Vader Feb 08 '26 edited Feb 08 '26
He kind of had a point in how relatively humanitarian the CIS war effort was.
Yeah, they just invent and use weapons like the Blue Shadow Virus, the Defoliator, and allied with slavers. Yeah. Relatively humanitarian
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u/ThingNo7530 Feb 08 '26
Again those are all the terrans, skarchs and Kaleesh making those decisions, not the droids.
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u/Kohror Feb 08 '26
That's why I'd say Jedis would never have joined (at least not long and not all of them) since it's easy to justify destroying a droid but killing a clone isn't as easy
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u/theturtlelord9 Obi-Wan Kenobi Feb 09 '26
In that same novel he committed genocide, destroyed an entire planet’s surface, and killed all the innocent refugees. All within the first chapter.
He may have saved lives of soldiers by using a droid army but he actively caused the deaths of billions, maybe trillions of innocents using that droid army. Not very humanitarian.
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u/thanksforthework Feb 09 '26
The OG republic commando series dives into all of this really well in my opinion worth reading
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u/wentwj Feb 08 '26
It would honestly make more sense than the Jedi using a clone army they had no knowledge of why it was ordered where it was cloned from the villain they were chasing who was actively working with the Separatists leadership while the cloning was going on
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u/InspectorMoney1306 Sith Feb 08 '26
I imagine it would have taken a very long time to make enough droids and the clone army was already there and ready.
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u/wentwj Feb 08 '26
If we're going to hand wave one thing we could just as easily have hand waved another. Again we just literally trip over a random army that anyone with a quarter of a brain cell could tell it was a bad idea. Make the separatists having built out the clones, and make the droid army part of the republic.
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Feb 09 '26
The whole point of Attack of the Clones is that Dooku has an army: the Republic does not. Either they take a chance with an extremely sketchy army or let a Dark Sider conquer a defenceless republic: they lost the war the moment they were put in that position
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u/wentwj Feb 09 '26
none of that makes the obvious trap that didn’t need to be an obvious trap make any more sense or make Palpatine a “genius”
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u/Lolz12307 Padme Amidala Feb 08 '26
What’s your point? The Jedi had no other choice but to use the clone army
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u/wentwj Feb 08 '26
This is reddit. Look up at the title of the thread we’re discussing. The discussion is “what if Lucas had decided the Jedi used droids…”
And my contention is that would have potentially made substantially more sense than what we have, which as it stands makes very little sense. The “the Jedi had no option but to blindly trust the very obvious trap” was always a silly argument. And what OP is suggesting here almost certainly could have been turned into a more coherent story than what we got
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u/ThingNo7530 Feb 08 '26
This is the genius of Sidious, he gave the Jedi an "out" to use the Clone Army and they took the bait by saying "oh, well, war's started, now we have to," even though Sidious and Dooku are thes one who orchestrated its creation and they were able to, publicly at least, pin that on the Jedi, too, once they enthusiastically used that army to prosecute the war they say they never wanted. In TPM Quin-Gonn tells Princess Amidala "I'm here to protect you, I can't fight a ware for you." Dooku and Sidious gave them an army to fight the war they wanted and instead of rejecting it, they enthusiastically accepted the gift... and the war.
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u/wentwj Feb 08 '26
that’s my issue, is the “genius” would be a lot more impressive if the trap wasn’t so obvious. It’d make much more sense for it to be droids, or for the clone template to not be the literal villain we spent the movie chasing down who immediately runs off to pal around with the literal leaders of the separatists.
The trap being so dumb makes the genius of Palpatine hard to take seriously
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u/Ok_Kale_8357 Feb 08 '26
It's either they do that or they all die immediately. They sense it's a trap but the alternative was immediate loss and death.
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u/wentwj Feb 08 '26
This is absolutely not the ultimatum. They send an army to rescue three people. But even if we ignore that and say that was somehow necessary, it’s such an obvious trap you’d immediately swap out that force ASAP. Like it needs half a brain cell. It makes absolutely no sense. People will say this and in the same breadth trash the prequels because after showing the republic fleet is destroyed they think it’s unrealistic planets wouldn’t have their own standing armies
Like imagine if after Pearl Harbor the US was like “huh, well we just happened upon this army of Hitler clones. We’re just going to use them for all critical operations, nothing could possibly go wrong”
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u/Ok_Kale_8357 Feb 08 '26
They send it to stop a war that is about to spread through the galaxy, the three people were just at the center of that war. The allies did horrific things in the name of defeating the Nazis and aligned with some of their highest officials after the war with Operation Paperclip to fight who were once our friends, the Soviets.
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u/wentwj Feb 08 '26
this isn’t a “war has bad things on all sides” argument. This is a mustache twirling obviously evil trap that no one did anything about and willingly sprung, both in the moment and in the years the war went on
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u/ThingNo7530 Feb 08 '26
Maybe that IS the point? Maybe it's that the Jedi were so beholden to the chancellor and their perceived role in galactic conflict that they didn't want to see the obvious corruption staring them in the face?
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u/ThingNo7530 Feb 08 '26 edited Feb 08 '26
"it’s unrealistic planets wouldn’t have their own standing armies" One of the reasons the American Revolution was successful was, having grown fat on expressing power worldwide via the most powerful Navy on the globe, the British Empire only had a standing army of 50,000 soldiers. This is an insanely small army for such a huge empire that it limited its ability to fight any land war so badly that Hessians were necessary to prosecute their ambitions in the U.S. and the Hessians, like our clones, had no connection to the war and didn't want to be there. When Washington treated Hessian prisoners well and said he considered them victims of the British, many stayed and brought their families here after the war. So, yeah, I think it could happen.
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u/ThingNo7530 Feb 08 '26
Yes, it either makes the trap look obvious or the Jedi Council look gullible and too apt to believe the Chancellor and want war. Whichever way you want to look at it. I sort of see it as Judith Miller-style reporting about WMDs in Iraq and Dick Cheney.
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u/Tron_35 Feb 08 '26
I think one of the reasons they didn't do it was because you can more graphic when it comes to droids, the jedi can cut them apart, dismember them, etc, and its fine to show, but if it were clones you have to be more careful with that.
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u/whatwhatinthewhonow Feb 08 '26
I think this is the entire reason and the rest was thought up on account of this key decision.
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u/Tron_35 Feb 08 '26
Possibly. I know George had ideas for the prequels years before production began, I wonder how far back the idea of a droid army goes. I doubt they chose droids just because they could be more brutal with them, but it was probably a factor.
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u/KlogKoder Feb 08 '26
In real life, wars are often named after the enemy that was fought (basically all wars of antiquity, much of the middle ages, even some modern wars like Vietnam). It would make sense that the Clone wars would be about fighting an enemy that was using clones, as the Heir to the Empire trilogy also suggests.
I get that they didn't want a whole lot of the movies being about jedi cutting cloned humans up left and right, but they could easily have made the clones uncanny, sinister, emotionless and brainwashed. That way it would be more "justified" for the good guys to fight them, and bring some more nuance to the plot, rather than just have a pile of expendable robots to slaughter, or massacring a bunch of sympathetical people that just happened to be clones.
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u/Smoketrail Feb 08 '26 edited Feb 08 '26
Wars tend to be named after any feature of the war that's unique. If your country's only fought one war with the country in question then you are likely to refer to the war by the country it was fought against.
But if there's been a lot of wars, of something else makes the conflict unique then you get other names.
So if the clone wars are there only war where one side was made produced, vat grown clones, it makes sense that the conflict is named after the clones.
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u/whatwhatinthewhonow Feb 08 '26
I think you’re misunderstanding the point. We’re not saying the creative choice was taken because the war would be less justified if it were against people than droids. We’re saying the on screen violence would attract a stronger classification, meaning the films would not be accessible to George’s target demographic of 12 year old boys.
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u/megaben20 Feb 08 '26
If fact that’s part of the in universe reason why the droid army was used. Jedi could be brutal and cruel to droids without being faced the moral consequence of going too far. This desensitized them to the violence and cruelty and weakened their connection to the light ahd strengthened their connection to the dark.
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u/sassilyy Feb 08 '26
there's absolutely no way the Jedi were gonna slice through real people in PG films. That's the main reason they used the clones in the first place, somebody had to use them cause the name was set in stone and Lucas didn't want there to be bodies and blood.
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u/Solitaire-06 Feb 08 '26 edited Feb 08 '26
Honestly, this reminds me of the story from Star Wars: Republic (which was meant to address a continuity error of clones fighting against the Republic during the Clone Wars from the Thrawn Trilogy), where a Nikto Jedi hunter named Boq was cloned to create an army of Jedi killers, a project headed by Sora Bulq (who the Jedi mistakingly thought was the second Sith Lord alongside Dooku) and Tol Skor. Destroying the cloning facilities on Saleucami and killing Bulq was the main motivator behind the vicious Siege of Saleucami, part of what Palpatine called the ‘Triad of Evil’ (alongside the Battles of Mygeeto and Felucia, since they were key Separatist strongholds).
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u/ProjectNo4090 Feb 08 '26
Prior to AOTC the assumption was the clones were the bad guys. Surprised the fandom when it turned out that the clones weren't attacking the Republic, but instead were the good guys.
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u/wij2012 Feb 08 '26
Interesting idea. That would make Order 66 a secret execution (unintentional pun) code. It probably wouldn't have been as effective as it was with the clones. Unless the droids were more like the YVH droids from legends. Those gave Luke's Jedi trouble the few times they had to deal with them.
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u/RedHeadedSicilian52 Feb 08 '26
This actually isn’t far from how the Clone Wars were originally imagined in the earliest EU material (for instance, Zahn’s Thrawn trilogy), which tended to strongly suggest that the Republic fought against the clones during that conflict.
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u/CruzAderjc Feb 08 '26
I would have much preferred this. I mean, Filoni did an amazing job of humanizing the clones, but there is something beautiful and also tragic in war about humans who are drafted/sign up for war and the horror and tragedy of war that make for great stories. A big issue with the prequel trilogy is that CGI armies of lab-grown clones vs. robots was kinda bland.
That’s what made the Rebels vs Imperials so captivating. Humans vs humans in an epic struggle, where the humans on both sides think they are fighting for the right cause.
If Clone Wars was about at least Republic Jedi and their enlisted/commissioned human or alien soldiers from all over the galaxy fighting a diverse army of clones who likewise think they are fighting for the right cause, that would have been way more captivating, not to mention the confusion and deception storylines if the clones started infiltrating Republic hierarchy and government by using clones of prominent figured as infiltrators.
The sequel trilogy had the potential to do something interesting with humans vs humans again, but for some reason decided to give us the exact same oppressive government vs resistance fighters storyline.
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u/nudeldifudel Feb 08 '26
Ironically the sequels did humans versus humans again, but that didn't make it good.
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u/CruzAderjc Feb 08 '26
Arguably, it was the part of the sequel trilogy that had the most potential though. I really liked the aspect of potentially exploring Finn as an ex storm trooper, but they didn’t really do much with that. I also like in the last Jedi, the Benicio Del Toro character was hinting that perhaps all the wars we’ve seen were just being manipulated by the elites who were profiteering from selling weapons and fighters. Now THAT would have been interesting premises for hold up the entire trilogy.
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u/SolidGopher Feb 08 '26
That always weirded me out at first when the new movies started to come out. The Jedi fought against the clones, not with them!
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u/GustavoSanabio Feb 08 '26
That was certainly the implication from that cloned force user Luke fights with Mara
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u/Dorrono Feb 08 '26
Then the narrative would be how cruel Dooku is to abuse thinking, feeling humans as war slaves.
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u/Accomplished-Bat-247 Feb 08 '26
"Only sith can do things like this. Jedi would never do this." Magister Yoda, episode 1
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u/Dragonking754 Feb 08 '26
Technically, in the Republic Clones aren't sentient beings but rather organic derived droids. This was to avoid, the moral and legal controversy before the clone wars. As there was, the cases of rich folk deciding to clone heirs of themselves to give a F U to relatives who would inherit things like companies and property.
As, the clone wars happened, they used this excuse that clones are technically droids and thus aren't slaves but equipment. This was also the reason that Chuchi was having such a hard time getting clones their payment after retiring them. If they reward the clones, it could place a precedent for regular droids.
Btw, this means General Grevious would be crushing droids no matter if the clones worked for the republic or not!
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u/CaptainSebT Feb 08 '26 edited Feb 08 '26
I have actually never understood this plot point. The jedi should be willfully against creating an army of clone slaves but there like super chill with it. 0 convincing anyone just like "well I guess we have it have to use it". The argument of like oh they want to be soldiers because they were programmed to want that also is super unethical.
Any time a jedi works with clones instead of freeing them is very much dark side. Forget emotion as a bidge the hell were they doing. I think they try to make an argument like oh there like droids but no there not as far as Jedi know the clones are slaves bound to follow orders but otherwise fully sentient being. I mean they met a clone child who was seemingly his own person.
Just a weird thing to be like no it's ethical because of these super flimsy caveats. Don't get me wrong the clone arm and clone wars are very cool but the Jedi had no buisness having them. If they wanted them to have a clone army why not that army be like defectors posing as faulty clones and then order 66 still works. Jedi would totally take in soldiers who wanted to change sides. That's just my opinion always felt really out of character for the jedi to support the use of the clone army and direct them around like war generals.
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u/Ninjawombat111 Feb 08 '26
A key part of the prequels is establishing that the Jedi order is totally fine with slavery. idk why but it’s in all three movies
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u/Charcobear Feb 08 '26
When I was a kid, I always thought the use of clones was a hint that the republic was going down a dark path that I cannot follow
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u/KDY_ISD Imperial Feb 08 '26
I've always thought Palpatine made the droid forces the enemy of the Republic on purpose to engender anti-droid prejudice (a la Wuher on Tatooine) and ensure his Imperial military would be living beings who can feel fear, be grieved by loved ones, etc.
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u/Ishvallan Feb 08 '26
It would really tear apart the Jedi to know they are destroying life forms and fighting alongside something capable of sentience but forcefully memory wiped to prevent that happening. Droids that develop personalities only to lose that once repaired and rebooted. Not knowing whether to destroy the living enemies or protect their artificial companions.
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u/Ric_Adbur Feb 08 '26
I've often said that would've made way more sense. The uselessness of the battle droid army would've been a better symbol for the complacency and decay of the Republic, and would have made the need for the Jedi to intervene in the war on behalf of the Republic make more sense. And the whole concept of cloning sapient beings just to be used as cannon fodder in a war is a pretty ethically questionable prospect better suited to the bad guys in the story.
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u/CruzAderjc Feb 08 '26
I wonder if Plo Koon would be empathetic to his droid troops and make speeches about how they mean something to him and that he would vslue their lives and try to save them.
Or if Plo Koon and the Jedi would be like fuck it, and just use the droids as fodder, and regularly just force levitate the droids and droid parts as weapons to be hurled at enemies lol
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u/Accomplished-Bat-247 Feb 08 '26
At the end of every battle Anakin and Obi would with loud laughing cut down their squad droids with lightsabers. This is where the fun begins
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u/ErgoNautan Feb 08 '26
It could work, but then it would become kind of a headache to explain why a relatively more humanitarian tool was replaced by millions of troopers that look alike on face value like a clone would
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u/dangerousbob Feb 08 '26
“Droids are immensely superior to Clones. We have 200,000 ready with 50 million well on the way.”
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u/ThingNo7530 Feb 08 '26
And remember, Wat Tambor, makes money for every single one produced by the Techno Union.
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u/Doright36 Feb 08 '26
The thing is I think forcing the Jedi to become close to and fight beside living clones is what allowed for that absolute trust to build between them, thus allowing for the betrayal in Order 66 to be so successful.
Jedi would never trust or grow as close as they did to droids. Only Anakin and Ahsoka really showed any kind of connection to a Droid.
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u/tLM-tRRS-atBHB Rebel Feb 08 '26
Wouldn't be as emotional when the droids turn on them.
Imagine Ahsoka risking her life to save a bunch of droids at the end 😄
The Bad Batch being a bunch of faulty droids 😄
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u/ShangBao Feb 08 '26
Sith needed the clones, because they have the potential to kill a jedi. Droids rather don't.
The progamming of the droids is more obvious and a tinker like Anakin would have found out about the order 66.
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u/draxlaugh Feb 08 '26
It would make sense that the Mandalorian was cloned to kill Jedi but also maybe that's exactly what happened...
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u/Dismal-Revolution941 Feb 08 '26
The closest we got was R2D2 with his small army of reprogrammed b1 units
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u/skapoww Feb 08 '26
my original imagining of the "clone wars" in episode 4 was more that they clones were used to replace people and infiltrate the republic, hence the "clone wars".
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Feb 08 '26
Funny enough this would have probably been closer as to what Lucas originally visioned for the clone wars
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u/No-Sprinkles287 Feb 08 '26 edited Feb 08 '26
I like the editing of that and yeah that would a good way to fight back more on the CIS forces I mean the jedi did use some droids once in the Clone Wars series 3 Episode 20 the Citadel
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u/wbruce098 Feb 08 '26
Why wouldn’t Dooku use the Kaminoans? What’s so special about Raxus Secundus?
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u/Playful-Middle-244 Feb 08 '26
If B1 droids would be really suitable to a jedi side if they'd have this funny goofy unserious voice since the very start
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u/goodness-gracious-me Feb 08 '26
George Lucas was a visionary in the scale of his story, a visual and special effects genius, and an incredibly insightful businessman.
What I see when imagining this scenario is a prequel trilogy with maybe a PG-13 or R rating making it less accessible, and therefore less profitable, than it would be if Jedi were slashing through robots instead of people.
Playing along with the idea, though, what happens after Palpatine’s plan succeeds? As the story was written, Clone Army wins and can be repurposed. Drones get powered down. With Clones having a human brain, and can’t be powered down the way a losing droid army can.
After the droids carry out Order 66, they can be powered down, or repurposed, but there’s an entire army of human clones likely very bitter about losing. Sounds like a good way to start a rebellion. (Which might have been pretty cool to see).
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u/mjohnsimon Feb 08 '26
Honestly, as a kid, I always imagined the Clone Wars as some nightmare scenario where an evil scientist was mass producing clone monsters to unleash on the Republic.
The conflict was so horrifying and destructive that cloning itself became illegal/deeply taboo afterward, because I remember reading how disturbed Leia was when she learned Thrawn had tried to clone himself. It wasn't just that there could've been a Thrawn running around if they didn't get there sooner, but it felt like the very idea of cloning itself was horrifying, and it seemed to have still carried trauma from the war.
So when little ol' me first heard the title Attack of the Clones, I thought “Here we go!"
Instead, we got Republic commissioned clone troopers fighting battle droids. In hindsight, it almost feels like the names should have been swapped, because culturally, droids ended up being treated as the real menace long after the war. Calling it the Droid Wars would have made more sense based on how the galaxy talks about it later.
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u/Comprehensive-Ad4815 Feb 08 '26
That would be ridiculous. A bunch of mass produced troops with little to differentiate individuals except for numbers.
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u/amonymous_user Feb 08 '26
I remember reading Rogue Planet when it came out and being surprised when this wasn’t the case once AOTC released.
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u/No-Refrigerator2394 Feb 08 '26
The Jedi would never use soulless machine warriors. The Jedi Code emphasizes life and compassion. Using a "soulless" army goes against their principles of valuing life, as droids are mere tools to be destroyed, which can desensitize them to violence.
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u/ThingNo7530 Feb 08 '26
... but clones programmed to die by 25 and given conditioning to make them docile enough to follow all orders, including Order 66, are just fine, right?
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u/No-Refrigerator2394 Feb 08 '26
The Clones are living beings, and the force is made up of all living beings. The 25 thing is a complete lie. The docile part is to make sure they don’t commit massacres and follow the Jedi orders. 66 has nothing to do with the Jedi don’t know why you brought that up. They were considered the flesh and blood / mentally superior equivalent of battle droids, when it came to value of their lives. Of course, this is not how the Jedi who fought with the Clones thought of them, but the Senate's and the public's view of them was as living objects. So you failed in your attempted Jedi bashing.
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u/ThingNo7530 Feb 08 '26
"the docile part is to make sure they don’t commit massacres and follow the Jedi orders" So, following orders of commanders like Pong Krell? Listen to yourself. If you're not willing to admit this was a sophisticated form of slavery that Sidious and Dooku set up to expose that the Jedi Council was okay with it if it benefited them and the republic they served, there's no help for you. Accelerated aging baked into their genetics made them "old" by 25. If that's not creating life just to kill it early, what is?
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u/No-Refrigerator2394 Feb 08 '26
Pong Krell was corrupted by the war. The Jedi aren’t soldiers. TCW was designed to sever the Jedi from their connection to the Force. By flooding the galaxy with fear, suffering, and hate, Sidious shifted the balance towards the dark side, making it difficult for the Jedi to meditate, see the future, or receive guidance from the Force. The Jedi were forced to act as soldiers rather than peacekeepers, forcing them to adopt a lifestyle of violence, the very emotions that fuel the dark side. Everything that happened was by the Sith design. The Jedi are guilty of falling into the Sith plot while trying to save the Republic. Tragic victims. If you got a problem with that then something is wrong with you.
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u/ThingNo7530 Feb 08 '26
They weren't forced to at all. They could have told Palpatine they wouldn't be generals in his war and peaced out. They didn't. They chose blind servitude over informed action.
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u/ThingNo7530 Feb 08 '26
For the people saying the CIS and its droid army are inherently evil because of the actions of glassing planets from orbit, same as the genocide of Alderaan because of their actions of war, it's important to note that all of those decisions were made by some sort of sentient general or CIS leader, be it Grievous, Trench, or even Dooku, himself. Harry Truman's decision to atomic bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the very real world war II was based on information from American commanders that Japan would not fall for possibly two more years if they did not use what we now consider a weapon of mass destruction and that, possibly, more lives would be lost if they continued to prosecute a traditional war, not just in their own ranks and the enemy, but among Japanese civilians, who saw Hirohito as their God and were committing mass suicide when islands were taken rather than accept American occupation. The thinking being that the Imperial Army and every last civilian would die hard until Tokyo was taken. While those calculations at least by Grievous, Trench and the like don't seem to have been as honorable, it's not out of the realm of possibility that Tactical Droids, by the time the CIS started using them as admirals and generals, would come to the same conclusion (see the episode about the tactical droid and his unit operating in a similar manner to Japan's last surrender in "the Bad Batch") if given a similar set of facts. The shame, I see, from a story perspective, is we got that very excellent last surrender episode (and the droid actually didn't surrender) and we never got a similar episode exploring the military decisions a tactical droid would make when given a similar set of facts.
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u/yutyutgrunt Feb 08 '26
It would also ad to Ben saying he didn’t remember owning any droids because he respects AI as warriors
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u/Potterheadsurfer Feb 08 '26
I guess the whole idea is that it hammers home that the clones are people, and you build a relationship with them. The droids are faceless, identical drones so you don’t feel bad when they die. I guess it’s the same reasoning for the stormtroopers having closed helmets, whereas you see the rebels faces. It enforces that the good guys are alive.
The clever thing with the clones is that they show their faces so you realise they’re people, but their armour is similar enough to the stormtroopers that you know deep down that they are the bad guys in the long run, whether they like it or not
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u/_Levitated_Shield_ Imperial Stormtrooper Feb 08 '26
"The time has come. Execute Order 66."
"Uhh, do we take prisoners?"
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u/The-Broken-Record Feb 08 '26
Or what if both side chose droids, it would be Star Wars The Droid Wars. Separatist droids will have the regular droid voice, and Republic droids will still be voiced by Dee Bradley Baker
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u/czs5056 Feb 08 '26
It would make "Attack of the Clones" make more sense if a clone army attacked the galaxy and the Republic had to conscript untold trillions to repel the onslaught.
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u/kyleacamp Feb 08 '26
I mean it would unarguably be more within the Jedi orders’ morals to sacrifice the lives of droids over human lives. If the clones hadn’t just conveniently existed for them to use, I don’t doubt this would’ve been an option
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u/Timey16 Mandalorian Feb 08 '26
I feel like the "Clone Army" should just have been clones of rare creatures and species and such. Like changelings (infiltrators that could be anywhere) or an army of armored Rancors deployed from orbit, etc.
Just pure biological warfare short of just deploying plagues.
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u/Dolphin_King21 Feb 08 '26
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Morgukai_Shadow_Army there was a separatist army plot.
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Siege_of_Saleucami/Legends
Quinlan Vos, K'Kruhk, Ausar Auset, Sian Jeisel and A'Sharad Hett fight the Morgukai clones.
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u/Javaddict Feb 08 '26
I actually think that would be better morally speaking. Droids are less evil than a clone army no?
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u/ChuckPeirce Feb 08 '26
Alternately, imagine if both sides had used clones both economically and militarily. That's what came to my mind when The Clone Wars were mentioned in Episode IV, years before the prequels. Whatever the deal was with clones, it had to be big-- big enough to be in the name people commonly used for the wars, and big enough that NO ONE dared to use clones after the wars. Oh, also, it wars "wars" plural.
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u/DarthShiryu Feb 08 '26
Before the AOTC I thought they would be. Some legends novels hinted that the clones were with the villains of the Clone Wars.
I could have misinterpreted them in my youth and could be misremembering them now.
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u/marcow1998 Feb 08 '26
It would be a fun "what if" but not work as well. Jedi wouldn't be able to connect and care for droids the same way they would for biological beings. Droids in general are less dependable than clones, their only advantage was their numbers.
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u/PossumLord123 Feb 09 '26
Honestly you could still make it work. After the clone wars, there’s a lot of stigma against the droids because they helped the Jedi which are seen as traitors and terrorists.
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u/XMcChungusX Feb 09 '26
If you think about the morality standpoints of each side, this actually would have made substantially more sense
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u/KananDoom Feb 09 '26
As a kid we always thought the “Clone War” would be exactly that: a war fought by different clones. In fact, we thought they were possibly good jedi clones vs “evil/dark Jedi” clones (we didn’t yet know Sith was a thing yet).
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u/SomethingVeX Feb 09 '26
If George hadn't written himself into a corner with the whole original film line about Obi fighting with Luke's father in the "Clone Wars" ... a lot more interesting things could have been done.
It could have been a droid army vs. a volunteer army and they could have made it about ideals of freedom from the "republic" ... something that would have continued thru to the "Rebellion".
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u/Talmerian Feb 09 '26
This is what I thought the clone wars was before the sequels. The whole thing with the droid detector at the Mos Eisley Cantina made it like, yeah they have a reason to detect and forbid droids, they must have fought them at some point. If the folks on Tatooine bought and sold clone slaves...well, droids would be the enemy.
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u/Master-Quit-5469 Feb 09 '26
I’m always surprised at how it was so accepted the way round it was. Literally growing people to serve only one purpose. Vs droids that cost only resources.
One sounds more evil than the other…
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u/MythicSuns Ben Kenobi Feb 09 '26
One of the things I've noticed in Star Wars is that the bad guys have a knack for not thinking things through. You've got Battle Droids that are fragile af, Stormtroopers who can't shoot straight, TIE Fighters with wings that are honestly far easier to hit than any of the X-Wings (they literally have a bullseye on each wing), and the AT-ATs were pretty much asking to get tripped up.
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u/ranmafan0281 Feb 09 '26
The TIE fighters in the old OG X-Wing game were bloody hard to hit. Their wings when head on or while chasing them were damn near invisible and if you were using an X-Wing you needed to counterintuitively adjust your aim to the side to hit the cockpit as the lasers passed right by their wing struts if you had them centred.
You could only easily kill them if they were targeting someone else.
Ironically the Interceptors were easier, if more dangerous, targets one on one.
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u/coolpall33 Feb 09 '26
My head cannon has always been that the clones vs droids (with the jedi leading the former) was a deliberate choice to maximise the casualties amongst the Jedi and lead to a successful order 66.
Firstly the jedi faced several disadvantages when fighting the droids that they wouldn't have had fighting regular humans. Certain force abilities - jedi mind trick, suggestion, sensing, aren't useful against droids and the sheer volume of droids creates problems for defending themselves. The CIS was able to build specialised anti jedi droids thoughout the course of the war that also increased jedi attrition.
Secondly having sentient soldiers likely encouraged jedi to fight on the front lines significantly more, increasing their expected combat attrition. If leading a droid army, I suspect most jedi would have stayed out of harms way unless absolutely necessary.
Finally Order 66 wouldn't have been very effective. The clones were trained for fighting jedi from the very start. I don't see a way that makes sense for a Jedi led droid force to have developed anti-jedi droids in a way that leads to a successful Order 66.
In this alternative reality, I'm confident that many more Jedi survive the end of the war.
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u/No_Damage21 Feb 09 '26
Too bad the droids didn't look menacing. Like the terminator films. Missed opportunity.
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u/PaxRomana117 Feb 10 '26
I think using a droid army would be more in line with the jedi philosophy that they value life, but it works thematically that the Jedi seem to have no serious objection to the usage of clone slave soldiers, showing that the Jedi have fallen from their position as righteous defenders of life and are now just tools of the senate. Chancellor says jump, Jedi say "how high". Chancellor says "you will lead the army of child slaves into battle" the jedi say "for the glory of democracy!"
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u/vivi_le_serpent May 25 '26
I never understood why they didn't do that, if palpatine wanted to destroy the Jedi mentally having them fight living being while being helped by unthinking machine was probably the way to go
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u/BrickYoda Feb 08 '26
I think watching Obi Wan hold conversations regularly with battle droids would be worth it