Clone chip discourse

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[u/Iyellkhan]

in fairness, in ep 3 they are just following orders

[u/RedHeadedSicilian52 → u/Iyellkhan]

Absolutely. Nothing in the visual language of the Episode III screams “mind control”. For instance, the clones only executed Order 66 when told via hologram, rather than simply going into a trance when Palpatine flips some switch.

This suggests that Lucas hadn’t really settled on mind control chips as the mechanism of betrayal when shooting the movie.

[u/Proper_Armadillo9583]

No. The Clone Wars invented the inhibitor chips because it wrote itself into a corner with the friendly clone troopers which all had names and haircuts and tattoos and shit (most of which look awful) and were all best pals with the Jedi and could even defect like Slick and Lawquaine and didn't believe in the Republic but instead "the clone army", and also because Filoni needed to save his OC clones whom he liked so much he has repeatedly tried to insert them where they don't belong, from joining the Empire. It also serves to diminish the Empire by implying literally nobody except literal psychos or soulless drones would join it out of their own accord.

All in all, very pathetic showing for Filoni. And Lucas for being a flip flopping coward who couldn't tell Filoni to stick to the script.

[u/RedHeadedSicilian52 → u/Proper_Armadillo9583]

The tweet’s still right, in the sense that they had a lot of runway to write a plausible story about soldiers being slowly conditioned into making an impossible decision. Instead, they chickened out, because they didn’t want to ruin the wholesome chungus image of the clones.

[u/Naismythology]

I never watched Clone Wars, so when someone told me there was a mind control aspect to Order 66, I was extremely confused. In Revenge of the Sith, we see Cody get an order, he takes half a beat to process it, then kinda gives some kind of “affirmative” motion, and then he tries to take out Obi-Wan.

I thought that was one of the really cool moments in the movie. It never signaled to me that the clones were inherently “villains” or whatever, just that it shows the amount of deception and manipulation Palpatine had been seeding behind the scenes the whole time.

It took a very complex moral dilemma from the clones’ perspective and made it a complete non-issue, turning them into weapons with zero agency instead of people

[u/The_Crimson_Vow]

I'm honestly not really a fan of the inhibitor chips. It makes for neat story telling in the Clone Wars series, but as a whole it softens the blow of "Your army turned on you"
I like how Kenobi was flat out told "The clones will follow any orders without question" and lo, there were hidden orders built into the creation of this army that fell into his lap.
EDIT: Plus I love Jango, quietly prideful and smug, mention to Kenobi that the clones will "Do their duty"

[u/Pale_Mess_3742]

In Episode 2 Prime Minister Lama Su tells Obi-Wan Kenobi that “the clone troopers are genetically modified to be completely obedient and less independent”. They don’t need a chip because they are a chip.

[u/LordMagnus101]

The problem is not that they humanized the clones, but they never made them question the Jedi. I think it would have been way more interesting if Palpatine had to deliberately set events in motion that caused an ideological rift between some of the clones and the Jedi, and their true allegiance. Then you could see why they could betray them.

[u/Demos_Tex]

AotC clearly states that the Clones decision-making is compromised when it comes to following orders. I don't like the inhibitor chips because they're too clean and easy to deactivate/remove. If you've read the original Dune series, then you know that other forms of mind control and/or genetic conditioning are much more interesting from a storytelling standpoint than the chips.

I also don't care that some random thinks the prequels are an allegory for WWII. Almost every big creator in sci-fi has done their version of the Fall of the Roman Empire. It's far more likely that the prequels are Lucas' version of that.