The Republic had small planetary militia, but nothing like a standing army.

Even a small volunteer force would have needed months of training and equipping, if not a year or two for the big items like Star Destroyers.

time the Republic did not have. By the time they were ready the Droids would have been on Corusant and in control.

But they were gifted the Clones - a pre made army to match the droids, and ready when needed.

So basically, if Yoda had practiced what he preached, and let Anakin and Obi-Wan fend for themselves on Geonosis even if it might have led to their deaths, which it wouldn't have since they need to be in Episode IV, then the war wouldn't have started there and then there would've been more time to scrounge up an army, which shouldn't be that hard given that most of the thousands of systems in the Republic must have at least some sort of planetary guard and navy on standby.

But then, the very premise of the Clone Wars makes no sense to begin with, so even trying to rationalise what is going on is just an exercise in futility.

... for the fun of it, I'd propose that Palpatine needed his second sock puppet (the first being the droid army) to be trustworthy to the Jedi.

Clones work better than droids for that - droids don't have personalities. Clones do. You can be friends with clones, you can fight with them, share meals with them, bond with them as human beings. And so, the Jedi - who didn't initially trust them - came to believe in them as people and rely on them as friends.

That's the key - the trick Palpatine plays: he creates an army of living, breathing troopers, then hides them behind masks to that they can become symbols. Heroes of the Republic. It all cleverly masks the fact that they're really just droids in a form the Jedi will come to accept, and they're utterly loyal to him.

Seriously, such /wasted/ potential in these stories.

The sad thing is that the Clone Wars as Lucas portrayed them in the prequels was that they were a war without effect. It didn't affect the lives of anyone in the Republic aside from the Jedi (and arguably the clones), Joe Average on Coruscant didn't feel anything of the war, life just went on as usual for him.

I always figured that the clones were the bad guys in the Clone Wars, and that as such the Jedi and millions of conscripted and/or volunteering troops had to go to war, weakening the Republic and its economy as it dragged on and thus facilitating Palpatine's takeover.

But that was clearly too logical for Lucas who instead had to show off his computers could render a thousand robots AND a thousand troopers.

but that was clearly too logical for lucas who instead had to show off his computers could render a thousand robots and a thousand troopers.

amen..

The sad thing is that the Clone Wars as Lucas portrayed them in the prequels was that they were a war without effect. It didn't affect the lives of anyone in the Republic aside from the Jedi (and arguably the clones), Joe Average on Coruscant didn't feel anything of the war, life just went on as usual for him.

 

I always figured that the clones were the bad guys in the Clone Wars, and that as such the Jedi and millions of conscripted and/or volunteering troops had to go to war, weakening the Republic and its economy as it dragged on and thus facilitating Palpatine's takeover.

 

But that was clearly too logical for Lucas who instead had to show off his computers could render a thousand robots AND a thousand troopers.

No more like it was illogical to do so, your really gonna make thousands of droid models? Then hire thousands of stuntmen and extras to fill troopers? Thats illogical and also a logistical nightmare.

No more like it was illogical to do so, your really gonna make thousands of droid models? Then hire thousands of stuntmen and extras to fill troopers? Thats illogical and also a logistical nightmare.

They did it in Braveheart.

Edit: The thousands of stuntmen, not the droids lol

I believe the clone army was needed by the Emperor to wipe out the Jedi.

He or or his associate Jedi Master Cifer Dias had them programed to wipe out the Jedi with special order 66, or whatever that order was that made all the clones turn on the Jedi. The Emperor couldn't have ensured that all in the army would turn on the Jedi if it wasn't a clone army, i think...

They did it in Braveheart.

 

Edit: The thousands of stuntmen, not the droids lol

Yes but Braveheat didn't have the settings that SW had, its wiser(and more logical and less frustrating) to use CGI to create huge and elaborate worlds then building them from scratch. That would take forever, and most likely have a bunch of problems with the props, sets and the like much like when the OT was in production they had problems with props and such. It was better for the OT to use props/models because the scenes that were shot, were not very big compared to the PT scenes.

In the OT you really had small scenes/sets, so props and the like were usable because its not as frustrating(though they still had problems anyway.) With the PT now, they expanded vastly on showing worlds, characters, and species no longer did you just have humans running around but you had other species and such doing their own thing so it makes sense to use CGI to fill that in.

Palpatine/Darth Sidious was the puppet master behind it all.

Sifo-Dyas became a close friend of Master Dooku and the two were both given temporary seats on the Jedi High Council. Gifted with precognition, Master Sifo-Dyas relation with Dooku is unclear, though Grand Master Yoda would later theorize that the Count of Serenno was manipulating his friend. Indeed, immediately after Master Dooku left the Order, Master Sifo-Dyas foresaw that the Republic would face a devastating war and be destroyed. To defend the Republic, Master Sifo-Dyas secretly commissioned a clone army from the cloners of the planet Kamino. Claiming to be a leading member of the High Council while dealing with the cloners, in truth Master Sifo-Dyas had not sat on the body in several years. Whilst Dooku provided funding for the army, neither Dooku or Sifo-Dyas met in person with the Kaminoans, and therefore records remain skewed as to the actual occurrences.

Unknown to Sifo-Dyas throughout this time, Master Dooku had fallen in league with Darth Sidious, Dark Lord of the Sith. Revealing Sifo-Dyas plans to his new Master, Dooku pledged himself to the Sith and began to carryout his Master's bidding.

 

Sifo-Dyas placed an order with the Kaminoans for a Clone Army without the knowledge or approval of the Jedi Council. Darth Tyranus, at the bidding of Darth Sidious, murdered Sifo-Dyas to keep the creation of this army secret from the Jedi and the Republic.

After episode 1, Dooku became Darth Sidious new apprentice once Darth Maul was slain. These whole events described above are all orchestrated by Sidious through Dooku.

Dooku also led the separatist under Sidious command. While Sidious was playing the part of Chancellor Palpatine. He was playing both sides to gain more power and to wipe out the jedi order.

These 2 quotes by these 2 forum members, basically answers the question on why there was a clone army !!!!

The Republic never needed the clone army, without it they would have negotiated a settlement with the separatists; acceding to the Trade Federation's demands about taxation or whatever nonsense.

 

Remember though that Darth Sidious set the whole thing up. Fighting the war with an army of clones next to his alternative of conscription got him huge favour with the population. It helped that he was behind the separatists to begin with and arranged for them to commit horrible war crimes to set the general population against them.

You're forgetting that the army wasn't made for the good of the Republic, it was made for the good of Palpatine.

 

What Palpatine needed was to scare the Senate into giving him emergency powers, and then to legalize an army. You can't conscript a galactic force without word getting out - but you can create a secret clone army.

 

Thus when the army is finally legal, you can immediately demonstrate the effectiveness of putting you in charge - without taking a year of losses (which you then have to explain to the Senate) while the army is being raised.

 

And, of course, you know Jango-clones are going to be OK with killing Jedi, whereas regular soldiers might stop to consider the legitimacy of the order.

No more like it was illogical to do so, your really gonna make thousands of droid models? Then hire thousands of stuntmen and extras to fill troopers? Thats illogical and also a logistical nightmare.

The film Ran would like to have a word with you, it used approximately 1400 extras, each of which had a uniquely crafted suit of samurai armour, and those aren't fast, easy or cheap to make. So if a Japanese director could achieve that in 1985 with a $12 million budget, then George Lucas could achieve even better in 2005 with a $120 million budget.

But hey, that would've forced Lucas to abandon the comfort his chair, his coffee and his two monitors which is how he directed the entire prequel trilogy. The most detached (and lazy) way of film making imaginable on top of putting his actors through the most detached way of acting, in front of very little but blue screen.

Edit: Actually, why should the plot have to bow for the special effects? The special effects exist to serve the story, not the other way around, at no point should the plot deviate from its course because of special effects issues. You basically just confirmed that the plot of the prequels serve purely to guide us from one special effects extravaganza to the next.

I believe the clone army was needed by the Emperor to wipe out the Jedi.

He or or his associate Jedi Master Cifer Dias had them programed to wipe out the Jedi with special order 66, or whatever that order was that made all the clones turn on the Jedi. The Emperor couldn't have ensured that all in the army would turn on the Jedi if it wasn't a clone army, i think...

Sifo-Dyas originally was supposed to be Palpatine himself using the alias "Sido-Dyas", but their was a typo on one of the scripts and Lucas decided he liked it better. They came up with some cop-out about him being a Jedi Master that was under Dooku's influence. This is despite the fact that the clones were ordered in the same year as the events of Episode I, when Maul was Sidious' apprentice and Dooku was still a practicing Jedi Master. But hey, maybe Dooku quit the Jedi, fell to the Dark Side and conned Sifo-Dyas into ordering an entire army in a couple of months.

I cannot figure out why the empire needed a clone army. Seems a little overkill considering how many people they could effectively conscript throughout the galaxy...

Umm...programed since cloning to be loyal to a fault and obey all orders no matter what with no other moral compass..sounds like what every dictator would dream of to me...the population conscripted into service might feel guilt and disobey. Cloned Troops didn't.