QUOTE (Casual Fan @ May 18 2005, 06:54 PM)
As has been pointed out here before, by the time AOTC ends its pretty much established that Palpatine controls:
1) The clone army
2) The separatist army, which the clone army is fighting
3) The Senate (as per Count Dooku)
Not only that, he seems to have controlled them since the beginning of the movie. He doesn't control the Jedi, but the separatists by themselves seem to be able to handle them.
So WTF? Why doesn't he just take over? It seems that Palpatine established his power offscreen, sometime between TPM and AOTC.
That's really all you need to know about the "plot".
1) The clone army
2) The separatist army, which the clone army is fighting
3) The Senate (as per Count Dooku)
Not only that, he seems to have controlled them since the beginning of the movie. He doesn't control the Jedi, but the separatists by themselves seem to be able to handle them.
So WTF? Why doesn't he just take over? It seems that Palpatine established his power offscreen, sometime between TPM and AOTC.
That's really all you need to know about the "plot".
In defence of George Lucas, this is one part of the plot that is pretty clever and does make sense.
In order to seize control, Palpatine needs 1. The Senate on his side 2. The populace on his side 3. A large army to enforce power once he's in control 4. The Jedi out of the way.
Initially, the Republic was working well enough - there were mutterings about corruption and beaurocracy taking over, but the threats were relatively minor and internal. Under these circumstances it would be nigh on impossible for Palpatine to gain the kind of power he wanted. To do that he needed a powerful, external threat that would give him the excuse to demand "emergency powers". Because no such threat existed, he needed to create one himself - hence the Separatists.
If you've ever read 1984 you'll know that war is a very powerful tool in maintaining control of the home population - people will accept all kinds of privations, indignities and curbs of rights and freedoms in the name of defeating "the enemy". This was key to Palpatine gaining absolute imperial power, since to form an effective powerbase he still needed to convince the populace that the Empire can do a better job than the Republic. Most totalitarian states started off at least initially with a grass-roots support from the general population (the Bolsheviks in Russia, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the Peasant Army in China).
The war gave him the freedom to create and use the clone army - without the war, he never would have been able to create a militia powerful enough to destroy the existing quasi-military froce, the Jedi without raising awkward questions. And, of course the clone army came in handy afterwards too...
The Separatist army would have been no use to him in terms of seizing power on their own, since their goals differed from Palpatine's. Palpy wants absolute power over the galaxy, but the Separatists want independence. If they want out of the Republic, you can be damn sure they'd want nothing to do with the Empire. Only Palpatine and Dooku know "the big picture", since the end result is everyone gets stuffed apart from them. Not many takers for that one, I imagine.
Making the Separatists "the enemy" to the Republic is a masterstroke tactically. Think about it - Palpatine wants control of the galaxy. In his position who do you want to identify and neutralise early on? The people who are likely to cause trouble - those who would want to secede from your Empire, maybe start a rebellion and especially large organisations (the Techo Union, the Trade Federation) who would support the dissidents and give them financial and technological backing. By "winning" the war, the Republic neutralise the Separatists and seriously weaken the organisations that support them, so that they are still useful to Palpatine but not powerful enough to be a threat individually. The war also weakens the Republic to the point where the most powerful force is the Clone Army, and who holds their reins?
For it to work, the one thing neither side must ever know is that they're being manipulated, and by allowing the Jedi to see Jango Fett fighting for the separatists, Dooku risked being found out. It's been said "Jango's a bounty hunter, it was just a job, blah blah", but the woman on Kamino made the comment to Obi-Wan that "we keep him (Jango) here." In other words, there was some kind of ongoing contract situation. Obi-Wan seeing Jango at Genosis should have raised many questions in his mind, "breach of contract" being the least of them.
This post has been edited by Code Red: 19 May 2005 - 03:49 AM