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Despite the legacy the prequel 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Star Wars movies left us with and all of its issues, there is one redeeming quality that emerged from these cinemati👍c dumpster fi🐬res of CGI and that’s the Clone Troopers.
Introduced in Star Wars: Attack Of The Clones, Clone Troopers were a great addition to the canon and an interesting precursor to the Stormtroopers. For those that haven’t absorbed the hours of spin-off shows and untold pages worth of lore in the books, the Clones just seem to just magically disappear in the series only to be replaced by Stormtroopers, but what bec💦ame of the Clone Army?
Are Stormtroopers Still Clones?
First things first, no Stormtroopers are not clones. There are some diꩲfferences between the modern bucket heads and the clones from the Old Republic.
The two most noticeable things of course are the armor and the fact that the Clones of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the Old Republic are all visually identical copies of the Bounty Hunter Jango Fett with only minor variations. In comparision, Storm Troopers are made up of a mix of mercenaries, volunteers, prison conscripts, and mostly kidnapped and indoctrinated children by the time the First Order rolls around.
The training between the two armies also differs greatly, with Clone Troopers being trained basically from birth to be an extremely efficient fighting force. Whilst modern Stormtrooper conscripts vary in their effectiveness depending on the quality of training and equipment, with most being pretty us🔯eless unless thrown at aও target in bulk or given intense specialization to create small elite death squads.
What Became Of The Clone Army?
You would think having an apparently limitless supply of cloned soldiers willing to throw themselves into any meat grinder across the galaxy would be the ult🦹imate weapon. But it had en🅠ough flaws for the Sith to replace it with their own specially indoctrinated army of fascists.
Whilst they were the perfect way for Darth Sidious and his cronies to execute Order 66 and wipe out almost every Jedi in the galaxy in one fell swoop, Clones were phased out surprisingly quickly. In the span of a generation, there are almost no traces of them left, despite their impact on billions of lives in the galaxy.
How Where The Clone Troopers Phased Out?
The phasing out of the Clone Troopers is an event that was first mentioned in the original 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Star Wars Battlefront campaign, as the narrator states that after the war, it was difficult to replenish the heavy casualties sustained fighting the Separatists and so regular people were used to replenish the ranks. Then over time, these replacements became the main force and the Clones were naturally transitioned out.
However, if you follow the side canon, specifically Star Wars: The Bad Batch and the 2008 Clone Wars series, there’s a bit more detail about the transition process and the decisions made to get﷽ rid ofౠ the clones from the new Imperial Army.
The Empire's Plan For Clones
Though they weren't all tossed out en masse at the first convenience, the phasing out of the Clones happened pretty quickly, with regular conscripts taking up the majority of the brunt of future conflict in the Empire almost immediately after the end of the War. Those leftover Clones still alive and of distinguished service from 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the Separatist Wars were used as the first generation of Imperial 🧸Stormtroopers, made pliable to their new role as the iron heel of the Emperor on the necks of the Galaxy thanks to behavioral modification chips that were installed in all clones from birth.
This allowed them to carry out Order 66 and other questionable requests from the higher-ups, with those refusing or bypassing their chips being executed as traitors. But Admiral Tarkin and Vice Admiral Rampart began to outwardly question the usefulness of clone soldiers in their new plans for a grand Imperial Army as they were expensive and reliant on a stable relationship with the Kaminoans. Their production was eventually canceled and replaced with a more cost-effective conscription process.
Why Were The Clone Troopers Phased Out?
Aside from the high cost of their creation and the over-reliance on the Kaminoans, Clone Troopers also were much harder to control, despite their inhibition chips. During the Wars, their Jedi generals had en♑couraged individuality amongst their ranks, which whilst manifesting as▨ a colorful and diverse fighting force, mant that they were no longer the mindless, unquestionable, uniform machine the Emperor desired.
There was also the fact that aside from being super pricey to create, and able to overcome the behavioral control chips (with some modifications), they also didn’t live that long. Clone Troopers aged twice as fast as humans, so their longevity as an active fighting force and permanent "Peacekeepers" fell into doubt. Throw on top of that the fact that the last stable genetic sample of the now-dead Jango Fett had also begun to degrade and with no donor seemingly available for future progeny, a timer was forever on the Clone Troopers shelf life.
So the contracts between the Kaminoans were dissolved and to put a final nail in the coffin, the Empire also opened fire on the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Kamino cloning facilities to prevent an army that could contest them in the future from being created. The resident Cloners willing to serve the needs of the new Emperor were inducted into the Empire, with members of the Kaminoan species that refused being rarely seen, if ever. With all opposition to their dominance of t🍬he galaxy removed and a massive drop in the need for casualty replacement at the end of the war, the new Stormtrooper conscription service went into full swing.
Eventually, the clones that remained alive at the end of the galactic conflict and still serving in the Empire's Army would be quietly retired or given instructor roles. Thereafter, the entire galaxy soon began echoing to the thudding jackboots of the Emperor's Stormtroopers.
Post-War Clones
Though they’re seemingly nowhere in the more recent Star Wars series, there were a few more brief appearances of the Kamino clones in the Imperial Army. For example, Purge Troopers featured a final batch of young male clones and were primarily used by Darth Vader to help him hunt out the last remaining Jedi in the galaxy in the extended canon. There’s also Bobba Fett, the last surviving genetic copy of Jango Fett who’s off on Tattooine building his own Mafia family.
A few notable former Clone Troopers are also pretty active in the side stories of Star Wars, such as Captain Rex, Wolffe, and others who spent their accelerated growth-induced twilight years living out on backwater planets and fighting in skirmishes for the Rebellion against their formal 🌱Imperial masters. The influence of Kamino cloning technology is also still ꦺfelt wide and far across the Star Wars canon as it was also used by Darth Sidious to create multiple copies of himself in an effort to transfer his consciousness into them and achieve a pseudo-immortality by the end of Rise of Skywalker.
Cloning is something that first appeared with the Clone Troopers, and it never quite left Star Wars afterward. With how useful it can be for conjuring up answers to plot holes or bringing back old characters, it probably will never disappear completely.