I can't feel for Marrt's heroics because I know he will turn on the Jedi and I know his actions means nothing because his leader is controlling the enemy.
The operative word here being I or rather you.
This is a purely personal stance on your part that has no objective value. You can try all day long to justify why YOU did not like the movies but that does not make them creatively bad.
It has nothing to do with an uncertain outcome unless you really thought Luke wasn't going to blow up the Death Star. The point is that within the confines of the story the outcome is uncertain thus making the characters' struggles more real and applicable to the audience. Their actions have consequences and thus we the audience care about the characters, their actions, their setbacks, and successes.
But you can not have an uncertain outcome in a prequel show. That is impossible by the very definition of a prequel.
But we do know how we got from A to B. We saw it in AOTC and ROTS. The Jedi get the clones, the clones fight the droids, and eventually Palpatine has the clones wipe out the Jedi. What's the point of a Clone Wars TV show or a story like Marrt? Like I said it would have been different had ROTS not come out before the Clone Wars show. I don't think very few people saw the clones as anything but bad guys until the CLone Wars movie and TV show because there was nothing in the two films to suggest otherwise.
I don't see what your problem is. Do you think the movies are so sacred that there is no place for anything other than them to flesh thins out ever? Or do you just think that the authors of every EU thing must obey the movies like a bible and newer write anything that is not first confirmed in them?
The movies obviously could not show the clones human side just as they barely showed the Jedi or anything else. They were for all intents and purposes the family drama of the Skywalker family with the other characters only getting some action if they happen to be needed to support the main cast. The average trooper was completely irrelevant save for being an extra that shoots at stuff.
The series on the other hand has much more time to work with, so they will naturally show the characters in much greater detail. Thus making for a better characterization of the little people. Just becouse the movies do not show something does not mean it can not exist. Nothing in the movies contradicts in any way that the clones might be good people with a human nature.
It just seems to me that you are constantly taking your own views of the show and turning them into blanket statements.
Your posts would make sense if I just substituted the word "Audience" with your name. But as they are, they are worthless and outright false. In fact, me arguing with you over this proves that you are wrong. Since obviously the audience can not agree with you if there are people like me who disagree with you.
Sure they can be human - bad humans, you know like the type who killed Luke's aunt and uncle and a bunch of Jawas and gunned down their former allies many of whom they shot in the back.
Now I feel the need to point out something to you. You don't have to be an evil person to do evil things in the line of duty like that. There was a fine discussion on the subject in the history forum recently. I will see if I can find it for you. Until than, the bottom line is that peer pressure, orders from above and the knowledge that it's better to shoot something that does not shoot back than to explain to Lord Vader why you disobeyed him will make even good people do evil things.
Looking at WW2 as the most recent example. Most Japanese, Germans, Russians and Americans were not monsters yet we have numerous war crimes on all sides of WW2. By your claim, every single soldier participating in those crimes had to be a sociopath. And yet most of them were actually fine church going people who would send letters home to their girlfriend and like to play with puppies.
It's a miracle what ordinary people will do given the right conditions.
Trying to give the clones any type of individuality or humanity is pointless to the overall story. Their role in the story both in the Prequels and Original Trilogy is that of the faceless nameless henchmen of the bad guys.
Becouse you said so? For someone who knows so much about the actual point of the movies you sure can't prove a thing. Perhaps you had dinner last night with mister Lucas and asked him about it? Unless this is the case, you have no authority to tell us and the writers what the point of the cartoon is.
Did anyone care what the Stormtroopers were thinking when they were attacking Hoth? No because they aren't the focal point of the story. They're the unknown Nazis that get obliterated in Raiders of the Lost Ark, the Sheriff of Nottingham's men who get skewered by Robin Hood's arrows, the countless orcs killed in Lord of the Rings.
And yet in the Clone Wars Cartoon Series they are the focal point of the story. It is the story of the Clone Wars and the clones fighting in them. The Jedi are the ones relegated to supporting roles here. In many ways it is the opposite of the movies.
If you are going to have a story about clones who are individualistic and heroic you have to address that at or near the beginning and certainly before the end of their character arc such as when they gun down the Jedi. the problem is there was absolutely nothing in ROTS that shows the clones to be anything more than the bad guys and not tragic figures - that notion only came out after the Clone Wars TV series.
And what exatcly were you expecting to see? I think the topic is perfectly adressed in the game SW Battlefront 2 at the begeaning of the Jedi Temple mission.
See the first minute of this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTbGza2Lkl8
Do you see any hestitation or sense of tragedy here other than the tragedy of the Jedi being killed by those they assumed were their allies? At 0:20 Commander Cody, Obiwan's buddy for years, gets the order and immediately says to his troopers to "Blast him!" which they do right away. Look at 1:22 when they keep shooting the Jedi chick in the back after she has already fallen. Am I suppose to feel sorry for them? But yeah you're right the clones are human. The human traits I see here are deviousness, cowardliness, and treachery - all very human aspects but no tragedy.
They reacted in the same way any professional soldier would. Obey orders now, cry about it later on your own free time. Again look at the WW2 example. Soldiers would routinely perform war crimes on order without hesitation only to crack up later. War does that to a mind, and regardless of what you say they for them that was a real war.
The rest of the world? Sorry but that is laughably presumptious. And the authors are getting a paycheck. "You want me to write a story about clones saving a Wookie orphanage? How much is this going to pay? Sure!"
You are the only person I know of that levies the kind of criticism that you do against the series. On the other hand, all I can find on the net is how well the series is received by the audience. This is further proven by the fact that it is now in it's what 3rd or 4th season.
If the series was as bad as you paint it to be you would think there would be some article, some survey you could link to proving that you are not alone on this one. Therefore I call you out on this. Provide proof or give in.
The clones are fundamentally good men? They're not even men. They were grown from a petri-dish, aged unnaturally, fed who knows what Nazi-esque propaganda in those 10 years, taught only to be a soldier and nothing else, and did I mentioned Palpatine was behind their creation?
And that proves what exactly? That they are somehow inhuman? They are Clones, as in clones of a human (in this case Mandalorian). Just becouse they were grown from a vat does not diminish their humanity. I take it that you are also pro harvesting them for organs if need be to save the "real" human beings.
And I won't even address the notion that if someone was raised with propaganda he becomes subhuman in some way and therefore a mindless mook.
The whole thing is unnatural and even the music is ominous. The only assurances of their complete obedience (which kind of takes away from them being individualistic) comes from the Kamino prime minister who for all we know is in cahoots with Palpatine directly perhaps for a lifetime contract of supplying him with clones. Watch the scene where they killed the Jedi again. Do you still see fundamentally good men when they are gunning down their former allies in the back? Those are not the actions of fundamentally good men.
That scene pretty much is the manager of a factory giving a speech about how good her products are.
They can think creatively, they are immensely superior to droids they are perfect, they are obedient, we are proud of our training programs. It all screams of the same behavior you would rightfully expect from someone who makes her life selling stuff to people. Taking this and turning it into a factual statement about the capabilities of the individual clone would be pretty much like looking at a tv commercial and drawing conclusions from there.
Funny you mention TV tropes. PunchClockVillians - bad guys (not fundamentally good men) who have nothing personal against their enemy, like Mafia hitmen. You're right though perhaps the clones aren't evil, they're just amoral with no principles or standards.
No, they are professional soldiers doing their job fighting for Republic and Chancelor. And if that means killing your friend for the greater good than that is a sacrafice that a soldier must be willing to make. To find a paralel, look at any army that executes deserters or those labeled arbitrarily by command to be traitors. Does that make the soldiers that do the deed evil? Or does it simply make them soldiers fallowing orders and shutting up. Double so if every one of them were to have a face concealing mask that hides emotions but has a microphone inside to let everyone in the whole galaxy hear should he mutter a grump or complaint.
Yep, whole lot of tragedy going on here!
You don't get it becouse for some reason you dislike ever having to characterize with anyone other than the hero. The fact that you can not see the tragedy in there does not mean that there is none, just that you suck at looking.
For some reason of your own, you desperately want the clones to be nothing but flat characters, cardboard cutouts that exist only to add to the background. And when things are not like that, you go into a rage about how it is bad writing. You reject anything that is not according to your norm. You are like the people who rejected abstract art becouse it is not what everyone else is doing. You define good writing as fitting to your taste.
It has become clear to me in the previous days that any attempts at reconciliation and explanation with the community here has failed. I have tried my best. I really have. I pored my heart out trying. But it was all for nothing.
You win. There, I have said it.
Now there is only one thing left to do. Let us see if I can sum up the strength needed to end things once and for all.