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david-talks-sw · 6 months

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"Bring in the flamethrowers!"

The above moment from The Clone Wars gets brought up a lot to illustrate Ki-Adi Mundi or the Jedi's moral decadence, a fall from grace caused by the war.

Figured I'd point out a couple of things in support of Ki-Adi!

1) Simple answer: the situation called for it.

The Geonosians attacking Ki-Adi were:

enemy fighters

with the element of surprise

who could fly and were thus harder to hit with the clones' blasters, hence why more wide-ranging weapons like flamethrowers were called for, as the clones were getting picked off one-by-one.

Time was of the essence, men were dying, Ki-Adi made a choice.

Wanna know what Jedi choose when a Geonosian isn't actively trying to kill them? They save its life (and get praised for it by their peers).

2) In-universe, the Geonosians are assholes.

From Attack of the Clones - The Illustrated Companion, 2002:

"Geonosians are a physically intimidating race conditioned to live and work in caste-segregated hives. The vast majority of Geonosians are subservient to the ruling caste, and throughout Geonosian society, there is evidence of a biologically engineered class system. Some Geonosians have wings, while drones do not. [...] The blind obedience of menial Geonosians makes them an easily exploitable workforce for the upper classes, who have built a highly profitable business manufacturing Battle Droids, Super Battle Droids, and Droideka Droids for the Trade Federation and its allies."

"For unusually intelligent Geonosians unlucky enough to be born into the lower castes, participating in the games provides the only chance they will ever get to escape the misery of their downtrodden lifestyles and the rigid social expectations of the upper classes. Triumph in the arena is often a hollow victory, however; while lower- and middle-class Geonosians may win the right to talk to their superiors, they can never earn their respect."

Okay, so the winged upper class are obviously elitist bastards, but how is that even remotely relevant--

-- oh. But hey, two of them don't have wings! Those are members of the drone caste, and they're all begotten underdogs, so--

"If there is one thing that unites Geonosians of all classes, it is their xenophobia. A traditionally isolationist species, they fear espionage attempts by rivals eager to learn the secrets behind their latest droids."

-- oh. Huh.

Bottom line: yes, they're sentient... but they're xenophobic, have an elitist caste system, and earn their living by forging weapons that melt your insides or blow up planets.

Now sure, this notion has been explored and deconstructed in Star Wars: Rebels...

... and I'm not entirely sure if the quoted info still holds true in current Disney canon (the lore is from 2002, after all), but if you ask me?

On a normal day, ol' Klik-Klak would be actively trying to murder the entirety of the Ghost crew for daring to even step their dirty non-Geonosian feet on his pure red planet.

3) Out-of-universe, the Geonosians are just "bug aliens". Nothing more.

The production team of Attack of the Clones referred to them as the "termite people". The script describes them as "winged creatures" who are heard "chuckling" once Anakin and Padmé are sentenced to a gruesome death. At some point, the storyboard artists considered introducing the Geonosian workers like you would a horror monster.

Hell, the whole Lucas decided to base them on termites is because his house was besieged by them.

They're not people, which is why they're not designed to look like people. They're purposefully dehumanized so that when one of them gets killed by our heroes, it's ethically "okay" and the audience doesn't need to stop and think "oh my God, that's murder!" or "hey! that's racist" whenever a clone calls one of them a "bug."

A similar logic is applied to the stormtroopers, who have face-covering helmets that dehumanizes them.

Functionally, a stormtrooper is a fascist goon, nothing more.

Same goes for the Geonosian. It's a bug alien, that's about it.

4) The flamethrowers were probably just added because they're cool.

Dave Filoni described how the decision to add flamethrowers came up, and it doesn't sound like George had deeper storytelling motives:

"You know, we're going through the tunnel with the Geonosians and George is like: “Yeah, well, here, we'll have the-- the tunnel and the flamethrowers. Yeah. How about that? ‘Bring in the flamethrowers!’ have Ki-Adi Mundi say ‘bring in the flame throwers!’” And it's like “flame—- What? Flamethrowers?!”" - Dave Filoni, “Return to Geonosis” Featurette, 2010

It sounds like he came up with it on the spot.

The flamethrowers aren't indicative of "the moral degradation of Ki-Adi and the Jedi Order." They're likely just in there 'cause they're cool (and if you've played Team Fortress 2, you know that's true)!

At the end of the day, when it comes to the Geonosians, I think that there's a certain irony to how their story ends.

They gleefully created the battle droids that tore the galaxy asunder and the Death Star, a weapon that enables the Empire to commit genocide... but fell victim to genocide themselves, at the hands of an even bigger monster.

They reaped what they sowed. They're not meant to be mourned.

And it's nice to see this aspect of the narrative doesn't get ignored as much as I would've expected.

I came across this video that basically rips into Ki-Adi for using flamethrowers, and I was ready to roll my eyes when I scrolled down to the comments section...

youtube

... but then, a happy surprise!

Most of the comments disagree with the video's stance! For once, logic prevails over anti-Jedi bias.

So yeah, that put a smile on my face.

#Ki-Adi Mundi #geonosians #geonosis #the clone wars #in defense of the jedi #on the jedi's involvement in the clone wars #tcw #clone wars #star wars #jedi master #21st Nova Corps #commander bacara #for the record: I'm an engie in TF2 not some WM1 Pyro

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