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cross-my-heartt · 1 year

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Alright folks, now that Solitary Clone and Outpost are out and we have more insight into Crosshair’s character, I thought it would be interesting to revisit some of the things he said on Kamino at the end of season one.

I’ve been meaning to make this analysis for a while but I’m glad I’m doing it now because season two gives us a lot more context and material to work with. (Let’s hope the rest of the season doesn’t make me look like a clown by throwing us a curve ball lol.)

Beware this is a quote heavy analysis.

Right off the bat I want to look at his motivations because that’s one thing people often use when they try to dub him as a villain. The thing is, Crosshair’s speech does often makes it sound there’s some more sinister ideological beliefs behind his actions.

“Crosshair, I've seen what the Empire's doing, occupying planets and silencing anyone who stands against them. You know it's not right.”

“You still don't see the bigger picture, but you will.”

But when we look into it, I think the ‘bigger picture’ for Crosshair is something much more pragmatic and cynical than it seems.

To put it simply Crosshair sees the Empire for what it is, he knows how dangerous it is and that stopping it at this point is nigh impossible (and let’s be real, if Luke had caught a stray blaster bolt at any point, the Empire wouldn’t have ended anytime soon.)

He’s even more aware of it than most because he’s on the inside so when he talks about it there’s almost this resigned fatalistic quality to it.

“They did what needed to be done. Kamino, regs, the Republic... that time is over. The Empire will control the entire galaxy, and I am going to be a part of it.”

There’s no reverence here. Compare it to the way any imperial baddie talks, Rampart, Tarkin, Sidious, etc. and you’ll see that this isn’t praise, this is just reality as Crosshair sees it. And Crosshair’s realism is really neat because it’s so uncomfortably close to the truth sometimes.

“Send her on a shuttle off-world.”

“Crosshair, don't.”

“It's for her own good. And yours.”

“Omega belongs with us.”

“Living among fugitives where she's in constant danger? You want to protect the kid, then let her go.”

___

“Blind allegiance makes you a pawn. A real leader protects his squad.”

“Look where that's gotten you. They're all going to die here because of your failed leadership.”

It’s in these moments of rationality that we see Crosshair’s perspective as someone who’s trying to protect his family at all costs, to the point where he’s almost begging.

“It's time to stop running.” (Running is too dangerous, I know the thing that’s hunting you and you can’t defeat it.)

“Don't make the same mistake twice. Don't become my enemy.” (Don’t pick a fight you’re going to lose.)

Of course coming from him, it all sounds like a threat because not only does Crosshair not sugarcoat things, he also finds the most brutal and even cruel ways to say them.

“If I wanted you dead, you would be. Not that it wouldn't be justified.” (I could have killed you but I didn’t. You did things that put you in danger of being killed.)

And because of his tendency to do that, you can easily make wrong assumptions about his character. The most uncomfortable parts of his speech are where he sounds eerily like a supremacist, like all of those officers who serve a bigoted and elitist empire.

“Because the Empire will be phasing out clones next.”

“Not the ones that matter.”

___

“We're not like the regs. We never have been. We're superior.”

But is that really supremacism? If it was would Crosshair treat the people around him as he does? Think about the way he treats Echo, Cody (especially in The Solitary Clone) and of course Mayday. That’s not the behavior of someone who finds other clones unworthy of friendship and kindness.

This is Crosshair being all bark and no bite. And it’s also that toxic coping mechanism that’s been hammered into his head: if you’re good enough, if you’re better than everyone, you earn the right to live and be safe and protected.

The batch’s life has always been about proving themselves, they’re an experimental unit, so it’s no surprise that a mentality like that has festered into something more insidious with Crosshair.

“You all are meant for more than drifting through the galaxy. It's time to stop running. Join the Empire, and you will have purpose again.”

Purpose? Ideological purpose? A higher purpose? Or just purpose in the sense of use, the thing that’s always kept them safe.

What’s funny here is that Hunter follows that line with “You really don't get who we are, do you?” because Hunter struggles with the same dilemma of ‘keeping my family safe’ vs ‘doing the morally right thing’ throughout the show and in most cases he needs an extra push from either Omega or Echo to choose the latter.

He as a leader knows firsthand how difficult the balancing act between those two is with how much grief it causes him.

Crosshair is on the extreme end of that dilemma. That protective side that sometimes overrides morality is much stronger in him and that coupled with his cynicism can make for a dangerous combination.

To Crosshair there will always be an unfeeling higher power that he has to please in order to earn its favor and protection. Once upon a time it was the Kaminoans, then it was the Republic and most recently it was the Empire – they’re all the same to him.

“The Empire can't protect the galaxy without strength.”

This is what the Empire is doing in his mind, the same thing as the Republic before it. It’s enforcing its will for the sake of peace and you needn’t look further than Cody’s own lines from episode three to realize that this is what things look like from most clones’ perspective, at least at first:

“The Empire seeks to establish peace and order throughout the galaxy. […] Listen, we both lived through one war. Let's not start another. Too many people have died already. We can resolve this without more bloodshed. Please, do this for your people.”

We also see that Crosshair doesn’t think all that highly of the Republic either:

“You betrayed everything we stood for. And for what? The Republic?”

And I think that’s because these big abstract entities hold little meaning to him.

His contract with both the Republic and the Empire is simple: protect and provide for me and my family and I will do what you say. You could even say he was conditioned to think that way. Ironically it’s Hunter who voices where Crosshair’s loyalties really lie when he says they're "loyal to each other and not some Empire" (and accidentally manages to be a bit hypocritical in the process).

And that’s true for Crosshair as well: his relationship with the Empire is not quite loyalty but more like a symbiotic relationship. It’s necessary but not personal:

“That's your problem, Hunter. You take things too personally.”

DBB put it best when he said “his job is not only to hit things from a stealth distance, but I think he also views the world and other people from that distance, as well”. (Remember that line about the bigger picture? Yep, Mr Baker knows his material.)

That’s why serving under Rampart seemed easy for Crosshair, we never once see him question or defy him. But then along comes Nolan who breaks that contract because suddenly things are personal, his hatred for clones is personal, he represents the part of the Empire that’s not just unfeeling but also actively goddamn awful and he makes the mistake of directing that cruelty at someone Crosshair cares about.

That’s both an eye opener and a deal breaker for Crosshair and we see what he’s capable of when things become personal, just how raw and human he can be.

That humanity, I think, is also why we see him split from the batch on Kamino. It might seem counterintuitive at first, but it starts to make sense when you see it from his pov: if you’re someone who’s so deeply devoted to the people you care about, the most painful thing that could happen to you is to be abandoned and rejected by them.

There’s a lot of hurt in what Crosshair says on Kamino:

“And here we all are, together again.”

“You betrayed everything we stood for. And for what? The Republic?”

“You weren't loyal to me. I was one of you. You may have forgotten, but I haven't. And it's why I'm going to give you what you never gave me: a chance.”

“Think of all we could do together. We were brothers once. We can be again.”

“All those missions together and you threw it away.”

And all that doesn’t just go away like that. It’s his pain that pushes him into making a decision that will later haunt him.

At the end of the day, Crosshair’s biggest virtue is how loyal he is to the people he cares about. He’s not like Rex or Echo or Omega, who selflessly put themselves in harm’s way for a cause that’s bigger than them (not for now at least) but you can bet he’ll tear himself to shreds to protect what’s valuable to him.

And you can love or hate that about him but I think it makes for a very interesting character. To quote DBB again: “He's not pure evil. He’s ultimately a rational guy, and there's some humanity in there, too.”

#tbb #sw tbb #the bad batch #tbb crosshair #tbb meta #tbb season two #tbb season 2 #my meta #I had fun with this one #honestly I love Crosshair because there are many ways to interpret the things he says and does #so each 'analysis' may come out different #I'm really eager to see where they take his character #unless they decide to kill him off then I'll just be eager to vandalize something

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firemama · 2 months

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If I had the power to become a Disney bitch that can just remake one of their classics because that's what Disney does these days, id remake Aladdin.

It'd still be animated and the goal would be a consistent style trilogy (without the sudden and sharp drop in animation quality preferably please god).

Completely scrapping the 'return of Jafar' plot line, I'd make the second movie in the trilogy about exploring the ramifications of aladdin's wish. He did not wish to *look* like a prince, he wished to BE a prince. Somewhere out there aladdin is the prince of some country or city or something and I would love to explore that as a technicality to aladdin and jasmine trying to get married. Especially if perhaps that kingdom is NOT on good terms with agrabah. They're trying to get all the arrangements done and theres a big joke about paperwork and getting the prince-requirment law squared away and then bam, the "well actually-" comes from genie and the rest of the movie is about exploring this new territory of aladdin. Who is marrying into Royalty and Politics, actually having to deal with some of that.

And then at the end of the movie, when all of that is sorted out, genie drops the second "well actually-" that aladdin was always sort of a prince anyway. Just not the inherited of any kind of land. You see, al, buddy, your dad's a king of thieves.

Movie three is that the wedding is once, again, delayed. Because now we have to deal with the fuckin ramifications of "what the fuck do you mean I'm the son of a famous criminal?" And the revelation that genie actually knows aladdin's parents. Movie three includes returning to the Magic Treasure Hoard where aladdin initially gets the lamp- "only One May Enter Here" being that aladdins father (deceased) left the cave as a sort of will of his treasure trove, a bounty worthy of a King Of Thieves. Including the most valuable artifact of the trove, the Genie In The Lamp, the most valuable treasure that was responsible for aladdin's fathers success as the king of thieves in the first place. We see some stories of Genie and Aladdins father- from rags to riches via crime, maybe the love story of aladdin's parents, (maybe some hints to why genie says "i dont like doing it" as to being able to bring back the dead rather than outright "i cant do it") and plausibly that the genie and aladdins father made the same deal, I'll use my two wishes and then free you, but (possibly following that failed attempt to bring back the dead as in trying to bring back aladdin's dead mother shortly after aladdin is born?) In the grief of that failure aladdin's father decides to use his last wish (possibly to arrange the Cave of Wonders for his sons inheritance or something) and ultimately betrays genies trust.

We get a little heart to heart with aladdin and genie- "I don't think your dad was a bad guy, per se, but-" and the classic Disney "what matters is that you kept your promise, and that's why I've stuck with you even after freedom, it's the magic of friendship"

and then once we work out reparations of the cave of wonders - using all of that stolen fortune inheritance to better aladdin's accidentally aquisitioned kingdom, and provide agrabah a stable fucking childcare system for orphans, and a whole other musical mintage of do-gooding, they FINALLY get their royal wedding- a unity wedding between these two lands and isn't it glamorous.

ON A COMPLETELY UNRELATED NOTE.

The whole big damb deal where Aladdin and Jasmines partnership is weighted against the genies freedom is so stupid when you consider. Aladdin could have just fucking handed the lamp to Jasmine? 3 more wishes. They solve the whole thing in movie one. Jasmine gets the lamp, makes a wish that Jafar will never escape the cave of wonders, wishes that there were bo laws restricting her personal freedoms any more than anyone else (marry who she wants AND go to the market) and then a third wish that argrbah under her rule will know ages of peace and tranquility. Then she hands that damb lamp back to Aladdin, Aladdin wishes the genie free, big happy celebration fireworks scene. (They do the heart to heart thing where they say they'll miss eachother after genie cuts himself off from talking about seeing the world. Obviously. That still needs to happen. They're friends, you honor.)

#Aladdin and the King of Thieves #aladdin #i have so many more thoughts about this than you think #munchatter #there was so much oppertunity for cohesion with aladdin sequels #and they just took NONE of the oppertunities #if you gave me a disney budget ibwould sit down and write out thr whole damn trilogy #after the first movie jafar at BEST maybe gets a haloween short come-back #but that is IT #he was an analogue for corruption and power and that worked for the first movie #he was facinating and scary in the first movie and then afterward fuckit #the only thing left in the cave of wonders is Jafar at the end of everything #and Only One May Enter There #so he will never see the light of day thanks #dbhxzhhs #demanding that my theoretical versions of the movie really highlight genie friendship #idk what the fuck i would do about not having robin williams do the voice though #who the fuck would play genie? not homer simpson #im a little bit obsessed with the idea of recreating aladdin as a trilogy but Good #cause lets face it everything after the first movie is kindaaaaaa :(

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