Star Wars: Attack of the ...?

I spent a lot of my time when I was younger loving everything about Star Wars, watching the movies, reading the books, and playing the games. While I was generally obsessive about most of the series, Attack of the Clones and the related Clone Wars stories I focused on, not particularly sure on the reason. While I have moved further away to other interests, our discussions in class over the breakdown on the border brought me right back to Star Wars.

During Attack of the Clones, during Obi-Wan's visit to Kamino, we first learn of the existence of the clone troopers, and the shock Obi-Wan feels as he looks at the literal army of clones below him is a feeling I am confident is shared by many. We see the lockstep movements of the clone troopers as they move in unison, their futuristic schooling that involves flashes of information on a screen, and the incubation vats they are created in. This seems totally an alien scenario, as the distinctly nonhuman Kaminoans speak of creating the "perfect" army, treating human bodies as a product, not a person. The similarities to Rossum's Universal Robots would appear to good to be accidental, of course.

Later, the battle droid manufacturing plant on Geonosis is explored, although in more hostile terms, but while the methods used are definitely more similar to a modern manufacturing plant, it is difficult to miss the relatively similar product produced for their war against the Republic. While the identification of the battle droids as robots is definitely easier, the similarities between the clone troopers and them are hard to miss. Both are created for war, faceless, uniform, expendable, and created for war. And they both follow their programming. While everyone expects the battle droids to ruthlessly and dispassionately kill as instructed, the horror as Order 66 is given to the clone army and their unquestioning obedience in turning their weapons against the Jedi is hard to ignore.
While both the droids and the clone troopers were given mostly background attention, it is interesting to note that the battle droids gained personality as the war progressed. While certainly lacking autonomy, the infamous "Roger Roger" was slowly transformed as the series went from the Phantom Menace to Revenge of the Sith, with more inflections and vocabulary added, perhaps in an attempt at creating a better soldier, although that would purely be speculation as it is not covered, and very likely for comedic effect. The clone troopers did not really experience a similar transformation, and so it is possible to see that the clone troopers were actually behind in their individuality development, at least compared to the battle droids.

While definitely not an exhaustive comparison, the parallels between the battle droids and the clone troopers are hard to ignore. While it is generally easy to distinguish the battle droids as a manufactured product, there seems almost a reluctance to see the clone troopers in a similar way. This seems to reflect some of the anxieties we discussed before, where the battle droids are not threatening until they are compared to the human clones, and how they were more similar than different, and how that connects to our perceptions of us as humans. It also brings up the questions about how the clones could be programmed in their behavior just the same as their robotic counterparts, and how that connects to larger society and the social and cultural influenced behavior we exhibit.