Except, y'know, the clones are still human beings, they can think for themselves, they might even grow a conscience, you know who DOES follow orders without questions without any risk of that going wrong? Droids~

You do realise that's not his regular talking voice yes? He's playing a character. That said, he could sound like professor Hawking, it doesn't take away that his words ring very true indeed.

This dialogue was written by George Lucas, it's not exactly worth discussing.

Granted, but to be fair Hoth hasn't been featured in tons of EU stories, particularly in games, off the top of my head I can only recall Jedi Academy. And I don't count the Rogue Squadron games since those follow the same Battle of Hoth you see in ESB and thus, not expanded universe.

I suppose they could've used Captain Panaka or his successor for that kind of character, but instead they get to stay behind and do nothing instead of going on the adventure, and make him boring, like every other character. I guess Qui-Gon simply had an addled mind, or had been drinking too much Gin, hence his surname. If he didn't want to draw attention on Tatooine he should've taken Panaka and/or Obi-Wan along rather than a slow astromech, a clumsy amphibian alien (on a desert planet) who can't keep out of trouble for longer than two minutes and an attractive young woman.

Then there is the question of how a Jedi, who is supposed to live a sober life, has enough credits to commission an entire clone army. With that kind of money he could've kept the local space-orphanage fed for decades.

I approve of your username, DrSlump. That said, I also feel it's kind... of... taking the easy route really, it's supposed to be an unimportant backwater planet but almost every single galactic hero worth mentioning has at the very least passed through there once. And yes, they do it because it's iconic, but every good artist knows when it's better not to use something, and Tatooine is one of those things that should be used rarely, yeah it's an iconic place, but that doesn't justify overusing it. I suppose it doesn't help that it's basically an easy to make planet in terms of design, lots of sand, very little props needed, you can map out a Tatooine level in a fraction of the time you'd need to make, say, a Coruscant level in a game. So yeah, basically it's the quick and easy route towards creating a "Star Warsy" experience.

I can't even read that with a straight face, so I'll just assume you didn't write that with a straight face, well played, I needed that chuckle.

The film Ran would like to have a word with you, it used approximately 1400 extras, each of which had a uniquely crafted suit of samurai armour, and those aren't fast, easy or cheap to make. So if a Japanese director could achieve that in 1985 with a $12 million budget, then George Lucas could achieve even better in 2005 with a $120 million budget. But hey, that would've forced Lucas to abandon the comfort his chair, his coffee and his two monitors which is how he directed the entire prequel trilogy. The most detached (and lazy) way of film making imaginable on top of putting his actors through the most detached way of acting, in front of very little but blue screen. Edit: Actually, why should the plot have to bow for the special effects? The special effects exist to serve the story, not the other way around, at no point should the plot deviate from its course because of special effects issues. You basically just confirmed that the plot of the prequels serve purely to guide us from one special effects extravaganza to the next.

The sad thing is that the Clone Wars as Lucas portrayed them in the prequels was that they were a war without effect. It didn't affect the lives of anyone in the Republic aside from the Jedi (and arguably the clones), Joe Average on Coruscant didn't feel anything of the war, life just went on as usual for him. I always figured that the clones were the bad guys in the Clone Wars, and that as such the Jedi and millions of conscripted and/or volunteering troops had to go to war, weakening the Republic and its economy as it dragged on and thus facilitating Palpatine's takeover. But that was clearly too logical for Lucas who instead had to show off his computers could render a thousand robots AND a thousand troopers.

And that my friends, is plot convenience. Problem there is that the Republic started the war. Yoda single handedly declared war on the Separatists by flying in several dropships of Clone Troopers and then has the moxy to act like he regrets the advent of war later on. (Note: This is not how Yoda should act, Lucas can't even get Yoda right) So basically, if Yoda had practiced what he preached, and let Anakin and Obi-Wan fend for themselves on Geonosis even if it might have led to their deaths, which it wouldn't have since they need to be in Episode IV, then the war wouldn't have started there and then there would've been more time to scrounge up an army, which shouldn't be that hard given that most of the thousands of systems in the Republic must have at least some sort of planetary guard and navy on standby. But then, the very premise of the Clone Wars makes no sense to begin with, so even trying to rationalise what is going on is just an exercise in futility.

If you've got an hour to waste, which with the current login queues seems very likely, you should watch this and you'll realise that this isn't even worth thinking about.

Apparently Aion had five hour queues on launch day, not sure what you're complaining about. =p