Republic Commando is not only a classic of a cult – also looking forward to Star Wars for the next 20 years

Star Wars: Republic Commando celebrates its 20th anniversary today, March 1, 2025. Below, we study its focus on military novels as a sign of things to enter the Star Wars galaxy.

The first thing you see when you launch Star Wars: Republic Commando is the Lucasarts logo that is as blurred as a clogged radio signal. It flickers with murmuring audio, Droid speaks. This is an idea proposed from the original Clone Wars comic (starting in 2003), in which case it also begins with a twisted broadcast, in which case it explodes fire and touted lightsaber. At the same time, these aesthetics flourished, away from the sci-fi myth of Star Wars, and turned to a more grim military novel to a more grim, though still exaggerated.

To be fair, these impulses weren't not in Star Wars in the first place. While the new hope draws on the Sci-Fi Golden Age Ideology of the Glitter Gordan series, it’s a shabby future. Our hero is possible guerrilla militants, driving a barrel of bolts. Their fascist enemies retain any futuristic smoothness. The battles of the insurgents are weird, hidden in trees and isolated in the rear water planet.

Still, Han Solo and Luke Skywalker are not ordinary soldiers, but heroes (the name of the Contemporary Republic Commando in the Star Wars video game: Robbery 2). The original trilogy, largely a prequel, has the same position as The Lord of the Rings. Epic battles often come to the forefront, and both franchises are undoubtedly related to war. But the hero is not the infantry boots on the ground, or even the military commander, but the children of the king and the prodigal son. They saved the world, and the rebels and fascists died in the dirt.

The Republic Commando represents something more mundane: the daily life of soldiers in the war. Outside of Star Wars itself, the game's obvious principle inspiration is halo. Like that FPS, the Republic Commando went out of their way to make its nominal character special boy, a cut of a normal clone that constitutes the rest of the Galactic Republic's army. But commandos can’t completely destroy the earth, either, or they will interfere with the movies their game connects with. In fact, if each of the commando died in the ditch, the plot of Star Wars itself would not change. The effect is like propaganda: you are the hero of the republic, although in reality, you are just more bodies that line up the future emperor checkbook.

The game is aware of this dynamic. Even if released before episode 3 reveals the looming Order 66 threat, the clone is still doomed to be a storm of the empire. (Yes, I know the Empire dropped a more standard military recruitment strategy early on. I only have one response to this criticism: Shut up, nerd.) At the end of the game, the Commando lost their sniper Sev meaninglessly, just for Jedi Commanders, letting their Jedi Commanders command them to command new positions, forcing them to stay away from their teammates. It is not a pawn that loses the same pawn and personality as each of his brothers. It's a person who has his own soul, whether cliché or simple.

All of this neatly foresaw Dave Filoni's The Clone Wars Show, which attracted the same attention of the entire platoon and battalion, and the game also provided an elite team. The game's commando even appeared in One episodebut they are also original characters of many of the Clone Wars, especially the predecessors of Bad Batch, who were first conceptualized before the series was cancelled on the Cartoon Network, but reappeared in the series “The Revival of Disney+” and then revived in their own spin-off show. Like commandos, bad batches are squads of professional figures defined by their combat skills. Bad batches are not the first such character that emerged in the Clone Wars, but rather a small unit whose relationships are defined with each other in an echo of the Republic Commando’s way.

But the Clone Wars' sense of wartime tragedy is even higher. After the Umbara Arc Battle, Anakin Skywalker's 501st cloning battalion was summoned as a special mission. The general who replaced him pushed the clone to the pointless loss of the secret agenda. The whole process is a dilemma of micro cloning. They all died for a reason that could not be actually chosen, which required them to use the flick of the switch to object to friends and comrades.

The show's final match on Disney+ pushed it to a logical conclusion, dramatizing 66 itself. Anakin's apprentice Ahsoka watches her friends open her up as she saves her mentor Captain Rex, but the rest of the clones accompany her death. This may be the essence of the metal gear solid backstory, as it explores the same problem: responsibility for loyalty and the essence of conscience, love on the battlefield or bullets in the intestine. The dilemma of cloning is the dilemma of an idealized, fictional, illusory soldier.

The Republic Commando had little serious involvement in these topics, but it all wore a shadow of unity. Its impact was felt in the next 20 years of Star Wars, from the sometimes strict military novel of Clone Wars to Andor's guerrilla drama to Dave Filoni's partial management of the franchise (though I believe the Mandalorian film was happening while I was watching the theater). All of these examples share the same dead end. No matter how the Republic Commando dresses up in the blast fire and halo-like heroes, everything that awaits its hero is death. For them, it was like Captain Rex, like Andor or Anakin Skywalker.