Are Stormtroopers Clones?

[Nirvana]

I was playing Battlefront 2, and as I was playing its campaign, the 501st stormtroopers, it said that the Empire was then taking recruits (normal people) but then it said, we under the 501st Legion remained pure (clones). So I guess it's just a mix, some people and some clones.

[Angry Ewok]

Sorry, darth_nirvana, but I refuse to accept Battlefront 2's Storyline as a reference for any sort of debate at all - the storyline isn't believable or accurate in the least bit, even with the SW Databanks backing it all up (to sell the game), I don't believe it was ever intended to be 'canon' in any shape or form...

The game credits the 501st Legion as having won the battles of Geonosis, Kashyyyk, Kamino, Felucia, Salecumi, Mygeeto, Mustafar, Naboo, the taking of the Tantive, protecting the Death Star, etc, etc... What a load of crap.

That's a bit off topic, though -

Are Stormtroopers Clones?

My answer - No. As it has been pointed out, the youngest batch of clones in Episode 3 (roughly 20 years old) would have been 40 years old by the time 'A New Hope' rolled into place. I believe that this last batch (assuming it was the last batch) was dispersed about the expanding Empire with the task of training Garrisons for local Governments. Each Garrison would have a small working staff of clones responsible for paving the future for the Empire...

Is the Empire Xenophobic?

My answer - For the most part, yes. That I'm aware of, only Grand Admiral Thrawn has been named as being an Imperial Officer, and its been said that he was held down from promotion for a long while simply because of his being alien. The Wookies were enslaved, as were the Noghri, and I'm sure other species, and EU credits the Empire for having whiped out entire civilizations for their being alien.

[Carjup Bejewel]

Of course stormtroopers are clones. have you not seen Episode III

[Ginanalbri]

Stormtroopers are not clones because in the books of Obi-Wan while he watches over Luke shows that there are some clones but most are now just human. plus they don't sound like Jango at all.

[TheBlackDog65]

Yep, Jude Watson makes it cannon!  Also, are there specific references to the Last of the Jedi books that you can provide as reference. I've read them with my son and never taken that away from the books, but then again, life has been hectic this fall.

[Clone Commander]

Well I would like to think that they are a mixture.

[Jesse James]

I'm a strong advocate of believe what you want to believe, but there is no definite answer to this question so "yes of course they are (aren't)" kind of replies are baseless and add nothing.

Lucasfilm has the stance that during the Empire (and its rise) Clones are mixed with recruited sentients to fill the Stormtrooper ranks.  This is basically a way of them taking the implied notion that they're Clones by Lucas himself and the Expanded Universe that, for decades, de-cloned the Imperial army and said they were recruited individuals.

That's LFL's stance, but not canon...  Just a nice way to simplify an unanswerable argument/debate.  Their stance says the Clones are from a variety of hosts that aren't all the swiftest in military expertise either, but rather picked for their political ties...  This, to me, is total bull**** because I think the whole concept of ST's being "bad shots" and inept soldiers is pretty much a falacy.  ST's mop up the floor with Rebel Soldiers on Hoth, Endor, and aboard the Tantive IV.  Kenobi himself says the shots on the Crawler were too accurate for anyone but ST's (I don't view him as trying to sway anyone, he's merely pointing out what he sees as a fact).

ST's just can't hit Han, Luke, Leia, etc. because well it'd be a hell of a hard story to tell if all the characters died off quickly.  It's like playing a video game with the utmost in realistic settings.  If you tried playing Medal of Honor as if it were a real game, you'd not get off the beach during the D-Day landings because in real life you die...  Or you're lucky and live.  In Star Wars the heroes live because they have to so the story can be told, not because Stormtroopers are inaccurate Degenerated DNA soldier rejects.  That's just people not being capable of thinking outside the box IMO.

Annnnyyyywayyy....

That's LFL's thing.  Others think that all Stormtroopers are Clones and they choose to disevow all the EU that says otherwise.  I actually think Lucas himself feels this way but he never clearly states it in the films for one reason or another.  He is known for wanting to contradict EU at times but being "persuaded" not to do so...  He supposedly didn't want to use Coruscant as the planet's name since Zahn created it, but he was "persuaded" to do so by people within LFL....  Fine.  Lucas isn't the end-all-be-all answer to anything Star Wars really if you choose NOT to listen to him.  That's simply your way of viewing his art, and he can't sway you one way or another.  It'd be like Michelangelo appearing while you mull over his statue of David and telling you WHAT to see instead of your mind telling you what you see.  We had a lotta conversation about this very concept in my Tolkien Studies course as we read Lord of the Rings.

Other people believe Stormies are all recruits...  At present that's my take because recruitment/training is a much faster means of building an army since Cloning took 10 years for them to mature to a fighting age, and ultimately I just like thinking that the galaxy was READY for an Empire.  That the majority in the galaxy were so dejected with political affairs under the Republic, that people were so anti-alien/pro-Palpatine, that people were so ready for law/order and peace (remember, it's preached in E3, and a focal point of WHY the Empire is good), that they welcome the Empire with wide open arms... 

Is everyone happy?  No, but in the grand scheme of things the vast majority I believe are, there's lots of positives the Empire offers, and the Empire manages to hide the things it does that aren't so nice for quite a while...  Or people are just as happy they did them.  I mean if there's a lot of anti-alien sentiment, does anyone care if aliens are enslaved?  Some planets will, but the Empire could be made of a majority who look down on the Wookiee Species for helping the Jedi who many perceive as trying to overthrow the Republic and take control via the confusion of the Clone Wars...  People are taught to hate/fear the Jedi's, and that a lot of their plight in life is from their kind.

Anyway, that's just some of MY perspective but it's still not canon by any means...  Canon's just what's in the films and undisputable by other sources as far as argument goes.  But how you view the films, the EU, and all other facets of the Star Wars galaxy is personal interpretation, and with that there are no "rules" to live by...  Canon included.  It just makes no sense to come into a discussion about the SW galaxy though and say, "yeah well I don't believe that even if it was in the film so your point doesn't matter".  That's fine to feel that way, but it doesn't make for good discussion/argument.

I'm to the point I could buy the LFL stance of Recruits mixed with Clones (I don't buy the various host theory though and I'd envision ALL Clones being Jango Clones, till the clones in Zahn's trilogy but that's another topic).  That's a nice way of accepting the film's implications and the EU all in one nice neat package.  Right now though I'm still leaning towards ALL recruits in the Empire though.  It adds a vastness to the galaxy that I love too...  That they could recruit that many possibly Trillions (or even more?) people into their military juggernaught.  That's practically impossible to even fathom for me, but that adds so much to Star Wars for me too.

[EpicGon]

As stated in anh visual guides on starwars.com last 2007, both Praji and Jir families of imperial officers have donated genetic templates for Imperial stormtrooper development programs. So in the case of see an unmasked stormie Jango head won´t be the unique avaiable face for this kind of trooper.

This would be the base to expand the range of characters variations in Expanded Universe Comics and of course a motif for variations in heads for future Hasbro stormtroopers, sandtroopers, etc.

In TFU we learn a variety of ranks of stormies according to the color of their armor. Other reason to suppose that variation in heads is the armor of st used by Bren and Dellis Tantor in Force Commander video game. So if to wear an armor a man don´t need to be a clone, this will be the source for head variations.

[Darth_Anton]

I wish I had kept that article dated 1978 that explicitly stated that Stormtroopers were clones.

[JangoTat]

I wish I had kept that article dated 1978 that explicitly stated that Stormtroopers were clones.

The card back of the POTF stormtrooper suggest that they may be clones too.

[Jesse James]

Lucas didn't alter it in the SE's but altered Boba's voice...  That alone says 100% to me that he either wants them NOT be Clones, not all the same type of Clones, or he wanted ambiguity for the expanded universe to fit.  That trumps whatever he said in 1978 too IMO.  He has the technology to change the voices and didn't, so he's leaving it open for some reason or another.

[McMetal]

The simplest and most sensible answer IMHO is that they're just clones. You can dream up any of a dozen different reasons why they would have lost their accent, that's a minor detail.

As far as I'm concerned, any sort of anti-clone argument that uses any EU material as "proof" is flimsy at best. I can dream up any old nonsense and throw it in my blog and that holds about as much legitimacy.

Rant over.

[JediJman]

I think it’s at least an easy argument that they’re not all Jango clones.  We know that the clones had an accelerated life-span, so it’s pretty unlikely that all the stormies we see are the equivalent of senior citizens.  They also clearly state in the movies that Jango has to return periodically to supply fresh DNA for new batches of clones, so no Jango means no Jango clones. 

I’m going with the stormies being a mix of clones and just regular enlisted joes.  There are certainly plenty of people who probably wanted to sign up for the military, so makes sense to me that you’d take what’s readily available for free versus producing more (costly, time consuming) clones.  That also helps explain size differences in some of the troopers seen in the movies, differences in voices, etc.

From a more subjective viewpoint, I also think the Emperor would have started “dumbing down” his troopers after he took power.  Clones can obviously be pre-programmed for certain orders, so why take the chance that some rebel group could infiltrate their programming and turn them against the Empire?  There seems to be a very obvious and deliberate choice in the OT to make imperials expendable (why don’t TIEs come with shields?), which again makes me think the preferred strategy is to overwhelm with numbers, but in turn having less effective individual units in case they change sides.

[Jesse James]

It's EU to say they're all CLones as well...  There's no proof either way, so "EU nonsense as an argument" applies both directions.

To me, the galaxy's littered with people and the Empire could not have survived without popularity backing it...  The Clone Wars ended with the possibility of a strong anti-alien sentiment/movement that the Empire capitalized on, the human worlds then had recruits wanting to sign up.  There's a pretty extensive supply of soldiers right there.  It also would take less time to train a soldier than grow a clone...  Cloning just isn't as practical, if you have the means at your disposal to recruit and train perfectly willing individuals.  Looking at the rest of the Empire, it's quite clear there's an extensive line of willing/able volunteers considering every ship and station seemed to have plenty of sentient recruits.

I think the Empire came in with quite a bit of popularity...  It's the Alliance who'd struggle for membership, and the Empire would have people gladly signing up.  And so no Clones for me right now.  I could see SOME Stormtrooper legions being Clones simply to have some on-hand though, but I think the majority of Clones are phased out.  Hell it's why the Clone Wars are sort of talked about like "That time was long ago".  Clones just aren't in vogue anymore.

[McMetal]

I think if that was true Leia would never have made the comment about Luke being "a little short" for a Stormtrooper. If any old schmoe could be a Stormie she wouldn't have batted an eye. But the fact that she picked up on Luke's height right away implies to me that all the Stormies are of identical physical dimensions, IE: clones.

The whole thing about "running out of DNA" seems rather sketchy to me, as they could simply grow more samples in the lab, if only in a petri dish.

Another explanation would be that they're continuing to take samples from Boba Fett. That's probably why Vader had him on Speed Dial when he needed bounty hunter services. It's not like no one would have made the connection to Jango.

And the point about the Empire not wanting to get infiltrated by rebels seems plausible to me and would support the Clones only theory, as well as the whole implied xenophobia thing.

You really can go either way, I just have a lot more logical problems with the idea that they're NOT clones. That seems way more complicated to me.