Star Wars: Republic Commando is celebrating its 20-year anniversary today, March 1, 2025. Below, we look at how its focus on military fiction was a sign of things to come to the Star Wars galaxy .
When you boot up Star Wars: Republic Commando, the first thing you see is the LucasArts logo, fuzzy like a jammed radio signal. It flickers with the audio of muttered orders, of droid speak. This is an idea taken from the original Clone Wars cartoons (starting in 2003), which also opens with a distorted broadcast, in that case of blaster fire and blaring lightsabers. In tandem, these aesthetic flourishes represent a turn away from the science fantasy mythicism of Star Wars proper and a turn toward a grittier, though still exaggerated, military fiction.
To be fair, it is not as if these impulses were not in Star Wars to begin with. Though A New Hope draws on the science fiction golden age idealism of Flash Gordan serials, it is a worn down future. Our heroes are would-be guerrilla militants, piloting buckets of bolts. Their fascist enemies reserve any futurist slickness. The fight of rebels is scrappy, hidden in trees and sequestered in backwater planets.