The Quantum Mirror Archives — Part III of V
Recovered review — June 1985
There is a scene near the beginning of The Clone Wars that may be the most disturbing image yet presented in a Star Wars film.
A young soldier lies in a Republic military hospital, having lost both arms defending an outlying settlement.
He speaks calmly about his injuries and the possibility of receiving mechanical replacements.
Only as the camera moves away do we discover dozens of men in neighboring beds.
Each possesses the same face.
They are not brothers.
They are copies.
In a remarkable narrative decision, the filmmakers have made the Clone Wars not merely the name of a historical conflict, but an ethical catastrophe at the center of their story.
The defenders of liberty
The Republic is losing control of its outer territories.
Its newly established military forces are stretched beyond their capacity. Many planetary governments refuse to supply soldiers for distant campaigns.
The Senate authorizes an alternative.
Genetically duplicated soldiers are produced in enormous numbers, artificially matured and trained for military service.
The clones are not robots.
They possess intelligence, emotions, ambitions and considerable individual variation.
Some distinguish themselves through military service. Others question why they were created. A few attempt to desert.
Their very existence presents a contradiction that the Republic is reluctant to acknowledge.
A civilization founded upon individual liberty has manufactured human beings whose principal purpose is obedience.
The film never permits the audience to forget this contradiction.
Two friends, two different answers
Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker are now senior officers in the Republic's increasingly desperate defense.
Their friendship provides the film with its emotional warmth.
They share an easy familiarity born of dangerous missions, mutual admiration and years of disagreement.
Anakin has married Padmé Amidala, and the couple are expecting a child.
When he tells Obi-Wan the news, his old friend responds with genuine delight.
Anakin hopes that the war will end before his child is old enough to understand it.
But there is growing disagreement between the two men.
Obi-Wan believes that the Republic must preserve its constitutional restraints even when doing so makes victory more difficult.
Anakin believes that allowing suffering to continue because of procedural restrictions is a greater moral failure.
Neither position is initially unreasonable.
The war will gradually make them incompatible.
The price of winning
The centerpiece of the film is Anakin's attempt to rescue an isolated population threatened by an enemy army.
He is denied permission to intervene because the world has declared neutrality.
Convinced that its inhabitants face extermination, Anakin attacks.
At first, his unauthorized mission succeeds brilliantly.
Then communications fail, reinforcements are delayed, and his troops become trapped among densely populated civilian settlements.
Anakin orders a devastating bombardment to prevent their annihilation.
He wins the battle.
Thousands of civilians die.
The sequence is brilliantly directed, not because the violence is especially graphic, but because the audience experiences the uncertainty from inside Anakin's command center.
We understand why he makes the decision.
We also understand what it costs.
Afterward, Anakin walks among the ruins, helping recover bodies from collapsed buildings.
He does not excuse the deaths.
But he insists that the alternative would have been worse.
That conviction becomes the most dangerous thing about him.
The Chancellor's understanding
Palpatine, now Supreme Chancellor, increasingly regards Anakin as indispensable.
In several private conversations, he offers the young commander a philosophy of government built upon necessity.
Public officials, he argues, are judged by whether their civilizations survive.
History is not kind to leaders who permit catastrophe simply to preserve their moral innocence.
Anakin recognizes the danger in these arguments.
But Palpatine provides something he has been unable to obtain from Obi-Wan or Padmé: approval without demanding that he reconsider what he has done.
Meanwhile, Padmé has begun witnessing the consequences of occupation, forced relocation and indefinite military authority.
She fears that the Republic is winning the war while losing the capacity to govern without violence.
The victory celebration
The final act concerns a massive military offensive threatening the Republic capital.
The Senate is divided, planetary governments are wavering, and military commanders disagree about the defense.
Palpatine invokes extraordinary emergency powers.
Anakin is placed in command.
His counteroffensive is an astonishing success.
The capital is saved.
The Republic celebrates its greatest victory.
At the closing ceremony, Anakin appears in a new black military uniform.
The Chancellor announces that emergency powers will remain in effect until every system has been secured.
A standing ovation follows.
Across the assembly, Obi-Wan watches his former pupil and friend.
He realizes that Anakin has become essential to the continued existence of the government.
And that Palpatine has become essential to Anakin's understanding of himself.
The final scene belongs to an unnamed clone soldier.
A journalist asks whether he expects to return home when the fighting ends.
The soldier thinks for a moment.
Then replies that he does not know where home is.
The screen fades to black.
Our verdict
The Clone Wars is a more difficult film than its predecessor.
It contains spectacular battles, extraordinary miniature photography and some of the most convincing alien environments ever placed on film.
But its greatest achievement is the transformation of Anakin Skywalker.
He has not become a villain in any conventional sense.
He has become a war hero who believes that personal moral responsibility requires him to make decisions others lack the courage to make.
It is an idea capable of justifying almost anything.
By the end of the picture, audiences can see the shape of Darth Vader emerging.
The black mask is still absent.
Everything essential beneath it is already forming.
Next: The Dark Times (1986) — The fall of the Jedi and the man who knew he was helping destroy everything he loved.
From the fictional Quantum Mirror Archives. This is an imagined contemporary review of an alternate-history Star Wars film, not a historical film release.
