A point of view on "a certain point of view"

Not couples goals in any fashion, a long time ago...

I'm a disc and a bit into the second season of Clone Wars and I'm starting to see the logic behind science fiction's most famous moral cop-out, Obi-Wan Kenobi's “what I told you was true... from a certain point of view”.

You see, I'm starting to see his point of view.

This is what I love about the Clone Wars series is how it lends context to the prequel films and one thing from the prequels it expands on is how little of Anakin's development Obi-Wan actually sees. In the films he doesn't ever find out about the slaughter of the Tuskan village (not only the men but the women and the children, too) and, of course, doesn't learn about Anakin and Padme's marriage until the very end. He doesn't understand the trauma Anakin lives with or the resentments that have built up in him concerning the Jedi Order.

Two generations of Skywalker man, same old bullshit

Obi-Wan Kenobi never comes to understand (save possibly in the last shot of Return of the Jedi) that Anakin and Vader are genuinely the same person. As far as he's concerned the slaughter of the younglings comes out of nowhere and is completely without motive. It is something Anakin would never do and so he sees the corrupting influence of the Dark Side as creating a completely distinct personality called Darth Vader.

And he thinks this because he never saw how close to the surface the Dark was in Anakin. He doesn't know that this isn't the first time Anakin has killed children as a reaction to trauma; he doesn't understand that Count Dooku didn't die in combat but was executed on Palpatine's orders; he doesn't sees the controlling behaviour that typifies Anakin's marriage (and is so much better dealt with and so much creepier in Clone Wars, by the way); he doesn't see Anakin force choke a prisoner to extract information.

That last one, the Clone Wars scene that inspired this post, is genius. In the second season episode Brain Invaders we see Anakin use the force choke for the first time and he even does it for pretty good reasons. The man he is, to be frank, torturing has information that could save the life of Anakin's padawan Ahsoka Tano. There's so much here of what will eventually damn Anakin: his instinct to violence; his tendency to take extreme action to save those he cares about; even the paternal emotions that will explicitly lead to his downfall.

And Obi-Wan sees none of it so, from a certain point of view...

Ahsoka Tano: this is going to hurt, isn't it?

One of the best ideas that The Clone Wars has, by far, is Ahsoka Tano. Giving Anakin a padawan of his very own does a lot for the characters. In the prequels I never felt like Anakin was ever a Jedi Knight. In Episode I he's a child, in Episode II he's Obi-Wan's padawan and then, in Episode III when he's meant to be a fully qualified knight and general, he's still basically Obi-Wan's sidekick.

Watching this series I finally have a feel for Anakin Skywalker the legendary general, the great Jedi, the man whose friendship Old Ben Kenobi still goes misty eyed thinking about in Episode IV. I've seen him fly with Shadow Squadron and Gold Squadron, displaying the prowess he was supposedly famous for but got to demonstrate only rarely in the films.

And I'm getting to see him with his student, a young woman he calls Snips and who calls him Skyguy. I've seen her light up when he praises her and get frustrated when he tells her off. The very first episode they appear in together he tells her off for mouthing off at Mace Windu and Palpatine and then, a couple of scenes later, gives her a very different lesson in how to disobey orders only once your superiors are no longer looking.

For her part, Ahsoka is very much Anakin's student by which I mean she every bit of the flare for the over-dramatic that he does, not to mention a lot of repressed anger and an insubordinate streak a mile wide. I adore her.

And that's why ehat Anakin is going to do one day will hurt more.

Before I knew about Ahsoka I could see where Anakin was coming from betraying the Jedi: their rules cost him his mother, forced him to marry in secret and (as far as he knows) the restraint of the Light Side will cost him the life of his wife and children. Furthermore, they have repeatedly lied to him, refused to trust him, and been unduly harsh on him because of his supposed destiny as the Chosen One (which I'm not even sure he knows about). He was inducted as a child into an order supposedly dedicated to justice that nonetheless refuses to quash the slavery he was brought up in (and that he dreamt as a child of destroying).

The fact that he was sometimes a bit fond of Obi-Wan just didn't cut it in the tragic stakes.

Now Anakin's decision means betraying Ahsoka. He obviously cares for her and tries very hard not to repeat the mistakes Obi-Wan made with him. He values her input and makes an effort to let her know this. She clearly operates on a longer leash than Obi-Wan allowed Anakin and is more in touch with her emotions than he was at that relative age.

I have over five and a half seasons of this brilliant, doomed dynamic ahead of me.

This is really going to hurt. Well done, Lucasfilm!

Giving (Clone) War A Chance

Last night, my housemate and I decided to watch The Clone Wars. As I write this we're five episodes in (if DVD orders aren't standard across regions that's Ambush, the Malevolence trilogy and Rookies). I went in with pretty high hopes because two friends recommended it.

And I love it. Funnily enough at least one person told me the first season was a bit of a slog but I've no complaints so far. In fact, there's an awful lot to love as far as I'm concerned.

I adore the 1940s news radio voiceover that does the continuity recaps at the beginning. I guess the traditional text crawl was too time-consuming for a cartoon and this is a fantastic compromise between saving time and harkening back to the series' film serial roots. I do sometimes wonder if the voice actor is going to ask me if I want to know more, of course...

I greatly enjoy the comedic stupidity of the Seperatist battle droids. I always found them vaguely annoying in the films but the series dials their stupidity up to eleven and adds in a rather charming weary fatalism.

Padme's one appearance so far indicates they're going with the more competent side of the character. Also, in just the few scenes she and Anakin have shared I do get more of a feel for how their relationship works during the war: stolen moments few and far between (and, incidentally, less chance for Anakin's obvious maddery to show through).

Anakin and Obi-Wan's relationship is definitely clearer here. Because of the huge time gaps between the prequel movies I never really got a feeling for the friendship that made Obi-Wan go misty eyed. I'm starting to feel it, though, even though Obi-Wan's main emotion towards Anakin is still persistence face palming. Eh, I can't pretend I don't have friends like that I'd miss.

Ahsoka is (how to put this delicately?) very much what I imagined from the phrase “Anakin Skywalker's padawan” and I love that the first interactions we see between her and her master are Anakin ticking her off for backtalking her superiors before going on to teach her how to disobey them without quite disobeying them. She is also a fantastic way of building up Anakin the general and legendary fighter pilot because it allows them to portray him as something other than a student.

All in all, a series I am very much enjoying.