Droids That Blind
During the space battle over Coruscant that opens Revenge of the Sith, Obi-Wan Kenobi's Jedi starfighter is attacked by enemy buzz droids. The diminutive buzz droids swarm Obi-Wan's ship, destroy his astromech copilot R4, shut down the controls, and disrupt the starfighter's internal systems, causing the cockpit windows to fog up and prompting Obi-Wan to exclaim, "I can't see a thing!"
This moment is a microcosm of the role that enemy droids play throughout the prequel trilogy. As Palpatine schemes to take over the galaxy, he uses battle droids – the armies of the Trade Federation and other Separatist factions – as a smokescreen to cloud the vision of the Jedi. "The dark side clouds everything," Yoda says at the beginning of Attack of the Clones, and at the end of the film, when the Jedi attack the droid foundries on Geonosis, both armies become enveloped in blinding dust clouds. The droids are Palpatine's distracting puppets: he gets the Jedi to look at these external enemies so they remain blind to his own machinations within the Republic. When the Jedi cannot see and feel threatened, they panic and are driven blindly ahead by the fear and aggression of the dark side, losing control of themselves just as the buzz droids cause Obi-Wan to lose control of his ship.
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Characters: Obi-Wan Kenobi / Palpatine
Films: Episode II: Attack of the Clones / Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
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Concepts: aggression / clouds / fear / sight and blindness
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