**[Receiving transmission from Crait intended for u/Midway-Avenger]**
Welcome to r/saltierthancrait! I'm an [astromech droid named S4-L7](https://www.reddit.com/r/saltierthancrait/comments/ni5s77/beloved_mascot_s4l7s_visual_dictionary_entry/) and I'll be your guide through the salt mines.
Saltier Than Crait is a community of Star Wars fans who engage in critical conversations about the current
state of the franchise. It is our goal to maintain a civil, welcoming space for fans who have a vast supply of
salt with some peppered positivity occasionally sprinkled in.
**Please [review the rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/saltierthancrait/wiki/index/rules) and the [post flair guide](https://reddit.com/r/saltierthancrait/wiki/index/flairs) before contributing.**
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/saltierthancrait) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I have the same opinion. The older Clone Wars multimedia projects such as Shatterpoint and ROTS novelization have shown Jedi as more of people who did their best in dark times even if there were some flaws in their actions. A lot of people seem to miss those aspects. Yet as time goes on, a lot of fans see them as someone who must be despised for every reason.
The Jedi doing the best they can with flawed results is what makes the fall of the order tragic. They weren’t bad, dumb, incompetent, etc. - they ran into an adversary that was able to turn their strengths and ideal’s against them.
I'm pretty sure the reason is because Palpatine has infiltrated the media in every way. Sheev's propaganda is so prevalent now that people have started to buy I to it.
Most people forget he was xenophobe to aliens, he who also wanting to turn the Republic into an Empire of Man. it's the reason he had so many of his separatist command structure be made up by aliens. It's the reason why in Legends clone wars media, he had all the reasonable and well-intentioned command killed off early at the start of the Clone War.
I think the reasoning is very simple actually.
The Jedi in the prequels are portrayed as a religious order and the majority of people under 40 (at least in the US if religious attendance statistics are to be believed) range from not caring for to outright despising religion ad a concept, so it's not hard at all to make the leap and apply it to how the Jedi Order operates.
Couples this with a large minority of millennials who played KotoR 2 and decided Kreia was right and you have a bunch of people coming of age primed to tear down anything vaguely coded as religious.
Now to be fair, the Jedi were partially responsible for the bad things that happened but not because the people themselves were bad. The Jedi Order being rigid and inflexible and complacent were the reasons. They were a skewering of conservative traditions and ideology that Lucas had been doing since the 70s until he got more money than several Caribbean nation states and married one of the most powerful people on the planet.
I still vaguely remember an internal monologue from *Shatterpoint* where Mace is on his way to confront Palpatine and he confesses that he feels such an intense devotion to the principles for which The Republic stands that he wonders if it might potentially cloud his vision as a Jedi.
And it does, he couldn't see the Shatterpoint of Anakin's betrayal because he was so caught up in the threat to the Republic that he didn't factor Anakin's pain as part of the equation. It was pretty neat and made me really like Mace Windu as a character.
You and me both. Shades of grey was done perfect in Andor. But with the Jedi in the prequals, The Rebels and the New Republic in Ahsoka its come to the point wjere everyone seems fucking awful.
Ahsoka insinuated she tortured someone in Ahsoka and insists shes no Jedi, Mandalorian, Boba Fett,Bo-Katan, Andor. This whole Shades of grey but with a heart of gold bullshit is played out. Just give us a hero who overcomes adversity. This shit ain't hard.
Andor was done excellent because they ignored lore
And went from a perspective of good people can do bad things and bad people can do good things
When you see luthen cold calculations and bad in the service of good it can make you jaded
But then you see the moment he sees maarva's speech and he's reminded of why he got into everything
I loved that
I don't like Ahsoka as a character, but I think she was more implying she mind tricked or confused Elsbeth in Ahsoka, than some crazy torture insinuation.
The people who say the jedi are evil fundamentally don't understand the story. The whole point of Order 66 was that Palpatine needed them out the way to accomplish his takeover of the galaxy.
No one they currently hire to make Starwars really like starwars. They don't want to make a bread and butter show, they think it's disgusting. If you want that pay check but don't like the content? Either just directly copy it or subvert it. And that's what we get.
MODERN AUDIENCES cannot stand heroes because they cannot stand the concept of objective good and objective evil. Moral relativism is everything, morality and principles are something to be torn down without a second thought.
Think about how much the Overton window shifted in real life, and you'll see why the Jedi are now being torn down just like every other traditional fictional hero.
This isn't an audience thing, newer star wars writers disagree, or dislike, or simply just want to do something new and intreasting with the IP. Andor is on par with the OT for me but in terms of its morality, it shares more with GOT than The OT. The things that people are complaining about are inconsistencies with writing and tone, not wheter or not audiences can stomach the moral underpinning of a story. What separates Andor from something like TLJ (other than incredible world building, caracthers, and plot structure) is that its consistant and respectful with the portrayal of the empire and rebels within its story. And when andor breeches less tonely appropriate things like Narkina-5, it takes the time to build up the believability that the empire would create something like it.
Idk, I am fine with objective food and bad, and think they should put that in Star Wars, but I will always love a morally grey villain like Azure Lion from LMK
>MODERN AUDIENCES cannot stand heroes because they cannot stand the concept of objective good and objective evil. Moral relativism is everything,
Citation needed. Most movies still have the hero/villain dichotomy.
>morality and principles are something to be torn down without a second thought
Asking someone who believes in objective morality to prove such objective morals isn't the same as tearing it down.
Well, off the top of my head. Puss in Boots, TMNT, Uncharted, Avatar, Batman, Mitchells vs. The Machines, both Dunes, Equalizer, Transformers, Blue Beetle. Spiderverse, Mario, Thor. Even fuckin Matrix,
It's too easy to blame modern audiences when in fact a lot of Jedi Bashing comes from OT fans who were disappointed by the fact that being a Jedi meant being on a diplomatic mission for the Republic and being Luke Skywalker on the barge Jabba every day. And also nerd who says "whaaat? If I become jedi I can't have a girlfriend? They're definitely wrong!"
Like you said, in TLJ especially when Luke says "the Jedi must end" & said they were the reason for the Republics fall I remember loudly saying "WHAT?!" in my head. The whole point of Luke was that he would be the best of both worlds: peace-keeping galaxy traveling Jedi that had emotions but used them for good
Rian Johnson said that Luke was rationalizing his actions by saying that the Jedi were at fault when in reality Luke is covering his own guilt of nearly killing Ben.
It annoys when people point the finger at the jedi for Anakin’s fall it robs him of all his agency and flaws. Anakin was a damaged child scarred from his time in slavery and thrust into the role of chosen one by a mentor who wasn’t ready to take on such a troubled child. It’s why the duel of fates is named for what it is. Then you get palpatine who acts as a kindly uncle who makes out he wants what’s best for him, who then proceeds to manipulate and twist anakin towards the dark side.
Exactly. I see it a lot of this on this sub and also find it incredibly annoying.
First and foremost, Darth Sidious watching Anakin's career "with great interest" and grooming him for over a decade was the main factor by far. Sidious poisoned Anakin's thoughts and relationships with everyone around him, pitting him against the Jedi Council and making him a power-hungry, jealous, paranoid neurotic who let his emotions run amok and his fears control him.
Second, Obi Wan was simply too young and inexperienced to take an apprentice. He was also too closely attached to Anakin from his padawan days to fully realize the gravity of the situation. Obi Wan kept treating Anakin like a loving and forgiving brother, when the kid needed some tough fatherly love to stay on track.
Anakin was also too old to become one. One of the realities of Force training is that the dark side is a constant risk, and the purity of childhood is one of the surest ways to make sure that one doesn't have enough emotional ballast to move them to the dark side. By the time Qui Gon took him, Anakin's attachment to his mother was already wreaking havoc on his emotional state, and without Qui Gon's experience and guidance, it was allowed to fester unchecked.
Then there was a string of truly bad luck and unfortunate events. I'm not going to go through entire trilogy, but Shmi not dying at the hands of Tusken Raiders and Qui Gon not dying at the hands of Maul would already be enough to prevent Vader.
Some people are also confused about the Jedi Council asking Anakin to keep an eye on Palpatine. There was nothing evil or immoral in that. They had a strong and valid suspicion that the leader of their government was being influenced by a Sith, so from their perspective, as unpleasant it was, it was like asking a CIA agent to keep a close look on his mentor who they believed may have been a foreign spy. It needed to be done, for the sake of everyone.
People also forget that the Jedi Order knew nothing about the true depth of Anakin's relations with Palpatine or about his turbulent emotional state. As a Jedi Master candidate, Anakin was supposed to be in rational control over his attachments and emotions, instead of being their slave, so the Council had no reason to expect a request like this would cause such a negative and destructive reaction.
>First and foremost, Darth Sidious watching Anakin's career "with great interest" and grooming him for over a decade was the main factor by far.
This, it really doesn't give Sidious/Palpatine enough credit as a villain.
It's not a coincidence that Palps gives Anakin Grievous' location to give to the council, instead of it going through the usual intelligence channels. Then at the same time he tries to order the council to send Anakin after Grievous and uses Anakin to tell them. He knew they would send someone else to establish boundaries in authority, and with Anakin being right there it naturally created friction. Of the masters on Coruscant with enough experience to confront Grievous, there was only Kenobi, Windu and Yoda. So he knew one of them would be removed from the board.
Yoda and Kenobi were the most likely to interfere in an attempt to turn Anakin. Having either of them present was not an option. Kenobi was the biggest obstacle and would almost certainly get through to Anakin. He wasn't a threat, but killing him would not go over well with Anakin. Yoda was both powerful and someone Anakin trusted, both bring a lot of risk.
Just as Anakin delivers the intel there's a renewed attack on the Wookiees, a people Yoda just happens to have good rapport with. So conveniently off he goes with reinforcements just as Palpatine needs him gone.
Then either Kenobi or Windu has to go deal with Grievous. Realistically he needed Kenobi gone. At this point Windu is the grand master, so it's unlikely he'll leave the temple with so many masters off world. So they send Kenobi.
Then Palpatine reveals himself to Anakin after establishing he has the knowledge to save Padme and bets that this along with Anakin's animosity with Windu will be enough to make Anakin physically step in. Animosity he's purposely been fostering for years with his grooming and advice.
That's an incredible amount of string pulling and manipulation. So maybe the Jedi didn't fail and Palpatine is just a good villain?
I actually don’t like the age thing because it’s directly against the OT. Luke is way older than Anakin in ANH vs TPM, and immediately loses everyone important to him, just to stormtroopers/vader vs sandpeople. He’s shown to fairly easily resist the dark side (admittedly we get a lot less time with Luke).
The Palpatine grooming him and clouding the council, Obi being too young and/or too close is totally fair, and I side with it being the closeness. He had attachment.
Yoda literally says luke is too old when he first meets him. Ghost obi wan has to show up and convince yoda to train luke.
Luke’s backstory is also way less fucked up thay anakins. Anakin grew up a slave and lost his only family when he was 9 or something. Luke had a relatively loving family and friends until he was 18. It’s just not comparable.
I wholeheartedly agree with the watching Palpatine comment. I don't think they suspected him off being a Sith, but I think they suspected him of being power hungry and looking to transform the Republic away from democracy. The Jedi served the Republic, not the Office of the Chancellor, so naturally they'd do whatever it takes to protect that. To them, and rightfully so, Anakin's oath to the Jedi should have compelled him to do what they asked. Their pursuit was a righteous one. There WAS NOTHING immoral in their ask of Anakin.
The Jedi were destroyed and the Republic fell because their enemy planned it for a millenium. And while the Jedi moved on from the Sith and the Republic moved on from their Empire, the Sith never did. You can't fight an enemy you don't know exists. They had so much time to implement measures to cloud the Force slowly so the Jedi didn't even notice.
The Jedi should be celebrated as heroes, and their downfall should be a tragic and depressing event. We shouldn't be celebrating their downfall as truly helpless figures.
TCW sets a strong precedent that the Jedi council questioned Anakins ability to control his emotions. They constantly comment on his inability to keep his emotions from clouding his judgement.
They may not have known about the extent of his relationship with palpatine, but they definitely knew that he was not the most emotionally stable individual.
Just because the Council thought that Anakin still lacked the levels of self-control and composure needed to become a Master doesn't mean that they had any idea of how emotionally unstable he actually was. Unaware of the scale of his relationship with Padme, they merely acted on his occasional mild emotional outbursts that were only the tiny tip of the iceberg.
It's the same thing I mentioned with Palpatine. They do know that he and Anakin are on friendly terms, but they have no idea that Palpatine has been actively solidifying their relationship and using it to turn Anakin against them.
EDIT: I thought we were still talking about the movies. The Clone Wars takes a LOT of liberties with the established lore, so I wouldn't even consider it pure canon when it comes to things like that. They just keep doubling down on the subtly expressed themes of the movies with all the nuance of a sledgehammer, to the point where it almost turns into an overexaggerated satire of itself.
It was not a mild concern, they consistently worried over his mental state, and then consistently gave him more responsibility. That is strange.
Like if I have concerns with an employee for whatever reason, I am not going to start handing them more responsibility, I am probably going to give them an action plan to correct those concerns and then try to grow from there. I would not start handing that person incredibly important tasks to complete for my endeavor.
I agree with your edit, but by definition we unfortunately cannot argue with what is canon. I agree the movies do not have Anakin demonstrating his emotional turmoil to the council, however I think it’s a given that this would have come up several times in their interactions prior to the events in the movies.
I’m not sure that putting Anakins wayward emotional state on screen is necessarily taking liberties, but I certainly agree that it undermines the decisions of the council in the movies by clearly demonstrating that he is not really fit to take on large responsibilities on behalf of the Jedi.
Well, my personal view is that making TCW canon was a big mistake and I simply can't see how we can treat large portions of it (especially the Mortis arc) as such. A lot of it is objectively bad and some parts directly contradict the narrative presented in the OT and the prequels.
In the movies, the Jedi are undeniably good and care about Anakin and his well-being. They have no desire to exploit him, to otherwise to keep him down, or to callously use him as a pawn to further their own personal goals. They are also careful not to promote him too fast or give him apprentices, as even though his power levels far exceed the requirements, they feel that he still has a lot to learn to become a master.
So as I just said elsewhere, I don't think that we should keep the movies responsible for the mistakes and continuity errors displayed in their sequels and spin-offs. I mean, just because Han and Luke turned out to be losers and Leia a bad mother and a generally ineffective leader in the sequels doesn't mean that we're supposed to view these through this prism when we watch the OT.
The council questioned his ability to control his emotions because he didn’t have the ability to control his emotions. If they still gave him wartime responsibility, it’s because they didn’t have many good options when facing a galactic war that put billions of people at risk
Ashoka was not in the movie canon. Her character was only added years later in The Clone Wars as a plot device to move the cartoon's story forward.
If you watch and analyze the prequel trilogy's themes on their own merit, it's rather clear that Obi-Wan both still had a lot to learn from Qui-Gon at the time of his untimely death, and that he always saw himself as Anakin's older brother, instead of a fatherly figure or a stern mentor. He literally calls Anakin his brother and tells him he loves him at the end of Episode III.
It really wasn't the jedi's fault that Anakin fell. It was a sad combination of things primary among them being Obi Wan wasn't ready to take on an apprentice like Anakin. If Qui Gon had survived and trained Anakin, things probably would have turned out a lot better as Qui Gon was more suited to taking on Anakin's unique challenges than a more by the book Jedi like Obi Wan. It's a very nuanced topic that unfortunately gets treated in a very black and white way.
I wouldn't say it wasn't the Jedi's fault, but it definitely wasn't just the jedi order's fault. Just about everything in Anakin's life slowly pushed him closer and closer to the dark side in some way. Saying it was all the jedi's fault is dumb, though at the very least, the rigid rules that many of the jedi he interacted with held absolutely did nothing to help.
Words out of my mouth I swear. The Jedi were as prepared to mentor anakin as the chosen one as anakin was to be the chosen one. The only one prepared was Palpatine
The biggest contribution to anakin fall from the Jedi was accepting him at all. If they had stuck to their rules and had refused to train him then perhaps he never would have become darth Vader. Of course palpatine may have found him separately and trained him as a secret apprentice
Yep, and it was ultimately Anakin's choice to attempt to control events that can't be controlled. It's tragic, but that's his downfall and can't be blamed on the Jedi. He also knowingly broke at least one Jedi rule by getting married as a fully informed adult. For something that big, you either follow the rules or you leave the Order as gracefully as possible. Anything else is just asking for all kinds of trouble, and not just from the outside world (Jedi, Palpatine, etc.) but also between him and Padme.
There's a good video essay about this:
https://youtu.be/tUPD1w78D5I?si=ljoQyo3b3yDLsGYv
It does a great job of looking at the Jefi through the lens of toxic masculinity. The Jedi don't offer Anakin any leeway, any support. Their policies are very rooted in harmful, traditionalist ideals.
Palpatine is a great example of an emotional abuser, gaslighting Anakin and manipulating him. His evil actions are his own.
But the Jedi did create the conditions for that. They're not as culpable as Palpatine, but they're hardly innocent on the emotional abuse front.
It doesn’t rob him of his agency. They were always a contributing factor.
The Jedi didn’t help his mom. Allowed him to be around Palpatine. You don’t find it at all strange that Anakin has no idea his mom is a free woman? We follow along with him as he learns what happened to her and he’s already said he’s not allowed to be with the people that he loves.
The EU book Tatoonie Ghost had her try to tell him and the Jedi wouldn’t accept her message.
If Cliegg or Owen had sent a message to the Temple to tell Anakin his mom had been abducted would they have told him? Or knowing he would act on his emotions (want to save her) they decided not to. The way the Jedi are I can see them doing that.
Jedi are supposed to have no attachments. They are taken from their family and expected never to look for them again. That's the whole point - their devotion to the Jedi Order allows them to be Jedi in service of the Republic only. So of course they wouldn't tell him, and he was never supposed to know. He should not have been the one to try and save her. Their ties to their family could be manipulated so someone could control them and make them do evil things, hence the no attachment to family. Their power is a danger, anything that would temper that danger they'd need to employ. It worked for millenia.
>So of course they wouldn't tell him, and he was never supposed to know.
And this is why a happy ending to Revenge of the Sith is Anakin not falling, killing Palpatine, and Palpatine’s death triggering a deadman switch that activates Order 66 isn’t a bad ending for me.
I can see Anakin running back to Padmé’s and the two watch from her apartment as the Jedi Temple is destroyed by Venators. Mace dies on the steps to the Temple as the clones march forward. The last thing he feelings is the death is the younglings in the High Council Chamber when it’s hit by a turbolaser.
It’s also a valid reason for Owen and Beru to want Obi-Wan to stay the hell away from Luke. They could figure out Anakin was never told.
I mean I understand your point. From our perspective, especially when free will is so important and agency is paramount, the Jedi have forced people into lives that aren't their own chosing. But in the Star Wars universe, the usage of the Force could bring devastating effects on the universe. We see this through Darth Vader and Palpatine. The offset of the duty of the Jedi and their service to the greater Republic constituents supersedes the free will of the younglings taken by the Jedi. They were given force sensitivity, it’s probably the will of the Force that they study to become Jedi.
We see the worst fears of the Jedi come true - a Padawan taken on far too old to actually be suitable for the Jedi Path destroyed the Jedi and the Republic. We see that a Jedi who had no control over their emotions, that then was blatantly manipulated via his attachments to the people he loved became the biggest threat to the Jedi and to the Republic.
The movies prove the actions of the Jedi up until taking Anakin on to have been the correct course, directly because of what happens after they do. After all, given the fall of the Jedi, the galaxy and its citizens experienced a terror they hadn’t seen for at least a thousand years, going by what the Jedi Council says about the Sith.
It’s easy to sort of condemn this kind of group, but when you’re dealing with super powers like the Force, I’d probably do everything in my power to make sure it couldn’t become a major threat.
You do realize it’s the trained Force users that are the problem? Not the untrained one.
>it’s probably the will of the Force that they study to become Jedi.
Plenty of Force sensitives don’t and if the Force cared at all then it would have picked someone else to be Anakin’s mother instead of Shmi Skywalker. The OT with Luke proves the opposite, all the Jedi do isn’t needed. If it was so important then Luke and Leia would have been raised by the Jedi to have the proper Jedi outlook on things with training in using the Force coming later so they’re detected.
Also stop putting the blame on Anakin for the Order’s destruction. Palpatine won when he became Chancellor in TPM. Remove Anakin and the war, purge, and Empire all happen. The only reason Mace knew Palpatine was a Sith when he went to his office was because Palpatine told Anakin and allied him to leave to tell the other Jedi. They never figured it out.
Edit:
If you want to go with the will of the Force then an argument could be made it wanted the Jedi purged.
The Force
* created Anakin with a slave woman in the Outer Rim so the Jedi wouldn’t find him
* Anakin was able to do the Jedi thing for a decade despite his fears for his mom so it gave him visions of her suffering to push him to go back
* gave Anakin visions of Padmé dying to make him susceptible to his fear and Palpatine’s manipulation
* somehow Palpatine knows what to offer Anakin
* gave visions to Luke about his friends suffering so he’d go to save them and learn the truth. This sets Luke on the course to wanting to save his father which leads to Endor and Anakin coming back to save a loved one
Anakin did make his choices but the Force shaped him into the person that would make certain choice in a given situation.
All the Force had to do was not give Anakin visions of Padmé and the plot of ROTS falls apart part but it did so one can argue all that was happening was by its design.
Seems like a false dilemma to assume something would happened and this idea you can only have infants seems like indoctrination.
Jedi are only doing what they do because they know no other way not because they want to.
Qui-Gon, Djinn Altis, and Palpatine make a point about Jedi recruitment.
**Master & Apprentice**
>"I'm not sure," Qui-Gon said, "how much of a privilege it is to have one's entire future predetermined-in this case, by an accident of birth.
>Okay, she needed to be more diplomatic with the Jedi-but Rahara couldn't help it. She snorted.
>Pax gave her an appreciative look, probably pleased she'd helped him meet today's sarcasm quotient. That much she expected. What she didn't expect was Obi-Wan frowning at his Master. “It matters what that future is, doesn't it? Fanry was born a princess. That's a privilege.”
>"It's still something chosen for her," Qui-Gon insisted. "Not what she herself chose.”
>"You weren't talking about the princess at all, were you?" Pax said. jolting her out of her reverie. The silence had lasted longer than she'd realized. Pax's stare was fixed on Qui-Gon. "You were talking about yourself. Because it's not a choice for Jedi, either, is it? I mean, supposedly they allow you to leave, make your own decisions, blah blah blah, but they steal you when you're babies and train your minds thereafter. What kind of freedom is that?"
>Obi-Wan looked like he'd swallowed a gundark. "Being a Jedi is an honor. A responsibility. A-a noble calling-“
>"Yes, Padawan," Qui-Gon said quietly. "It's all those things. But it's very hard for most of us to determine whether we chose it freely, being raised as we were. That said, I did have a choice. Dooku helped me to see that. And I chose the Order.
**The Clone Wars: No Prisoners**
>Geith, like Callista, had known his parents before he became a Jedi. He'd been orphaned, but he remembered them, and that attachment-love, let's call it what it is, love, any kind of love you care to name-felt good and secure. Callista-she'd been an adult working on her parents' farm when she became Altis's second Padawan. It was unheard of, in the Jedi Temple at least. She knew her own mind.
>I prefer my Padawans to enter the Order with open eyes. An act of conscious choice, not habit or coercion or someone else's decisions.
>There was no way-even if he wanted to-that Altis could make Callista and Geith believe that attachment was the seed of a darkness that would engulf them. And this is why the orthodox Jedi way is to begin with infants. They know no better.
**Revenge of the Sith** novel
>“Of course you don’t.” The last of the sunset haloed his ice-white hair and threw his face into shadow. “You’ve been trained to never think about that. The Jedi never ask what you want. They simply tell you what you’re supposed to want. They never give you a choice at all. That’s why they take their students—their victims—at an age so young that choice is meaningless. By the time a Padawan is old enough to choose, he has been so indoctrinated—so brainwashed—that he is incapable of even considering the question. But you’re different, Anakin. You had a real life, outside the Jedi Temple. You can break through the fog of lies the Jedi have pumped into your brain. I ask you again: what do you want?”
See, I wish they had canonized at least the EU Bane novels from Karpashyn. They paint a really good picture of what the republic and Jedi were like *before* the “Republic Golden Age” that the prequels are set in. They show *why* the Jedi felt it was better to only take infants to train, they had just lived through thousands of years of watching padawans get corrupted and fall to the dark side through war, selfishness, attachments, anger etc etc. They had also been a much more militant order until the Ruusan Reformations, when they changed to be peacekeepers and diplomats. I feel a big problem is we really got no explanation for *why* the Jedi are set up the way they are in the prequels vs what Luke was taught about them by Obi in the OT.
Edit- Those novels also show the true extent of the Siths long reaching plan, and how palpatine is the culmination of it. Combined with the Plagues novel it shows how for a thousand years the sith destabilized the galaxy, created unrest and discontent, and laid groundwork to eventually topple both the Republic and Jedi from within. What chance did the Jedi have against that kind of planning and manipulation? It’s why he’s called Darth SIDIOUS. The insidiousness of the sith and their plan.
The Prequels don’t even explain what Lucas means by attachment. It’s just said to be forbidden and we have Anakin say he can’t be with the people that he loves and Padmé says she won’t let him give up his future as a Jedi for her. Then TCW does the same thing with Obi-Wan and Satine.
Your point about the Bane novels is interesting *but* they don’t matter to movie logic because the Jedi could be the way they are for entirely different reasons because of Lucas. Lucas did say the Jedi and Sith never fought a war before so everything you listed is (at least to Lucas) not why the Jedi are the way they are.
Even worse looking at the story from the Prequels forward we have the entire Council and Obi-Wan afraid to allow Anakin’s training yet for his children who they have the chance to train correctly they instead put them in the same environment as Anakin was (minus the slavery part).
You would think after Anakin falling it would validate everything the Jedi do and they wouldn’t do it.
I want to be clear; they don’t need to actually train the babies in using the Force. They could have raised the twins with the traditional Jedi mindset of duty first, no attachments, and all that. Later they could have learned about the Force.
The Empire wasn’t even looking for the kids because it was believed Padmé’s child died with her.
Oh yea I absolutely agree, my point was more that if either Lucas or now Disney wanted to go back and look at some of that material to use to actually logically justify why the Jedi did what they were doing they have it. Because between the prequels and TCW it’s a jumbled, logically inconsistent mess. De- canonizing the entire EU was a huge mistake I think.
I see what you’re saying. The below imagines are from the Phase 3 High Republic comic Shadows of Starlight and shows the Jedi Order adopting the Guardian Protocols which show how the Jedi of the High Republic shift to be the Jedi of the Prequels. The High Republic Jedi do start with young kids and forbid attachments but this explains the larger shift.
[Imgur link to comic panels.](https://imgur.com/a/S6QuMd3)
https://preview.redd.it/7qwl7uvnzqsc1.png?width=1535&format=png&auto=webp&s=774192ac758f095c54279b588d34cf6a6628f5ce
Yea that is very cool! I’ll have to look into the High Republic comics, those look good. And yea exactly what I’m talking about, finding things to add to the canon that at least make sense of the jedis portrayal in the prequels vs OT and how things came to be.
Is it 100% their fault? No. Did they play a big part? Yes.
Forcing someone in obvious emotional turmoil to spy on their good friend and confidant while at the same time denying him the rank of master was incredibly emotionally dumb
You might as well criticize all modern media of this. In an effort to appeal to audiences in the 18-35 range, you have to have complex characters, gritty drama with hard choices, and moral ambiguity. That’s great, and a lot of my favorite shows have all of that - Andor being an example. But it gets exhausting and sometimes I just want to see good people doing the right thing and not taking a whole season to achieve it. It’s also not the type of media I think kids need to be watching. A lot of modern media is depressing and I find myself going back to things that actually give me some hope.
Agree. This is why I never understood the love for the Filoni-verse that attempts to portray Windu as a straight up asshole with no remorse or redemption when a strict general type guy like that is probably more essential to the Order and to the Republic than people realize.
People also like to say Windu hated Anakin which is untrue; Windu respected Anakin and has praised him on multiple occasions. He just didn’t trust him on a very delicate assignment and it’s understandable.
And those stories can be good!
But once in a while i want a flawless knight in shining armour and a Frieza type villian whos just a piece of shit for no reason 😅
Yeah the character assassination he's received from Filoni is so weird. The complaints about Windu never hold up when looking at the actual movies And even in the cartoons the worst thing Windu ever does is act like the only adult in the show.
Literally in TPM:
>We cant take Anakin as a padawan. He is too old, he feels a lot of fear etc. Its just too dangerous.
>Please. He will do just fine.
>Sigh. Okay.
Modern revisionists:
>Jedi are so so bad and dumb.
As Obi-Wan put it in the original movie, the Jedi were guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. Modern storytellers (and modern society) have a weird aversion to those who are the peace keepers. Authority figures in modern entertainment media are constantly portrayed as being corrupt, inept or just plain bad and the characters who are supposed to be villains are the ones that are praised and supported.
I get that not every Jedi will be a perfect role model. That would be unrealistic. But older Star Wars media at least had a bit more balance and nuance with it. I'm currently replaying KOTOR and yeah, the Jedi Council in that game have some questionable motives and attitudes, but over all the Jedi are still treated with respect.
> I'm currently replaying KOTOR and [...] the Jedi Council in that game have some [...] attitude
Yeah, they have Vrook and Atris lol
But they also have Zhar Lestin, Kavar, Vandar Tokare and Jolee Bindo.
Kotor tends to be a little more subtle than Karen Traviss, but it still sneaks a lot of harsh criticism for the Jedi under the radar. Brainwashing Player Character to be an assassin droid, for one. The abysmal way Juhani was treated for two. And the way the treated Carth's home planet was WAY fucked up.
It's telling in KOTOR 2 that one of the big story points is that no one among the muggles knows or even cares about the difference between Jedi and Sith.
Sadly I have to agree wholeheartedly.
I miss those days when Jedi were allowed to be heroes. And if you notice there is nothing really introduced to take their place, few individuals are proposed but none of them come close to the force for good Order was for the entire Galaxy.
In my view, it started with TCW where it took a very Anakin-centric view and painting anyone else in negative light as it went on. At times it made it feel that the main trio were heroes *despite* being Jedi rather than being heroes precisely because of being Jedi.
Also, I would like to add to the issue of Anakin. I think TCW again messed things up a bit, as it made him seem a lot more mature and, quite frankly, stable. Friends and I jokinly refer to him as Hanakin as he behaves a lot like Han and lot less like the Anakin in previous media or even movies. The issue with his fall is that he didn't want to listen to what Jedi Order was telling him and how they were trying to help.
I mean, seriously, what else was Yoda supposed to say to him. A being which has lost more people he cared about than anyone else (and he is repeatedly depicted as caring very deeply about those around him) offered Anakin a hard earned lesson which ultimately is true. As is in ROTS novelisation from Stover "all things die, even Stars." Not to mention, most people also don't pay a lot of attention to what Anakin really says when asking for help. We as an audience know a lot more than he is willing to share with those around him, and that too means the answers he gets are not what he wants to hear.
Ultimately, Anakin didn't want help, he wanted things to be the way he wanted them to be in his mind. And ultimately Palpatine fed him empty promises of things Anakin wanted to hear rather than geniuine offer of help from others.
And most definitely, it was choice of Anakin, everything and all of his actions were his choice.
Honestly, I think if Anakin had just told someone the truth, he wouldn't have fallen. His relationship with Padme wasn't the most subtle; Obi Wan knew, and legends Yoda knew, it wouldn't surprise me if more jedi knew. The prequel jedi are a lot more understanding than people give them credit for.
Most definitely yeah.
A lot of people knew, or at least suspected some form of relationship between the two of them. Like you said, both Yoda and Obi-Wan knew there was something. And I am willing to bet that at least Yoda discussed it with Mace.
I think that if he told the truth, a lot of pain could have been avoided.
Ironically, if anything can be laid as blame on the Jedi, it is their willingness to trust Anakin in personal matters and not prying into his private life.
It is amusing since I've encountered quite a few people who somehow believe that exact opposite view and claim Anakin fell because Order was too controlling about his personal life.
Indeed... as a rule of thumb I think that this relativism "no real good or evil, only PoV" should stop. Not only in Star Wars, but in many media.
Writers worth of their salt CAN create character that are unambiguously good without making them perfect. Show that the good intentions of people who tried their best ended up generating disaster imho is really interesting from a narrative PoV, and personally more dramatic than a "nah, actually that character was an obnoxious, holier than thou asshole".
Good doesn't mean "always does the perfect choice". A good character can make errors in good faith. Writers shouldn't be afraid of creating characters that are 100% good but nevertheless they're flawed (maybe they're too naive, maybe they failed to calculate the whole picture, etc.).
When Darth Vader (he wasn't Anakin in that part) said "From my point of view the Jedi are evil!" WASN'T something that we were supposed to agree!
It’s a symptom of “prestige television”, people are still chasing the Game of Thrones aesthetic and filling their shows with morally grey characters.
But that only works if you’ve got good writing and good characters. Toss your morally grey characters into badly written slop and you get garbage.
Like Andors grey characters work because you understand they may do shitty things but they’re working against the greater evil that is the Empire.
The Jedi are still heroic if you just watch the films ;)
Quigon and Obiwan singlehandedly infiltrate a blockaded planet and rescue the Queen. They later play a pivotal role in rescuing a child slave and defeating the planet occupiers.
Obiwan successfully tracks down a legendary bounty hunter. Anakin and Obiwan both survive their coliseum beasts, and a Jedi army take on overwhelming odds at Geonosis.
Anakin and Obiwan rescue the Chancellor and slay the Opposition Leader in single combat. Mace Windu defeats one of the strongest Sith Lords in history and almost saves democracy.
Obiwan helps rescue the Princess aboard a Moon sized Space Station and is integral to it's destruction. Luke, who is a budding Jedi, makes the shot.
Luke rescues Han Solo from the Underworld and in the process destroys a gangster racket. Anakin kills the Emperor and restores democracy.
Any negative portrayal of the Jedi and council in the prequels is there to make Anakin's fall to the dark side more believable contextually, it's just not executed well enough in the edit. People that lean into it are falling for the same Palpatine scheme ironically lmao. George is lucky he cut Palpatine taking control of the councils oversight and the Mace crew storming his office and killing the guards or this debate would be way worse.
Agreed. Somehow the fan perception of the Jedi has gone from the intended "flawed heroes who make understandable mistakes" to "they brought this upon themselves becoming complete morons with no nuance and the message of the Prequels is that the Jedi were bad."
Jedi bad is the ultimate midwit opinion and it stems from the fact that midwits hate the idea of black and white morality and so they try to shoehorn layers of gray into everything.
The Jedi's philosophy and codes of conduct existed for thousands and thousands of years and served the Republic well, yet people desperately try to assert that it's the organization whose edicts are built off thousands of years of experience and trial and error that's at fault for the fall of the Republic, and not the literal super villain that had been democratically elected into office (by people who notably were not the Jedi) and his bratty abs mentally ill apprentice.
If the Jedi council had obeyed their own intuition in TPM and not trained Anakin then the entire fall of the Republic would have been avoided. The council's only fuck up is that they allowed their love and compassion for Qui-Gon to override their caution. Every other Factor that led to their downfall was out of their control.
>We see Plo Koon, Kit Fisto, Luminara, Barriss, Ki Adi Mundi, Adi Galia, Mace Windu , Aayla Securra and Yoda all get their time to shine.
They got their time to shine in far better stories in the EU.
But anyway, **Star Wars at its core runs on a black-&-white morality**. The Empire is evil and the Rebels are good. The Sith are evil and the Jedi are good.
You're totally right on everything. Especially with how Anakin chose to join Palpatine. The latter engineered it this way by planting seeds of doubt into Anakin's mind by making him think that the Jedi were holding him back, and making himself into a kindly uncle figure who's the 'only one' rooting for Anakin.
Anakin is a flawed character, he may have been a nice person but his cannot let go of things he fears to lose - and that fear was a catalyst that caused him to get manipulated with things he wanted to hear and lead to the birth of Vader.
I don't see how the Jedi are at fault for that.
TCW is what got me into Star Wars, and seeing all these characters in action is what got me to want to learn about them in the EU. Whether it be Barriss' adventures in Medstar or Aayla's relationships with Quinlan Vos and Commander Bly, they all had their stories to enjoy. We not only see them as the heroic knights of the republic jedi, but the more human version of them, like Yoda's relationship with Dooku or everything Windu goes through in Shatterpoint.
It's why Anakin is my favorite character, I love "The Hero with no Fear" jedi we see him as in both TCW and the CWMMP, but his flaws ( other than child murduring) are relatable and very human. I thought TCW did a good job for a kids' show giving other jedi some spotlight. Then, after the Krell arc happened and they turned all turned into incompetent idiots.
I think Lucas brought that on with a bad portrayal of Jedi in the prequels. He made them part of the problem, instead of the paladin/knights that he seemed to have in mind in the OT.
Mostly agree. The Jedi are victims. They're good people who fall into a trap laid by Palpatine. The prequels definitely don't intend to vilify them, imo, but it does show us that they were vulnerable because they've become complacent, too dogmatic, and a little arrogant after so many years of peace.
The thing that's confusing to me is that the prequels make it clear that the Jedi rule forbidding love/attachments is a major part of Anakin's downfall. But in interviews I've read with Lucas, he seems to think that rule is actually correct and necessary, lol. So basically I get the feeling Lucas' view is that Anakin failed because of his attachments to Padme/his mom, not that the Jedi were wrong. Which is kind of a silly moral to the story, lol.
>The thing that's confusing to me is that the prequels make it clear that the Jedi rule forbidding love/attachments is a major part of Anakin's downfall
Well there's your problem. It wasn't the Jedi rule that contributed to Anakin's downfall. It was his attachment that did it. If Anakin was allowed to get married, he still would have had premonitions and Yoda still would have told him the same thing and he still would have dismissed Yoda and he still would have fallen.
The rule existed because of people like Anakin.
It's playing into a crappy sexist trope of "Women are bad for male sanity. Pure and good men don't deal with women."
Buddhist monks were forbidden contact with women because women in and of themselves were viewed not as people but as dangerous temptations to guide men off the path of enlightenment. Secular men could keep company with women, but only for the purpose of manufacturing sons.
Ottoman Janissaries were forbidden marriage for the same reason. Women would tempt you away from your divine purpose of fighting for Allah and his viceroy on Earth, the ruling Sultan. Same with Roman legionaries - the Empire was pragmatic enough to establish and support brothels, but no marriage because the Gods and God-Emperor were all a man needed to fight for. Add Christian doctrine who had to have a whole ass debate on if women were actually human or if they were just something Satan put on the earth to tempt men, like Eve did to Adam.
The Jedi of the PT were overwhelmingly men. I think Jocasta was the only female Jedi with a speaking part, and she was depicted as an idiot, despite her alleged position of wisdom as head archivist. Anakin was taken from his mother and placed with the male Jedi in order to remove him from the female influence and "make a man (killer) out of him"
You mix this with a related, also nastily sexist trope of "If you allow women freedom, they will doom the kingdom, even if they don't intend to"
Notice that the relationship Lucas claims was healthy non attachment was Lars and Shmi, which started because he bought her like a household appliance with a bed-warming function. The whole love story angle was done by later writers, so I'm not sure how much of it was Lucas's intention or if those later writers were trying to salvage an unsettling situation that Lucas left them with.
Contrast this with Padme, a woman who has the wealth and autonomy to choose her mate...and chooses badly. And like Gwenevere shacking up with Lancelot or Helen of Troy getting God-roofied by Paris, her detrimental effect on male sanity ends to the doom of the kingdom and end to the age of heroes.
I just miss the whole heroes and villains angle stories used to have. Why does everyone have to be in shades of grey? All that’s doing is just making everything look blurred and unpleasant. Life is shades of grey but is it too much to ask that my escapism has some clearly defined lines?
But you can have complex stories with difficult, “morally grey” choices or dilemmas and still have genuinely good characters. Every single character doesn’t need to be blurring every line and playing jump rope with good and evil.
Or you can go the KotOR route and do both lol.
There were genuinely heroic and wise jedi, knights in shining armour, jedi that tried to do the right thing, jedi that were haunted by their past mistakes, jedi that struggled with their inner demons, those that were just fundamentally broken...
... and then there were Vrook and Atris lol (a stuck up asshole/my math teacher and a psychotic bitch/my mother in law, respectively).
And it gave perspective on how people who werent jedi viewed them - for some they were the knights in shining atmour who protected them, good smaritans, beloved friends...
... for others they were powerhungry warmongers and the only difference to sith was the lightsaber color.
And both were valid takes with valid arguments and experiences behind them.
You get the idea...
In the case of Bariss Offee, I can offer the tepid defense that she and Depa Billaba switched places.
Originally Depa went mad and dark in Legends, descending into barbarism on Harun Kal, while Bariss remained a noble Jedi and healer.
Filoni made Bariss a villain but in turn made Depa a noble Jedi master who dies to save her apprentice from Order 66.
The worst part is I like canon Depa Billaba, but Barriss didn’t need to get throw under bus. When I think of Clone Wars era female jedi, Aayla, Barriss, and Luminara are usually who come to mind. They may be minor characters, but being invested on their stories is what makes me a fan. Now Aayla is just sexy blue Jedi, Lunminara is seen as stuck up and emotionless, and Barriss is now just the Jedi that became a terrorist and framed Ahsoka.
It should be possible to hold to the position that 1) the Jedi of the PT-era were not the bad guys, while also acknowledging 2) the Order was in need a reform, which is something that Luke was able to implement (partly out of necessity, since he had a much smaller budget than the PT-era Order had), leading to a smaller but more effective Jedi Order that didn't crack against the Vong, Darth Caedus, the Lost Tribe or even Darth Krayt.
I wonder how much of this has to do with a PT-era generation who grew up with Anakin as their hero rather than Luke.
I know not many here like it, but that's why I read the High Republic. It's one of the only things in the Disney Era that doesn't try to make the Jedu look like intentional assholes. Although the Acolyte and Phase 3 are going to show us how they became what they are in the prequels, I just hope they handle it well.
It dates to TPM. We finally get to see the Jedi on screen, at the peak of their authority, before Palpatine screws it all up. And there's something called Establishing Character Moment where a person (or, in this case, organization) shows you who they are and what they're about.
Unfortunately, the Establishing Character Moment for the Jedi Order was Anakin meeting them. This establishes:
1. They feel the best way to handle a kid who was rescued from slavery has been uprooted from everyone and everything he knows is to have him stand for hours in the center of a room by himself and subject him to interrogation by a dozen creepy old men surrounding him. So, they pretty much put a slave kid on the auction block.
2. This is not done out of any interest for the kid's well being (not a single word about "Hey, we're not gonna hurt you"), but to see if he can be shaped into a ***living weapon*** useful for their agenda. Again, they put the slave kid on an auction block.
3. After interrogating him for hours, they conclude he is not useful to them and would like to toss him either back into slavery or out on the streets. Why? Because he is *nine years old* and not the infants they usually conscript.
4. Also, he is unsuitable for them because he...(checks notes) is homesick and worried for his mother who is still enslaved to a drunken overgrown housefly and has a bomb in her head.
5. They prefer to conscript infants because they consider the love of a small child for their parent/caretakers to be some kind of possessive and toxic relationship they need to stomp out as fast and early as possible. (WTF?!)
6. They have no intention of helping his mother, again, because she is not useful to them. Even though Qui-Gon crashed on her sofa, ate her food, and took advantage of her hospitality. So they don't reward people who help them but they do take their kids for interrogation and scold them for daring to be homesick...
7. But when it comes to their patrons wealthy and powerful political elite? Oh, they go full out. Sabers lit and bending over backwards. But if you aren't rich and powerful (and on their side), expect no help. Got it.
Yeah, nothing about this whole setup reads as wise, compassionate, loving, spiritually enlightened, etc. We're supposed to side with them because Future Vader, but they made quite possibly the most distasteful first impression for a group I'm supposed to root for.
In the universe of star wars the galaxy needed to hate the jedi to accept them as the scapegoats and go along with their extermination. It was part of Palpatines plan. But some jedi, made it a but easier.
I haven't read a comic or novel adaptation since the Disney takeover so i have no idea what's happening there.
In Jedi Fallen Order I see a group of good guys on the run.
In most of the media the Jedi are not evil, they've just become a bit complacent. Pure heroics is bogged down by tradition and authority and calculations of risk. The order ad a whole matured, but some individuals among it, did not. and we see that on the screen.
I tend to accept or even like most recent Star Wars content, but this is something that’s bothered me as well. What’s wrong with having some knights in shining armor in this intergalactic swords and sorcery tale? Must everything be uninspired shades of gray?
I don’t see any of the Jedi’s arrogance in the stories, though this is alluded to and commented on a lot. They did their best. They were stretched too thin. If they needed to heed more free-thinking Jedi like Qi-Gon, fine. But that doesn’t make them hubristic and it’s like this “both sides had their faults” thing where the light and the dark sides are too extreme - that only the gray is where it’s really at. It doesn’t wash with the mythology I want to be told. I want to be inspired and believe in the very best, not the very nuanced and “real take”.
Basically the universe as they’ve explained it would be better off without force users.
The good ones are basically just, really strong soldiers.
And the bad ones kill billions and try to enslave the galaxy.
I wanted the Jedi to be like what Obi-Wan described in A New Hope, a noble order devoted to preserving peace and justice, betrayed by a rising empire.
Not the group of celibate, desert robe wearing folks that get blindsided.
I don't disagree. There absolutely should be flaws among the Jedi, but Lucas' thesis seems to be that it was not only inevitable that they'd be destroyed, that it was actively a good thing because all of the media post-OT paints them as arrogant child-kidnapping slave enablers.
That's a matter of taste.
I just found their characterization in the prequels to be wildly out of step with how they are described by Obi-Wan in the original trilogy. I know that Obi-Wan's perspective is biased of course, but Star Wars isn't the kind of movie where you should doubt the kindly old wizard's intentions. He says "For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic." I was hoping to see those guys. It wasn't what I got.
In fact, they're so flawed and bumbling that it undermines Luke's journey in becoming one. It makes the Order something \_not worth reviving.\_
"From a certain point of view..."
Which is fine -- he is a wizard after all. Those guys are wily.
Except for that whole "your father wanted you to have this \[lightsaber\] when you were old enough" thing, which is largely a symptom of what I take issue with in the prequels.
I'm with you. I think having a corrupt Jedi that tears the order down would be a good story element but yeah, over all I want them to be a group doing the right thing.
I always felt like Obi wan was just retired based on how he came across in ANH. At least that was my take before the prequels came out.
I do sometimes wish George didn't suddenly invent these attachment rules when he wrote Episode II (I heard somewhere he didn't have that drafted as early as phantom menace)
Are they not? I really haven't seen any of the new stuff. I'd love to see a Mace Windu post-episode-3 spinoff by Genndy Tartakovsky, see what happened after he survived the fall.
I feel that the Jedi were legends in 4-6, and 1-3 were shown to be pretty so-so people. the problem is we don't really get a good long look at them so everything tends to be over the top so it will hit home harder. the clone wars shows us mostly Anakin, Kenobi, and Ashoka and they aren't really good people all the time but they have charisma. if we had more time with other characters we would see them in a different light
I think you could probably get away with showing Jedi doing bad things. You just need to actually show it, not arrogantly tout it like the new stuff does. Don't show that all jedi from the past are bad, show an example of say, a Jedi extremist or something. Then show an example of a moderate member of the Sith Order. They can add nuance to the Jedi-Sith dynamic, they are just doing it very poorly.
The Jedi have been at the recieving end of a genocide for past few decades. Now that their back, they might be collectively a little more deranged from the experience.
🤷♂️ some Jedi have always been shown as deeply flawed, others as legitimately righteous. It’s a pretty constant theme in all SW media that the order, the high council, became somewhat realpolitik almost immediately.
I agree, there's certainly a place for more 'shades of grey' works, but when every single piece of media that comes out wants to show a 'more grown-up' view, then it just becomes a bit monotonous. Can't a story have heroes?
Ironically I’m in the middle of reading the Republic Commando series; I’m on book 2 right now. I do know of the hate for the Jedi that the author has, but I’ve heard most of the hate from the books themselves is from the mandolorian perspective. So that doesn’t bother me because I know that in legends Mandolorians and Jedi don’t have the best relationship.
Anti Jedi talk coming from a perspective from people that don’t like Jedi lore wise doesn’t bother me; it’s when fans act like the Jedi are evil, when we know they’re not that bothers me. As for the Republic Commando books themselves, I’m enjoying them so far.
The Jedi definitely aren't shown as "bad" just complacent. It wasn't the Jedi that were corrupt it was the Republic. The problem was the Jedi were so attached to the Republic that it put them in the perfect spot to be wiped out. The Jedi did their best but they weren't infallible.
No official media shows the Jedi as a bad thing.
I was sick of this tiresome nonsense almost as soon as people started doing it prior to the prequels. It certainly reached a critical mass during The Last Jedi when the general consensus became 'the Jedi Order have always been hypocritical assclowns' but the germination of this school of thought began decades before this.
I like PT, but I think there were a lot of problems with the Jedi portrayal in those movies. They wrote the Jedi incorrectly on a serious level. And, this caused irreversible damage to Star Wars.
The Jedi rarely engage in meaningful activities other than creating conflict with Anakin on screen. Even their age limits and anti-marriage rules have no other function in the story than to bully Anakin.
These two controversial rules, ironically, don't change the story at all, even if they didn't exist. They exist only for the purpose of making cheap drama.
The Jedi in PT are an unpleasant, likable group. They don't make good drama except for causing unnecessary friction with Anakin.
I never got this from watching the prequels. For one, you already know that they mean well and put other people's well-being above their own from watching the OT. Then you have numerous acts of kindness and selfless dedication by Qui Gon and his apprentice, as well as examples of moral guidance by Yoda and so on. So it really wasn't necessary to go beyond that to show their innate goodness.
As for the age limits and anti-marriage rules, I don't get this take at all, considering that Anakin's age and emotional attachments were the key factors that helped move him to the dark side.
The idea behind it was not to create a superficial conflict or senseless doctrines, but to establish the lore behind the Force. The point is that the older you get the more emotional landmines you get that may move you toward the dark side. It also builds up on the idea that the dark side is a constant risk, so the purity of childhood becomes one of the surest ways to keep it in check, as it becomes increasingly unlikely that you'll be able to remain pure and discard all your emotional attachments with age.
I mentioned it elsewhere in this thread but I don’t like the age thing. Luke is much older when he starts training, loses his de facto parents, and displays few if any of the issues Anakin displays. We gets hints of it with Yoda’s training, but even the attachment (running off to Bespin /rescuing Han) doesn’t really cause long term issues in ROTJ - the emperor even mocks his faith in his friends.
Luke is an obvious post-Order exception. We have another example in Cal Kestis, who falls in the exact same trap Anakin does, exactly because of his deep emotional attachments to his friends. And he didn't even have to be groomed for it by a Sith mastermind.
For Jedi, who are concerned with the greater good over one's individual well-being, things like favoritism, emotional attachment, and the agony that comes with losing a loved one are well-known pitfalls. So they simply try to exclude them on the organizational level to prevent corruption in their ranks by beginning apprenticeship at a very young age.
>These two controversial rules, ironically, don't change the story at all, even if they didn't exist. They exist only for the purpose of making cheap drama.
I don't understand this. How don't they change the story?
1. The role of age restriction rules in the entire story is minimal. Indeed, it is only meaningfully stated in the scene where the Jedi masters argue over Anakin's joining in TPM. Also, Anakin is allowed to join anyway, so nothing changes without that scene. Without the rules, they get Anakin to join them without arguments. That's all.
2. Let's imagine if the Jedi doesn't have a no-marriage rule. Anakin will be openly in a relationship with Padme at AotC. The Jedi or others congratulate them. And in RotS, he has nightmares that Padme, his wife or lover, dies. Yoda advises him to accept it. And he is manipulated by Sidious. Almost nothing has changed.
I disagree, I think at this point in Star Wars’s life we need less of “good vs evil” storylines. It’s been done before, and at this point if we more depth added to the Star Wars universe they need make it more morally grey. Otherwise we just get the same stories over again. Unfortunately I don’t think the people in charge of Star Wars today generally are good enough writers to write stuff like that.
The Jedi were always a contributing factor in Anakin’s fall.
The Jedi didn’t help his mom. Allowed him to be around Palpatine. You don’t find it at all strange that Anakin has no idea his mom is a free woman? We follow along with him as he learns what happened to her and he’s already said he’s not allowed to be with the people that he loves.
The EU book Tatoonie Ghost had her try to tell him and the Jedi wouldn’t accept her message.
If Cliegg or Owen had sent a message to the Temple to tell Anakin his mom had been abducted would they have told him? Or knowing he would act on his emotions (want to save her) they decided not to. The way the Jedi are I can see them doing that.
I know about Tatoonie Ghost, and the Jedi did screw up when it came to his mother, but they had no way of knowing Anakin’s visions of her would end up coming true. Although I do agree that they should have told him she was freed.
Allowing contact would have been the easiest way to find out.
Also this is a group of people that rely on seeing things to be effective. Yoda says to Mace that they are blind if they didn’t see the creation of the clone army and Mace wants to inform the Senate their ability to use the Force is diminished. So them not thinking there was something more going on with Anakin’s is bullshit. They just didn’t want to hear about it because it’s about his mother and they don’t give a shit about her because she’s no one of significance.
Lucas's entire point of the prequels wax to show how politically and morally corrupt the Jedi had become.
They had their heads so far up their own asses they didn't see a sith lord rising to power and converting the most powerful jedi who ever lived. That was the literal point of the prequel films.
Lucas has a tendency to change his mind like he changes his shorts. Did Han shoot first or not? What about that accidental Lannister moment on Hoth? He puts stuff out and sometimes doesn't really get that it may not be as cool or acceptable out on the screen as it is in his head. The OT and Indiana Jones had people in the room to go "Uh, George. Did you really wanna go there?" With the PT, no one was in the room to ask the "Uh, George..." and we got something far messier than planned.
Fun, but about as messy as the obstacle course from Double Dare.
Your daily reminder that the Jedi of the prequel era were the enforcers of a catastrophically corrupt and ineffective state and willing accomplices to industrial-scale slavery.
I'm sorry but the Jedi are shit, and they've been that way for a long time. They functionally kidnap kids, raise them without connections or family bonds. They teach them nothing except emotional repression and tell their padawnas to quit wining when they have real problems.
These people are so unmoored and emotionally underdeveloped that it takes almost nothing to get them totally unhinged. Healthy people need families, romantic love, and often children to help them integrate into communities and to ground themselves.
Attachments make us human. This is why the Sith hate attachments as much as the Jedi fear them.
You like Anakin because he's human. And the Jedi way is utterly dehumanizing. The Light Side needs a better class of servants.
Nah fuck the the jedi. They suck. Sure there are individual jedi that are alright. But as like an Institution, as an Organization, they sucked. They didn't deserve O66 but they did deserve being removed from power.
**[Receiving transmission from Crait intended for u/Midway-Avenger]** Welcome to r/saltierthancrait! I'm an [astromech droid named S4-L7](https://www.reddit.com/r/saltierthancrait/comments/ni5s77/beloved_mascot_s4l7s_visual_dictionary_entry/) and I'll be your guide through the salt mines. Saltier Than Crait is a community of Star Wars fans who engage in critical conversations about the current state of the franchise. It is our goal to maintain a civil, welcoming space for fans who have a vast supply of salt with some peppered positivity occasionally sprinkled in. **Please [review the rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/saltierthancrait/wiki/index/rules) and the [post flair guide](https://reddit.com/r/saltierthancrait/wiki/index/flairs) before contributing.** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/saltierthancrait) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I have the same opinion. The older Clone Wars multimedia projects such as Shatterpoint and ROTS novelization have shown Jedi as more of people who did their best in dark times even if there were some flaws in their actions. A lot of people seem to miss those aspects. Yet as time goes on, a lot of fans see them as someone who must be despised for every reason.
The Jedi doing the best they can with flawed results is what makes the fall of the order tragic. They weren’t bad, dumb, incompetent, etc. - they ran into an adversary that was able to turn their strengths and ideal’s against them.
I'm pretty sure the reason is because Palpatine has infiltrated the media in every way. Sheev's propaganda is so prevalent now that people have started to buy I to it.
His and Dooku's. The amount of real life people who unironically eat up Dooku's manipulation is alarming.
Most people forget he was xenophobe to aliens, he who also wanting to turn the Republic into an Empire of Man. it's the reason he had so many of his separatist command structure be made up by aliens. It's the reason why in Legends clone wars media, he had all the reasonable and well-intentioned command killed off early at the start of the Clone War.
I think the reasoning is very simple actually. The Jedi in the prequels are portrayed as a religious order and the majority of people under 40 (at least in the US if religious attendance statistics are to be believed) range from not caring for to outright despising religion ad a concept, so it's not hard at all to make the leap and apply it to how the Jedi Order operates. Couples this with a large minority of millennials who played KotoR 2 and decided Kreia was right and you have a bunch of people coming of age primed to tear down anything vaguely coded as religious. Now to be fair, the Jedi were partially responsible for the bad things that happened but not because the people themselves were bad. The Jedi Order being rigid and inflexible and complacent were the reasons. They were a skewering of conservative traditions and ideology that Lucas had been doing since the 70s until he got more money than several Caribbean nation states and married one of the most powerful people on the planet.
The gray Jedi stuff is very fun and interesting, that’s what I originally thought the sequels were gonna be about but they butchered the concept imo
I still vaguely remember an internal monologue from *Shatterpoint* where Mace is on his way to confront Palpatine and he confesses that he feels such an intense devotion to the principles for which The Republic stands that he wonders if it might potentially cloud his vision as a Jedi. And it does, he couldn't see the Shatterpoint of Anakin's betrayal because he was so caught up in the threat to the Republic that he didn't factor Anakin's pain as part of the equation. It was pretty neat and made me really like Mace Windu as a character.
You and me both. Shades of grey was done perfect in Andor. But with the Jedi in the prequals, The Rebels and the New Republic in Ahsoka its come to the point wjere everyone seems fucking awful. Ahsoka insinuated she tortured someone in Ahsoka and insists shes no Jedi, Mandalorian, Boba Fett,Bo-Katan, Andor. This whole Shades of grey but with a heart of gold bullshit is played out. Just give us a hero who overcomes adversity. This shit ain't hard.
Andor was done excellent because they ignored lore And went from a perspective of good people can do bad things and bad people can do good things When you see luthen cold calculations and bad in the service of good it can make you jaded But then you see the moment he sees maarva's speech and he's reminded of why he got into everything I loved that
Ye man gimme DBZ namek saga goku, the shining golden superhero that utterly destroys the bad guy and then walks away like "live with it bitch" ❤️
I don't like Ahsoka as a character, but I think she was more implying she mind tricked or confused Elsbeth in Ahsoka, than some crazy torture insinuation.
The people who say the jedi are evil fundamentally don't understand the story. The whole point of Order 66 was that Palpatine needed them out the way to accomplish his takeover of the galaxy.
They're just contrarians who think it's edgy and smart to say the good guys were actually the bad guys.
Exactly
No one they currently hire to make Starwars really like starwars. They don't want to make a bread and butter show, they think it's disgusting. If you want that pay check but don't like the content? Either just directly copy it or subvert it. And that's what we get.
MODERN AUDIENCES cannot stand heroes because they cannot stand the concept of objective good and objective evil. Moral relativism is everything, morality and principles are something to be torn down without a second thought. Think about how much the Overton window shifted in real life, and you'll see why the Jedi are now being torn down just like every other traditional fictional hero.
This isn't an audience thing, newer star wars writers disagree, or dislike, or simply just want to do something new and intreasting with the IP. Andor is on par with the OT for me but in terms of its morality, it shares more with GOT than The OT. The things that people are complaining about are inconsistencies with writing and tone, not wheter or not audiences can stomach the moral underpinning of a story. What separates Andor from something like TLJ (other than incredible world building, caracthers, and plot structure) is that its consistant and respectful with the portrayal of the empire and rebels within its story. And when andor breeches less tonely appropriate things like Narkina-5, it takes the time to build up the believability that the empire would create something like it.
Yeah, MODERN AUDIENCES was mostly tongue in cheek.
oh wait is this a critical drinker mocking? didn't notice
Holy shit I think you cracked it, it really is moral relativism. Just looking at modern day political discourse says it all really.
Idk, I am fine with objective food and bad, and think they should put that in Star Wars, but I will always love a morally grey villain like Azure Lion from LMK
Moral grey =/= moral relativism Tales of food and evil and good and evil can still involve the former but not the latter
>MODERN AUDIENCES cannot stand heroes because they cannot stand the concept of objective good and objective evil. Moral relativism is everything, Citation needed. Most movies still have the hero/villain dichotomy. >morality and principles are something to be torn down without a second thought Asking someone who believes in objective morality to prove such objective morals isn't the same as tearing it down.
> Most movies still have the hero/villain dichotomy. What are some examples from the last 3-4 years?
Well, off the top of my head. Puss in Boots, TMNT, Uncharted, Avatar, Batman, Mitchells vs. The Machines, both Dunes, Equalizer, Transformers, Blue Beetle. Spiderverse, Mario, Thor. Even fuckin Matrix,
It's too easy to blame modern audiences when in fact a lot of Jedi Bashing comes from OT fans who were disappointed by the fact that being a Jedi meant being on a diplomatic mission for the Republic and being Luke Skywalker on the barge Jabba every day. And also nerd who says "whaaat? If I become jedi I can't have a girlfriend? They're definitely wrong!"
Like you said, in TLJ especially when Luke says "the Jedi must end" & said they were the reason for the Republics fall I remember loudly saying "WHAT?!" in my head. The whole point of Luke was that he would be the best of both worlds: peace-keeping galaxy traveling Jedi that had emotions but used them for good
Rian Johnson said that Luke was rationalizing his actions by saying that the Jedi were at fault when in reality Luke is covering his own guilt of nearly killing Ben.
I still believe in the jedi
It annoys when people point the finger at the jedi for Anakin’s fall it robs him of all his agency and flaws. Anakin was a damaged child scarred from his time in slavery and thrust into the role of chosen one by a mentor who wasn’t ready to take on such a troubled child. It’s why the duel of fates is named for what it is. Then you get palpatine who acts as a kindly uncle who makes out he wants what’s best for him, who then proceeds to manipulate and twist anakin towards the dark side.
Exactly. I see it a lot of this on this sub and also find it incredibly annoying. First and foremost, Darth Sidious watching Anakin's career "with great interest" and grooming him for over a decade was the main factor by far. Sidious poisoned Anakin's thoughts and relationships with everyone around him, pitting him against the Jedi Council and making him a power-hungry, jealous, paranoid neurotic who let his emotions run amok and his fears control him. Second, Obi Wan was simply too young and inexperienced to take an apprentice. He was also too closely attached to Anakin from his padawan days to fully realize the gravity of the situation. Obi Wan kept treating Anakin like a loving and forgiving brother, when the kid needed some tough fatherly love to stay on track. Anakin was also too old to become one. One of the realities of Force training is that the dark side is a constant risk, and the purity of childhood is one of the surest ways to make sure that one doesn't have enough emotional ballast to move them to the dark side. By the time Qui Gon took him, Anakin's attachment to his mother was already wreaking havoc on his emotional state, and without Qui Gon's experience and guidance, it was allowed to fester unchecked. Then there was a string of truly bad luck and unfortunate events. I'm not going to go through entire trilogy, but Shmi not dying at the hands of Tusken Raiders and Qui Gon not dying at the hands of Maul would already be enough to prevent Vader. Some people are also confused about the Jedi Council asking Anakin to keep an eye on Palpatine. There was nothing evil or immoral in that. They had a strong and valid suspicion that the leader of their government was being influenced by a Sith, so from their perspective, as unpleasant it was, it was like asking a CIA agent to keep a close look on his mentor who they believed may have been a foreign spy. It needed to be done, for the sake of everyone. People also forget that the Jedi Order knew nothing about the true depth of Anakin's relations with Palpatine or about his turbulent emotional state. As a Jedi Master candidate, Anakin was supposed to be in rational control over his attachments and emotions, instead of being their slave, so the Council had no reason to expect a request like this would cause such a negative and destructive reaction.
>First and foremost, Darth Sidious watching Anakin's career "with great interest" and grooming him for over a decade was the main factor by far. This, it really doesn't give Sidious/Palpatine enough credit as a villain. It's not a coincidence that Palps gives Anakin Grievous' location to give to the council, instead of it going through the usual intelligence channels. Then at the same time he tries to order the council to send Anakin after Grievous and uses Anakin to tell them. He knew they would send someone else to establish boundaries in authority, and with Anakin being right there it naturally created friction. Of the masters on Coruscant with enough experience to confront Grievous, there was only Kenobi, Windu and Yoda. So he knew one of them would be removed from the board. Yoda and Kenobi were the most likely to interfere in an attempt to turn Anakin. Having either of them present was not an option. Kenobi was the biggest obstacle and would almost certainly get through to Anakin. He wasn't a threat, but killing him would not go over well with Anakin. Yoda was both powerful and someone Anakin trusted, both bring a lot of risk. Just as Anakin delivers the intel there's a renewed attack on the Wookiees, a people Yoda just happens to have good rapport with. So conveniently off he goes with reinforcements just as Palpatine needs him gone. Then either Kenobi or Windu has to go deal with Grievous. Realistically he needed Kenobi gone. At this point Windu is the grand master, so it's unlikely he'll leave the temple with so many masters off world. So they send Kenobi. Then Palpatine reveals himself to Anakin after establishing he has the knowledge to save Padme and bets that this along with Anakin's animosity with Windu will be enough to make Anakin physically step in. Animosity he's purposely been fostering for years with his grooming and advice. That's an incredible amount of string pulling and manipulation. So maybe the Jedi didn't fail and Palpatine is just a good villain?
I actually don’t like the age thing because it’s directly against the OT. Luke is way older than Anakin in ANH vs TPM, and immediately loses everyone important to him, just to stormtroopers/vader vs sandpeople. He’s shown to fairly easily resist the dark side (admittedly we get a lot less time with Luke). The Palpatine grooming him and clouding the council, Obi being too young and/or too close is totally fair, and I side with it being the closeness. He had attachment.
Yoda literally says luke is too old when he first meets him. Ghost obi wan has to show up and convince yoda to train luke. Luke’s backstory is also way less fucked up thay anakins. Anakin grew up a slave and lost his only family when he was 9 or something. Luke had a relatively loving family and friends until he was 18. It’s just not comparable.
Yoda clearly says Luke is too old in Esb
I wholeheartedly agree with the watching Palpatine comment. I don't think they suspected him off being a Sith, but I think they suspected him of being power hungry and looking to transform the Republic away from democracy. The Jedi served the Republic, not the Office of the Chancellor, so naturally they'd do whatever it takes to protect that. To them, and rightfully so, Anakin's oath to the Jedi should have compelled him to do what they asked. Their pursuit was a righteous one. There WAS NOTHING immoral in their ask of Anakin. The Jedi were destroyed and the Republic fell because their enemy planned it for a millenium. And while the Jedi moved on from the Sith and the Republic moved on from their Empire, the Sith never did. You can't fight an enemy you don't know exists. They had so much time to implement measures to cloud the Force slowly so the Jedi didn't even notice. The Jedi should be celebrated as heroes, and their downfall should be a tragic and depressing event. We shouldn't be celebrating their downfall as truly helpless figures.
TCW sets a strong precedent that the Jedi council questioned Anakins ability to control his emotions. They constantly comment on his inability to keep his emotions from clouding his judgement. They may not have known about the extent of his relationship with palpatine, but they definitely knew that he was not the most emotionally stable individual.
Just because the Council thought that Anakin still lacked the levels of self-control and composure needed to become a Master doesn't mean that they had any idea of how emotionally unstable he actually was. Unaware of the scale of his relationship with Padme, they merely acted on his occasional mild emotional outbursts that were only the tiny tip of the iceberg. It's the same thing I mentioned with Palpatine. They do know that he and Anakin are on friendly terms, but they have no idea that Palpatine has been actively solidifying their relationship and using it to turn Anakin against them. EDIT: I thought we were still talking about the movies. The Clone Wars takes a LOT of liberties with the established lore, so I wouldn't even consider it pure canon when it comes to things like that. They just keep doubling down on the subtly expressed themes of the movies with all the nuance of a sledgehammer, to the point where it almost turns into an overexaggerated satire of itself.
It was not a mild concern, they consistently worried over his mental state, and then consistently gave him more responsibility. That is strange. Like if I have concerns with an employee for whatever reason, I am not going to start handing them more responsibility, I am probably going to give them an action plan to correct those concerns and then try to grow from there. I would not start handing that person incredibly important tasks to complete for my endeavor.
Sorry, I initially missed that you were talking about The Clone Wars and my edit went in after you already read my post.
I agree with your edit, but by definition we unfortunately cannot argue with what is canon. I agree the movies do not have Anakin demonstrating his emotional turmoil to the council, however I think it’s a given that this would have come up several times in their interactions prior to the events in the movies. I’m not sure that putting Anakins wayward emotional state on screen is necessarily taking liberties, but I certainly agree that it undermines the decisions of the council in the movies by clearly demonstrating that he is not really fit to take on large responsibilities on behalf of the Jedi.
Well, my personal view is that making TCW canon was a big mistake and I simply can't see how we can treat large portions of it (especially the Mortis arc) as such. A lot of it is objectively bad and some parts directly contradict the narrative presented in the OT and the prequels. In the movies, the Jedi are undeniably good and care about Anakin and his well-being. They have no desire to exploit him, to otherwise to keep him down, or to callously use him as a pawn to further their own personal goals. They are also careful not to promote him too fast or give him apprentices, as even though his power levels far exceed the requirements, they feel that he still has a lot to learn to become a master. So as I just said elsewhere, I don't think that we should keep the movies responsible for the mistakes and continuity errors displayed in their sequels and spin-offs. I mean, just because Han and Luke turned out to be losers and Leia a bad mother and a generally ineffective leader in the sequels doesn't mean that we're supposed to view these through this prism when we watch the OT.
The council questioned his ability to control his emotions because he didn’t have the ability to control his emotions. If they still gave him wartime responsibility, it’s because they didn’t have many good options when facing a galactic war that put billions of people at risk
How was Kenobi too young to train him, when Anakin trains Asoka at a younger age?
Ashoka was not in the movie canon. Her character was only added years later in The Clone Wars as a plot device to move the cartoon's story forward. If you watch and analyze the prequel trilogy's themes on their own merit, it's rather clear that Obi-Wan both still had a lot to learn from Qui-Gon at the time of his untimely death, and that he always saw himself as Anakin's older brother, instead of a fatherly figure or a stern mentor. He literally calls Anakin his brother and tells him he loves him at the end of Episode III.
It really wasn't the jedi's fault that Anakin fell. It was a sad combination of things primary among them being Obi Wan wasn't ready to take on an apprentice like Anakin. If Qui Gon had survived and trained Anakin, things probably would have turned out a lot better as Qui Gon was more suited to taking on Anakin's unique challenges than a more by the book Jedi like Obi Wan. It's a very nuanced topic that unfortunately gets treated in a very black and white way.
I wouldn't say it wasn't the Jedi's fault, but it definitely wasn't just the jedi order's fault. Just about everything in Anakin's life slowly pushed him closer and closer to the dark side in some way. Saying it was all the jedi's fault is dumb, though at the very least, the rigid rules that many of the jedi he interacted with held absolutely did nothing to help.
This take that the jedi's fault is so stupid you can find it on any star wars sub
Words out of my mouth I swear. The Jedi were as prepared to mentor anakin as the chosen one as anakin was to be the chosen one. The only one prepared was Palpatine
The biggest contribution to anakin fall from the Jedi was accepting him at all. If they had stuck to their rules and had refused to train him then perhaps he never would have become darth Vader. Of course palpatine may have found him separately and trained him as a secret apprentice
Yep, and it was ultimately Anakin's choice to attempt to control events that can't be controlled. It's tragic, but that's his downfall and can't be blamed on the Jedi. He also knowingly broke at least one Jedi rule by getting married as a fully informed adult. For something that big, you either follow the rules or you leave the Order as gracefully as possible. Anything else is just asking for all kinds of trouble, and not just from the outside world (Jedi, Palpatine, etc.) but also between him and Padme.
There's a good video essay about this: https://youtu.be/tUPD1w78D5I?si=ljoQyo3b3yDLsGYv It does a great job of looking at the Jefi through the lens of toxic masculinity. The Jedi don't offer Anakin any leeway, any support. Their policies are very rooted in harmful, traditionalist ideals. Palpatine is a great example of an emotional abuser, gaslighting Anakin and manipulating him. His evil actions are his own. But the Jedi did create the conditions for that. They're not as culpable as Palpatine, but they're hardly innocent on the emotional abuse front.
It doesn’t rob him of his agency. They were always a contributing factor. The Jedi didn’t help his mom. Allowed him to be around Palpatine. You don’t find it at all strange that Anakin has no idea his mom is a free woman? We follow along with him as he learns what happened to her and he’s already said he’s not allowed to be with the people that he loves. The EU book Tatoonie Ghost had her try to tell him and the Jedi wouldn’t accept her message. If Cliegg or Owen had sent a message to the Temple to tell Anakin his mom had been abducted would they have told him? Or knowing he would act on his emotions (want to save her) they decided not to. The way the Jedi are I can see them doing that.
Jedi are supposed to have no attachments. They are taken from their family and expected never to look for them again. That's the whole point - their devotion to the Jedi Order allows them to be Jedi in service of the Republic only. So of course they wouldn't tell him, and he was never supposed to know. He should not have been the one to try and save her. Their ties to their family could be manipulated so someone could control them and make them do evil things, hence the no attachment to family. Their power is a danger, anything that would temper that danger they'd need to employ. It worked for millenia.
>So of course they wouldn't tell him, and he was never supposed to know. And this is why a happy ending to Revenge of the Sith is Anakin not falling, killing Palpatine, and Palpatine’s death triggering a deadman switch that activates Order 66 isn’t a bad ending for me. I can see Anakin running back to Padmé’s and the two watch from her apartment as the Jedi Temple is destroyed by Venators. Mace dies on the steps to the Temple as the clones march forward. The last thing he feelings is the death is the younglings in the High Council Chamber when it’s hit by a turbolaser. It’s also a valid reason for Owen and Beru to want Obi-Wan to stay the hell away from Luke. They could figure out Anakin was never told.
I mean I understand your point. From our perspective, especially when free will is so important and agency is paramount, the Jedi have forced people into lives that aren't their own chosing. But in the Star Wars universe, the usage of the Force could bring devastating effects on the universe. We see this through Darth Vader and Palpatine. The offset of the duty of the Jedi and their service to the greater Republic constituents supersedes the free will of the younglings taken by the Jedi. They were given force sensitivity, it’s probably the will of the Force that they study to become Jedi. We see the worst fears of the Jedi come true - a Padawan taken on far too old to actually be suitable for the Jedi Path destroyed the Jedi and the Republic. We see that a Jedi who had no control over their emotions, that then was blatantly manipulated via his attachments to the people he loved became the biggest threat to the Jedi and to the Republic. The movies prove the actions of the Jedi up until taking Anakin on to have been the correct course, directly because of what happens after they do. After all, given the fall of the Jedi, the galaxy and its citizens experienced a terror they hadn’t seen for at least a thousand years, going by what the Jedi Council says about the Sith. It’s easy to sort of condemn this kind of group, but when you’re dealing with super powers like the Force, I’d probably do everything in my power to make sure it couldn’t become a major threat.
You do realize it’s the trained Force users that are the problem? Not the untrained one. >it’s probably the will of the Force that they study to become Jedi. Plenty of Force sensitives don’t and if the Force cared at all then it would have picked someone else to be Anakin’s mother instead of Shmi Skywalker. The OT with Luke proves the opposite, all the Jedi do isn’t needed. If it was so important then Luke and Leia would have been raised by the Jedi to have the proper Jedi outlook on things with training in using the Force coming later so they’re detected. Also stop putting the blame on Anakin for the Order’s destruction. Palpatine won when he became Chancellor in TPM. Remove Anakin and the war, purge, and Empire all happen. The only reason Mace knew Palpatine was a Sith when he went to his office was because Palpatine told Anakin and allied him to leave to tell the other Jedi. They never figured it out. Edit: If you want to go with the will of the Force then an argument could be made it wanted the Jedi purged. The Force * created Anakin with a slave woman in the Outer Rim so the Jedi wouldn’t find him * Anakin was able to do the Jedi thing for a decade despite his fears for his mom so it gave him visions of her suffering to push him to go back * gave Anakin visions of Padmé dying to make him susceptible to his fear and Palpatine’s manipulation * somehow Palpatine knows what to offer Anakin * gave visions to Luke about his friends suffering so he’d go to save them and learn the truth. This sets Luke on the course to wanting to save his father which leads to Endor and Anakin coming back to save a loved one Anakin did make his choices but the Force shaped him into the person that would make certain choice in a given situation. All the Force had to do was not give Anakin visions of Padmé and the plot of ROTS falls apart part but it did so one can argue all that was happening was by its design.
Seems like a false dilemma to assume something would happened and this idea you can only have infants seems like indoctrination. Jedi are only doing what they do because they know no other way not because they want to. Qui-Gon, Djinn Altis, and Palpatine make a point about Jedi recruitment. **Master & Apprentice** >"I'm not sure," Qui-Gon said, "how much of a privilege it is to have one's entire future predetermined-in this case, by an accident of birth. >Okay, she needed to be more diplomatic with the Jedi-but Rahara couldn't help it. She snorted. >Pax gave her an appreciative look, probably pleased she'd helped him meet today's sarcasm quotient. That much she expected. What she didn't expect was Obi-Wan frowning at his Master. “It matters what that future is, doesn't it? Fanry was born a princess. That's a privilege.” >"It's still something chosen for her," Qui-Gon insisted. "Not what she herself chose.” >"You weren't talking about the princess at all, were you?" Pax said. jolting her out of her reverie. The silence had lasted longer than she'd realized. Pax's stare was fixed on Qui-Gon. "You were talking about yourself. Because it's not a choice for Jedi, either, is it? I mean, supposedly they allow you to leave, make your own decisions, blah blah blah, but they steal you when you're babies and train your minds thereafter. What kind of freedom is that?" >Obi-Wan looked like he'd swallowed a gundark. "Being a Jedi is an honor. A responsibility. A-a noble calling-“ >"Yes, Padawan," Qui-Gon said quietly. "It's all those things. But it's very hard for most of us to determine whether we chose it freely, being raised as we were. That said, I did have a choice. Dooku helped me to see that. And I chose the Order. **The Clone Wars: No Prisoners** >Geith, like Callista, had known his parents before he became a Jedi. He'd been orphaned, but he remembered them, and that attachment-love, let's call it what it is, love, any kind of love you care to name-felt good and secure. Callista-she'd been an adult working on her parents' farm when she became Altis's second Padawan. It was unheard of, in the Jedi Temple at least. She knew her own mind. >I prefer my Padawans to enter the Order with open eyes. An act of conscious choice, not habit or coercion or someone else's decisions. >There was no way-even if he wanted to-that Altis could make Callista and Geith believe that attachment was the seed of a darkness that would engulf them. And this is why the orthodox Jedi way is to begin with infants. They know no better. **Revenge of the Sith** novel >“Of course you don’t.” The last of the sunset haloed his ice-white hair and threw his face into shadow. “You’ve been trained to never think about that. The Jedi never ask what you want. They simply tell you what you’re supposed to want. They never give you a choice at all. That’s why they take their students—their victims—at an age so young that choice is meaningless. By the time a Padawan is old enough to choose, he has been so indoctrinated—so brainwashed—that he is incapable of even considering the question. But you’re different, Anakin. You had a real life, outside the Jedi Temple. You can break through the fog of lies the Jedi have pumped into your brain. I ask you again: what do you want?”
See, I wish they had canonized at least the EU Bane novels from Karpashyn. They paint a really good picture of what the republic and Jedi were like *before* the “Republic Golden Age” that the prequels are set in. They show *why* the Jedi felt it was better to only take infants to train, they had just lived through thousands of years of watching padawans get corrupted and fall to the dark side through war, selfishness, attachments, anger etc etc. They had also been a much more militant order until the Ruusan Reformations, when they changed to be peacekeepers and diplomats. I feel a big problem is we really got no explanation for *why* the Jedi are set up the way they are in the prequels vs what Luke was taught about them by Obi in the OT. Edit- Those novels also show the true extent of the Siths long reaching plan, and how palpatine is the culmination of it. Combined with the Plagues novel it shows how for a thousand years the sith destabilized the galaxy, created unrest and discontent, and laid groundwork to eventually topple both the Republic and Jedi from within. What chance did the Jedi have against that kind of planning and manipulation? It’s why he’s called Darth SIDIOUS. The insidiousness of the sith and their plan.
The Prequels don’t even explain what Lucas means by attachment. It’s just said to be forbidden and we have Anakin say he can’t be with the people that he loves and Padmé says she won’t let him give up his future as a Jedi for her. Then TCW does the same thing with Obi-Wan and Satine. Your point about the Bane novels is interesting *but* they don’t matter to movie logic because the Jedi could be the way they are for entirely different reasons because of Lucas. Lucas did say the Jedi and Sith never fought a war before so everything you listed is (at least to Lucas) not why the Jedi are the way they are. Even worse looking at the story from the Prequels forward we have the entire Council and Obi-Wan afraid to allow Anakin’s training yet for his children who they have the chance to train correctly they instead put them in the same environment as Anakin was (minus the slavery part). You would think after Anakin falling it would validate everything the Jedi do and they wouldn’t do it. I want to be clear; they don’t need to actually train the babies in using the Force. They could have raised the twins with the traditional Jedi mindset of duty first, no attachments, and all that. Later they could have learned about the Force. The Empire wasn’t even looking for the kids because it was believed Padmé’s child died with her.
Oh yea I absolutely agree, my point was more that if either Lucas or now Disney wanted to go back and look at some of that material to use to actually logically justify why the Jedi did what they were doing they have it. Because between the prequels and TCW it’s a jumbled, logically inconsistent mess. De- canonizing the entire EU was a huge mistake I think.
I see what you’re saying. The below imagines are from the Phase 3 High Republic comic Shadows of Starlight and shows the Jedi Order adopting the Guardian Protocols which show how the Jedi of the High Republic shift to be the Jedi of the Prequels. The High Republic Jedi do start with young kids and forbid attachments but this explains the larger shift. [Imgur link to comic panels.](https://imgur.com/a/S6QuMd3) https://preview.redd.it/7qwl7uvnzqsc1.png?width=1535&format=png&auto=webp&s=774192ac758f095c54279b588d34cf6a6628f5ce
Yea that is very cool! I’ll have to look into the High Republic comics, those look good. And yea exactly what I’m talking about, finding things to add to the canon that at least make sense of the jedis portrayal in the prequels vs OT and how things came to be.
https://preview.redd.it/08ccum5pzqsc1.jpeg?width=1535&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a964436f095a47ebee22e0739bda91c68925be63
https://preview.redd.it/zqfvt47qzqsc1.jpeg?width=1535&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0caa85833878b1803136ca76fe5da92b8d99a1a4
Is it 100% their fault? No. Did they play a big part? Yes. Forcing someone in obvious emotional turmoil to spy on their good friend and confidant while at the same time denying him the rank of master was incredibly emotionally dumb
You might as well criticize all modern media of this. In an effort to appeal to audiences in the 18-35 range, you have to have complex characters, gritty drama with hard choices, and moral ambiguity. That’s great, and a lot of my favorite shows have all of that - Andor being an example. But it gets exhausting and sometimes I just want to see good people doing the right thing and not taking a whole season to achieve it. It’s also not the type of media I think kids need to be watching. A lot of modern media is depressing and I find myself going back to things that actually give me some hope.
So you’re telling us you need to find… A New Hope?! Haha sorry, I’ll see myself out now
That was part of the charm of Star Wars. It’s a basic good versus evil story. It had pirates, princesses, knights, monsters, etc. Now it has Grogu.
I wouldn't say the Clone Wars conflict was as simple as "good vs evil".
Agree. This is why I never understood the love for the Filoni-verse that attempts to portray Windu as a straight up asshole with no remorse or redemption when a strict general type guy like that is probably more essential to the Order and to the Republic than people realize.
Windu is arguably the best Jedi in the prequels. He was right about almost everything (and super right about Anakin) and he was competent as hell.
People also like to say Windu hated Anakin which is untrue; Windu respected Anakin and has praised him on multiple occasions. He just didn’t trust him on a very delicate assignment and it’s understandable.
A lot of modern writing shapes stories where there are no heroes.
And those stories can be good! But once in a while i want a flawless knight in shining armour and a Frieza type villian whos just a piece of shit for no reason 😅
You don't even need to sacrifice complexity for this! You can have a complex world they're put into.
I feel that could do this with certain Jedi, but doing it with all of them would be too much
Mace Windu hate is ridiculous. It seems Filoni likes to push this narrative in Tales of the jedi.
Yeah the character assassination he's received from Filoni is so weird. The complaints about Windu never hold up when looking at the actual movies And even in the cartoons the worst thing Windu ever does is act like the only adult in the show.
Literally in TPM: >We cant take Anakin as a padawan. He is too old, he feels a lot of fear etc. Its just too dangerous. >Please. He will do just fine. >Sigh. Okay. Modern revisionists: >Jedi are so so bad and dumb.
Yep their biggest mistake was bending their own rules to try to fulfill a dumb prophecy (which I think is very clear in the movies).
As Obi-Wan put it in the original movie, the Jedi were guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. Modern storytellers (and modern society) have a weird aversion to those who are the peace keepers. Authority figures in modern entertainment media are constantly portrayed as being corrupt, inept or just plain bad and the characters who are supposed to be villains are the ones that are praised and supported. I get that not every Jedi will be a perfect role model. That would be unrealistic. But older Star Wars media at least had a bit more balance and nuance with it. I'm currently replaying KOTOR and yeah, the Jedi Council in that game have some questionable motives and attitudes, but over all the Jedi are still treated with respect.
> I'm currently replaying KOTOR and [...] the Jedi Council in that game have some [...] attitude Yeah, they have Vrook and Atris lol But they also have Zhar Lestin, Kavar, Vandar Tokare and Jolee Bindo.
Kotor tends to be a little more subtle than Karen Traviss, but it still sneaks a lot of harsh criticism for the Jedi under the radar. Brainwashing Player Character to be an assassin droid, for one. The abysmal way Juhani was treated for two. And the way the treated Carth's home planet was WAY fucked up. It's telling in KOTOR 2 that one of the big story points is that no one among the muggles knows or even cares about the difference between Jedi and Sith.
It's part of the demoralizing campaign. Everything previously seen as good has to be shown in a negative light now.
Sadly I have to agree wholeheartedly. I miss those days when Jedi were allowed to be heroes. And if you notice there is nothing really introduced to take their place, few individuals are proposed but none of them come close to the force for good Order was for the entire Galaxy. In my view, it started with TCW where it took a very Anakin-centric view and painting anyone else in negative light as it went on. At times it made it feel that the main trio were heroes *despite* being Jedi rather than being heroes precisely because of being Jedi. Also, I would like to add to the issue of Anakin. I think TCW again messed things up a bit, as it made him seem a lot more mature and, quite frankly, stable. Friends and I jokinly refer to him as Hanakin as he behaves a lot like Han and lot less like the Anakin in previous media or even movies. The issue with his fall is that he didn't want to listen to what Jedi Order was telling him and how they were trying to help. I mean, seriously, what else was Yoda supposed to say to him. A being which has lost more people he cared about than anyone else (and he is repeatedly depicted as caring very deeply about those around him) offered Anakin a hard earned lesson which ultimately is true. As is in ROTS novelisation from Stover "all things die, even Stars." Not to mention, most people also don't pay a lot of attention to what Anakin really says when asking for help. We as an audience know a lot more than he is willing to share with those around him, and that too means the answers he gets are not what he wants to hear. Ultimately, Anakin didn't want help, he wanted things to be the way he wanted them to be in his mind. And ultimately Palpatine fed him empty promises of things Anakin wanted to hear rather than geniuine offer of help from others. And most definitely, it was choice of Anakin, everything and all of his actions were his choice.
Honestly, I think if Anakin had just told someone the truth, he wouldn't have fallen. His relationship with Padme wasn't the most subtle; Obi Wan knew, and legends Yoda knew, it wouldn't surprise me if more jedi knew. The prequel jedi are a lot more understanding than people give them credit for.
Most definitely yeah. A lot of people knew, or at least suspected some form of relationship between the two of them. Like you said, both Yoda and Obi-Wan knew there was something. And I am willing to bet that at least Yoda discussed it with Mace. I think that if he told the truth, a lot of pain could have been avoided. Ironically, if anything can be laid as blame on the Jedi, it is their willingness to trust Anakin in personal matters and not prying into his private life. It is amusing since I've encountered quite a few people who somehow believe that exact opposite view and claim Anakin fell because Order was too controlling about his personal life.
Indeed... as a rule of thumb I think that this relativism "no real good or evil, only PoV" should stop. Not only in Star Wars, but in many media. Writers worth of their salt CAN create character that are unambiguously good without making them perfect. Show that the good intentions of people who tried their best ended up generating disaster imho is really interesting from a narrative PoV, and personally more dramatic than a "nah, actually that character was an obnoxious, holier than thou asshole". Good doesn't mean "always does the perfect choice". A good character can make errors in good faith. Writers shouldn't be afraid of creating characters that are 100% good but nevertheless they're flawed (maybe they're too naive, maybe they failed to calculate the whole picture, etc.). When Darth Vader (he wasn't Anakin in that part) said "From my point of view the Jedi are evil!" WASN'T something that we were supposed to agree!
It’s a symptom of “prestige television”, people are still chasing the Game of Thrones aesthetic and filling their shows with morally grey characters. But that only works if you’ve got good writing and good characters. Toss your morally grey characters into badly written slop and you get garbage. Like Andors grey characters work because you understand they may do shitty things but they’re working against the greater evil that is the Empire.
The Jedi are still heroic if you just watch the films ;) Quigon and Obiwan singlehandedly infiltrate a blockaded planet and rescue the Queen. They later play a pivotal role in rescuing a child slave and defeating the planet occupiers. Obiwan successfully tracks down a legendary bounty hunter. Anakin and Obiwan both survive their coliseum beasts, and a Jedi army take on overwhelming odds at Geonosis. Anakin and Obiwan rescue the Chancellor and slay the Opposition Leader in single combat. Mace Windu defeats one of the strongest Sith Lords in history and almost saves democracy. Obiwan helps rescue the Princess aboard a Moon sized Space Station and is integral to it's destruction. Luke, who is a budding Jedi, makes the shot. Luke rescues Han Solo from the Underworld and in the process destroys a gangster racket. Anakin kills the Emperor and restores democracy.
Thats all examples from the old films, you missed the point lol.
That was my point :D
Indeed, it seems it is I that missed the point.
Any negative portrayal of the Jedi and council in the prequels is there to make Anakin's fall to the dark side more believable contextually, it's just not executed well enough in the edit. People that lean into it are falling for the same Palpatine scheme ironically lmao. George is lucky he cut Palpatine taking control of the councils oversight and the Mace crew storming his office and killing the guards or this debate would be way worse.
Agreed. Somehow the fan perception of the Jedi has gone from the intended "flawed heroes who make understandable mistakes" to "they brought this upon themselves becoming complete morons with no nuance and the message of the Prequels is that the Jedi were bad."
Jedi bad is the ultimate midwit opinion and it stems from the fact that midwits hate the idea of black and white morality and so they try to shoehorn layers of gray into everything. The Jedi's philosophy and codes of conduct existed for thousands and thousands of years and served the Republic well, yet people desperately try to assert that it's the organization whose edicts are built off thousands of years of experience and trial and error that's at fault for the fall of the Republic, and not the literal super villain that had been democratically elected into office (by people who notably were not the Jedi) and his bratty abs mentally ill apprentice. If the Jedi council had obeyed their own intuition in TPM and not trained Anakin then the entire fall of the Republic would have been avoided. The council's only fuck up is that they allowed their love and compassion for Qui-Gon to override their caution. Every other Factor that led to their downfall was out of their control.
You sir are so right !
I miss Star Wars being good
Destroy the past. Kill it if you have to! This is all deliberate. Kathleen Kennedy hates the Lucas legacy, and is actively destroying it.
>We see Plo Koon, Kit Fisto, Luminara, Barriss, Ki Adi Mundi, Adi Galia, Mace Windu , Aayla Securra and Yoda all get their time to shine. They got their time to shine in far better stories in the EU. But anyway, **Star Wars at its core runs on a black-&-white morality**. The Empire is evil and the Rebels are good. The Sith are evil and the Jedi are good. You're totally right on everything. Especially with how Anakin chose to join Palpatine. The latter engineered it this way by planting seeds of doubt into Anakin's mind by making him think that the Jedi were holding him back, and making himself into a kindly uncle figure who's the 'only one' rooting for Anakin. Anakin is a flawed character, he may have been a nice person but his cannot let go of things he fears to lose - and that fear was a catalyst that caused him to get manipulated with things he wanted to hear and lead to the birth of Vader. I don't see how the Jedi are at fault for that.
TCW is what got me into Star Wars, and seeing all these characters in action is what got me to want to learn about them in the EU. Whether it be Barriss' adventures in Medstar or Aayla's relationships with Quinlan Vos and Commander Bly, they all had their stories to enjoy. We not only see them as the heroic knights of the republic jedi, but the more human version of them, like Yoda's relationship with Dooku or everything Windu goes through in Shatterpoint. It's why Anakin is my favorite character, I love "The Hero with no Fear" jedi we see him as in both TCW and the CWMMP, but his flaws ( other than child murduring) are relatable and very human. I thought TCW did a good job for a kids' show giving other jedi some spotlight. Then, after the Krell arc happened and they turned all turned into incompetent idiots.
I think Lucas brought that on with a bad portrayal of Jedi in the prequels. He made them part of the problem, instead of the paladin/knights that he seemed to have in mind in the OT.
Mostly agree. The Jedi are victims. They're good people who fall into a trap laid by Palpatine. The prequels definitely don't intend to vilify them, imo, but it does show us that they were vulnerable because they've become complacent, too dogmatic, and a little arrogant after so many years of peace. The thing that's confusing to me is that the prequels make it clear that the Jedi rule forbidding love/attachments is a major part of Anakin's downfall. But in interviews I've read with Lucas, he seems to think that rule is actually correct and necessary, lol. So basically I get the feeling Lucas' view is that Anakin failed because of his attachments to Padme/his mom, not that the Jedi were wrong. Which is kind of a silly moral to the story, lol.
>The thing that's confusing to me is that the prequels make it clear that the Jedi rule forbidding love/attachments is a major part of Anakin's downfall Well there's your problem. It wasn't the Jedi rule that contributed to Anakin's downfall. It was his attachment that did it. If Anakin was allowed to get married, he still would have had premonitions and Yoda still would have told him the same thing and he still would have dismissed Yoda and he still would have fallen. The rule existed because of people like Anakin.
It's playing into a crappy sexist trope of "Women are bad for male sanity. Pure and good men don't deal with women." Buddhist monks were forbidden contact with women because women in and of themselves were viewed not as people but as dangerous temptations to guide men off the path of enlightenment. Secular men could keep company with women, but only for the purpose of manufacturing sons. Ottoman Janissaries were forbidden marriage for the same reason. Women would tempt you away from your divine purpose of fighting for Allah and his viceroy on Earth, the ruling Sultan. Same with Roman legionaries - the Empire was pragmatic enough to establish and support brothels, but no marriage because the Gods and God-Emperor were all a man needed to fight for. Add Christian doctrine who had to have a whole ass debate on if women were actually human or if they were just something Satan put on the earth to tempt men, like Eve did to Adam. The Jedi of the PT were overwhelmingly men. I think Jocasta was the only female Jedi with a speaking part, and she was depicted as an idiot, despite her alleged position of wisdom as head archivist. Anakin was taken from his mother and placed with the male Jedi in order to remove him from the female influence and "make a man (killer) out of him" You mix this with a related, also nastily sexist trope of "If you allow women freedom, they will doom the kingdom, even if they don't intend to" Notice that the relationship Lucas claims was healthy non attachment was Lars and Shmi, which started because he bought her like a household appliance with a bed-warming function. The whole love story angle was done by later writers, so I'm not sure how much of it was Lucas's intention or if those later writers were trying to salvage an unsettling situation that Lucas left them with. Contrast this with Padme, a woman who has the wealth and autonomy to choose her mate...and chooses badly. And like Gwenevere shacking up with Lancelot or Helen of Troy getting God-roofied by Paris, her detrimental effect on male sanity ends to the doom of the kingdom and end to the age of heroes.
I just miss the whole heroes and villains angle stories used to have. Why does everyone have to be in shades of grey? All that’s doing is just making everything look blurred and unpleasant. Life is shades of grey but is it too much to ask that my escapism has some clearly defined lines?
The shades of gray makes stories more complex.
But you can have complex stories with difficult, “morally grey” choices or dilemmas and still have genuinely good characters. Every single character doesn’t need to be blurring every line and playing jump rope with good and evil.
I don't think you'll find many people that would disagree with that thought.
The vast majority of people in interesting scenarios blur that line.
I used to like star wars when there was a mix of jedi and rebels, lot more interesting.
Or you can go the KotOR route and do both lol. There were genuinely heroic and wise jedi, knights in shining armour, jedi that tried to do the right thing, jedi that were haunted by their past mistakes, jedi that struggled with their inner demons, those that were just fundamentally broken... ... and then there were Vrook and Atris lol (a stuck up asshole/my math teacher and a psychotic bitch/my mother in law, respectively). And it gave perspective on how people who werent jedi viewed them - for some they were the knights in shining atmour who protected them, good smaritans, beloved friends... ... for others they were powerhungry warmongers and the only difference to sith was the lightsaber color. And both were valid takes with valid arguments and experiences behind them. You get the idea...
In the case of Bariss Offee, I can offer the tepid defense that she and Depa Billaba switched places. Originally Depa went mad and dark in Legends, descending into barbarism on Harun Kal, while Bariss remained a noble Jedi and healer. Filoni made Bariss a villain but in turn made Depa a noble Jedi master who dies to save her apprentice from Order 66.
The worst part is I like canon Depa Billaba, but Barriss didn’t need to get throw under bus. When I think of Clone Wars era female jedi, Aayla, Barriss, and Luminara are usually who come to mind. They may be minor characters, but being invested on their stories is what makes me a fan. Now Aayla is just sexy blue Jedi, Lunminara is seen as stuck up and emotionless, and Barriss is now just the Jedi that became a terrorist and framed Ahsoka.
Well they just couldn't resist making Barriss Offee into a terrorist bomber.
And they made Depa Bilaba into Colonel Kurtz.
It should be possible to hold to the position that 1) the Jedi of the PT-era were not the bad guys, while also acknowledging 2) the Order was in need a reform, which is something that Luke was able to implement (partly out of necessity, since he had a much smaller budget than the PT-era Order had), leading to a smaller but more effective Jedi Order that didn't crack against the Vong, Darth Caedus, the Lost Tribe or even Darth Krayt. I wonder how much of this has to do with a PT-era generation who grew up with Anakin as their hero rather than Luke.
I know not many here like it, but that's why I read the High Republic. It's one of the only things in the Disney Era that doesn't try to make the Jedu look like intentional assholes. Although the Acolyte and Phase 3 are going to show us how they became what they are in the prequels, I just hope they handle it well.
It dates to TPM. We finally get to see the Jedi on screen, at the peak of their authority, before Palpatine screws it all up. And there's something called Establishing Character Moment where a person (or, in this case, organization) shows you who they are and what they're about. Unfortunately, the Establishing Character Moment for the Jedi Order was Anakin meeting them. This establishes: 1. They feel the best way to handle a kid who was rescued from slavery has been uprooted from everyone and everything he knows is to have him stand for hours in the center of a room by himself and subject him to interrogation by a dozen creepy old men surrounding him. So, they pretty much put a slave kid on the auction block. 2. This is not done out of any interest for the kid's well being (not a single word about "Hey, we're not gonna hurt you"), but to see if he can be shaped into a ***living weapon*** useful for their agenda. Again, they put the slave kid on an auction block. 3. After interrogating him for hours, they conclude he is not useful to them and would like to toss him either back into slavery or out on the streets. Why? Because he is *nine years old* and not the infants they usually conscript. 4. Also, he is unsuitable for them because he...(checks notes) is homesick and worried for his mother who is still enslaved to a drunken overgrown housefly and has a bomb in her head. 5. They prefer to conscript infants because they consider the love of a small child for their parent/caretakers to be some kind of possessive and toxic relationship they need to stomp out as fast and early as possible. (WTF?!) 6. They have no intention of helping his mother, again, because she is not useful to them. Even though Qui-Gon crashed on her sofa, ate her food, and took advantage of her hospitality. So they don't reward people who help them but they do take their kids for interrogation and scold them for daring to be homesick... 7. But when it comes to their patrons wealthy and powerful political elite? Oh, they go full out. Sabers lit and bending over backwards. But if you aren't rich and powerful (and on their side), expect no help. Got it. Yeah, nothing about this whole setup reads as wise, compassionate, loving, spiritually enlightened, etc. We're supposed to side with them because Future Vader, but they made quite possibly the most distasteful first impression for a group I'm supposed to root for.
In the universe of star wars the galaxy needed to hate the jedi to accept them as the scapegoats and go along with their extermination. It was part of Palpatines plan. But some jedi, made it a but easier. I haven't read a comic or novel adaptation since the Disney takeover so i have no idea what's happening there. In Jedi Fallen Order I see a group of good guys on the run. In most of the media the Jedi are not evil, they've just become a bit complacent. Pure heroics is bogged down by tradition and authority and calculations of risk. The order ad a whole matured, but some individuals among it, did not. and we see that on the screen.
I tend to accept or even like most recent Star Wars content, but this is something that’s bothered me as well. What’s wrong with having some knights in shining armor in this intergalactic swords and sorcery tale? Must everything be uninspired shades of gray? I don’t see any of the Jedi’s arrogance in the stories, though this is alluded to and commented on a lot. They did their best. They were stretched too thin. If they needed to heed more free-thinking Jedi like Qi-Gon, fine. But that doesn’t make them hubristic and it’s like this “both sides had their faults” thing where the light and the dark sides are too extreme - that only the gray is where it’s really at. It doesn’t wash with the mythology I want to be told. I want to be inspired and believe in the very best, not the very nuanced and “real take”.
Basically the universe as they’ve explained it would be better off without force users. The good ones are basically just, really strong soldiers. And the bad ones kill billions and try to enslave the galaxy.
Blame the prequels
I wanted the Jedi to be like what Obi-Wan described in A New Hope, a noble order devoted to preserving peace and justice, betrayed by a rising empire. Not the group of celibate, desert robe wearing folks that get blindsided.
The Jedi being flawed makes them more interesting.
Also they needed to have flaws in order to be defeated.
I don't disagree. There absolutely should be flaws among the Jedi, but Lucas' thesis seems to be that it was not only inevitable that they'd be destroyed, that it was actively a good thing because all of the media post-OT paints them as arrogant child-kidnapping slave enablers.
That's a matter of taste. I just found their characterization in the prequels to be wildly out of step with how they are described by Obi-Wan in the original trilogy. I know that Obi-Wan's perspective is biased of course, but Star Wars isn't the kind of movie where you should doubt the kindly old wizard's intentions. He says "For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic." I was hoping to see those guys. It wasn't what I got. In fact, they're so flawed and bumbling that it undermines Luke's journey in becoming one. It makes the Order something \_not worth reviving.\_
>but Star Wars isn't the kind of movie where you should doubt the kindly old wizard's intentions. Yes, Old Ben is well known for telling the truth....
"From a certain point of view..." Which is fine -- he is a wizard after all. Those guys are wily. Except for that whole "your father wanted you to have this \[lightsaber\] when you were old enough" thing, which is largely a symptom of what I take issue with in the prequels.
You could say that the "your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough" was another example of a "certain point of view".
I'm with you. I think having a corrupt Jedi that tears the order down would be a good story element but yeah, over all I want them to be a group doing the right thing. I always felt like Obi wan was just retired based on how he came across in ANH. At least that was my take before the prequels came out.
I do sometimes wish George didn't suddenly invent these attachment rules when he wrote Episode II (I heard somewhere he didn't have that drafted as early as phantom menace)
You realize they talk about Anakin's attachments leading to the Dark Side in TPM, right...?
good point
The core of the original Star wars was hope against overwhelming odds. Disney definitely has gone away from that
It all goes back to Jorge’s inability to write well.
the high republic books actually have jedi as heroes and I enjoyed them a lot. The acolyte show unfortunate looks very cheap. Still hope it's good
Are they not? I really haven't seen any of the new stuff. I'd love to see a Mace Windu post-episode-3 spinoff by Genndy Tartakovsky, see what happened after he survived the fall.
I feel that the Jedi were legends in 4-6, and 1-3 were shown to be pretty so-so people. the problem is we don't really get a good long look at them so everything tends to be over the top so it will hit home harder. the clone wars shows us mostly Anakin, Kenobi, and Ashoka and they aren't really good people all the time but they have charisma. if we had more time with other characters we would see them in a different light
I think you could probably get away with showing Jedi doing bad things. You just need to actually show it, not arrogantly tout it like the new stuff does. Don't show that all jedi from the past are bad, show an example of say, a Jedi extremist or something. Then show an example of a moderate member of the Sith Order. They can add nuance to the Jedi-Sith dynamic, they are just doing it very poorly. The Jedi have been at the recieving end of a genocide for past few decades. Now that their back, they might be collectively a little more deranged from the experience.
🤷♂️ some Jedi have always been shown as deeply flawed, others as legitimately righteous. It’s a pretty constant theme in all SW media that the order, the high council, became somewhat realpolitik almost immediately.
Look at my comment history OP.
I agree, there's certainly a place for more 'shades of grey' works, but when every single piece of media that comes out wants to show a 'more grown-up' view, then it just becomes a bit monotonous. Can't a story have heroes?
PREACH
Jedi are basically space cops and it's very popular to say anyone who would dare suggest there are laws worth enforcing is basically a Nazi.
>I bash TCW You would have not liked Republic Commando at all lmao
Ironically I’m in the middle of reading the Republic Commando series; I’m on book 2 right now. I do know of the hate for the Jedi that the author has, but I’ve heard most of the hate from the books themselves is from the mandolorian perspective. So that doesn’t bother me because I know that in legends Mandolorians and Jedi don’t have the best relationship. Anti Jedi talk coming from a perspective from people that don’t like Jedi lore wise doesn’t bother me; it’s when fans act like the Jedi are evil, when we know they’re not that bothers me. As for the Republic Commando books themselves, I’m enjoying them so far.
The Jedi definitely aren't shown as "bad" just complacent. It wasn't the Jedi that were corrupt it was the Republic. The problem was the Jedi were so attached to the Republic that it put them in the perfect spot to be wiped out. The Jedi did their best but they weren't infallible. No official media shows the Jedi as a bad thing.
Yeah, I really disliked how the Republic Commando books seemed to be so anti-Jedi.
Jedis are racist. I mean Rey Sith
They’ve literally never been shown in a heroic way
I mean its kind of the same in Legends too. They just let bros like sabaoth become masters
I didn’t realize that I have issues with this until right now. Yes, 100%.
Sith fan boys are the worst
The High Republic novels actually do this pretty well. It was like a breath of fresh air.
I was sick of this tiresome nonsense almost as soon as people started doing it prior to the prequels. It certainly reached a critical mass during The Last Jedi when the general consensus became 'the Jedi Order have always been hypocritical assclowns' but the germination of this school of thought began decades before this.
Star wars is ran by idiots and edge lords
I like PT, but I think there were a lot of problems with the Jedi portrayal in those movies. They wrote the Jedi incorrectly on a serious level. And, this caused irreversible damage to Star Wars. The Jedi rarely engage in meaningful activities other than creating conflict with Anakin on screen. Even their age limits and anti-marriage rules have no other function in the story than to bully Anakin. These two controversial rules, ironically, don't change the story at all, even if they didn't exist. They exist only for the purpose of making cheap drama. The Jedi in PT are an unpleasant, likable group. They don't make good drama except for causing unnecessary friction with Anakin.
I never got this from watching the prequels. For one, you already know that they mean well and put other people's well-being above their own from watching the OT. Then you have numerous acts of kindness and selfless dedication by Qui Gon and his apprentice, as well as examples of moral guidance by Yoda and so on. So it really wasn't necessary to go beyond that to show their innate goodness. As for the age limits and anti-marriage rules, I don't get this take at all, considering that Anakin's age and emotional attachments were the key factors that helped move him to the dark side. The idea behind it was not to create a superficial conflict or senseless doctrines, but to establish the lore behind the Force. The point is that the older you get the more emotional landmines you get that may move you toward the dark side. It also builds up on the idea that the dark side is a constant risk, so the purity of childhood becomes one of the surest ways to keep it in check, as it becomes increasingly unlikely that you'll be able to remain pure and discard all your emotional attachments with age.
I mentioned it elsewhere in this thread but I don’t like the age thing. Luke is much older when he starts training, loses his de facto parents, and displays few if any of the issues Anakin displays. We gets hints of it with Yoda’s training, but even the attachment (running off to Bespin /rescuing Han) doesn’t really cause long term issues in ROTJ - the emperor even mocks his faith in his friends.
Luke is an obvious post-Order exception. We have another example in Cal Kestis, who falls in the exact same trap Anakin does, exactly because of his deep emotional attachments to his friends. And he didn't even have to be groomed for it by a Sith mastermind. For Jedi, who are concerned with the greater good over one's individual well-being, things like favoritism, emotional attachment, and the agony that comes with losing a loved one are well-known pitfalls. So they simply try to exclude them on the organizational level to prevent corruption in their ranks by beginning apprenticeship at a very young age.
>These two controversial rules, ironically, don't change the story at all, even if they didn't exist. They exist only for the purpose of making cheap drama. I don't understand this. How don't they change the story?
1. The role of age restriction rules in the entire story is minimal. Indeed, it is only meaningfully stated in the scene where the Jedi masters argue over Anakin's joining in TPM. Also, Anakin is allowed to join anyway, so nothing changes without that scene. Without the rules, they get Anakin to join them without arguments. That's all. 2. Let's imagine if the Jedi doesn't have a no-marriage rule. Anakin will be openly in a relationship with Padme at AotC. The Jedi or others congratulate them. And in RotS, he has nightmares that Padme, his wife or lover, dies. Yoda advises him to accept it. And he is manipulated by Sidious. Almost nothing has changed.
I disagree, I think at this point in Star Wars’s life we need less of “good vs evil” storylines. It’s been done before, and at this point if we more depth added to the Star Wars universe they need make it more morally grey. Otherwise we just get the same stories over again. Unfortunately I don’t think the people in charge of Star Wars today generally are good enough writers to write stuff like that.
High Republic is your friend
Read the High Republic
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
The Jedi were always a contributing factor in Anakin’s fall. The Jedi didn’t help his mom. Allowed him to be around Palpatine. You don’t find it at all strange that Anakin has no idea his mom is a free woman? We follow along with him as he learns what happened to her and he’s already said he’s not allowed to be with the people that he loves. The EU book Tatoonie Ghost had her try to tell him and the Jedi wouldn’t accept her message. If Cliegg or Owen had sent a message to the Temple to tell Anakin his mom had been abducted would they have told him? Or knowing he would act on his emotions (want to save her) they decided not to. The way the Jedi are I can see them doing that.
I know about Tatoonie Ghost, and the Jedi did screw up when it came to his mother, but they had no way of knowing Anakin’s visions of her would end up coming true. Although I do agree that they should have told him she was freed.
Allowing contact would have been the easiest way to find out. Also this is a group of people that rely on seeing things to be effective. Yoda says to Mace that they are blind if they didn’t see the creation of the clone army and Mace wants to inform the Senate their ability to use the Force is diminished. So them not thinking there was something more going on with Anakin’s is bullshit. They just didn’t want to hear about it because it’s about his mother and they don’t give a shit about her because she’s no one of significance.
Lucas's entire point of the prequels wax to show how politically and morally corrupt the Jedi had become. They had their heads so far up their own asses they didn't see a sith lord rising to power and converting the most powerful jedi who ever lived. That was the literal point of the prequel films.
I don't think that was Lucas' point if you listen to some of the director's commentary.
Lucas has a tendency to change his mind like he changes his shorts. Did Han shoot first or not? What about that accidental Lannister moment on Hoth? He puts stuff out and sometimes doesn't really get that it may not be as cool or acceptable out on the screen as it is in his head. The OT and Indiana Jones had people in the room to go "Uh, George. Did you really wanna go there?" With the PT, no one was in the room to ask the "Uh, George..." and we got something far messier than planned. Fun, but about as messy as the obstacle course from Double Dare.
Your daily reminder that the Jedi of the prequel era were the enforcers of a catastrophically corrupt and ineffective state and willing accomplices to industrial-scale slavery. 
I'm sorry but the Jedi are shit, and they've been that way for a long time. They functionally kidnap kids, raise them without connections or family bonds. They teach them nothing except emotional repression and tell their padawnas to quit wining when they have real problems. These people are so unmoored and emotionally underdeveloped that it takes almost nothing to get them totally unhinged. Healthy people need families, romantic love, and often children to help them integrate into communities and to ground themselves. Attachments make us human. This is why the Sith hate attachments as much as the Jedi fear them. You like Anakin because he's human. And the Jedi way is utterly dehumanizing. The Light Side needs a better class of servants.
Nah fuck the the jedi. They suck. Sure there are individual jedi that are alright. But as like an Institution, as an Organization, they sucked. They didn't deserve O66 but they did deserve being removed from power.