MaximRecoil said:
Let's look at the lightsaber thing. Given the concentration it takes under most situations to use the force (Luke pulling his saber from ice, Yoda lifting the ship, Vader hurling debris at Luke) perhaps being on the back of a moving speeder Anakin was unable to spare a moment to concentrate to telekinetically retrieve it. For me, the half-second of thought it took to come up with that consistent in-universe explanation is more satisfying that throwing disbeleif out the windy and saying the writers suck.
Luke was knocking on death's door when he retrieved his light saber from the snow. It was also the first time we saw him use telekinesis; he hadn't even had his brief training session with Yoda yet. At that point, not only was he not a Jedi, but I don't think you could even call him a "padawan". Note how easily he retrieves his light saber at the end on ROTJ when he wants it. Most of the time, that stunt is shown to be quick and effortless for a Jedi in good condition.
We've seen Jedi in precarious situations engaging in light saber duels (such as balancing on those hovering things over the lava in ROTS), so it is not like they have to stop everything they are doing in order to use the force. We also know that their reaction time is extremely fast, to the point that they can see things slightly before they happen (as Anakin's podracing abilities were explained in TPM), which allows them to do seemingly impossible things like blocking blaster bolts with their light sabers (even when blindfolded).
Speaking of podracing, Anakin was able to keep his podracer going on the course while trying to fix it; involving reaching around to the outside blindly and putting something back in place, and fooling with the cockpit controls; and he was just a child at the time, and certainly not a trained Jedi. I guess he can walk and chew bubblegum at the same time.
Considering those abilities, you are going to try to tell me that it makes sense for Anakin to have not retrieved his light saber in AOTC? It is sloppy writing; i.e., a lazy plot device.
Let's look at Yoda. From the abilities he displays in the films, we can infer that Yoda is a Jedi master with impressive telekinetic talent, but his power is limited enough that he can't crush the Death Star, and that when he said 'Size matters not' he was either a:) A 900 year old backwards talking philosopher and what he said wasn't meant to be taken as a literal refrence to unlimited telekinesis, or b:) A literal refrence to the nature of the Force, not to his own individual abilities. I think either of those consistent, in-universe explanations are superior to discoutning huge sections of the films with 'bad writing makes Yoda stupid.'
"A" is out, because there was nothing philosophical about it. Luke thought it was too big to lift, and Yoda corrected him by saying that size doesn't matter; and then proceeds to lift it. The dialog here is about as matter-of-fact as you can get.
As far as "B" goes; what would be the point of telling Luke that size doesn't matter, if, in the context of the scene (i.e., using the force to lift things), it actually did matter? Yoda telling him that size doesn't matter, but secrectly having an irrelevant context in mind when he said it, makes no sense. That would be like going to a car lot and telling the salesman that price doesn't matter. Then when he shows you an expensive car that you can't afford, you say: "Well what I meant was, price doesn't matter in the context of the nature of money; in other words, there is enough money in the world to buy any car on the lot."
By using the 'bad writing' argument, any evidence to the contrary is automatically discounted. Yoda said 'size matters not' and that's taken literally, so the fact at no point in the movies does this claim appear to be true is completely discounted as 'bad writing'.
No, that is not correct. Any evidence to the contrary is not automatically discounted. However, you may just find that there is no evidence to the contrary to be found. An example of evidence to the contrary would be something like a scene with Yoda trying to move an object and failing because it was too large, and some dialog to explain the inconsistency (for example: "I guess I wasn't as strong in the force as I thought I was"); so we know it is not just a case of the writer forgetting things which had been previously established. All you have provided are baseless rationalizations; which are not evidence.
To me it seems using the force to grab a lightsaber that's lying on the ground is one thing, grabbing it when it's falling/flying is something else. Is there anyone in the Star Wars, Empire or Jedi that grabs a moving object out of the air using the force? Anakin can't grab a falling lightsaber, Darth Vader can't lift Luke when he jumps in cloud city.
About lifting the X-wing, Luke thinks he can't grab it because it's to big. Yoda simply makes clear the X-wing isn't to big but Luke just doesn't believe it's possible to lift. I mean, "size matters not" can be X-wing specific and it doesn't mean you can automatically lift things that are much bigger than X-wings, let alone planets or Death Stars. Yoda simply says the size of the X-wing isn't the limiting factor in this case. To me the movies make clear that use of the force is very limited, so no, I don't think it makes Jedi look stupid because they supposedly don't use their powers.
