At least for me, while that’s definitely the way it feels it should be taken, how it was received by the audience seems off. While I can look at it and go, “Yeah, if the Jedi have lost their way, it makes sense,” a lot of the fans I’ve interacted with, (and significant chunks of Legends Continuity) seem to have taken it as not just, “The way Jedi are,” but inherently part of the Light Side of the Force.
I’m of the belief that the films missed the mark on what they wanted Jedi to be, but that I can at least see what it was aiming for.
Yeah, I think that is fair point! I think a way future stories could alleviate the discrepancy between the Prequel-Jedi and how fans saw Jedi before the prequels would be to have a story set in the Old Republic that shows how the Jedi transitioned into fundamentalism. Maybe the Jedi of the past had more freedom and were more swashbuckler, but maybe one or several Jedi fell to the dark side due to their attachment and the war that followed really wreaked havoc on the galaxy. And this conflict caused the Jedi to re-evaluate their code and they reacted by becoming more dogmatic and traditional (raising Jedi from birth, no possessions, monk robes, etc).
It could be one way to handle it at least.