Ahh but there’s the real problem, and keeping all of the ESB twists intact would require far more creativity.
Or maybe because it would contradict more lines from the original trilogy? Like Yoda knowing who Luke’s father was enough to say “Powerful Jedi was he” and “Much anger in him… like his father”.
He can know Anakin without having been in the Jedi Order. Not to mention, Yoda says that he’d been watching Luke all his life, despite being on Dagobah for 19 years. Maybe Yoda just knows this shit.
I don’t necessarily think Yoda being outside the (main?) Jedi Order is the only or even best way to go. But it would’ve made for a much better characterization than… whatever the hell you could call the Yoda we got.
How else would he know to “Not underestimate the powers of the Emperor”?
The Emperor’s clearly powerful and got to Anakin decades ago. Him getting to Luke is a huge risk. Plus, Yoda could have had experience with the Emperor without any of the changes to his character the prequels brought.
And how else would he learn “Wars not make one great” without having experienced that first hand.
Well, just knowledge of history, although that would be really boring. Really, there’s nothing wrong with him having first hand knowledge of the horrors of war, but it needs to have one of two things:
-An actual character arc of him learning the horrors of war, in the actual movies, and not from some EU writer trying to rehabilitate the prequels
-Or, push it back to before the prequels if you don’t want to deal with it, or if you want to have Yoda be a force for pacifism in the story.
Having him be an active, enthusiastic general and then inexplicably become a huge pacifist off-screen between movies, doesn’t make for a compelling story.
That’s another thing that a lot of people miss. When he says “Do not underestimate the powers of the Emperor” that obviously means he faced him before. Obviously he was witness to the Emperor’s power first hand. That actually becomes a plot hole for anyone who removes that duel from the movie, because now how else would he know the Emperor’s power? It fits into the original trilogy perfectly.
“Powers of the Emperor” doesn’t necessarily mean his skill at lightsaber fighting. Hell, the prequels recontextualizing everything about the Force and a Jedi’s power to be just Dragonball Z fights is the worst thing about them.
I’m not a super fan of conservative prequel rewrites, but Belated Media’s Episode III rewrite has a scene that deals with this plot point a hundred thousand times better, here, and also shows Palpatine’s rise to power in a more compelling way.
Belated Media’s really only putting the bare minimum in, in my opinion, but it’s leagues better than the story the prequels gave us. Because, well, these ideas are actually there in the story itself.