What’s conveyed by the writing, cinematography, editing, and cultural context > authorial intent.
This thread is entirely about whether it was George’s intentions or not. So that’s the discussion. It’s irritating whenever this discussion is had and someone has to come up and say, “It wasn’t conveyed well”, like yeah, no shit. Obviously it wasn’t since so many people are confused. But whether it was conveyed well isn’t the topic of discussion.
People will talk about how George was such a genius for making the Jedi Order ideologically flawed when that wasn’t his idea, and if you follow his intent they aren’t flawed in the ways people think. That wasn’t George’s idea, it’s yours.
Also no matter how well an intent was conveyed or not the authorial intent is still canon. If you decide to not watch the films from a different lens from what the author had in mind that’s your head canon, or fanon. Now obviously canon doesn’t matter to you and that’s totally cool. The issue is when someone talks about this re-interpretation of the Prequels as if it is canon.
I think you need to read up on how the creative process works. There are a lot of creative people who have shared their experiences. You start with the idea. Then you develop it. You work on it and improve it. In the written word (which is where Star Wars always starts) you write treatments and drafts. The story slowly changes as you develop it. We can see from the many interviews with Lucas over the years that this is absolutely the case for Star Wars. Lucas added in concept art. In some cases it archives some of his thoughts better than the writing. And you can see how the Jedi change over time as he worked on the saga from 1974 to 2012. So where do you want to pinpoint his intent? At what point do you freeze the fluid process to determine absolute intent? I don’t think you can. I think the OT very much shows where Lucas was with the Jedi when he started the PT and how he started it, with Qui-gon going against the council, that Kenobi trains Anakin against Yoda’s better judgement, and all the flaws that are crystal clear in the OT, that the Jedi were written from the start as flawed. They are too wrapped up in politics. They are being too strict in their teachings. They aren’t properly in tune with the force. They moved the bar to train Luke. The list of issues between how Luke was trained vs. how Anakin was trained vs. how Ahsoka was trained is huge. If Lucas didn’t go into the PT intending the Jedi to be flawed, he really screwed up because so much of what the story is in the PT is about the Jedi being flawed. They aren’t perfect at this point. They aren’t what they once were. It is written that way.
Here is how I interpret Lucas’s many comments. He does the PT. Interest in the Jedi skyrockets. He wants to encourage that because he likes his fans and there are a bunch of ways to make money on that interest. He isn’t going to go into interviews telling fans not to like the PT Jedi because they are flawed. As individual Jedi I don’t think they are. I think it is the institution and traditions and their function in the Republic that is flawed. So Lucas focus’s on Jedi being Jedi and rather than on the institution. He spends time in interviews telling fans how to be the ideal Jedi. He says that was his intention all along, just like he claims the Vader was going to be Luke and Leia’s father all along (which is demonstrably false). Lucas’s quote on the matter are not reliable for accessing the intent of Lucas the creative genius. Creative genius lives in the moment and does what the story requires (AOTC has a few things were you can tell he needed to pass the script by some friends like he did with ANH or a good screenwriter like TESB and ROTJ).
When it comes to his actual intent as a writer, I don’t think he often shares such insights publicly. I think John Williams and David Filoni probably know more of his intent than most others. Ralph McQuarrie might have as well. Those who have worked creatively with him. Duel of the Fates used a Welsh Poem translated into Sanskrit and then adjusted to fit the music.
Under the tongue root
a fight most dread,
and another raging
behind in the head
It is clear from this that the PT was going to be about the fight in Anakin’s head. This was externalized by the fight with Maul. That Filoni (after working for nearly a decade with Lucas and hearing first hand all about the Jedi directly from the source) tells us that the title directly refers to the fate of Anakin and that seems to agree with the lyrics Williams picked and that Qui-gon could have given Anakin a different path, one where he would not follow what they council taught, indicates to me that it is accurate and that the Jedi Institution has become hidebound and is in as perilous a situation as the Republic itself. I feel this is intrinsic to the PT and is written into the core of the store. So I very much feel it is Lucas’s creative intent that the Jedi of the PT are flawed. It is not in his interests as the owner and creator of Star Wars to alienate all the Jedi fans so his official line is quite different from the story he told on screen. Because he is not just saying what is in the films, but expanding on it and explaining it. Fans will take that and run with it. He knows that fans want to believe the Jedi are great (they once were before the PT, which the High Republic era should be showing us) just as other fans want to believe he always intended Vader (phonemically almost identical to the Germanic word for father) to be Luke’s father.
The question really lies in what you think shows intent. I feel that a writer’s previous writings show their creative intent. I feel that their work shows their intent far more than interviews. In an interview you have to ask why they are giving the interview and what they are looking to get out of it. I feel that Lucas’s intent in interviews is quite clear. I was involved in the West End RPG back before the SE came out. Much of what you find in the PT Jedi’s skills and abilities can be found in that game. Timothy Zahn was handed some of the sourcebooks as references to write his trilogy. Many of the alien names come from that game. And the game in turn was developed from the OT movies and other novels. Brain Daly first mentioned Med Packs in his Han Solo Trilogy which didn’t become a canon thing until TLJ. Lucas had a hand in all of these things. Lucas allowed Luke to get married and have a son in the EU. He had his own fall to the dark side and redemption. They did Tales of the Jedi comics in the 90’s which go back 4000-5000 years before and explore the ancient Jedi and the rise of the Sith. This all relates to fan expectation of what the Jedi would be revealed to be in the PT. Lucas did not want to disappoint while at the same time I think it is clear from what he wrote that he crafted the PT Jedi order to have issues that would aid in Anakin’s downfall.
Is the PT Jedi order evil? No. They just have issues. They are stuck in tradition over individuality. They would rather all their students conform rather than tailor their individual training. Anakin needed that individual touch. He needed a master who did not follow the council. Instead he got Obi-wan Kenobi who followed the council. I get this from the dialog in TPM.
Now, if you choose to accept that Lucas is giving us the unvarnished truth (something I just can’t agree with based on other established facts) I can see where you would think that they Jedi are not flawed. It is a nice think to think that Anakin’s fall was his own doing. That would be a valid story to tell. But the larger tragedy is that the Jedi order failed him. Their strict adherence to tradition and teaching by the book (Master Jocasta is emblematic of what is wrong with the PT Jedi going by how Lucas wrote them) is a contributing factor to his fall and his story could have played out differently had he been taught a different way. See, I heard Dave Filoni talk about the meaning of Duel of the Fates and I instantly absorbed it because it agreed to completely with everything I have seen in the PT story over the years. It was not some new insight. I knew that Qui-gon would have been a different teacher and things might have turned out different. But that interpretations makes it a certainty. The pieces fall into place. Lucas’s intent is clear. From his writing that is. From his interviews, not so much.
The the question really comes down to what sources you want to go by for Lucas’s intent. If you want to go by the works themselves, you get one answer. If you want to go by the interviews you get another. It is all a matter of which weigh in as more significant to you. There is no right answer because both are valid views. I hold a writer’s work reveals the author’s intent far better than any interview every could.
There is more to my argument as well, but the site rules and normal forum decorum about politics and religion prevent me from addressing those. Suffice it to say that I see many parallels to existing institutions in Star Wars and many of them are equally hidebound and on the bring of crumbing and if coupled with such political turmoil might collapse as the Jedi order did. I see warnings in the failings of the Jedi that match many other things in the saga. I very much believe that the flaws and failings of the Jedi that many perceive are very deliberate and intentional and I also believe his comments can be viewed as having a similar very deliberate and intentional purpose and both can exist together if you look at it from a certain point of view.