I agree with you when you say that the Jedi were right about Anakin letting his emotions control him. But it’s not true that they weren’t upset about him wanting to have a girlfriend or wanting to save his mother.
Anakin had been having nightmares about his mother for a long time, and he told Obi-Wan about them. All Obi-Wan said was “Dreams pass in time.” So when it comes to his mother, it’s not like Anakin never talked to the Jedi about what was going on. He did, and they gave him bad advice.
This whole thing could’ve been solved so easily by just letting Anakin visit his mother to make sure she was okay. I mean, yeah, you shouldn’t let your emotions take over. But if you’re someone with Force abilities who starts having prophetic dreams about your mother suffering, it’s only natural to wonder if something bad is actually happening, and it’s only reasonable to check if everything’s fine. If you found out there’d been an explosion in your mom’s neighborhood, wouldn’t you call her or go see her to make sure she’s okay? It’s not even about letting your emotions control you, it’s just about having compassion for your mother.
And when it comes to Anakin having a girlfriend, the Jedi explicitly forbade romantic relationships, which is something Obi-Wan reminded Anakin of when Anakin told him that being around Padmé was intoxicating. So they didn’t approve the idea of him having a girlfriend.
I wouldn’t call that upset. Distanced moreso to me.
As far as we saw Anakin never pursued seeking to visit his mom in the movies, until he thought she was suffering. This could be an interesting thing to build around, and I think the movie doesn’t do that, and it’s a flaw in the movies that we don’t see it be brought up. This is among the kind of thing that I think for me could have filled out the story more.
But Obi is never developed to think those dreams are those things. I think it’s played like he thinks they’re dreams. In ROTS, I think Yoda seems to be a little uncertain about it to me.
The Jedi council never found out that as he was still working for them. I think they wouldn’t be pleased, maybe that’d be upset in a way.
By mad I just mean that they thought it was negative and told him not to do it, and didn’t like it when he did. It was slight hyperbole.
The Jedi never told him to not rescue his mom in the movies. Not have a girlfriend, yes, but for both things Anakin could quit and do what he wanted. He’s not coerced. It’s suggested in AOTC that quitting is an option.
It’s a specific reading of the prequels that a gigantic portion (possibly most) fans have right now, which is that the Jedi forbidding attachment is:
- their major flaw that causes Anakin to fall and screws everything up
- directly connected to when they tell Luke not to go to Cloud City to help Han and Leia, and to when they tell Luke to kill Vader (note they don’t actually tell him to kill Vader but that’s a separate bugaboo I have)
I blame the prequels for changing the Jedi and causing confusion with poor writing. The Jedi are written as morons, so when people who like the prequels watch the OT, they assume it’s just more of the same and it’s Yoda and Obi Wan filling Luke’s head with nonsense. Sometimes with the added thing (people here have said this including very recently) that Luke deciding to redeem Vader is him rejecting the attachment thing they taught him.
Another example would be the concept of “Balance in the Force” which has been interpreted to mean equal good and evil in the universe or equal Jedi and Sith. That’s silly, but it is something that the word “balance” suggests if you take it out of context, and it was never really explained in the movies themselves. It gets further muddled by Mortis Filoni material including the Ahsoka show.
I think that’s their choice. Because I disagree.
How is this moronic of the Jedi when they’re shown to be accurate about how attachments lead to those things, for both Anakin and Luke?
I’d also disagree about how Luke interacts with the Vader situation.
The movies explain it, I think straight forward, which is: Destroy the sith and bring balance. That’s what said in the movies.
And I didn’t mention this before, but you did refer to it as “seems contradictory” here:
This is overcomplicating it and it seems contradictory only because the attachment thing was made up in 2002 to create a “forbidden love” angle for Anakin, like I’ve been saying.
Unless I misinterpreted what you were saying here? Because afterwards you did say this:
It doesn’t contradict the OT
I agree with you that Anakin could have quit at any time, but I’m talking about the perception people have about the movies. The standard reading now is that the Jedi are a creepy cult that kidnaps children and brainwashes them to not have emotion. I know that that’s blatantly incorrect on every level. However, the Jedi do look really dumb due to their inability to figure out obvious details happening right in front of them with regard to the clone plot, Republic corruption, Palpatine, and Anakin/Padme, so it gives the impression that they have to be doing something wrong to make them act that way and/or deserve it when it comes crashing down. People fill in the blanks and put it up to something to do with emotions, suppressed emotions, attachment, “too much light side”, etc.
The Balance in the Force thing is vague and the Chosen One prophecy is vague, and they tell you straight up in ROTS that the prophecy could have been misread. To most people this means you can interpret it however you want, even though there are token references to it being about destroying the Sith. Yes ultimately it swings back around and winds up being true when Vader does take out the Emperor, but people also insert a step where it means he had to exterminate the Jedi or reduce them to 2 because there were too many.
By contradictory I was talking about the other post I was quoting, where the other poster was trying to reconcile the movies and their messaging. I said it seems contradictory because people are trying to read something into it that wasn’t there previously.
My full sentence was
“It doesn’t contradict the OT, it (according to a fan interpretation) retroactively adds an unnecessary part to it that gets tied in with something unrelated.”
For example when a story does the “it was all a dream” trope, it doesn’t technically contradict anything that happens in the story itself, or break continuity, because anything can happen in a dream. But everyone hates it because it changes the perspective on the story to make it a lot less interesting and impactful. That’s what reducing everything to attachments/no attachments does for me, even though you can technically shoehorn Yoda and Obi Wan’s comments into that framework.