MaximRecoil said:
Yoda made a claim and then lifted a ship. He did not demonstrate the ability to use unlimited telekinetic power. At no point did he back up the claim "Size matters not" with quantifiable evidence of unlimited power. That he had unlimited telekinesis is an extraordinary claim, and I don't see any extraordinary proof in the films.
Extraordinary claim relative to what? This is a fictional universe defined by the writer. The idea that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, applies to the real world, not to fictional worlds. A writer can make any claim he wants to; as he is the creator of that fictional universe. However, when there are inconsistencies, you may end up with plot holes, or at the least, characters which come across as stupid.
Let us assume, given the single most impressive feat of telekinisis evident in the films- Yoda stopping the metal thing Dooku dropped on Obi and Anakin. That effort made it impossible for Yoda to stop a fleeing Dooku, and apparently took a great deal of concentration and perhaps some physical strain judging from his expression. Is that the upper limit of the most powerful Jedi in the films? It's possible. He certainly never does anything like crush the Death Star. Non-existence of evidence is not evidence of non-existence, but given Yoda's character, goals, and apparent wisdom, him not using this power if he had it seems unlikely.
The problem here is you are trying to rationalize everything, which means you've discounted the possibility of something far more simple to explain inconsistencies; i.e., bad writing.
Also, in this scene, Yoda wasn't simply dealing with the weight of the metal thing, but he had to counteract Dooku's use of the force (that stuff didn't break/fall due to natural causes). The same thing applies in ROTS when the emperor was throwing those senate seats (or whatever they were) at him.
As to why Yoda didn't throw whole droid armies around, perhaps theres a fundamental difference between lifting something with the Force and Force pushing things in combat. I don't know, I'm not a Jedi.
Or, a more obvious explanation is that the character was written with too much power which makes it next to impossible to invent dangerous situations which he could not easily overcome by using that power.
And that's still not begging the question. I never assumed the Jedi can't be morons, just that given a choice between all Jedi being morons, or beleiveing that the way you describe a Jedi's power being inaccurate, it seems more likely that your claim that Jedi should demonstrate unlimited telekinetic power is innacurate.
You're discounting the possibility of bad writing; i.e., you're assuming that the writing is fine (and that is the question); and using that assumption as your basis for trying to rationalize the inconsistencies; hence, you are begging the question.
This could have been fixed with some writing changes. For example, don't have Yoda claim that size doesn't matter if the writer actually intends for size to matter. Don't keep using the whole "dropping the light saber" thing as a plot device when it is already established that even rookie Jedi can will the things back into their hands at a moment's notice; etc. When you are writing super powered characters you need to give them certain limitations and be very creative with the dangerous situations that you construct for them. Otherwise, you end up with characters that look stupid.
Here's the crux of our disagreement. I'm not 'rationalizing' anything. You blame bad writing for what you percieve as inconsistencies, and I see perfectly reasonable in-universe explanations where no such inconsistencies even exist. It's not even hard.
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.
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.'
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'.
I would agree with the bad writing argument if there were not interally consistent reasonable explanations for these so-called 'inconsistencies' that don't violate the reality of the films. However it seems to me that these explanations exist, have large ammounts of evidence to support them, and are not hard to come up with.