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Inconsistent use of "the force" — Page 2

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C3PX said:

When the term "canon" is used in context of a work of fiction, it typically means any work related to the original and created by or accepted by the original creator as an authentic part of the over all story of the fictional universe he created. All this crap about a-canon b-canon c-canon is BS used to legitimize the fact that ol' boy George wants to pull in more dough by accepting royalties from the selling of liscened SW novels, but also doesn't want to be confined by rules or events related to those novels. Which is fine, but why not disregard them as canon altogether, instead of this "different levels of canon" stuff. Canon is suppose to be what is offically accepted, it either is or is not.

That said, when we talk about real canon, it is what Lucas and official sources make it out to be. Sure, I mentioned my personal canon, but that is just a fancy way of saying the works I wish to accept as having happened in my own personal experience of the franchise. When we start changing the meanings of words, such as "canon" to mean what is most plausable or what makes the most sense, or what was set out first, we muddle the meaning to the point where it is no longer a useful word.

The common understanding of canon in fiction (the understanding you're citing) is based on the mistaken view that the "creator" or owner always puts out genuine stuff or knows best what's the real thing. The idea at the core of the idea of canon is what's the real thing. That's what's at the heart of it. People have just gotten used to accepting that the word of the "creator" is the best guide to what's the real thing. But it isn't.

In its core essence the idea of canon (and thus the meaning of the word canon) is about what's the real thing. But you won't get the real thing if you go by a bad guide like the judgement of a "creator" who's lost touch with the work. Defining canon is all about defining what's the real thing. All this stuff about the offical line and canon being stuff created or accepted by the creator is about looking for the real thing. People are effectively just figuring that the offical line and stuff created by or accepted by the creator IS the real thing. But it isn't always.

And insisting on something being the real thing before recognizing it as canon is not changing the meaning of the word, it's holding to its core idea at the expense of its common interpretation. The whole idea of canon was created to define what was the real thing. That's what canon is all about. All this stuff about canon being what the "creator" says is canon is really just a descendant of that.

I'm not changing the meaning of the word, I'm just isolating its core meaning and insisting that anything called canon live up to that.

Things totally at odds with the core canon or drastically inconsistent with it cannot be canon. No matter what the "creator" says. Let's say Lucas gets up tomorrow and says the Care Bears tv show is canon in the Star Wars universe -it would not make it so. By the same token, the SE with its cartoonish stuff and the PT with its cartoonish stuff and fake Anakin cannot be canon. They are not genuine Star Wars.

The word canon is not rendered useless by recognizing its core meaning and using that core meaning as a criterea for judging what's canon. We may have to recognize that people may have different definitions of canon and different uses of the word, but that is true of many words in our dictionary and that does not render them useless. (And that is the situation with the word canon already anyway -you will not get everyone to agree on what canon is, there are multiple interpretations.) The word is made more useful when we are more faithful to its core meaning, because then we're talking about something real and not some silly idea some "creator" has.

I refuse to accept George Lucas's definition of Star Wars canon, because I believe that definition is at odds with the whole purpose of the idea of canon.

Many people share my view that canon isn't always what the creator says is canon.

 

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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.

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Vaderisnothayden said:

The common understanding of canon in fiction (the understanding you're citing) is based on the mistaken view that the "creator" or owner always puts out genuine stuff or knows best what's the real thing. The idea at the core of the idea of canon is what's the real thing. That's what's at the heart of it. People have just gotten used to accepting that the word of the "creator" is the best guide to what's the real thing. But it isn't.

In its core essence the idea of canon (and thus the meaning of the word canon) is about what's the real thing. But you won't get the real thing if you go by a bad guide like the judgement of a "creator" who's lost touch with the work. Defining canon is all about defining what's the real thing. All this stuff about the offical line and canon being stuff created or accepted by the creator is about looking for the real thing. People are effectively just figuring that the offical line and stuff created by or accepted by the creator IS the real thing. But it isn't always.

Say what you like, but you are redefining clearly defined words, and thus destroying their usefulness for communication.

The word "canon" has many meanings, but when used in the context of fiction, it has been used to mean what I explained it to mean in my previous post.

 

"Every time Warb sighs, an angel falls into a vat of mapel syrup." - Gaffer Tape

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TheBoost said:

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.

 

Very well, explain Leia talking about her memories of her mother? I have yet to hear the contrived excuse for that one, but I have no doubt that it exists. You can explain away anything in this manner, it has been done for years by people trying to fix bad writing or inconsistencies.

The pink Klingon blood in Star Trek VI is a good example of this. Anywhere else in Trek continuity we see that Klingons bleed red, but there is a scene in ST VI that has a bunch of Klingons being murdered in a zero gravity environment. With the lack of gravity, their  blood floats around in bubbles, the scene is extremely violent for a Star Trek film, but the blood plays an important role in the film. Since it was such a violent scene containing such an incredible amount of blood, they made the blood pink, like Pepto-Bismol, in order to keep the content rating of the film down. Had it been red, as would be canonically accurate, the film would have earned an R rating. In the film they made no effort to explain this inconsistency other than by pretending Klingon's had pink blood all along. Since then, I think a video game or two may have portrayed Klingon blood as pink, but all TV shows and movies since have clearly shown it to be red.

Since ST VI came out, fans have tried to explain this inconsistency by claiming that some chemical floating around in the room mixed with the blood made it pink, or lack of gravity somehow made it pink, or lack of oxygen. The point is, they have tried to explain it with silly explanation, sure those explanations may help smooth over the inconsistencies, but the fact is that they didn't want an R rating, so the blood was made pink.

When making ROTS, they mentioned that they had to go back and film Obi-Wan picking up Anakin's lightsaber after the fact, because they "kind of forgot" that Obi-Wan gives it to Luke later on. If they "kind of forgot" about that, then why is it so unreasonable to believe there are other things they "kind of forgot" about? It seems to me that they "kind of forgot" about Leia remembering her mother. Fortunately for them, they have fans who will come up with the craziest far out excuses to explain these plot holes away and try to claim that everything fits together perfectly and consistently.

 

 

"Every time Warb sighs, an angel falls into a vat of mapel syrup." - Gaffer Tape

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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.
Luke was knocking on death's door when he retrieved his light saber from the snow. It was also the first time we saw him use telekinesis; he hadn't even had his brief training session with Yoda yet. At that point, not only was he not a Jedi, but I don't think you could even call him a "padawan". Note how easily he retrieves his light saber at the end on ROTJ when he wants it. Most of the time, that stunt is shown to be quick and effortless for a Jedi in good condition.

We've seen Jedi in precarious situations engaging in light saber duels (such as balancing on those hovering things over the lava in ROTS), so it is not like they have to stop everything they are doing in order to use the force. We also know that their reaction time is extremely fast, to the point that they can see things slightly before they happen (as Anakin's podracing abilities were explained in TPM), which allows them to do seemingly impossible things like blocking blaster bolts with their light sabers (even when blindfolded).

Speaking of podracing, Anakin was able to keep his podracer going on the course while trying to fix it; involving reaching around to the outside blindly and putting something back in place, and fooling with the cockpit controls; and he was just a child at the time, and certainly not a trained Jedi. I guess he can walk and chew bubblegum at the same time.

Considering those abilities, you are going to try to tell me that it makes sense for Anakin to have not retrieved his light saber in AOTC? It is sloppy writing; i.e., a lazy plot device.

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.'

"A" is out, because there was nothing philosophical about it. Luke thought it was too big to lift, and Yoda corrected him by saying that size doesn't matter; and then proceeds to lift it. The dialog here is about as matter-of-fact as you can get. 

As far as "B" goes; what would be the point of telling Luke that size doesn't matter, if, in the context of the scene (i.e., using the force to lift things), it actually did matter? Yoda telling him that size doesn't matter, but secrectly having an irrelevant context in mind when he said it, makes no sense.  That would be like going to a car lot and telling the salesman that price doesn't matter. Then when he shows you an expensive car that you can't afford, you say: "Well what I meant was, price doesn't matter in the context of the nature of money; in other words, there is enough money in the world to buy any car on the lot."

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'.

No, that is not correct. Any evidence to the contrary is not automatically discounted. However, you may just find that there is no evidence to the contrary to be found. An example of evidence to the contrary would be something like a scene with Yoda trying to move an object and failing because it was too large, and some dialog to explain the inconsistency (for example: "I guess I wasn't as strong in the force as I thought I was"); so we know it is not just a case of the writer forgetting things which had been previously established. All you have provided are baseless rationalizations; which are not evidence.

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MaximRecoil said:

 

No, that is not correct. Any evidence to the contrary is not automatically discounted. However, you may just find that there is no evidence to the contrary to be found. An example of evidence to the contrary would be something like a scene with Yoda trying to move an object and failing because it was too large, and some dialog to explain the inconsistency (for example: "I guess I wasn't as strong in the force as I thought I was"); so we know it is not just a case of the writer forgetting things which had been previously established. All you have provided are baseless rationalizations; which are not evidence.

 

 This is the disagreement we're not getting anywhere on. See, I see the six movies, where the Jedi clearly show they do not have the power to crush Death Stars with their mind, as evidence that they do not have the power to crush Death Stars with their minds.  Since you assume, based on one line of dialogue, that they must have that power, every single example where they don't is therefore not evidence. I would posit that the reason we don't see Yoda fail at moving anything is because a 900 year old Jedi Master might already know his reasonable limits, but that no doubt is a baseless rationalization.

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This is the disagreement we're not getting anywhere on. See, I see the six movies, where the Jedi clearly show they do not have the power to crush Death Stars with their mind, as evidence that they do not have the power to crush Death Stars with their minds.

So everything that we didn't see people do in the six movies counts as evidence that they couldn't do it? How do you figure?

Since you assume, based on one line of dialogue, that they must have that power, every single example where they don't is therefore not evidence.

There is no "they". Yoda is the one that made the claim. And I'm not "assuming" anything. Like I said before, words mean things.

It is established that Yoda can move objects regardless of size (which would of course, include the Death Star), based on his claim in ESB. There is no evidence that Yoda could not move the Death Star. The fact that he didn't is not evidence that he couldn't. So why didn't he when he said he could? It is questions like those which lead to the conclusion of the character being dumb; which leads to the conclusion of bad writing.

I would posit that the reason we don't see Yoda fail at moving anything is because a 900 year old Jedi Master might already know his reasonable limits, but that no doubt is a baseless rationalization.

So why claim there are no limits if he knows there are? Why are you so determined to reconcile the rest of the series to that single line from Yoda, rather than simply admit the line was bad writing, which ended up making Yoda look dumb for not single-handedly taking down the Empire with this god-like ability of which he boasts?

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C3PX said:

When the term "canon" is used in context of a work of fiction, it typically means any work related to the original and created by or accepted by the original creator as an authentic part of the over all story of the fictional universe he created. All this crap about a-canon b-canon c-canon is BS used to legitimize the fact that ol' boy George wants to pull in more dough by accepting royalties from the selling of liscened SW novels, but also doesn't want to be confined by rules or events related to those novels. Which is fine, but why not disregard them as canon altogether, instead of this "different levels of canon" stuff. Canon is suppose to be what is offically accepted, it either is or is not.

That said, when we talk about real canon, it is what Lucas and official sources make it out to be. Sure, I mentioned my personal canon, but that is just a fancy way of saying the works I wish to accept as having happened in my own personal experience of the franchise. When we start changing the meanings of words, such as "canon" to mean what is most plausable or what makes the most sense, or what was set out first, we muddle the meaning to the point where it is no longer a useful word.

 

I agree that the creator defines canon, not the fans. I have my own personal canon as well, but I realize that in a debate, I have to adhere to the one held by the responsible parties. I don't know what VaderHayden's rant was about, but it seems he thinks himself able to judge what is "real" Star Wars and what is not. I think we can agree that he is mistaken. He simply doesn't have the right to make that decision.

Anyway, I agree that the whole GTCSN canon scale was contrived for the sake of appeasing both GL and the EU fans out there, but I think that to say that it betrays the meaning of "canon" is not necessarily true. The whole point of fictional canon is to define what is part of the story and what is not. Since such a designation is up to the creator (or his cronies), that means he/they can define such a system however they want, either in black-and-white terms like Star Trek (series and movies are canon, nothing else) or with a multi-tiered system that can throw out contradictory elements and rewrite itself (the canon scale used by LucasBooks). If a piece of information is not contradicted by another piece of information on a higher level (or by a decree from LucasBooks), it is "truth", just like the series and movies in Star Trek. The only difference is that this "truth" can be overwritten at a moments notice if a contradictory piece of information from higher up on the scale appears. Seems more orderly than the black-and-white approach, actually.

For example, what if there is a contradiction between a later ST series and an earlier ST series? There's no real precedent for which series holds the "truth", so it's really up to the fans. With SW, a lot of those concerns (not all, of course) are easy to sort out. Couple this with the fact that the writers for the EU are trying more and more to make everything gel, and the only wild cards SW deals nowadays are when GL tries something crazy (like the new TV series, which completely fucked the whole Clone Wars timeline up its ass) or when trying to reconcile really old EU information (like from the Marvel Comic series).

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I'm gonna jump in here...feel free to shout me down if you like.

The whole 'Size matters not' comment, I feel, has been taken out of context. To me, it is not to imply that the Jedi had unlimited Superman style power but to indicate that someone shouldn't feel it is impossible just because a task or object is bigger than they thought it was. 'The Force is more than this crude matter' (or something like that) indicates that knowledge and is far greater than what we store it in. From that, the power comes from the confidence to use it in the correct manner. Limitation comes from not knowing how to apply that power.

Going off track for a moment, Bruce Lee had pretty much the same quote in different words - 'Having No Way As Way' meaning to limit yourself to one method means you deny the other 9 methods that would get you to the same result (if there were 10, of course!) In this case, Yoda means to show Luke that even though he is a tiny creature, he is able to tap into the Force to move an object far greater and heavier than he is.

Going back to why they just didn't wipe out huge armies with a flick of the wrist - of course it's a plot point, but also consider this: it obviously takes a lot of effort to tap into the Force to do a lot of things. Luke's retrieval of his lightsaber in ESB shows this to be the case, as does Yoda saving Obi-Wan and Anakin in AOTC. The limitation in this regard is to show that whilst the Force is an 'all powerful mystical energy', it is not all encompassing, requiring the user to focus on one thing (or a few things) at one time. Retrieval of Dooku's solar yacht would have meant lessening his focus on the large weight that was bearing down on him - and we're not exactly privvy to whether Dooku was also pressing down with it beyond his hands indicating so, which meant Yoda had to concentrate on saving his fellow Jedi. Also, a case in point is Yoda being unable to fully repel Palpatine's second attack in ROTS. With a dark shadow hanging over the light of the good side, it seems like the Jedi are unable to fully call on their powers - another plot device, of course.

As I said in a previous thread, why didn't old Ben flick his wrist and force push Vader away - we're talking about a Star Wars universe that hadn't been cocked up by George's retrofit of Jedi being martial artists plus factor in that Ben has been in hiding for so many years. Use of his Force skills would have sent a ripple to Vader telling him exactly where he was and thus endangering Luke as well. It's the same with Yoda, but since he's a grand master and Ben only a master, there is obviously some difference in their skills. Vader, obivously, has no human limbs left, so is unable to muster more than a Force choke and a pull in the Force (to retrieve Solo's gun on Cloud City), but even he is only 40% human due to the injuries from Mustafa and the Force only works with living things...

Anyway, if I've misunderstood, sorry. If not, I hope I've put forward enough conjecture for thought...I'm not flicking my wrist to push anything away btw...I'm far too old to use skills like that now!! :p

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MaximRecoil said:

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.
Luke was knocking on death's door when he retrieved his light saber from the snow. It was also the first time we saw him use telekinesis; he hadn't even had his brief training session with Yoda yet. At that point, not only was he not a Jedi, but I don't think you could even call him a "padawan". Note how easily he retrieves his light saber at the end on ROTJ when he wants it. Most of the time, that stunt is shown to be quick and effortless for a Jedi in good condition.

We've seen Jedi in precarious situations engaging in light saber duels (such as balancing on those hovering things over the lava in ROTS), so it is not like they have to stop everything they are doing in order to use the force. We also know that their reaction time is extremely fast, to the point that they can see things slightly before they happen (as Anakin's podracing abilities were explained in TPM), which allows them to do seemingly impossible things like blocking blaster bolts with their light sabers (even when blindfolded).

Speaking of podracing, Anakin was able to keep his podracer going on the course while trying to fix it; involving reaching around to the outside blindly and putting something back in place, and fooling with the cockpit controls; and he was just a child at the time, and certainly not a trained Jedi. I guess he can walk and chew bubblegum at the same time.

Considering those abilities, you are going to try to tell me that it makes sense for Anakin to have not retrieved his light saber in AOTC? It is sloppy writing; i.e., a lazy plot device.

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.'

"A" is out, because there was nothing philosophical about it. Luke thought it was too big to lift, and Yoda corrected him by saying that size doesn't matter; and then proceeds to lift it. The dialog here is about as matter-of-fact as you can get. 

As far as "B" goes; what would be the point of telling Luke that size doesn't matter, if, in the context of the scene (i.e., using the force to lift things), it actually did matter? Yoda telling him that size doesn't matter, but secrectly having an irrelevant context in mind when he said it, makes no sense.  That would be like going to a car lot and telling the salesman that price doesn't matter. Then when he shows you an expensive car that you can't afford, you say: "Well what I meant was, price doesn't matter in the context of the nature of money; in other words, there is enough money in the world to buy any car on the lot."

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'.

No, that is not correct. Any evidence to the contrary is not automatically discounted. However, you may just find that there is no evidence to the contrary to be found. An example of evidence to the contrary would be something like a scene with Yoda trying to move an object and failing because it was too large, and some dialog to explain the inconsistency (for example: "I guess I wasn't as strong in the force as I thought I was"); so we know it is not just a case of the writer forgetting things which had been previously established. All you have provided are baseless rationalizations; which are not evidence.

To me it seems using the force to grab a lightsaber that's lying on the ground is one thing, grabbing it when it's falling/flying is something else. Is there anyone in the Star Wars, Empire or Jedi that grabs a moving object out of the air using the force? Anakin can't grab a falling lightsaber, Darth Vader can't lift Luke when he jumps in cloud city.

About lifting the X-wing, Luke thinks he can't grab it because it's to big. Yoda simply makes clear the X-wing isn't to big but Luke just doesn't believe it's possible to lift. I mean, "size matters not" can be X-wing specific and it doesn't mean you can automatically lift things that are much bigger than X-wings, let alone planets or Death Stars. Yoda simply says the size of the X-wing isn't the limiting factor in this case. To me the movies make clear that use of the force is very limited, so no, I don't think it makes Jedi look stupid because they supposedly don't use their powers.

 

Fez: I am so excited about Star Whores.
Hyde: Fezzy, man, it's Star Wars.
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there's got to be boundary in there somewhere of when they can and cannot use the force.

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To me, the boundary is set by the fact they cannot do two things at once with the Force. Using a lightsaber is not a Force-power but a learnt skill, so they can attack and parry automatically without calling on the Force. You can see that they never use two skills at the same time and this is consistently throughout the saga, not just in the original or prequel trilogy.

The biggest example of this would be Yoda's rescuing of Obi-Wan and Anakin after the fight with Dooku. If he could utilise the Force in more than one effort, he'd have stopped the ship from leaving as well as hold off the ton of bricks coming down on his head.

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The Last Jedi has inspired new debates about the nature of the Force and what it can do. I recommend reading the first two pages of this thread.

The blue elephant in the room.

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Oh thanks, I had almost forgotten VINH was a thing once upon a time.

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It was interesting seeing all of these familiar names after so long. I’d honestly forgotten Vaderisnothayden and the VINH acronym as well! And good old C3PX. He’s good people.

There is no lingerie in space…

C3PX said: Gaffer is like that hot girl in high school that you think you have a chance with even though she is way out of your league because she is sweet and not a stuck up bitch who pretends you don’t exist… then one day you spot her making out with some skinny twerp, only on second glance you realize it is the goth girl who always sits in the back of class; at that moment it dawns on you why she is never seen hanging off the arm of any of the jocks… and you realize, damn, she really is unobtainable after all. Not that that is going to stop you from dreaming… Only in this case, Gaffer is actually a guy.

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Interesting discussion. I would say Yoda is both right and wrong. Size matters not in theory, and a Jedi completely in tune with the Force, reaching a complete state of enlightenment, should be able to move planets, and crush Death Stars. However, no such Jedi exist, or have ever existed. A Jedi has to work all his life to get more in tune with the Force, and the training never ends. Yoda is much more in tune with the Force than most other Jedi, but even he has not reached that asymptotic state, because you basically have to be immortal to reach it.

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I just long for a return to the relatively restrained Force usage of the OOT. The commercials for these new SW games these days do not exactly say “Stretch out with your feelings,” or “Its energy surrounds us and binds us.” Rather they say “POWER LEVEL OVER 9000! LOOK AT THESE COOL TWIRLY SWORDS!”

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I’d say there’s an invisible logical barrier, where an audience member would stop believing in what the force can or cannot do.

That’s why the 2D 2003 Clone Wars cartoon is quite stupid sometimes, it just makes the force a videogame device to several characters which makes it all look stupid. Of course, it was somewhat of the intention of the show.

The largest thing someone moves with the force in the movies is Yoda moving the X-Wing, and he apparently had to really focus and he’s the most powerful force user alive. So if all of a sudden Obi-Wan was moving Star Destroyers with his mind it would’ve been weird.

That’s the “invisible logical barrier” thing. I don’t know exactly where it is, but at some point I know I’d stop believing in what characters can do with the force.

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With the 2003 Cline Wars, the thing that makes it work for me is that it’s a highly stylized animated set of shorts. The action isn’t supposed to be “realistic.”

My stance on revising fan edits.

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Besides the frequently criticized Mace Windu action scene is seen through the eyes of a young boy. It’s indeed not supposed to be realistic but to represent the Jedi as a Legend (something someone else did on a very recent SW flick by the way 😉).

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The original 2D Clone Wars animation is the only thing worthwhile in the whole prequel era.

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MalàStrana said:

Besides the frequently criticized Mace Windu action scene is seen through the eyes of a young boy. It’s indeed not supposed to be realistic but to represent the Jedi as a Legend (something someone else did on a very recent SW flick by the way 😉).

There’s also Yoda literally wrecking huge tanks without any effort in Coruscant, which contrasts with the not incredibly easy time he had taking the X-Wing out of the water.

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I’m sure there was a little boy watching that too, we just couldn’t see him.

I still like the series overall but those scenes are silly.

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It’s just artistic license. Same reason everyone looks like Thunderbirds puppets in TCW.