Frickin’ blacks, feminists, and queers. They all need to go back to Africa, the kitchen, and the closet. Tolkien is for the white, super-straight ubermensch. Cleanse Hollywood of degenerate art. Deus vult.
what a glorious strawman
Not to add fuel to the fire and run away, but the LOTR trilogy ain’t 100% Tolkien faithful either. Faramir’s character was completely changed, entire chunks of the book were removed, and rolls were completely swapped out.
I wouldn’t be surprised that if those movies came out today the outcry would be massive. I can almost see the YouTube thumbnails photoshopping Greta Thunberg’s face over Arwen and Eowyen.
Conversely, if this show came out in 2008, I challenge the notion that the backlash would be the same.
The cry for Tolkien purism may be true to some, the PJ movies had that cry (although so quiet in the discourse) but it just seems like a shield to criticize diverse casting and female main characters.
If your claim is that it’s “not Tolkien’s story,” then you probably shouldn’t be watching any LOTR adaptation.
This is cope. Book purists were extremely critical of the movies at the time, including Christopher Tolkien himself. It’s in hindsight that a lot of people recognized that they did a good job being as faithful as they were, but there’s still plenty of people that don’t feel that way. Faramir is a big sticking point. So is Aragorn being unsure of himself as king. No one ever thought anything negative about Eowyn because she was accurately portrayed, and so was Galadriel. Arwen had a slightly bigger role and some people didn’t like that Glorfindel was replaced, but overall it wasn’t a huge deal because everything else was still accurate.
No one has a problem with Galadriel as a main character. The thing is that she’s being forced into an action hero role that doesn’t suit her. Her complexity and subtlety was reduced to a simple revenge story. She’s arguably one of the more interesting and morally gray characters in the series along with the other Noldor, but you wouldn’t know it. She’s supposed to have some hubris and try to build up her own realm, and she’s known more as a witch or sorceress who enchants people and naturally draws them to herself. She’s not just a blonde woman with a sword.
As for the ethnic thing, LOTR is a story based on Medieval Europe and the perspective of those peoples. That makes modern people uncomfortable, but it shouldn’t. There are nonwhite people in Middle Earth and they tend to ally with Sauron, but the REASONS they ally with Sauron are largely a history of colonialism and exploitation by the “white” Numenorians. You could easily make that into a great, diverse story with modern themes depicting the Haradrim and Easterling cultures with more complexity and some characters that are heroes, along with their tragic persecution by both Sauron and the men of the west. Gondor and Rohan are not inherently good in the written LOTR. Two important story points are made out of Rohan’s harsh treatment of the Dunlendings whose land they took, and the nonwhite Druedain, who they apparently hunted like animals. You could even have the Druedain instead of the Harfoots/Hobbits, and they would all be black or aboriginal.
You could do something similar with the elves and dwarves as well.
When everything on screen just looks like the modern US, you lose any of that complexity. It takes you out of the story immediately and you’re reminded that it’s a 2022 TV show on Amazon getting marketed to as broad an audience as possible instead of a fictional world with its own history and cultures.
Tales of the Jedi comics
Knights of the Old Republic 1 and 2
Dark Forces and Jedi Knight series
Unaltered Original Trilogy
Shadows of the Empire
All Timothy Zahn books
The Mandalorian seasons 1 and 2
specific video games, comics, RPG supplements, books, etc. on a case by case basis
separate prequel thing if the prequels happened:
Darth Plagueis novel
Select elements of The Phantom Menace
Shatterpoint
Republic Commando game
Genndy Tartakovsky Clone Wars
Select elements of Revenge of the Sith
Kenobi novel
specific video games, comics, RPG supplements, books, etc. on a case by case basis
if you forced me to make a Disney canon of real movies that actually exist:
The Phantom Menace
Revenge of the Sith
Solo
Andor
Rogue One
Original Trilogy
The Mandalorian seasons 1 and 2
Unless I’m misremembering, A New Hope kind of glosses over how exactly Luke, Han and the others manage to get from inside the Falcon in the Deathstar hangar bay over to the adjoining hallway in order to enter that small console room. Luke and Han were disguised as Stormtroopers, but how did they get Obi-Wan, the two droids, and a giant Wookie, out of the Falcon and through the open hangar bay in full view of any number of cameras or nearby guards?
Oh crap, did I just nitpick the Original Trilogy? That’s at least seven lashes.
My thought is that the imperials already searched the Falcon, and the two stormtroopers that were directly guarding the ship were the ones they called inside, then replaced. So the other people in the hangar bay weren’t really looking for them and they might be able to sneak by. They get the officer directly overlooking the hangar to turn away with the TK421 thing.
I think it might be simpler to just do it the way the Star Trek EU does and let people choose to integrate or not integrate whichever canon they want.
Well, no. Unlike most of you, I’m a person who actually cares about continuity. I would like Star Wars to be a multimedia project, a single universe made up of multiple media that’s basically consistent with itself and between the various stories, as much as possible. I’m absolutely in favour of the existence of and official continuity, I think it’s necessary. This doesn’t prevent the individual fans to create their own personal Canon, and in fact I am the first to do so. But I think the existence of a stable and consistent official continuity is important.
I understand that as well and I also like that. However, there are things in the old EU that I wouldn’t want to be canon even though they were all integrated somehow. I think everyone always had stuff that they ignored. For me it’s The Old Republic MMO, big chunks of the prequels, everything post New Jedi Order, and loads of cruddy books and comics scattered all over.
TLJ is the only thing I love about the ST, and it’s precisely the one that ignored the fans.
This isn’t really true either, it just prioritized some “fans” (the Lucasfilm Story Group and people like them) over others. It’s still full of exactly the same kind of repetitive material as The Force Awakens. It follows the same plot beats as ESB and ROTJ. It puts the Battle of Hoth at the end and the Emperor’s throne room in the middle, but it’s all the same stuff.
The other issue is that it isn’t so much ignoring what fans want as just being actively hostile to the audience in general. Everything is some kind of bait and switch. Even if you like the plot for being subversive, the subversiveness makes it frustrating to watch. Oh wow a cool ship! Oh it’s a clothes iron. Oh wow Rey is going to find out something about herself in the dark cave! Oh she just sees nothing and her character is exactly as uninteresting as before. Oh wow Kylo Ren offers Rey a chance to ignore all the conflict and start a third way! Oh she says no and he wasn’t really telling the truth anyway. The one thing that everyone (fan or not) would have universally loved, having Poe and Finn go on more adventures, was deliberately avoided.
What would I have done if I had bought Star Wars in 2012? Well, to understand it, you first need to understand how the Canon of the time was structured. Before the decanonization of the EU there was a very precise Canon hierarchical system in place, which included five levels:
- G Canon: The Prequel Trilogy and the Original Trilogy
- T Canon: The Clone Wars (2008)
- C Canon: The majority of the EU
- S Canon: The stories written in the 70s and 80s, before the Thrawn Trilogy
- N Canon: The non-Canon stories, such as the Infinities comics, the satirical stuff, etc.
Anyone can see that this hierarchical system is very complicated, and that many people can get confused. So, if I had bought Star Wars in 2012 I would have kept the EU as Canon, but at the same time simplifying the hierarchical system by eliminating the S Canon and the T Canon tiers.
The stories that were part of the S Canon tier contradict the post-Thrawn Trilogy EU, so they were not considered entirely Canon, but only partially Canon. That is, the parts of those stories that didnt contradict the post-Thrawn Trilogy EU were considered Canon, while the parts that did contradict it weren’t taken into account. Now, since the S Canon stories were never considered entirely Canon to begin with, then keeping the S Canon tier is completely useless. So, if I had bought Star Wars in 2012 I would have simplifyed the Canon hierarchy by completely erasing the S Canon tier, and moving all the stories that were part of that tier into the N Canon (non-Canon) tier. Furthermore, I would have allowed TCW to have a satisfying ending to make the fans of the series happy. However, since TCW contradicts much of the pre-2008 established EU, then I would have eliminated the T Canon tier from the hierarchy, moving TCW and related media into the N Canon tier, thus allowing the Clone Wars Multimedia Project to retake its original place between AOTC and ROTS.
By doing all this, the Canon hierarchy would be much simpler, since it would only include the G Canon (the films), the C Canon (the EU) and the N Canon (the non-Canon stuff), and there would be much less confusion among the fans.
But my plans don’t end here. If I had bought Star Wars in 2012 I would not only have simplified the Canon hierarchy, but I would also have decanonized some works that before 2012 were considered part of the official Expanded Universe (that is, of the C Canon). Specifically, I would have moved the Dark Empire Trilogy, the Crimson Empire Trilogy, The Force Unleashed II, and the post-NJO novels from the C Canon to the N Canon. They are, in my opinion, works that doesn’t deserve to be part of the official continuity.
So, after fixing and simplifying the Canon hierarchy and decanonizing the stories that never deserved to be Canon in the first place, I would have started designing a film trilogy set during the Old Republic Era. However, to make sure that there are no continuity errors between the new trilogy and the KOTOR/SWTOR stuff, I would have made sure that the new trilogy followed secondary and marginal characters, characters that are involved in the galactic wars of the past, but at the same time aren’t related to the main characters of that Era (like Revan, Bastila, Vitiate, Malgus, etc). I mean, the galactic wars against the Sith were galactic conflicts, indeed, and the Galaxy is huge, so we wouldn’t have had any problem in creating a good Old Republic Trilogy without contradicting the already established stuff. And, of course, in addition to the Old Republic Trilogy, I would also have allowed the EU to continue to expand, allowing authors to write new stories set across all the Eras, and most importantly, making sure that the post-NJO period is completely rewritten, without other Skywalkers falling to the Dark Side, without the return of the Sith, but with new enemies and original conflicts. I mean, Darth Vader and Darth Sidious were the last of the Sith. The authors would have had to adapt to this reality and invent new, non-Sith enemies after the NJO, instead of retake an already extinct threat.
Finally, I would have placed Leland Chee and Howard Roffman in charge of Lucasfilm, to make sure that everything remained as consistent as possible and that the universe and individual works had as few contradictions as possible.
However, if I bought Star Wars today then I would apply a double Canon system. That is, the New Canon would continue to exist and I would allow it to continue to expand according to the already existing projects, but at the same time I would also continue to expand the Old Canon (Legends), applying to it what I have just listed for my 2012 plans.
I think it might be simpler to just do it the way the Star Trek EU does and let people choose to integrate or not integrate whichever canon they want. The fan favorites will naturally get referenced more than stuff that isn’t as good.
With that said I forgot to include that I would erase The Old Republic MMO and make a proper KOTOR 3.
- LISTEN TO THE FANS
Quoth the Stan Lee, “Never give the fans what they think they want.”
Indeed. The writer of Animorphs, Katherine Applegate, had a good answer to fan inquiries about the ending of the books.
War sucks. People die. I’m not going to write a happy ending. Deal with it.
Fans might want a happy ending, but the creator doesn’t always want the same. Fan-creator relationships can be fascinating, in the parasocial sense.
You can still have an unhappy ending that is satisfying. That’s the main issue. The example I use is what if, during Empire Strikes Back, a common rebel killed Vader in battle with a lucky shot, or a stormtrooper killed Luke with a lucky shot? Sure, that would be realistic. It can technically happen according to the rules of the world. It subverts expectations and people won’t see it coming. War is hell and respects no one. But that wouldn’t make a better story.
This hypothetical is twofold:
I’ll start. For the first one, I would follow more of an Avengers model. You might not like the MCU but people would at least know how it works, and it’s pretty successful. In 2012 it would still be somewhat fresh.
There would be three movies building to two movies, all making use of the most popular expanded universe material.
First would be a Kyle Katarn movie, covering the events of Dark Forces and Jedi Knight 1, mixing them together. Kyle steals the death star plans! (Star Wars: Dark Forces).
Second would be a Mara Jade movie, covering her time as the Emperor’s Hand, what happened to the empire after the Battle of Endor and the death of the emperor, and Jade joining the fringe with Talon Karrde. (Star Wars: Emperor’s Hand).
Third would be an adaptation of Shadows of the Empire, recasting Luke and Leia with new actors. This would bring people back into contact with the original trilogy characters, but with the familiar prequel setting of Coruscant, and introduces the imperial palace. (Star Wars: Shadows of Coruscant).
The big two teamup movies are adaptations of the Thrawn trilogy books, with some of the Hand of Thrawn and other books mixed in. Thrawn is almost always successful until the end and he pushes the New Republic to its breaking point. After Luke recognizes that Jorus Cbaoth is insane and isn’t going to teach him what he needs, and that he can’t rely on old masters, he sets about restoring the Jedi himself. The first new Jedi are Luke, Leia, Kyle Katarn, and Mara Jade. (Star Wars: Heir to the Empire and Star Wars: The Last Command).
If I took over in the present day, I would cancel the slate of existing movies and tv shows and give it a rest. I would designate the new Disney canon with its own name (neo-canon? D-canon? hyper-canon? who knows) and make it possible for new works to be created in either Legends or the new canon. Then I would focus on new projects like Visions and actually make some series out of those pilot episodes. Do Visions 2, 3, however many, and use the fruit that comes out of it. There would be the two big canons, but at the same time, I would de-emphasize canon in general, and encourage projects that have nothing to do with the existing material, or overwrite it, or do something else unique, only canon unto itself.
The other focus would be video games, which historically carried Star Wars through low periods and produced some really great stories and games. Whatever setup they have now would be dissolved and original LucasArts would return as much as possible.
Then I would make an alternate universe movie where Anakin didn’t turn to the dark side, bring back Ewan, Hayden, and the rest of the prequel cast, and make 50 bajillion dollars.
I really never liked the idea of Palpatine manipulating both sides like a puppet master. I would have preferred a more straightforward plot to the Prequels, rather than the “mystery” plot framework we got. The fundamental problem is that so many of the plot details and on-screen actions revolve around Palpatine’s behind-the-scenes machinations, but we never explicitly see how Palpatine does any of this, so everything is presented in very broad strokes and the outcomes often seem arbitrary.
I think The Phantom Menace is probably the worst in this regard. The entire plot is about an evil mega-corporation (the Trade Federation) invading a defenseless planet. This is a pretty straightforward sci-fi plot setup, but we never really know how individual plot developments map to goals/motivations of the Trade Federation beyond extremely fuzzy, broad strokes. They want lower taxes, so they blockade a planet, then invade the planet, then deny they invaded the planet, then try to force the local monarch to sign a treaty to legalize their invasion. At no point does any of this cleanly map to some clear goal like getting lower taxes. And it’s not clear to me if any of these actions make sense from the perspective of the Trade Federation as logical steps towards achieving their goals, or if they have no clue why they’re doing any of this and just blindly trust the mysterious shadowy hologram that tells them to do crazy things like invade planets.
I think the plot would have worked better if it was framed as a simple land-grab: evil mega-corporation invades peaceful planet to strip it of valuable resources, while Senate fails to do anything due to corruption, so Palpatine rides in as the hero standing up for Naboo. We don’t even need the Darth Sidious persona - let the Trade Federation have their own clear motives instead of obeying the whims of some shadowy hologram all the time.
I agree with you, but I still think Palpatine as a puppet master is a cool idea. In some ways, and I think what you said goes along with this, it would have been better with less dialogue and appearances around it rather than more. They give just enough to make it sound like there’s actually some logic behind it, but there isn’t.
An interesting read on the trilogy, maybe Palpatine could have picked up on his involvement with everything that has transpired in his conversation with Grievous.
Other than that I feel like the Jedi are too gullible throughout the movies to pose a threat to Palatines plans. In TPM Qui-Gon senses that there is more behind the Federation invasion but he doesn’t investigate and in AOTC does nobody investigate the mystery behind the creation of the clones. Only in ROTS do the Jedi start to suspect Palpatine after he placed Anakin on the council and thereby openly challenged the Jedi.
This makes the plot feel less like a tense game of chess and more like a GM taking on an amateur.
100%
This is where a lot of people nowadays get it twisted. Oh the Jedi were corrupt and blinded by hypocrisy and dogmatism, that was their downfall! Palpatine was such a brilliant manipulator!
Actually no, as depicted their downfall was stupidity, as in not doing basic stuff that you would see on any hack cop procedural. Hey who paid for these clones? Who was building all these ships and landing craft for them? Why did Sifo Dyas order an army? Why didn’t the Kaminoans contact anybody in the Republic for 10 whole years to give them a status update or collect payments? Was it all in cash up front? (remember one of the only things we know about the Kaminoans is that they care about “how big your pocketbook is,” so it’s not like the money trail isn’t explicitly important) Were there senators that did know about the army and were hiding it? If there were, why didn’t the Jedi question them? Why was Jango Fett, the template of the clone army literally still living on the same planet where they’re still making the clones, sent to assassinate Padme on behalf of Count Dooku and the Trade Federation? Why does the trail lead straight from Kamino, the center point of the new Republic army, to Geonosis, the center point of the new Separatist army? Anyone care to examine any of this for more than 2 seconds?
All this gets waved away as “the dark side clouding their vision.” Which you would think is supposed to mean their ability to see the future, not their basic intelligence unrelated to the Force.
As for Clone Wars, we shouldn’t be reliant on an extra show for information that should have been in the movie. That’s assuming it actually explains everything in the movie, which it doesn’t.
If it were all that specific you would think Luke would warn Han and Leia that their son is going to kill them.
But what in TFA implies that he didn’t? In fact Leia’s moment with Kylo during the attack on the raddus could be interpreted as if Luke warned her that this day would come.
They didn’t talk about it. You would think it would have come up.
If it were all that specific you would think Luke would warn Han and Leia that their son is going to kill them.
Yeah. A lot of people loving the prequels now comes from:
playing video games with Clone Wars stuff in it
watching the Clone Wars show
laughing at funny lines of dialogue and memes
contrarian hot takes from people about how they’re “secretly genius”
It’s not because of the movies themselves, it’s because they like the shared experience of talking about them, talking about how they watched them as kids, or reading/playing/watching extra material surrounding them. Even then, most of their positive memories are about the ROTS payoff and not the first two.
With that said I do have a lot of fun with Revenge of the Sith and I like watching it. There are lots of little things I would adjust, which have been largely addressed with fan edits like on this site. But it’s not unsalvageable like Attack of the Clones or the sequel trilogy. It has some really good things in it, especially Obi Wan and Palpatine.
I actually prefer watching it as a standalone movie ignoring the other two, because then all the issues I have with AotC go away as well.
Another non-Empire enemy could involve the Corporate Sector, but that might be too similar to the Separatists.
True. I know the canon novels have the New Republic paint Leia as a war monger, but she sort of was even if it was justified. I agree that think it would’ve fit Leia better if she was trying to maintain peace as a politician rather than just be a general.
So you’re saying that you would’ve had the New Republic on one side, the Imperial Remnant on the other, with their being peace or a truce between them, and the Knights of Ren as the main antagonists trying to stir up trouble?
It could be done that way or it could be that the former Empire is already incorporated into the New Republic, and so some former imperials help the Knights of Ren with an insurgency. I think they’re more enemies from inside than outside.
Sounds cool.
I say this a lot but try to limit the amount of all caps words in the crawl to just one or two.
I like it.
I don’t like that quote at all (even if I agreed with the ideas, the cutesy rhyming is really annoying lol) but I get your point. It would be more interesting to explore the ideas and actually grapple with them.
As for the Empire, I would prefer not to take the view that they’re just IRL nazis who have to be exterminated for all time, and if you don’t exterminate them hard enough they just come back for another sequel trilogy. I think it makes more sense if they’re a government that a lot of people consider legitimate and want to live under. Again, I think the Thrawn books and especially the Hand of Thrawn do this in a much better way. The Empire are the bad guys but they’re not completely incompetent, and after the death of Palpatine they change and adapt according to the circumstances. They get rid of their anti alien biases, and they enter peace talks with the New Republic. Leia goes out of her way to establish peace, which is the polar opposite of their idea in the sequel movies, where she is the only person dedicated to total war and everyone else is just too dumb to listen to her.
Somewhere along the line people picked up this idea that the Empire is only WW2 Germany and not also the Roman Empire or even the United States at times. Palpatine isn’t just Hitler, he’s Julius Caesar and Napoleon and others as well. But it’s so common now to see modern domestic political opponents as literally Hitler/Nazis that it produces a kind of tunnel vision where that’s all Star Wars was ever about, and if you try to introduce any nuance then you’re doing something dangerous.
With that said, either way, the main thing to be original would be to focus on an underground terrorist kind of enemy instead of a standing army that’s exactly the same as the Empire or the Trade Federation/Separatists.
The Thrawn Trilogy, maybe condensing and adapting three books into two and then adapting the Hand of Thrawn duology into the third movie. Maybe throw some Jedi Academy/I, Jedi/Kyle Katarn stuff into the mix in the second or third movie.
If I had to use the existing sequel concepts as a base, then I would delete the First Order, delete Starkiller Base, and lean heavily into the angle of Kylo Ren worshiping Darth Vader. The Knights of Ren would be an actual cult of Vader. Their acts would be more like terrorism and less like a military. They would kill and corrupt some of Luke’s students but not all of them, with maybe Rey being their newest student so there’s an audience surrogate for them to explain things to. The Knights’ goal would be more to destabilize the New Republic than conquer or destroy it, and with this they’re pretty successful until the third movie. There are too many competing interests in the New Republic (politicians, planets, corporations, the Jedi, criminals, former imperials, etc.) for it to easily hold together, and they exploit these tensions, probably using assassinations and sabotage, to cause chaos. If Snoke still existed, Snoke would be their leader or maybe their financier. He’s a ruthless alien warlord who got exiled out of the Empire and always hated Palpatine. For a prequel tie in, maybe he’s a former Separatist leader.
Their beliefs would be based on the silly ideas that a lot of current fans have about the Force and how it works, and they would see Anakin/Vader as the embodiment of Balance in the Force, as in someone who was equally attached to the “light side” and the dark side and found total fulfillment by seeking out both (something silly people also say about Revan.) They view themselves as “gray jedi,” with a utilitarian, ends justify the means sort of concept. It would be the task of Luke, Leia (a jedi), and Anakin’s ghost to impress upon them that Vader was enslaved by the dark side and he was not some kind of god of balance, he was a good man who was corrupted by giving into temptation and the power of the Emperor.
It’s up to our heroes Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie, R2 and 3PO, and their pals to defeat the Knights of Ren! Maybe because of the political stuff going on, they have to team up with some scum and villainy types to do it, like a resurrected Boba Fett or some other mercenary guys.
I don’t agree with anything in the OP
The problem with that is what Lucas told Filoni. It wasn’t just Anakin’s need for power, it is how he was taught that led to that. The duel between Qui-gon and Darth Maul was the duel for Anakin’s fate. Had Qui-gon won, Anakin would have turned out different. Qui-gon is portrayed as a rebel against the Jedi council. Anakin needed an unorthodox teacher teacher like that. Instead he got the by the book teacher in Obi-wan (his comments to Qui-gon both point out how out of step with the council Qui-gon was and how in step he himself was). That plus Palpatine whispering in his ear for thirteen years.
Also, the feeling I get from the PT is that the Jedi are flawed. I stopped reading the EU materials long before the PT came out so I have no clue if they support or contradict the impression I get from the PT itself. The flaw in the Jedi teaching does not lie in their dogma. It lies in the tools they teach their younglings and padawans to resist the temptation of the dark side. What we get is that they don’t teach them anything. They teach dark side abstinence and avoidance. So when the dark side comes calling, they have no defenses to resist it. Fear lead to anger which leads to hate which leads to suffering. Anakin is too old at 9 and has some fear of leaving his mother. So instead of addressing his fear, the Council doesn’t want to teach him. Obi-wan has what Yoda taught him as a youngling and what Qui-gon taught him as a padawan, but we clearly see that Anakin never loses his fear of losing the ones he cares about. There is this wonderful meme someone made of Grogu long after Din Djarin was gone that sums up what Anakin needed. It is not the attachment that is the problem, it is the fear of losing the attachment. Everyone dies so a properly trained Jedi must be prepared to accept the loss and carry on. If you don’t fear the loss, an attachment cannot lead to the dark side. One simple tool, though probably a hard lesson. So I’ve always felt the flaws in the Jedi teachings were there in the films without need to refer to an outside source. Though what Filoni had to say was very enlightening.
I’d argue that we don’t actually know Lucas told that to Filoni. (This is all my opinions and speculation of course.) Because yeah, Filoni said it and he worked with Lucas, but he’s his own person with his own ideas just like Gary Kurtz and Lawrence Kasdan were. Add that to the fact that everything Lucas has said, which I gave some examples of earlier, is in contradiction with what Filoni said, I genuinely cannot believe Filoni got those ideas from Lucas.
“The fact that everything must change and that things come and go through his life and that [Anakin] cannot hold onto things, which is a basic Jedi philosophy that he isn’t willing to accept emotionally and the reason that is because he was raised by his mother rather than the Jedi. If he’d have been taken in his first years and started to study to be a Jedi, he wouldn’t have this particular connection as strong as it is and he’d have been trained to love people but not to become attached to them."
I think its safer to assume that Filoni, being as big of an EU as he is, got a lot of ideas and interpretations from it, where lots of novels did raise questions about the Jedi because Lucas did not effectively convey what he was trying to say. Unless Lucas changed his mind on the topic of course, which with his history is completely possible, in which case I digress and will stand corrected.
I completely agree with you about the films and what they show, which is why I try to separate what Lucas said and understand it because it shows he didn’t do as good a job as he should have. It is easier for me to accept the idea that Lucas wanted the plot and story to show one thing, but the result was not what he wanted and its too late to try to fix it. The Jedi come off as a weird group who try to isolate themselves, seem to dismiss emotion, etc. and we get not clear reasons why, which makes us wonder why Anakin’s supposed love for his mother and Padme is wrong.
Also, Lucas’ idea of Attachment is not a bond nor is it love. It is purely greed, greed formed around people. These quotes sum it up well:
“Try not to confuse attachment with love. Attachment is about fear and dependency, and has more to do with love of self than love of another. Love without attachment is the purest love because it isn’t about what others can give you because you’re empty. It is about what you can give others because you’re already full.” — Yasmin Mogahed
“The problem is always that we mistake the idea of love for attachment. You know, we imagine that the grasping and clinging that we have in our relationships shows that we love. Whereas actually it is just attachment, which causes pain. You know, because the more we grasp the more we are afraid to lose, then if we do lose, then of course then of course we are going to suffer.
Attachment says: I love you, therefore I want you to make me happy. And genuine love says: I love you, therefore I want you to be happy. If that includes me, great, if it doesn’t include me, I just want your happiness. And so, it’s a very different feeling. You know, attachment, it’s like holding very tight. But genuine love is like holding very gently, nurturing, but allowing things to flow, not to be held tightly. The more tight we hold on to others, the more we will suffer." - Tenzin Palmo Jetsunma
So yeah, Lucas also failed to make it clear what exactly attachment was, because the only character we see in situations with family and a significant other is with Anakin, who also happens to be the one with attachments the films/Jedi are shunning.
To make it clear, I am a prequel fan. I grew up with them. This particular issue is the one flaw I find in these films and to me its a pretty big one because 1. I like knowing what storytellers want to do with their stories and 2. Because, as I’ve said, I think Lucas failed to deliver this point, and at the end of the day the general consensus and understanding of an art by the audience becomes the more important part.
I think Lucas did fail to deliver his points clearly. His story, the deep stuff, is too subtle. It is there, but you have to watch it several times and read about what he was trying to do, and some you don’t get unless you watch all 6 movies up to that point. I feel that the important point is similar to what you say. Attachment of the sort Anakin had is bad. But I think it is also clear that the Jedi, rather than teach how to have good relationships, just said not to have any. To totally avoid the temptation. I think that shows a failing in their teachings. And it is unfortunate that a significant deleted scene in TLJ repeats this idea as Luke trains Rey. But he makes it about the nature being intertwined with the Force. Anakin didn’t get this lesson. Luke did. And by get I don’t mean he wasn’t taught it. We don’t get to see Anakin’s training so we don’t know. But he didn’t learn it. A proper response to the though of Padme dying in childbirth would be that he would do what he could to prevent it, but if that was her fate then life goes on. Instead Anakin is clinging to her and it destroys him.
One thing I’ve found amusing is that Lucas has said that the force is not like yin/yang, but yet everything he has done with it is very much like the yin/yang concept. Even his talk of bringing balance to the force. So a lot of what Lucas says has to be taken with a grain of salt. I feel he lives in the world of “a certain point of view”. Sometimes I think some of our heated discussions are because some of us see through what he says to what he means and some of us take him as what he says is what he means.
You don’t have to be a Jedi though. No one has to. To be a Jedi is a very specific commitment, just like being a monk is. Only a small fraction of Christians or Buddhists become monks or nuns. It’s even more important for them to have restraints than real life monks because they have insane levels of power and they’re a branch of both the government and the military. Note - I do not agree with the Jedi being depicted this way and I infinitely prefer the era before the prequels when Jedi openly had lovers, marriages, and children.
On a personal level, in my personal faith, marriage is a good thing including for clergy. However, we do have full time missionaries with similar commitments.
But going off of what Lucas was going for, it’s perfectly reasonable for monks to exist. For people that aren’t inherently suspicious of religion anyway.
As for Yin and Yang, that’s another thing that’s conveyed poorly, as that’s not actually what Balance in the Force means, but the very wording of “Balance in the Force” confuses people and leads them in some really silly directions. (You need equal good and evil, light side is about “lack of emotion” and dark side is about emotion, etc.)
Want to add to my comment from earlier and explain some of my opinions behind this. The ultimate issue here is that Lucas thinks the Jedi are unquestionable ultimate heroes, but they did not come off that well for most of the audience, and I have to agree.
This is my biggest issue with the prequels, that Lucas did not really convey what he thought the Jedi to be very successfully. Yeah, we get a few lines of dialogue here and there, but nothing that really sticks with the audience unless they are thoroughly examining the films like we are. Of course even then there are still certain major plot points that don’t make the Jedi look too good. Anakin and his enslaved mother is a prime example. Why couldn’t the Jedi free Shmi? Why wasn’t Anakin allowed to see her for a decade?
Like yeah, you could try to explain that in different ways and try to reason it out, but on top of other scenes and plotlines, mixed in with a lack of clear details, its not looking too good. (And this is all coming from someone who grew up with prequels if that means anything.)
I tend to think the main culprit is the sheer amount of other things going on in the films. We really don’t get the Jedi explained as Lucas wanted them to. George Lucas is a talented guy, but I think the prequels would have been better off it were in two parts. One fully explaining the political issues, and another fully exploring the Jedi Order. Seriously, all of the ways Lucas describes the Jedi in the interviews I had brought up never come through that clearly in the prequels. Some things came through in The Clone Wars, but that doesn’t excuse much.
I used to try to reason out all of these things and try to see the prequel Jedi under the most positive light I could, but I always came to the issue that the films themselves don’t show these things. No matter how I tried to rationalize the Jedi’s decisions, and how much I listening to Lucas’ quotes that came out after the fact, they just aren’t present enough in the films.
Lastly, while Lucas is “Buddhist” and were influenced by extremely devoted Buddhist Monks, some consider the Jedi a bastardization of those ideas. So while he may have wanted to base some ideas off of Buddhism, him and his Jedi should never be used as a 1:1 metaphor for Buddhist people and monks. It is fiction over all, and many practices of the Jedi are certainly there for the story only.
Exactly.
One more thing on that, I found a quote from Vision of the Future (number 2 in the Hand of Thrawn duology by Timothy Zahn) that touches on this.
Page 405
(referring to Mara Jade) "She grimaced. ‘Besides, I keep remembering stories about how the last step to becoming a Jedi is usually making some supreme and rather ugly personal sacrifice. I’m not crazy about that one, either.’
‘It’s not always as bad as it seems,’ Luke said, and Mara could sense his discomfort as unpleasant memories of his own floated back to the surface. ‘Just before he died, Master Yoda told me that before I would truly be a Jedi I needed to face Vader again. I jumped to the conclusion that that meant I had to either kill him or let him kill me. As it turned out, it didn’t happen either way.’
‘But you had to be willing to make that sacrifice if necessary,’ Mara pointed out. ‘Thanks, but I’m not interested.’
‘Then you automatically limit your capabilities,’ Luke said."
This accurately reflects the pre-1999 view of what happened. Before the prequels, this is what the original trilogy actually shows and its interpretation.
To become a Jedi, someone needs to make a final, spiritual sacrifice.
In Luke’s case, he had to face Vader.
Like many viewers, Luke incorrectly assumed that this could only mean a fatal duel to the death and Yoda was sending him to either kill or be killed.
The reality, under the influence of the Force, was more complex than that. Yoda could have foreseen this or known that it was more nuanced, because again it was about a spiritual confrontation for Luke to finish becoming a Jedi, not about destroying the Empire.
However, Luke had to be willing to go through with it, if it did mean kill or be killed, which is what Obi Wan tells him. If he wasn’t willing, he was limiting himself.
Now, the prequels ignored this final sacrifice concept. They might be alluding to it with “the Trials” but the Trials are never explained or shown. Perhaps in Obi Wan’s case it was losing Qui Gon. Either way, after The Phantom Menace, it’s dropped. After the prequels, a lot of people assume that Luke is just on an assassination mission like with Yoda and Obi Wan trying to kill Vader and the Emperor in Revenge of the Sith, when that’s not the case. (Also worth noting that in the Zahn books before the prequels, it’s established that Yoda and Obi Wan could have wiped the floor with Vader and the Emperor if they wanted to, but they chose not to, both to avoid abusing their power and to give Luke and the rebellion the real victory.)
You can say oh well, that book is obsolete because the prequels superseded it, or because it’s from the old EU and not the Disney canon (for me it supersedes both,) or because you just don’t like it. Whatever the case, the point is that this was the understanding that people had before the prequels or other material came in, just going off of what is actually shown and said in Return of the Jedi.
I think it is also important to consider, what a Jedi is supposed to do with Vader, if they are not allowed to kill their enemy once defeated. Particulary in the situation, where there is no option to bring him to justice, since the Emperor controls all branches of government. ROTJ makes it clear, that Obi-Wan and Yoda don’t believe Vader can be redeemed, so how is Luke supposed to stop/conquer them, if he cannot kill them? So, let’s for the sake of argument say Luke defeats Vader and the Emperor, and they are at his mercy. What then?
I’ve given this topic a lot of thought lately, and I think that fundamentally, it’s always a question of context. While I believe that the Jedi code would disapprove of killing a defeated enemy in all but the most extreme circumstances, the fact that Yoda challenges Sidious with the full intention of killing him seems to show that certain circumstances do exist that would allow a Jedi to execute their foe. But a Jedi can never strike down an enemy out of fear or anger/hate. And in the context of RotJ, I actually do think the strength of the Rebellion finally allows Luke the possibility of imprisoning the Emperor and/or Vader, a possibility that no longer existed for Yoda. So I think Luke striking down Vader and the Emperor would have been motivated entirely by his own fear or anger, and that’s exactly what he was struggling with during the entire throne room confrontation. I think that’s why Lucas makes it clear that the optimistic side of Luke believes that the Empire ends today with or without his involvement, and that he has to fight the nagging fear that he may be wrong (and should kill the Emperor to prevent the loss of the fleet). I think it would have taken the defeat of the Rebel fleet to bring the possibility of actually executing the Sith into the realm of being defensible, but even then, the only way Luke could do that without falling to the dark side is if it wasn’t motivated by fear.
So to answer your question, I could conceive of an alternate reality where after Luke fully achieves Jedi status, the Emperor manages to fend off Vader’s attack and kills him. Let’s imagine Luke would recover his lightsaber to defend himself from the Emperor, and soon after, Luke can see that the Rebel fleet is routed in retreat. Would Luke strike down the Emperor after defeating him and would it be justified? I think the answer could be yes to both, but only if the execution came from a place of serenity, which wouldn’t be a trivial thing for Luke to achieve in that moment. And even if he went through with it, I could see him being burdened by uncertainty about what he had done.
Tangentially, when it comes to how Obi-Wan and Yoda view the situation, I think there’s nuance that tends to be overlooked by fans who think that they’re essentially sending Luke on an assassination mission. It’s fair to say that Obi-Wan and Yoda have lost hope that Vader can be redeemed at this point, but I don’t think that means they think that Luke has to kill him at all costs. I like to frame it this way, do fans really believe that when Luke is standing over Vader, that Obi-Wan and Yoda want Luke to kill Vader in that moment? If that were the case, then why is that what the Emperor wants Luke to do? Instead, Luke throws down his lightsaber and declares that he’s a Jedi. That’s what Obi-Wan and Yoda want him to do, because they’re Jedi themselves. Not fallen, corrupted Jedi who have lost their way, but true Jedi. It’s what Yoda knew Luke had to do before becoming a Jedi like them; that’s what the conversation in the hut about confronting Vader was getting at. Luke had to prove that he could face Vader without giving into fear, which is the foundation of being a Jedi.
Exactly, you nailed it.