Vladius

NFBisms said:

The annoying thing about anti-woke discourse is that it’s reactionary to a climate that’s at least a decade past at this point. No one ever really bought into that kind of tokenism except ineffectual lib Disney adults in 2014, or like, literal children. So all the whining about a corporation chasing a profitable demographic feels smug and incurious. If it’s a shield for criticism, then corpos need a new blacksmith, because this discourse has never failed to pop up about anything.

Even if something is crap - why is part of the “analysis” going to the race/identity well at all? The answer is always rooted in specific confirmation biased speculation, and it’s only ever triggered by the subjectivity of if the work in question landed well or not. And even in a positive direction, that lens becomes condescending, as though gay/black/minority/whatever progressive thing rose above itself this time. feels unfair

who needs media literacy when wokeness can be the eternal scapegoat

No one said that anyone bought into the tokenism. I don’t really understand what your point is here.

StarkillerAG said:

Fan_edit_fan said:

Can we just…please…stop bringing up personal politics when talking about the quality of SW writing, acting and directing? 🤷‍♂️

Yes, please. If a black character or female character is written like crap, it’s not because they’re black or female, it’s just because they’re written like crap. Anti-wokeness is the biggest disease that infects modern movie discourse.

You know this already, but the anti-woke point is that they’re written like crap, and their female, black, etc. status is picked ahead of time as a shield for criticism. This happens constantly. All the “anti-woke” talking heads that hate on Disney fully backed John Boyega when he called them out for messing up his character.

StarkillerAG said:

Vladius said:

Why? Why do we have to accept it?

You don’t have to, but I’m sure Disney would like other people to.

Why would it divide the fandom further?

Because there are people out there who actually like the sequels (believe it or not), and Disney suddenly saying “that never happened lol” would majorly piss them off. That’s exactly what happened with TFA going out of its way to shit on the prequels, and I doubt Disney wants to repeat that mistake.

What is wrong with dividing the fandom?

Disney wants money. Fans give Disney money. If Disney pisses fans off, they stop giving Disney money. I could not make this more simple.

Why is it better to salvage something?

Because then the people who still like at least a bit of the sequels will become much more pleased with the franchise as a whole, and the people who unconditionally love the sequels will just be pleased to have that story expanded on. Again, when this strategy was applied to the prequels via the Clone Wars show, it was received much more positively than “just pretend it didn’t happen” was for TFA.

Why is it possible to salvage anything?

Again, it may not be possible for you, but there are plenty of people out there who see at least a few redeeming qualities in the sequels’ story. If Disney can expound on those mostly-liked elements, while rationalizing the bits that pissed fans off, I think the sequels can be redeemed in the fandom’s eyes.

Why are they “the main saga?”

Because Disney branded them as such, and contradicting your own branding is almost never a good idea.

In a nutshell, it feels like you’re seeing this from a subjective, opinion-based point of view, while a corporation like Disney will go with what’s most economically sound. And from what I see, attempting to redeem the sequel trilogy is the most economically sound direction to take the franchise. No matter how you feel about the sequels, they will always be part of Disney’s canon.

I’m genuinely confused. I was talking about your opinion, not Disney’s. Why should we care about whether or not Disney makes money? Why do we care about Disney’s branding?

There aren’t that many people that like the sequels. There are people that liked The Force Awakens when it came out (me), there are people that see them as an opportunity to cut up footage to make something else (faneditors here, so approximately 20-100 people in the entire world, charitably,) and there are many people that like The Last Jedi for political reasons (because many people also hate The Last Jedi for political reasons.) But as a whole, I don’t think that there are a lot of people who like all three. There are good elements that I think everyone likes, like Adam Driver, but that doesn’t mean the whole thing.

I could maybe see an argument that the sequels’ existence appeals to the kind of people who put together wiki articles and timeline videos just because it’s satisfying to connect dots and fill in blanks. I think that’s where the breadcrumbs in Mando season 3 come in. “That guy’s last name is Hux!”
But I don’t think that that is very many people, and they’re more enjoying it because of the stories’ weight than what is actually in the stories.

I actually liked this episode a lot more than the rest of the season. It had some good action, it was nice that it kept Din as the main character, and it was more straightforward and wasn’t about setting up a bunch of Cinematic Universe tie ins.

Marooned Biker Scout said:

I find it a little disappointing how the 3 main series in the Mandoverse: The Mandalorian, Book Of Boba Fett, and Ahsoka (as well as any ideas and outlines from cancelled ‘Rangers Of The Republic’ series, and maybe even the new ‘Skeleton Crew’ series), are going to essentially be a rehabilitation project for the Sequel Trilogy?

Yep, you nailed it!

StarkillerAG said:

As for the whole “desperately making excuses for why the sequels happened” thing, I think it’s something we just have to accept. The sequels were a botched attempt at recapturing the OT’s magic that just ended up feeling bleak and cynical, but they’ll always be there, and erasing them from canon would just divide the fandom further. It’s better to salvage at least something worthwhile out of those movies, rather than treating 3 installments of the main saga like the Holiday Special.

Why? Why do we have to accept it? Why would it divide the fandom further? What is wrong with dividing the fandom? Why is it better to salvage something? Why is it possible to salvage anything? Why are they “the main saga?”

StarkillerAG said:

WitchDR said:

StarkillerAG said:

But what if you think Rey was already a good character? I certainly did, at least until the whole “you are a Palpatine” fiasco. But I feel like a major goal of this movie is to rationalize and streamline some of the messiness of TROS, bringing the sequels’ reception back to the mostly-positive outlook pre-2019.

Remember, both TFA and TLJ had a more than 90% positive critical reception, and I feel like the audience score would look the same way if sequel hate wasn’t weaponized during the Trump-era culture wars. People liked the sequels before TROS, Disney just needs to figure out how to make people like them again.

For one I wouldn’t take payed critics opinions seriously

You lost me here. Anyone who seriously says to ignore the opinions of professional critics and trust obviously review-bombed audience scores instead is not worth paying attention to.

and second - this “Trump-era” culture war you speak of, I don’t think has anything to do with it. What happened is TLJ came out an completely destroyed Luke Skywalker. And people were pissed. You can try to blame outrage culture channels on Youtube for this. But the whole reason they ever rose to stardom in the first place is BECAUSE people were going to these sites to see if people felt the same way they did after leaving the theater from TLJ.

I know some people were genuinely upset by what happened to Luke (although I personally like it, YMMV), but the culture war grifters were the ones who turned it from individual dissatisfaction into a mass movement of right-wing nerd outrage. And it rubbed off on people of other political persuasions too: if everyone around you is saying “Rian Johnson ruined Star Wars”, you’re inevitably going to start believing it.

The only reason TFA was so positive is because it was a new mainline Star Wars movie after 15 years of none. And once that high wore off and TLJ came out, people looked at it far more critically. And it especially didn’t help that the movie itself was horrible.

One, as I already told you, a lot of people like TLJ. Stop acting like your opinions are objective.

And two, it being a “new mainline Star Wars movie after 15 years of none” didn’t stop people from hating TPM. You can have issues with how weak TFA was as a setup to the sequel trilogy (God knows I do), but the vast majority of people genuinely loved that movie. And it also helps that the “culture war” thing wasn’t anywhere near as big in 2015: I remember grifters trying to make people hate TFA because “How dare they have a female protagonist” or “How dare they have a black stormtrooper”, but no one listened to that stuff back then.

But anyways, I’ve said my piece. If you seriously don’t believe there was at least some political element to TLJ hate, you clearly weren’t paying enough attention back in 2017. Does that 40% Rotten Tomatoes audience score really look genuine to you?

There is a culture war aspect to whether or not people like TLJ but that doesn’t matter. The quality and intent of the story still remains. If the people on one side of the culture war are right about it, then they’re right. There are explanations for certain decisions that Kathleen Kennedy or Disney or Rian Johnson or whoever made about the movies that are absolutely related to culture war stuff, but the fact remains that those decisions exist in the movies on their own, and are still bad decisions either way.

The sequels made lots of money because they were big flashy movies. TFA was good and had a lot of promise. TLJ made money off the back of that, but tanked all the goodwill that the fans had for it, which resulted in Solo bombing or getting boycotted. TROS made the least money of the three.

The average non-Star Wars fan might have liked them in a vague sort of way because they like big budget movies in general. An apt JJ Abrams comparison would be something like Star Trek: Into Darkness. It has 84% on Rotten Tomatoes. It made plenty of money. But most Trek fans could probably tell you why it’s derivative and repetitive, why it really doesn’t understand the point of Star Trek or the characters it’s depicting, or why it doesn’t make any sense, which makes it bad.

For people that actually care about Star Wars, the reception of the sequels is generally negative, for political reasons or not. If anything, this site is an echo chamber for people that don’t hate the sequels, because some of the only people left here are people trying to do fanedits of post-2015 Disney stuff.

It’s disappointing how everything, Thrawn included, is going to end up as one big elaborate retcon to explain why the New Republic sucked so bad and how the First Order could exist in the sequels. It’s a rehabilitation project. They think they can get away with it because it worked with so many people with the prequels. Sadly they’re probably right and in 10-15 years we’ll see a bunch of contrarian takes about how underrated they were and how deep the lore is and how all the Disney+ shows “redeem” them.

Not that I trust them to do Thrawn or anything else justice, but it’s extra insulting that that’s what they’re using it all for.

NFBisms said:

I actually liked The New Republic being conceived as its own brand of neoliberal horror, but I don’t know, the conceptualization of what The Empire as an institution even was, is disappointing here. While I get the surface level comparisons to ANDOR, it doesn’t have a grasp on any tangible theory to fill out the spaces it’s playing in. (And certainly not the writing, it’s very journeyman here.) For as much as it “explores” a postwar reconstruction, it still moves in a Good/Evil, malice-of-an-out-group kind of ideology.

It’s a pretty high school social studies understanding of historical play.

Maybe I’m just attached to the interpretations provided by the prequels and then ANDOR, but Imperialism as Establishment, as oppression evolved from power evolved from status-quo, works far better for me than “Imperial” conceived as a pseudo-nationality. The episode codifies the former Empire’s structure as one that went out of its way to be bleak and awful; Palpatine and his powerbase as one and the same.

It just rubs me the wrong way that it’s even being called Andor-lite. They’re not necessarily incongruous in the macro beats, but philosophically coming from entirely different places. Without any real poli-sci informing the premises, its storytelling ambitions are just cynical for the sake cynicism.

You don’t need to try to sound smart here, it’s really not that important

C3PO isn’t annoying

G&G-Fan said:

Will never be a fan of pining the blame of Anakin’s turn on the Jedi. Darth Vader should be a villain with agency responsible for his own actions. Makes him a more powerful and badass villain.

This may be driven by the fact that I’m a Vader fanboy, but it’s just my opinion.

Yes.

StarkillerAG said:

Ending the prequels with an apparent “victory” does seem like an interesting route. The only flaw I can think of is that it would make the sequels seem even more derivative of the OT, given that both trilogies would begin with the previous heroes’ accomplishments being undone in the first paragraph of the crawl. 😉

Who cares what it does to the sequels?

SparkySywer said:

I’d embrace the idea of the Jedi being kind of a cult. The Jedi, on their quest to defend peace and justice in the galaxy, have tried to systematize good and evil to help them understand what their quest even is. I like the idea of the Jedi thinking Yoda was the Chosen One, so maybe he, or some other legendary Jedi who deserves that level of respect, would have defeated the Sith, established the current Republic and a new Jedi order, and came up with a perfect moral code which always illuminates the greater good. In the 800 or so years since this, the Jedi have set out on perfecting both themselves and the galaxy.

The cult-like behavior comes from their sheer commitment to the greater good. The Order is socially engineered so all of its members always prioritize the greater good. They train Jedi from birth so they never meet their family and prioritize them over the greater good of the galaxy. They don’t allow Jedi to fall in love or even have friends because the galaxy’s history books are full of Jedi who turned to the dark side for their friends. It’s dehumanizing, but the Jedi justify it because the Force gives you an immense amount of power, and if you can’t give up your own humanity for the greater good, you don’t deserve that power. Anakin, the one who wasn’t brainwashed from birth, who will fall in love and have a child, is going to be the one who ultimately destroys the Jedi Order and hands the galaxy over to Palpatine.

The Jedi are still flawed though, and if I were to actually write this I’d like to frame it to make the argument that the greater good itself is not for the greater good. The Jedi and the Republic tolerate slavery because the effort to end it would cost many times more lives than it would liberate, and (temporarily) tolerating some evils is for the greater good. But you can’t exactly tell a slave that their slavery is a good thing, and if it turned out that the Chosen One is a former slave, you’re going to make a natural enemy of him by continuing to tolerate slavery, even if he recognizes ending slavery would let out more evils than it would abolish.

Anakin’s fall to the dark side has more to do with the Jedi’s failings than his own inclination toward evil. Anakin’s respect for all the good the galaxy’s done at first puts him on their side. But as it becomes more clear to him how much evil they tolerate, he becomes disillusioned with them. When it becomes clear that he’s the Chosen One, not Yoda/whoever, and their arcane rules prioritize the greater good over him fulfilling his destiny by ending the war and defeating the Sith, he becomes radicalized against them. He embraces fear because it’s a natural reaction to danger, anger because it’s a natural reaction to injustice, and hate because it’s a natural reaction to evil. He turns to Palpatine and the Sith, not because they were the real good guys, but because in a galaxy where moral thinking is so completely dominated by the dishonest, delusional, and ineffective Jedi, the only option he really has to turn to is the Sith, who definitely do not give a damn about the greater good, but don’t force him to tolerate slavery and don’t stop Anakin from ending the war destroying galactic civilization itself. With the Sith and the Empire, the galaxy is his to shape according to his will, but radicalized against the extreme selflessness and peacefulness of the Jedi, he becomes a brutish tyrant whose will becomes just as much of an evil as what he once fought against.

I’d like to reconstruct this in the ST. If the PT Jedi’s failings were that they prioritized the greater good over the individual good, and there’s this idea that in the ST that the Force is to become decentralized, maybe Luke and/or Rey teach the galaxy to defend their own personal good. The galaxy shouldn’t have one group of people defending peace and justice, but everyone should be defending peace and justice in their own lives. The Republic, too, would have to go, because there’s no way to enforce one singular greater good over trillions or quadrillions of people in the galaxy. Someone’s always going to get fucked over for the greater good, and some people more often than others. The political status quo after Episode 9 would be a network of small, local Republics which keep order and peace on a small scale. This is bittersweet, because without the institutions that keep galactic civilization together, civilization can not exist on a galactic scale. But that scale of civilization led to the tyrannies of the Republic and the Empire, and the hell that the Clone Wars and the Empire were weren’t worth the luxury of galactic civilization.

This is the bog standard internet interpretation right now with almost no changes.

I think you’re right that starting with him already as a Jedi or at least as Obi Wan’s young adult student would be much better. Also remove anything to do with chosen ones.

Wexter said:

Yoda doesn’t appear at all, but is talked about a lot, being a living legend with unknown current whereabouts. Obi-Wan is kind of a big deal in the Jedi order as he has been trained by Yoda himself. Anakin and Obi-Wan may actually only be supporting characters in this story to preserve the surprise reveals of the OT. Obi-Wan takes multiple apprentices during the prequel trilogy.

At least three decades separate the Clone Wars from the OT and it is actually the bad guys who start with the cloning, creating themselves an army of mutants of all shapes and sizes to combat the Republic and its Jedi. The Clone Wars is actually a series of conflicts, not just one war.

Cloning, especially for military purposes, is generally considered unethical. However, chancellor Palpatine shows a remarkable interest in the technology. Shortly after the discovery of his own DNA in a cloning laboratory on enemy territory – which proves to the Jedi he has been orchestrating the war all along – he manipulates most of the Republic military into turning against the Jedi and declares himself the Emperor. All (or nearly all) of the cloning facilities are however destroyed during this period. Palpatine’s possible Force-sensitivity is suggested, but is never confirmed.

Most of the antagonist figureheads – some of whom are Force-sensitive – are interested in the cloning technology as a means to achieve immortality. Others are however motivated mostly by ideology or greed.

The Jedi are not celibate monks and they don’t wear Tatooine hermit robes. Leia’s mother doesn’t die immediately after giving birth. No Boba Fett origin story and no Chewbacca. The Jedi are very much present throughout the prequels, but many of the main characters are not Force-users – there’s the military, politicians, and common people of many different trades and convictions. Bail Organa plays a prominent role.

Excellent. I agree with all of this.

NFBisms said:

Vladius said:

I like the show a lot but I wish people wouldn’t throw around terms like “spy thriller” or “political thriller” or talk about how it dissects capitalism or something.

Those are corporate buzzwords just as much as anything else. The MCU does the same thing, they put out a movie and they’ll call it a “political thriller” or a “heist movie” or a “horror movie” and then they just make a normal superhero action movie with some genre flavoring. And I like those movies a lot, I just don’t like it when people read marketing materials and then spout them verbatim from whatever Kevin Feige or whoever said. People here did it with “The Skywalker Saga.” That was a marketing term used to promote Rise of Skywalker. Even though most here hated that movie, they bought it hook, line, and sinker and felt compelled to make unnecessary 9 movie mega edits because of it, because you have to have the complete Skywalker Saga.

Guarantee most people today who use the term “political thriller” would not even know that genre existed if it weren’t for these corporate brands using it in that way.

Star Wars stands on its own without feeling insecure and talking about how this is ADULT and SERIOUS and INTELLIGENT. It’s just a well written, well made, well directed show.

I think the counter-shill can be just as unproductive, because I do think someone like Tony Gilroy put a lot of thought and effort into making his show.

I think it’s a shame that all other media more or less gets to be taken in as their own pieces, to be analyzed with all the nerdy film stuff that I fell in love with as a film fan in the first place. But Star Wars doesn’t get to have that anymore, because of The Boss, I guess. Not saying every project released under Disney deserves it, but I lament how we can have threads discussing stuff like what balance in the Force means to us individually + other headcanons, or even how much George Lucas may/may not have known what he was doing, etc… But Andor - dense with its own substance and cool things to dissect - is still stuck in the culture proxy war. Even when it’s positive, it’s just, “Can you believe how much better it is than BOBF or Kenobi???”

Either way, I think drawing attention to Disney [The Nebulous Entity] Doesn’t Care, as though that’s news to anyone, is ironically far shallower a direction to lead discussion than anything the show is putting down itself. I’d rather appreciate where studio and artist meet in the middle and that there can be wins on the creative side of this soul-crushing churn, than rehash the same tired cynicism that fundamentally misunderstands how the industry works anyway.

I haven’t used the “political thriller” moniker myself, but I do think this show is very, un-accidentally political. I don’t see the purpose in handwaving any intentions or themes in the material.

It’s just a little disheartening to write up an earnest, excited breakdown of cool things I could take away from the work, and then for someone to twist it as corporate shilling

I don’t necessarily mean Disney specifically, I just mean the marketing around the show and the way people talk about it. The show is good in large measure because it seems like they permitted a lot of creative freedom and budget, which is unusual for them and deserves credit. Like I said, it’s a good show. But I think it can stand on its own without people exaggerating how mature and “political” it is. It’s like they feel ashamed that Star Wars is perceived as childish, so they have to compensate by describing it in serious terms. And generally not serious terms that they would use in other cases, serious terms that come from marketing or from reading thinkpieces about it or watching YouTube essays.
It’s like people that don’t want to admit they read comic books, so they call them “graphic novels.”

The other thing that bugs me is when people say things like “Star Wars has NEVER been this realistic/grounded/detailed etc.” because that’s not true either. There are lots of Star Wars stories that get into that kind of mindset. It’s just that most people only know the movies, and movies by their very nature can’t be too slow or too detailed because of their runtime. The show reminds me of an EU book, in a good way.

edit: Obviously it is political in some ways and some of that is intentional. But I think it should be acknowledged that it is much more subtle and well done than what the people who say “Star Wars was always political” generally mean. Star Wars politics are a mishmash of the Roman Republic and Empire, Napoleon, the American Civil War, World War 2, and the Vietnam War, but when people say “Star Wars was always political” they’re generally defending the sequel trilogy or people in real life interpreting Rogue One in the lens of the 2016 election, for example. An oversimplistic us vs. them narrative that just calls the Empire “fascist space Nazis” as though there’s nothing else to it and nothing else going on. Although Andor seems like it’s aimed at those people and the marketing and some creator statements point that way, the show itself is much smarter than that. People in the Empire are portrayed as real people with real motivations, emotions, and reasons for what they do. People in the rebellion have to make difficult decisions and don’t always come off as sympathetic and heroic. This is good stuff strictly BECAUSE it does not agree with any particular real world political philosophy, it just depicts the realities of bureaucracy and the use of force in various ways.

I like the show a lot but I wish people wouldn’t throw around terms like “spy thriller” or “political thriller” or talk about how it dissects capitalism or something.

Those are corporate buzzwords just as much as anything else. The MCU does the same thing, they put out a movie and they’ll call it a “political thriller” or a “heist movie” or a “horror movie” and then they just make a normal superhero action movie with some genre flavoring. And I like those movies a lot, I just don’t like it when people read marketing materials and then spout them verbatim from whatever Kevin Feige or whoever said. People here did it with “The Skywalker Saga.” That was a marketing term used to promote Rise of Skywalker. Even though most here hated that movie, they bought it hook, line, and sinker and felt compelled to make unnecessary 9 movie mega edits because of it, because you have to have the complete Skywalker Saga.

Guarantee most people today who use the term “political thriller” would not even know that genre existed if it weren’t for these corporate brands using it in that way.

Star Wars stands on its own without feeling insecure and talking about how this is ADULT and SERIOUS and INTELLIGENT. It’s just a well written, well made, well directed show.

Servii said:

There’s still the problem of Jedi being taken in as babies. Because of that, their lives as Jedi are all they know. They have the option to leave the Order if they wish, but with a few exceptions, none of the Jedi have lives or key social connections outside of the Order. I’m not counting casual friends like Dexter Jettster. I mean connections that could take the place of a family or a community. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if padawans would stay in the Order simply out of fear of being on their own in the outside world.

This sort of ascetic lifestyle is something that a person really needs to consent to be a part of. I know the rationale, that if you wait too long before you start training, they’ll develop attachments to their family. But that doesn’t stop people in the real world from becoming monks on their own. And feeling a connection to your family is certainly not a bad thing, anyway.

Again, that’s a very modern point of view. No one consents to who their parents are or where they grow up. You could just as soon argue that anyone’s parents are being cruel to their children by not having them tour around the world and figure out which of the thousands of cultures they want to join. I don’t personally agree with having Jedi raised from birth but that’s just me.

And we don’t really know whether or not Jedi could find friends elsewhere. It seems reasonable that they could. In one of the Jedi Apprentice books, Obi Wan finds a political cause on a planet that he agrees with and he’s ready to leave the Jedi to help out his new friends. Qui Gon has to talk him out of it.

RogueLeader said:

Even if TLJ leaves some narrative threads open, I kind of think it stands on its own regarding the thematic elements it has. Even if we don’t see what happens with Kylo Ren, or we don’t the restoration of the Jedi or the Republic proper, we know there are still people that the fight will continue after the film ends, and they will eventually succeed.

I also kind of like the parallels TLJ shares with Le Morte D’Arthur, where King Arthur story ends with a duel with his wicked kin, Mordred, and the ruin of his kingdom, but there is hope that Arthur will return from Avalon one day and restore the kingdom.

Like Arthur, the OT and these bookends could be seen as focusing on the birth, life and death of Luke Skywalker. Ironically, though, I don’t know if I actually would want to show Luke dying in this version. I like the idea of leaving his fate ambiguous, allowing the audience to choose what happens to him. Does Luke die there on the island and become one with the Force, or will he live on to restore the Jedi Order as Lucas intended to depict?

Kind of the same idea with Kylo. I like how TLJ ends showing Kylo “winning” the battle, but losing spiritually. And the audience is left to wonder if Kylo is doomed to the dark side, or if there is still hope for redemption.

Regarding George’s ST ideas, we know that at some point George suggested combining the Jedi Killer character with Han and Leia’s son. So in some version of his treatment, he still fell to the dark side just as he did in the final version of those films, but we don’t know what his fate would have been in George’s version. So leaving Kylo’s eventual fate ambiguous and letting the audience ponder on it fits with what little we know about Lucas’ version of the sequel trilogy.

And the intentional ambiguity of what comes after mirrors the intentional ambiguity of what comes before the prologue. By having ROTS operate as a standalone film, the audience can be left to imagine a version of how Anakin and Obi-Wan met that is more in line with what the original trilogy tells us: Anakin followed Obi-Wan on a idealistic crusade, and Owen thought Anakin should’ve stayed on Tatooine and not gotten involved.
That’s not really what we see in the actual films, but by not showing how they met and coming in on their story in medias res, the audience could choose to imagine the events before the prologue however they want, whether it be more in like with the OT, or how it is depicted in the rest of the PT.

I don’t think it finishes thematically either. People love the broom kid for some reason but it doesn’t show anything new or inspiring. Ordinary people can be force sensitive? People believe in legends about Luke Skywalker? We knew that already. That was what Rey was about. Likewise Kylo Ren’s story. What is the lesson there? Luke has to learn that certain people can’t be redeemed and he should just abandon them? All the sequels have the same problem of retreading the same ground as the original trilogy and the prequels, and The Last Jedi is no different.

In the sense you’re talking about, every episode could be standalone (the original movie was designed to be but none of the others were.) But it’s your edit, do what you want.

Darth Malgus said:

You know, the more I read this discussion, the more I realize that this is not a discussion about the Jedi teachings and theology, but simply a confrontation between two philosophies and two different ways of understanding life.

On one hand, there are those who are in favor of Romanticism, expressing their passions and having selfish feelings, but without letting these things take over and balancing them with altruism. On the other hand, there are those who are completely opposed to passion and selfishness and profess absolute altruism, instead of a form of altruism that Is balanced with selfishness. It’s for this reason that Anakin’s story and tragedy have a different meaning depending on the person who talks about them.

Our contrasts have actually nothing to do with Star Wars, they’re simply a reflection of what we think and what our philosophy of life is. So if anything, if we have to discuss these things, I think we should do it in the appropriate sections, where we can discuss about personal things, philosophy and stuff like that. Because again, this discussion about the Jedi is nothing more than a transposition of what we think and what our philosophy of life is. So I think we should bring the discussion back to the objective reality of things, without necessarily having to involve Star Wars.

Pretty much everyone in real life, as well as the Jedi, agrees that you have to have a personal balance of acting for your own self-preservation and interest, and altruism.

The divide is more modern versus ancient, secular versus religious, or western versus eastern. The modern, western, secular perspective is essentially Freudian and liberal - your strong emotions and desires are your authentic self, and as long as they don’t harm other people, you should be able to do whatever you want. If you constrain them too much, then you’re “repressed” and it’s going to make you blow up eventually or act out in some way. It’s focused a lot on sex, and the whole thing is a sexual metaphor. From this point of view, having a large group of people all commit to control their desires is bound to fail spectacularly, and it’s only justified and held up by a bunch of superstition, mysticism, and unnecessary tradition.

The ancient or medieval, religious, eastern perspective is that emotions and desires are like horses. They’re extremely useful, but you need to train them, bridle them and keep them in check. Once you’ve done that, you can keep doing it indefinitely because you have the training and discipline. You might slip up occasionally but if there’s a big deviation it’s because you made a choice. When people make oaths or give their word, they generally mean it. Their “word is their bond.”

From the first perspective, the Jedi are doomed to failure because they don’t allow attachments and they teach initiates to control their emotions, which is ultimately impossible. Anakin is just the latest and worst in what must surely be a long line of blow ups. The Expanded Universe and the sequel trilogy seem to confirm this for a lot of people because there’s almost always someone turning to the dark side so that the story can happen. Luke’s Jedi got massacred too? Welp, looks like it was his fault for not “learning from the Jedi’s mistakes,” and suppressing Ben Solo’s emotions somehow. (This is inferred because of course we don’t see it.)

From the second perspective, Anakin tragically chose not to live the Jedi’s teachings. He chose ambition and power over his own family, friends, and allies. It’s a Faustian deal with the devil. But that only makes complete sense for people that believe in the concept of a devil, or temptation, or evil, as opposed to just competing priorities or sets of desires.

yotsuya said:

Vladius said:

yotsuya said:

G&G-Fan said:

The only reason people have come to this uncharitable view of the Jedi Order is because George Lucas is not a good writer. Simple as that.

Sorry to cut out most of what you said, but that would be too long.

The Jedi have fallen from their high point and are now struggling and sacrifices have been made. Their teaching relies on avoidance rather than learning how to resist the dark side. Their missions have become more political - controlled by the Senate and Chancellor - than moral (going to help where they are needed). The Clone Wars are the final nail in their coffin because it emphasizes everything they are trapped into doing. And they get destroyed for it.

I don’t think it is the writing, at least not this part. I think this is all pretty clear. If there is nothing wrong with the Jedi, why do they need the Chosen One to come and balance things? We are left to imagine how the Jedi would have been before all this in their glory days. But the PT does not depict their glory days, it pictures them in decline and clinging to traditions and that is included in the films.

Please explain your distinction between avoidance and resistance. That just doesn’t make any sense. If you’re talking about temptation, avoidance is legitimately the best strategy FOR resistance. It’s better to prevent a situation or avoid getting into a situation than to intentionally put yourself near it and grit your teeth and focus really hard on not doing it. But the Jedi absolutely also teach how to do that if you’re in the situation. That’s the point. That’s why they’re always talking about clearing their minds, and meditating.

Sometimes the political missions are the moral missions. If they were sent out to free slaves, that would absolutely be a political mission as well. We don’t really know the details of what their missions look like anyway, or what most Jedi are up to outside of Coruscant. For all we know, they’re serving the people perfectly well.

The Chosen One isn’t to balance the Jedi, it’s to balance the Force, which in some way involves destroying the Sith. The idea is vague and not explained well, but at the very least it doesn’t say anything about getting rid of the Jedi or fixing them.

The PT does depict their glory days. According to Lucas, that was the point of Duel of the Fates being so different from the OT duels. They’re at the height of their abilities, so they’re doing all kinds of flips and whatsits and have faster choreography.

Avoidance vs. Resistance. When you are teaching someone and you don’t want them to do things you teach them to avoid them. You focus on that. But when you want to teach someone how to get along in the real world and you don’t want them to do something, you teach them the dangers in detail. You give them the tools and knowledge to know what the dangers are and how to avoid them by resisting the temptation to do something that might make sense in one situation. In the case of the Jedi, if you don’t want them to give in to fear or anger or hate, you need to teach them what fear, anger, and hate are, and how to avoid fear turning into anger and how to keep anger from turning into hate. We see this in TPM with Obi-wan. Qui-gon dies and Obi-wan acts in anger (he skips fear). For him to avoid going further down that path, he needs the teaching (which is sometimes instinctual and for others it is not). The same thing happens with Luke in ROTJ. Both avoid taking it any further. Both resist the temptation and recenter. Ankin is not able to do this. His anger takes control and the hate sets in. He was not given the tools he needed. Even though they sense several times that he is edging the wrong way. They sense he is in danger and they do nothing to help him. A good teacher (or master) would address the situation with Anakin and make sure he had the teachings he needed.

So basically, teaching avoidance is good for things that you are certain to be able to avoid. If situations can arise where total avoidance is not possible, you need to teach to resist. So for general students, teaching to avoid the dark side might be all you need. Drilling into younglings and Padawans that fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering, and that all leads to the dark side might give them the ability to resist just by virtual of persistent training. Anakin starts late. He hasn’t had as much time. A good teacher would know how to adapt the teaching. Yoda should know how to adapt and be able to advise Obi-wan on what to do. But instead there is a total failure to provide Anakin any additional teaching to keep him from being tempted by the dark side. He has been taught the theory without the tools to resist a real world test.

They do teach all of that. There’s nothing showing that they don’t. Like I said, that’s what all the meditation and “clear your mind” stuff is for. Qui Gon tells Obi Wan to keep his mind on the here and now. It sounds hokey but this is exactly what people everywhere teach now as mindfulness training, which is supposed to help with stress and negative emotions. (It doesn’t help me personally but it does apparently work for a lot of people.)

Anakin’s choices are the issue. All this extra baggage that people place onto the story about it being the Jedi’s fault comes from their own cultural assumptions.

G&G-Fan said:

yotsuya said:

The Jedi teaching that we get in the first 6 films are all based on avoidance.

A big part of the path of the Jedi is about confronting your fears and overcoming it. It’s what the scene with Kanan and the temple guards is about, in Rebels. The Ithorian youngling getting his kyber crystal (overcoming his fear of the scary cave) in The Clone Wars. Yoda overcoming Dark Yoda in The Clone Wars. It’s why Yoda told Luke to go into the dark side cave on Dagobah in The Empire Strikes Back. Because he knew Luke would see what he’s afraid of. He needs to face it and overcome it. If Jedi’s relationship with fear was avoidance, he would’ve told Luke not to go in there.

Exactly. It astounds me how many people don’t understand the nature of Yoda having Luke go into the cave or go to face Vader in ROTJ.

The Last Jedi doesn’t stand alone. At the end there’s still Kylo Ren to deal with, and the resistance has been reduced to a handful of people that can all fit comfortably in the Falcon. You might as well say that The Force Awakens stands alone.

Honestly it just sounds like a reason for another Revenge of the Sith edit, which is fine. I like when people try to make it fit the original trilogy.

yotsuya said:

G&G-Fan said:

The only reason people have come to this uncharitable view of the Jedi Order is because George Lucas is not a good writer. Simple as that.

Sorry to cut out most of what you said, but that would be too long.

The Jedi have fallen from their high point and are now struggling and sacrifices have been made. Their teaching relies on avoidance rather than learning how to resist the dark side. Their missions have become more political - controlled by the Senate and Chancellor - than moral (going to help where they are needed). The Clone Wars are the final nail in their coffin because it emphasizes everything they are trapped into doing. And they get destroyed for it.

I don’t think it is the writing, at least not this part. I think this is all pretty clear. If there is nothing wrong with the Jedi, why do they need the Chosen One to come and balance things? We are left to imagine how the Jedi would have been before all this in their glory days. But the PT does not depict their glory days, it pictures them in decline and clinging to traditions and that is included in the films.

Please explain your distinction between avoidance and resistance. That just doesn’t make any sense. If you’re talking about temptation, avoidance is legitimately the best strategy FOR resistance. It’s better to prevent a situation or avoid getting into a situation than to intentionally put yourself near it and grit your teeth and focus really hard on not doing it. But the Jedi absolutely also teach how to do that if you’re in the situation. That’s the point. That’s why they’re always talking about clearing their minds, and meditating.

Sometimes the political missions are the moral missions. If they were sent out to free slaves, that would absolutely be a political mission as well. We don’t really know the details of what their missions look like anyway, or what most Jedi are up to outside of Coruscant. For all we know, they’re serving the people perfectly well.

The Chosen One isn’t to balance the Jedi, it’s to balance the Force, which in some way involves destroying the Sith. The idea is vague and not explained well, but at the very least it doesn’t say anything about getting rid of the Jedi or fixing them.

The PT does depict their glory days. According to Lucas, that was the point of Duel of the Fates being so different from the OT duels. They’re at the height of their abilities, so they’re doing all kinds of flips and whatsits and have faster choreography.

Servii said:

If there is nothing wrong with the Jedi, why do they need the Chosen One to come and balance things?

I don’t think the reasoning for why Jedi think things are out of balance is conveyed well. If the Jedi had become complacent, then they would think that everything is fine and that the Force is balanced. By all outside appearances, the Force does seem to be fine until the Sith start to reveal themselves, and even then, the Jedi are skeptical when Qui-Gon first tells them about the Sith’s return.

I know a common piece of writing advice is “show, don’t tell,” but I sometimes think George should have spelled some things out more clearly, even at the risk of giving too much exposition. Obi-Wan says that Qui-Gon doesn’t follow the code, but we’re never shown or told how he’s not following it. There are some references to Jedi’s connection to the Force being diminished, and we can infer that the Jedi have become too politically minded rather than focused on helping people, but that’s not something the movies acknowledge nearly enough. The films never call out the Jedi for ignoring slavery, for example. That could have very easily been made a major grievance Anakin had with the Jedi Order, but the movie doesn’t address it, which leads me to believe it wasn’t meant to be a moral failing of the Order.

Exactly. All of these perceived issues are something we read into it because as written it just doesn’t make sense or there’s too much missing or contradictory information.

As for the slavery thing, their jurisdiction is inside the Republic. If they go outside the Republic to start cracking heads, that could start a war and ultimately result in more collateral damage including to slaves. It wouldn’t be morally right or practical for them to conquer every system for the Republic and forcibly subjugate everyone into following their own laws.

I greatly prefer the decentralized pre-1999 Jedi, but with what we have, that part makes perfect sense.