Star Wars General Discussion Thread

[RadiantPhoenix]

Genuine emotional intimacy and a sense that they're anything more than colleagues in the films. I know the depth of my relationship with my little brother, and I can look to the found families of the other trilogies which, with the exception of Episode IX, I find believable in ways that I never did Anakin and Obi-Wan's relationship no matter how hard McGreggor tried.

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Please provide clips of other Star Wars characters demonstrating emotional intimacy in ways you feel Jedi don't.

I'm really struggling to find the words for what a huge restriction is to be told that you cannot, without special dispensation, sire children. Like, that's such a fundamental urge for so many people. None of that's to knock adoption, OBVIOUSLY. But... you know? It's a colossal restriction. And if one day you meet that special someone and you want to do those things with them, it comes with the condition of turning your back on everything you know.

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Uh, on Jedi not being allowed to get pregnant.

Not just "I feel like", an actual citation.

 

[bluntblade]

Please provide clips of other Star Wars characters demonstrating emotional intimacy in ways you feel Jedi don't.

Uh, on Jedi not being allowed to get pregnant.

Not just "I feel like", an actual citation.

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Ooh, let's see, Luke opening up to Leia in VI, Leia comforting Luke over Ben's death despite seeing her homeworld blown up. For just proof of affection, let's also throw in Han enduring a miserable night out in the snow wastes because he wasn't going to leave Luke to freeze. The originals and the sequels, for the most part, are dripping with affection between the leads. The prequels are not.

Also again, if everything in the novels and the actual films was pointing to "having children is bad news" and "the only couple which involves a Jedi is a Forbidden Relationship", that's what I'm going to take from it. Trevorrow wrote a script in which the assumption is that relationships weren't allowed for Jedi, and I don't recall loads of comments to the effect of "that's totally unrealistic, Jedi were totally allowed in the prequels".

I read plenty of ancillary materials, OK? And I wasn't aware of Lucas' intent that actually, romantic relationships, baby-making etc were actually totally cool for Jedi as long as there wasn't any "possessiveness" involved until this forum. In which case, Lucas communicated that information abysmally. If Jedi were allowed to root, why didn't Anakin bring it up with Padme? Were we always meant to think their relationship was specifically unhealthy?

Essentially, Lucas' poor writing this is a brick wall and for me, there's no getting through or around it. I can only extend so much goodwill to a man who gives us such a clunker as "from my point of view the Jedi are evil" and doesn't have Obi-Wan answer with "I'm not the murderer here!"

 

[RadiantPhoenix]

Ooh, let's see, Luke opening up to Leia in VI, Leia comforting Luke over Ben's death despite seeing her homeworld blown up. For just proof of affection, let's also throw in Han enduring a miserable night out in the snow wastes because he wasn't going to leave Luke to freeze. The originals and the sequels, for the most part, are dripping with affection between the leads. The prequels are not.

Also again, if everything in the novels and the actual films was pointing to "having children is bad news" and "the only couple which involves a Jedi is a Forbidden Relationship", that's what I'm going to take from it. Trevorrow wrote a script in which the assumption is that relationships weren't allowed for Jedi, and I don't recall loads of comments to the effect of "that's totally unrealistic, Jedi were totally allowed in the prequels".

I read plenty of ancillary materials, OK? And I wasn't aware of Lucas' intent that actually, romantic relationships, baby-making etc were actually totally cool for Jedi as long as there wasn't any "possessiveness" involved until this forum. In which case, Lucas communicated that information abysmally. If Jedi were allowed to root, why didn't Anakin bring it up with Padme? Were we always meant to think their relationship was specifically unhealthy?

Essentially, Lucas' poor writing this is a brick wall and for me, there's no getting through or around it. I can only extend so much goodwill to a man who gives us such a clunker as "from my point of view the Jedi are evil" and doesn't have Obi-Wan answer with "I'm not the murderer here!"

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So the answer is no, you have zero citations and zero clips backing up your argument.


bluntblade

 

[bluntblade]

So the answer is no, you have zero citations and zero clips backing up your argument.


bluntblade

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Do I need citations for films that we're all acquainted with? If anything, the absence of anything to cite and acknowledge as a counterargument to my view (which I did all the same as a history undergrad)

Outside of Obi-Wan, and even with Obi-Wan, I don't get a sense of strong friendship. Anakin spends most of the second film whinging about him and they spent most of III apart. No one hugs them after they pull that move with the Invisible Hand in which they should by rights have died in a fireball and instead save several square kilometres of Coruscant from being flattened. They save thousands of lives and no Jedi is congratulating them on it.

The ancillary materials I read were only saying "their love is forbidden". It wasn't "Anakin is pushing Padme to violate the rules of being a Senator/potentially commit an abuse of power". And again, I've never seen attachment nor possession defined in any of those materials save for Yoda being very, very vague (when you'd think that that's the time to ask some hard questions and find out what your volatile young Jedi in a precarious situation is actually hiding).

 

[tankdrop24]

I just really find it hard to see how you can interpret it not being a problem with the Jedi.

I mean, if you're going on text alone, maybe you could interpret that way. But it seems heavily implied to go the other way.

Most people online seem to agree that the Jedi have some kind of ban against marriage. So I don't really think you can just try to shut down another person's interpretation like that.

 

[Zimmerwald1915]

What's funny about this line, is that in the Star Wars galaxy, this can apply to several species.

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Including humans! Most human birth-givers are not assigned and do not perform the father role.

 

[IlumMoss]

Outside of Obi-Wan, and even with Obi-Wan, I don't get a sense of strong friendship. Anakin spends most of the second film whinging about him and they spent most of III apart. No one hugs them after they pull that move with the Invisible Hand in which they should by rights have died in a fireball and instead save several square kilometres of Coruscant from being flattened. They save thousands of lives and no Jedi is congratulating them on it.

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I mean, Anakin refuses to leave Obi-Wan behind on that ship, even though it might jeopardise his mission. Their bantering during that entire rescue is also delightful. In AotC their relationship is more tense, but even there we start on the elevator scene, where I think it's made clear that they both love and know each other well. In RotS we also have the extremely warm goodbye scene when Obi-Wan goes to Utapau. After landing Obi-Wan and Anakin is clearly in a celebratory mood, but I don't think it's strange that most of the people that meet them give more attention to how the chancellor, the head of state, is safe. Anakin also leaves before attention could move to him to steal some super secret alone time with Padmé xD
And honestly, it's not the first time they have pulled something like this off. It's not a post Death Star moment of wonder and victory, it's Friday during the clone wars.

Most people online seem to agree that the Jedi have some kind of ban against marriage.

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I do think a decent argument could be made for marriage not being allowed for the Jedi (in fact that is the view I tend to take myself), as they are already married to the order is many ways. But marriage is of course not the same as a relationship or even having feelings for someone. And at least the feelings part high canon has explicitly established that it's not a problem.
"Jedi Knights aren't celibate - the thing that is forbidden is attachments - and possessive relationships." –George Lucas, BBC News 2002 interview
Based on this quote I would also guess that casual or non-attached relationships would also be okay.

The ancillary materials I read were only saying "their love is forbidden". It wasn't "Anakin is pushing Padme to violate the rules of being a Senator/potentially commit an abuse of power". And again, I've never seen attachment nor possession defined in any of those materials save for Yoda being very, very vague (when you'd think that that's the time to ask some hard questions and find out what your volatile young Jedi in a precarious situation is actually hiding).

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Different materials interpret Jedi culture and what attachment is or isn't in several different ways. As for how it's meant to be understood in high canon (movies and tv-series) I think Lucas's quotes on the matter might be the clearest:

The Making of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, page 213:​

"No human can let go," Lucas would say of [the Yoda-Anakin scene]. "It's very hard. Ultimately, we do let go because it's inevitable; you do die and you do lose your loved ones. But while you're alive, you can't be obsessed with holding on. As Yoda says in this one, 'You must learn to let go of everything you're afraid to let go of.' Because holding on is in the same category and the precursor to greed. And that's what a Sith is. A Sith is somebody that is absolutely obsessed with gaining more and more power - but for what? Nothing, except that it becomes an obsession to get more."
"The Jedi are trained to let go. They're trained from birth," he continues, "They're not supposed to form attachments. They can love people- in fact, they should love everybody. They should love their enemies; they should love the Sith. But they can't form attachments. So what all these movies are about is: greed. Greed is a source of pain and suffering for everybody. And the ultimate state of greed is the desire to cheat death." ​

​

Star Wars: Attack of the Clones commentary track, George Lucas:​

"The fact that everything must change and that things come and go through his life and that he can't 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 year 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.
"But he has become attached to his mother and he will become attached to Padme and these things are, for a Jedi, who needs to have a clear mind and not be influenced by threats to their attachments, a dangerous situation. And it feeds into fear of losing things, which feeds into greed, wanting to keep things, wanting to keep his possessions and things that he should be letting go of. His fear of losing her turns to anger at losing her, which ultimately turns to revenge in wiping out the village. The scene with the Tusken Raiders is the first scene that ultimately takes him on the road to the dark side. I mean he's been prepping for this, but that's the one where he's sort of doing something that is completely inappropriate."​

Overall I would give Lucas's own quotes much more weight regarding how we are supposed to understand terms and themes in the movies than I would give ancillary materials. But nobody has to agree with that.

 

[Arthur Frayn]

I mean, Anakin refuses to leave Obi-Wan behind on that ship, even though it might jeopardise his mission. Their bantering during that entire rescue is also delightful. In AotC their relationship is more tense, but even there we start on the elevator scene, where I think it's made clear that they both love and know each other well. In RotS we also have the extremely warm goodbye scene when Obi-Wan goes to Utapau. After landing Obi-Wan and Anakin is clearly in a celebratory mood, but I don't think it's strange that most of the people that meet them give more attention to how the chancellor, the head of state, is safe. Anakin also leaves before attention could move to him to steal some super secret alone time with Padmé xD
And honestly, it's not the first time they have pulled something like this off. It's not a post Death Star moment of wonder and victory, it's Friday during the clone wars.


I do think a decent argument could be made for marriage not being allowed for the Jedi (in fact that is the view I tend to take myself), as they are already married to the order is many ways. But marriage is of course not the same as a relationship or even having feelings for someone. And at least the feelings part high canon has explicitly established that it's not a problem.
"Jedi Knights aren't celibate - the thing that is forbidden is attachments - and possessive relationships." –George Lucas, BBC News 2002 interview
Based on this quote I would also guess that casual or non-attached relationships would also be okay.


Different materials interpret Jedi culture and what attachment is or isn't in several different ways. As for how it's meant to be understood in high canon (movies and tv-series) I think Lucas's quotes on the matter might be the clearest:

The Making of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, page 213:​

"No human can let go," Lucas would say of [the Yoda-Anakin scene]. "It's very hard. Ultimately, we do let go because it's inevitable; you do die and you do lose your loved ones. But while you're alive, you can't be obsessed with holding on. As Yoda says in this one, 'You must learn to let go of everything you're afraid to let go of.' Because holding on is in the same category and the precursor to greed. And that's what a Sith is. A Sith is somebody that is absolutely obsessed with gaining more and more power - but for what? Nothing, except that it becomes an obsession to get more."​

"The Jedi are trained to let go. They're trained from birth," he continues, "They're not supposed to form attachments. They can love people- in fact, they should love everybody. They should love their enemies; they should love the Sith. But they can't form attachments. So what all these movies are about is: greed. Greed is a source of pain and suffering for everybody. And the ultimate state of greed is the desire to cheat death." ​

​

Star Wars: Attack of the Clones commentary track, George Lucas:​

"The fact that everything must change and that things come and go through his life and that he can't 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 year 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.​

"But he has become attached to his mother and he will become attached to Padme and these things are, for a Jedi, who needs to have a clear mind and not be influenced by threats to their attachments, a dangerous situation. And it feeds into fear of losing things, which feeds into greed, wanting to keep things, wanting to keep his possessions and things that he should be letting go of. His fear of losing her turns to anger at losing her, which ultimately turns to revenge in wiping out the village. The scene with the Tusken Raiders is the first scene that ultimately takes him on the road to the dark side. I mean he's been prepping for this, but that's the one where he's sort of doing something that is completely inappropriate."​

Overall I would give Lucas's own quotes much more weight regarding how we are supposed to understand terms and themes in the movies than I would give ancillary materials. But nobody has to agree with that.

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Man, reading shit like this makes me mad Lucas didn't just write all this cool shit down and handed them off to someone who could actually write a script or direct actors. He was trying to smuggle in this story Greek Tragedy IN SPAAAAAAAAAACE about greed consuming both democracy and Space Jesus, and we just whiffed it. Here we are debating "Are Jedi allowed to form attachments?" because he couldn't direct his actors.

 

[Alane1]

I mean from what I gathered Lucas apparently had asked Steven Spielberg, Robert Zemeckis, and Ron Howard to direct instead for the prequels but all three directors turned him down and instead insisted Lucas should be the one to direct them.

 

[bluntblade]

Overall I would give Lucas's own quotes much more weight regarding how we are supposed to understand terms and themes in the movies than I would give ancillary materials. But nobody has to agree with that.

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OK, this is where I need to reiterate something I said at the very top of this thread: the director's quotes are not what I feel in the movie. If I'm to really take them in, they should be in the text (Chris Terrio and JJ Abrams have recently done some sterling work to demonstrate this). With Empire and The Last Jedi - as with Pacific Rim, Lord of the Rings, Fury Road etc. - I know what I'm being told. We glean that stuff from the dialogue, the performances and the visual language. There is so much in the Prequels which I'm apparently meant to take from the text, and I just don't see it.

I mean from what I gathered Lucas apparently had asked Steven Spielberg, Robert Zemeckis, and Ron Howard to direct instead for the prequels but all three directors turned him down and instead insisted Lucas should be the one to direct them.

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I mean, we'd have needed some rewrites as well but I still feel robbed.

 

[Lexical]

I don't know, for one, I felt the messages in ESB were pretty clear, but I frequently see people with alternative takes.

Luke has a vision of his friends suffering in Bespin and runs off. Yoda tries to warn him against this, saying "Decide you must, how to serve them best. If you leave now, help them you could; but you would destroy all for which they have fought, and suffered."

The fact is that as things stand in that movie, Luke is, to the best of his knowledge, the best hope of the rebellion and the Jedi in overcoming Vader and the emperor. He's also woefully unprepared to face Vader and hasn't finished his training.

More than this, his desire to go to Bespin is for selfish reasons, he wants vengeance against Vader and he wants to rescue Leia. While his desire to save his friends is admirable, it's still fundamentally selfish because it's about his fear of losing them, not about what they want. Leia would be willing to endure the hardship on Bespin to advance the cause of the rebellion and buy him time. It's telling that when Luke shows up she doesn't go "Thank goodness, you're here to save me" she goes "RUN LUKE! It's a trap!". But Luke ignores her and continues. As a result, Luke is crippled by the loss of his arm and traumatized by knowledge he was not emotionally ready to process. Moreover, Leia and Lando have to turn around and save him, costing them their opportunity to pursue and rescue Han.

It's interesting because these are the exact same themes which are shown in the prequels, that acting rashly and putting your feelings ahead of duty and obligations to others is called attachment, it's selfish and it leads to bad things.

Nonetheless, I've seen a lot of people with takes that Luke was right to head to Bespin in ESB.

 

[RadiantPhoenix]

OK, this is where I need to reiterate something I said at the very top of this thread: the director's quotes are not what I feel in the movie. If I'm to really take them in, they should be in the text (Chris Terrio and JJ Abrams have recently done some sterling work to demonstrate this). With Empire and The Last Jedi - as with Pacific Rim, Lord of the Rings, Fury Road etc. - I know what I'm being told. We glean that stuff from the dialogue, the performances and the visual language. There is so much in the Prequels which I'm apparently meant to take from the text, and I just don't see it.

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So when we get down to it, it's entirely that you feel that forbidding marriage implies forbidding love, sex, pregnancy, romance, family, etc.

Despite:

• The conclusion not actually logically following from the premise.
• The author explicitly contradicting you on most of those.
• The work (George Lucas's Star Wars, Disney's Canon) explicitly contradicting you on several of those.

I think the problem isn't Star Wars or the Jedi, I think the problem is bluntblade being deliberately obtuse for motives not yet explicitly spelled out.

... unless I've missed a motive being spelled out?

 

[IlumMoss]

It's interesting because these are the exact same themes which are shown in the prequels, that acting rashly and putting your feelings ahead of duty and obligations to others is called attachment, it's selfish and it leads to bad things.

Nonetheless, I've seen a lot of people with takes that Luke was right to head to Bespin in ESB.

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It's pivotal that Luke doesn't have patience. He doesn't want to finish his training. He's being succumbed by his emotional feelings for his friends rather than the pratical feelings of "I've got to get this job done before I can actually save them. I can't save them, really." But he sort of takes the easy route, the arrogant route, the emotional but least practical route, which is to say, "I'm just going to go off and do this without thinking too much." And the result is that he fails and doesn't do well for Han Solo or himself.​

It's the motif that needs to be in the picture, but it's one of those things that just in terms of storytelling was very risky because basically he screws up, and everything turns bad. And it's because of that decision that Luke made on [Dagobah] to say "I know I'm not ready, but I'm going to go anyway."​

— George Lucas

Lucas is very consistent with his themes, which is something I really appreciate

 

[bluntblade]

So when we get down to it, it's entirely that you feel that forbidding marriage implies forbidding love, sex, pregnancy, romance, family, etc.

Despite:

• The conclusion not actually logically following from the premise.
• The author explicitly contradicting you on most of those.
• The work (George Lucas's Star Wars, Disney's Canon) explicitly contradicting you on several of those.

I think the problem isn't Star Wars or the Jedi, I think the problem is bluntblade being deliberately obtuse for motives not yet explicitly spelled out.

... unless I've missed a motive being spelled out?

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What have I cited multiple times? That the Jedi, to my eye, are coded in a way that suggests monks and knightly orders. Monks, traditionally in Western stories, have a bit of a down on all those things. So often do the likes of the Knights Templar. You see it in ASoIaF with the Night's Watch and the Kingsguard, whose oaths make it explicit - and which have characters lamenting on boys being permitted or made to join those orders when they don't realise what they're giving up.

Also because the films themselves and the novelisations of the films do not make clear the things that Lucas has stated after the fact, I don't have a huge amount to go on. Stories don't work on the basis of us looking at things that are clearly recall archetypes we know and going "yes, but this is in a different world, so I had better wait before I jump to conclusions and go do some research." The shorthand of coding is part of the storytelling - or at least it should be. It's why I don't need to ask what the fish-nuns in TLJ are about, because they are coded as nuns and from that I infer that they're religious and therefore, as the old temple is a religiously significant site, that's their reason to tend to it.

And the coding, the communication of Lucas' ideas through the text in a coherent way, is the problem for me. Because I'm being served a bunch of stoic charisma-vacuums who just talk about their duty. I mean, there's a reason why commentators from Mr Plinkett to Patrick Willems take the view that the Jedi aren't all that relatable in the Prequels, and why plenty of them figure that the Order sort of sucked in that era.

Regarding what the author said, allow me to amplify the point I tried to gently make about Terrio and Abrams. They tell me that Finn was so keen to tell Rey that he was Force-sensitive - that doesn't jive with what the film told me, which was that Finn was trying to make some sort of romantic confession to Rey. The novelisation can retcon Rey's dad to being a clone of Palpatine - too late, I saw him in the film and he looks nothing like Ian McDiarmid. I can be told that Leia "awakened the good in Kylo" and it does nothing to dispel my deeply confused reaction to a scene which failed utterly to depict what the writers apparently intended. And Lucas did just the same by failing to establish dramatised baselines for what is acceptable to the Jedi and what their relationship to the outside Galaxy is.

My motive is making the point that Lucas either wrote the Jedi as unlikeable, or failed to write them in such a way that I would think they Did Nothing Wrong except for letting Obi-Wan train Anakin.

 

[Arthur Frayn]

I mean from what I gathered Lucas apparently had asked Steven Spielberg, Robert Zemeckis, and Ron Howard to direct instead for the prequels but all three directors turned him down and instead insisted Lucas should be the one to direct them.

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From what I understand Lucas basically came up with the Marvel model a decade ahead of schedule. His plan was to position himself as essentially the show runner for the Prequels - he'd come up with the broad strokes of the plot and oversee all the production design and VFX teams, while another writer and/or director would incorporate his ideas into a screenplay and then direct the actors.

It's just that Lucas only offered the number two slot to either his friends or established industry figures, none of which would be that inclined to play second fiddle to a famous control freak. That, and the not unfounded fear that Star Wars was still his baby and that they'd just screw it up.

If Lucas had offered the job to up-and-coming filmmakers, or journeyman with solid filmographies (which is what Marvel ended up doing), the Prequels probably would have been more successful. I mean, he certainly wouldn't have had difficulty finding talent in the late 90's.

 

[bluntblade]

From what I understand Lucas basically came up with the Marvel model a decade ahead of schedule. His plan was to position himself as essentially the show runner for the Prequels - he'd come up with the broad strokes of the plot and oversee all the production design and VFX teams, while another writer and/or director would incorporate his ideas into a screenplay and then direct the actors.

It's just that Lucas only offered the number two slot to either his friends or established industry figures, none of which would be that inclined to play second fiddle to a famous control freak. That, and the not unfounded fear that Star Wars was still his baby and that they'd just screw it up.

If Lucas had offered the job to up-and-coming filmmakers, or journeyman with solid filmographies (which is what Marvel ended up doing), the Prequels probably would have been more successful. I mean, he certainly wouldn't have had difficulty finding talent in the late 90's.

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Martin Campbell would be my shout for that - with a Brosnan Bond and The Mask of Zorro under his belt, he'd be a good fit for most of the stuff Lucas was aiming for, at least in the first two films.

Howard seems the most natural fit of the three mentioned above - not that I believe in auteur theory, but Spielberg and Zemeckis tend more towards that than Howard, who will generally shoot the script he's given and do it very competently (but as we've seen in Solo and the Dan Brown adaptations, he can't rescue a bad script). If you've got a control freak in the big chair (someone mentioned here that there were big rows during the making of Empire and I know Kasdan bailed partway through writing RotJ) then you're not going to the Nolans, Wachowskis, George Millers etc. You're going to the equivalents of Jon Favreau. Not sure who else I'd suggest though from that time - Kathryn Bigelow maybe?

 

[RadiantPhoenix]

What have I cited multiple times? That the Jedi, to my eye, are coded in a way that suggests monks and knightly orders. Monks, traditionally in Western stories, have a bit of a down on all those things. So often do the likes of the Knights Templar. You see it in ASoIaF with the Night's Watch and the Kingsguard, whose oaths make it explicit - and which have characters lamenting on boys being permitted or made to join those orders when they don't realise what they're giving up.

Also because the films themselves and the novelisations of the films do not make clear the things that Lucas has stated after the fact, I don't have a huge amount to go on. Stories don't work on the basis of us looking at things that are clearly recall archetypes we know and going "yes, but this is in a different world, so I had better wait before I jump to conclusions and go do some research." The shorthand of coding is part of the storytelling - or at least it should be. It's why I don't need to ask what the fish-nuns in TLJ are about, because they are coded as nuns and from that I infer that they're religious and therefore, as the old temple is a religiously significant site, that's their reason to tend to it.

And the coding, the communication of Lucas' ideas through the text in a coherent way, is the problem for me. Because I'm being served a bunch of stoic charisma-vacuums who just talk about their duty. I mean, there's a reason why commentators from Mr Plinkett to Patrick Willems take the view that the Jedi aren't all that relatable in the Prequels, and why plenty of them figure that the Order sort of sucked in that era.

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Do the Night's Watch and Kingsguard allow their members to leave freely? If not, stop making such dishonest comparisons.

And, wow, talk about telling on yourself.

• You complain that Jedi talk about responsibility too much.
• You complain that the protagonists aren't the charismatic ones.
• You complain that Star Wars's greatest heroes are reserved and thoughtful.
• You complain that Jedi stop and think rather than allowing their emotions to rule them.

The Star Wars prequel trilogy is about how the lack of all of these things damned the galaxy.

It sounds like your problem is that you reject the messages of Star Wars, and when you're called out on that, you start whining about how Lucas is a "bad" writer for writing things you don't want to hear:

• You want reckless charismatic "heroes" who allow their emotions and personal concerns to rule them, but one of Star Wars's messages is that you should not trust people like that, nor should you be people like that.
• You demand that people be like you in order to be worthwhile, you demand that people be "charismatic" to be taken seriously, you demand that characters fit their stereotypes.
• You complain that Jedi aren't relatable to you, but maybe you should stop and think about what that says about you, not just assuming it means bad things about Jedi.

Much like Anakin Skywalker, you want to be told that you are right and justified in choosing the easy way and not looking deeper, and you get upset because Star Wars disagrees with you.

A few quick end points:

• I'm not getting into the Sequels. I haven't watched them, and George Lucas didn't write them, so they're irrelevant to even the the tail of the dog you're waving around.
• "Jedi aren't celibate" isn't after-the-fact, it's before-the-fact. Published a day before the release of Attack of the Clones
• George Lucas's interview about how lazy voters caused the fall of the Republic was NINETEEN FUCKING YEARS before The Phantom Menace, and a quarter of a century before Revenge of the Sith.

 

[bluntblade]

Ah, we finally got personal did we? (Deep sigh)

Coding isn't a matter of stereotyping so much as it's shorthand and AGAIN, it's Lucas failing to overcome the pitfalls of using that without showing us that not all the connotations apply. The Night's Watch and Kingsguard not being 1:1 replicas doesn't make them invalid as comparisons.

Uncharismatic everyone is kind of a big deal in what's meant to be an emotive action-adventure tragedy to the point that I hardly know how to express it. It's a problem because it means that I don't care about anyone in the film. Not one of them. And therefore I don't really feel the tragedy. Heck, I'm even dubious about them being so thoughtful when not one of them asks who paid for the Grand Army and all its hardware, and send one guy to apprehend a lethal bounty hunter with no backup.

It's not that I want irresponsible Jedi, it's that the Order is so fucking starchy that again, I don't care about them. It gets to the point why they don't strike me as noble so much as they're just dogmatic about following the rules of the job. This is a story about the downfall of democracy and freedom in which no one makes the case for democracy and freedom!

Because if you want to wag the finger over politics, there are much better ways to go about it and tie it into the rise of the Empire. You can frame it as people embracing authoritarian politics as a matter of strength and perceived safety over freedom, whereas what we got was Palpatine massacring the Jedi, then we are told that he told the Senate and they totally believed it. This is bad writing.

The rule stuff? We've been over this. How many times do I have to say that Lucas should've been just a little clearer about exactly what was forbidden about Anakin and Padme's relationship? And done so in the films as opposed to interviews that I wasn't reading as a child?

The Sequels are relevant in terms of one of them (just one, admittedly) being functionally written and me absorbing just about everything it had to say on my first viewing because the messages are all in the script or on the screen. Because this plainly did not happen with the Prequels due to their poor writing, dull and inexpressive direction and largely wooden performances.

And you know what? Lucas's "lazy voters" thing would land a whole lot better if his trilogy cared for a second about ordinary people instead of spending all its time on the Senators, senior Jedi etc. at the top. I actually count this as a problem with what he decided to do with the Clones, as it removes the potential for families all over the Galaxy to have skin in the game and want the protection of the Empire. That's your "my dad was in New York" material.

I don't want Anakin to be right, but I think it's just plain daft to say that the tragedy was solely the Order relaxing its rules to take in someone who was fundamentally selfish because of a tragic background.

Anakin always being a tosser makes him much less compelling as a tragic villain. There's a reason Macbeth starts out as "worthy Macbeth" and not "thy whiny jerk". I don't want him to be right, I want to see him fall for reasons that aren't stupid. Better yet, have us sympathise properly with his reasons so we recognise the humanity of his awful deeds. As is, it's just how that whiny overgrown child whom I never liked took a quantum leap to become a mass-murderer.

Finally, please stop acting like this is an interpretation unique to me. It's all over the bloody place and it comes from what Lucas put onscreen much more than my personal baggage.

 

[RadiantPhoenix]

Ah, we finally got personal did we?

Coding isn't a matter of stereotyping so much as it's shorthand and AGAIN, it's Lucas failing to overcome the pitfalls of using that without showing us that not all the connotations apply. The Night's Watch and Kingsguard not being 1:1 replicas doesn't make them invalid as comparisons.

Uncharismatic everyone is kind of a big deal in what's meant to be an emotive action-adventure tragedy to the point that I hardly know how to express it. It's a problem because it means that I don't care about anyone in the film. Not one of them. And therefore I don't really feel the tragedy. Heck, I'm even dubious about them being so thoughtful when not one of them asks who paid for the Grand Army and all its hardware, and send one guy to apprehend a lethal bounty hunter with no backup.

It's not that I want irresponsible Jedi, it's that the Order is so fucking starchy that again, I don't care about them. It gets to the point why they don't strike me as noble so much as they're just dogmatic about following the rules of the job. This is a story about the downfall of democracy and freedom in which no one makes the case for democracy and freedom!

The rule stuff? We've been over this. How many times do I have to say that Lucas should've been just a little clearer exactly what was forbidden about Anakin and Padme's relationship? And been in the films as opposed to interviews that I wasn't reading as a child?

The Sequels are relevant in terms of one of them being functionally written and me absorbing just about everything it had to say on my first viewing because the messages are all in the script or on the screen. Because this plainly did not happen with the Prequels due to their poor writing, dull and inexpressive direction and largely wooden performances.

And you know what? Lucas's "lazy voters" thing would land a whole lot better if his trilogy cared for a second about ordinary people instead of spending all its time on the Senators, senior Jedi etc. at the top. I actually count this as a problem with what he decided to do with the Clones, as it removes the potential for families all over the Galaxy to have skin in the game and want the protection of the Empire.

I don't want Anakin to be right, but I think it's just plain daft to say that the tragedy was solely the Order relaxing its rules to take in someone who was fundamentally selfish because of a tragic background.

Anakin always being a tosser makes him much less compelling as a tragic villain. There's a reason Macbeth starts out as "worthy Macbeth" and not "thy whiny jerk". I don't want him to be right, I want to see him fall for reasons that aren't stupid.

Finally, please stop acting like this is an interpretation unique to me. It's all over the bloody place and it comes from what Lucas put onscreen much more than my personal baggage.

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It's been personal since you started using, "I don't relate to them," as an argument for why the Jedi are bad.

Your Clone argument is ass-backwards: Sidious chose a "disposable" army so that voters wouldn't have skin in the game, in order to make it easier for voters to not care.

Likewise, your "tragic background" argument is bullshit: the Order letting Anakin in wasn't the cause of the genocide, or of the fall of the Republic. The cause was political and advanced by the Sith, and in the grand scheme of things, Sidious Turning Anakin was basically his victory lap. In fact, I think he probably made himself more vulnerable to make it happen -- he didn't have to out himself and face the Council in combat, he could have just activated Order 66 and then gone to the Senate claiming to have heard of a Jedi plot from the Clones, but he wanted his victory lap and Vader-trophy.

You're basically just making shit up here and flinging it at the wall.

 

[bluntblade]

It's been personal since you started using, "I don't relate to them," as an argument for why the Jedi are bad.

Your Clone argument is ass-backwards: Sidious chose a "disposable" army so that voters wouldn't have skin in the game, in order to make it easier for voters to not care.

Likewise, your "tragic background" argument is bullshit: the Order letting Anakin in wasn't the cause of the genocide, or of the fall of the Republic. The cause was political and advanced by the Sith, and in the grand scheme of things, Sidious Turning Anakin was basically his victory lap. In fact, I think he probably made himself more vulnerable to make it happen -- he didn't have to out himself and face the Council in combat, he could have just activated Order 66 and then gone to the Senate claiming to have heard of a Jedi plot from the Clones, but he wanted his victory lap and Vader-trophy.

You're basically just making shit up here and flinging it at the wall.

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Within the dramatic construct of the film, not relating to the Jedi makes it harder to engage with the tragedy of their fall. I can appreciate that them dying is bad, but I don't feel it half as much as I should. The film has failed to make me care.

Motivated it may have been, but that doesn't mean it's well-executed. Necause Lucas isn't really depicting the citizens of the Republic and how they don't care, it's a redundant point, and in the context of the films it puts a very real ceiling on our emotional involvement. Lucas again fails to dramatise the argument he's pushing.

Then it's all external stuff that the Jedi were powerless to avert, which isn't that interesting in terms of tragedy. Name me one of the great, resonant tragedies which aren't founded on the hero's tragic flaws. Because the only film I can think of where nothing is the tragic hero's fault and it's the cruel world conspiring against him is The Room.

And a better story would position Anakin's fall as the fulcrum (as the actual film would seem to try to) and tie it to the wider disaster because it means that we have a microcosm of what Palpatine's doing on a Galactic scale. As it is, we apparently have a story about lazy, apathetic voters tied to the tale of a man who surrendered to his base passions. That's some real thematic dissonance there.

 

[RadiantPhoenix]

Within the dramatic construct of the film, not relating to the Jedi makes it harder to engage with the tragedy of their fall. I can appreciate that them dying is bad, but I don't feel it half as much as I should. The film has failed to make me care.

Motivated it may have been, but that doesn't mean it's well-executed. Necause Lucas isn't really depicting the citizens of the Republic and how they don't care, it's a redundant point, and in the context of the films it puts a very real ceiling on our emotional involvement. Lucas again fails to dramatise the argument he's pushing.

Then it's all external stuff that the Jedi were powerless to avert, which isn't that interesting in terms of tragedy. Name me one of the great, resonant tragedies which aren't founded on the hero's tragic flaws. Because the only film I can think of where nothing is the tragic hero's fault and it's the cruel world conspiring against him is The Room.

And a better story would position Anakin's fall as the fulcrum (as the actual film would seem to try to) and tie it to the wider disaster because it means that we have a microcosm of what Palpatine's doing on a Galactic scale. As it is, we apparently have a story about lazy, apathetic voters tied to the tale of a man who surrendered to his base passions. That's some real thematic dissonance there.

Click to shrink...

Why do you need to relate to someone to be horrified by the villains genociding them? Do you think the only people who are people are the people who look and think like you? WTF?

Anakin's fall is driven by his flaws, but the Jedi as a group were just outmatched, unsupported, and trapped. Anakin could have saved the Jedi, maybe, but only because Palpatine deliberately left himself open to Anakin, which he only did because he was confident that Anakin would surrender and serve him, but if he weren't there, that opening wouldn't have existed.

 

[Zimmerwald1915]

Why do you need to relate to someone to be horrified by the villains genociding them? Do you think the only people who are people are the people who look and think like you? WTF?

Click to shrink...

I was going to "like" this post for this point (if you believe Aristotle and Nietzsche, character relatability is counterproductive to engagement with tragedy, because tragic figures are larger-than-life heroes and aristocrats - it's not until Arthur Miller that we even get a theoretic acknowledgement that "relatable" figures can be tragic at all), but then you had to go and quote Pocahontas.

And really, @bluntblade, it sounds from what you're saying more like you're consciously hardening your heart on principle against the film's attempts to elicit emotion from you, rather than responding unconsciously to the designs and actions of, and consequences to, the characters themselves.

 

[RadiantPhoenix]

I was going to "like" this post for this point (if you believe Aristotle, character relatability is not necessary to engage with a tragedy, which is supposed to create pity of and fear for the characters), but then you had to go and quote Pocahontas.

Click to shrink...

Is there something I should be more aware of about Pocahontas or that particular song?

 

[bluntblade]

Why do you need to relate to someone to be horrified by the villains genociding them? Do you think the only people who are people are the people who look and think like you? WTF?

Anakin's fall is driven by his flaws, but the Jedi as a group were just outmatched, unsupported, and trapped. Anakin could have saved the Jedi, maybe, but only because Palpatine deliberately left himself open to Anakin, which he only did because he was confident that Anakin would surrender and serve him, but if he weren't there, that opening wouldn't have existed.

Click to shrink...

For the same reason any blockbuster should have you emphathising with the heroes or goodies in general. Because if you don't, you can only respond to the texture of things that happen to them, it doesn't really lodge in the heart for me. We should feel like we understand them; we should feel like we are losing them, and I don't feel that.

Oh, thanks for accusing me of being a fucking racist by the way!

You're missing the point. I think that for dramatic purposes, we feel it more, paradoxically, if the Jedi have a tragic flaw which opens them to their defeat. As Johnson clearly saw it, they slid into complacency which allowed the thing which they'd stood against for so long to come back and wiped them out.

It's just a part of good storytelling. It's Gondor being on the ropes due to that complacency after Sauron's defeat.

To be clear, courtesy of the racism accusation I'm done with this argument. That's below the belt.

@Zimmerwald1915 I see where you're coming from, but I don't feel anything watching that sequence, which is what's weird for me. For context, I'm a cryer at films. Paige Tico's death? Breaks me.

 

[RadiantPhoenix]

For the same reason any blockbuster should have you emphathising with the heroes or goodies in general. Because if you don't, you can only respond to the texture of things that happen to them, it doesn't really lodge in the heart for me. We should feel like we understand them; we should feel like we are losing them, and I don't feel that.

Oh, thanks for accusing me of being a fucking racist by the way!

You're missing the point. I think that for dramatic purposes, we feel it more, paradoxically, if the Jedi have a tragic flaw which opens them to their defeat. As Johnson clearly saw it, they slid into complacency which allowed the thing which they'd stood against for so long to come back and wiped them out.

It's just a part of good storytelling. It's Gondor being on the ropes due to that complacency after Sauron's defeat.

To be clear, courtesy of the racism accusation I'm done with this argument. That's below the belt.

@Zimmerwald1915 I see where you're coming from, but I don't feel anything watching that sequence, which is what's weird for me. For context, I'm a cryer at films. Paige Tico's death? Breaks me.

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Putting aside your demand that people be like you in order for you to care about them, I assume you're talking about the director of TLJ? Could you provide an actual quote on this? Preferably from the author outside of the work, but providing an exact and extended quote from the movie and context (e.g.: character is trapped in a cycle of depression and unreasonable self-blame) is a decent back-up.