CT ESB - Yoda trained Obi-Wan?

So as I sit here rewatching TESB, I noticed that in Luke's vision of Obi-Wan on Hoth, Obi-wan tells him to go to Dagobah to find Yoda, the Jedi Master who trained him. Obviously,Qui-gon was Obi-wan's master, but did Yoda contribute in some direct way as well? Or should we assume that because Yoda instructed Dooku and Dooku instructed Qui-gon, that indirectly Yoda did indeed train Obi-wan?

 

I think the current view is that Yoda trains all the little kids (as in Attack of the Clones) so he trained Obi-Wan in that capacity. However, at the time ESB was made, it seems like it was just supposed to be that Obi-Wan was Yoda's apprentice.

 

That's a really good point. I forgot about Yoda's role as youngling-instructor. Like you said though, at the time they most likely intended for Yoda to be Obi-wan's master. It just stuck out to me because the George and his team did a really good job about staying true to things said and done in the original trilogy. They even paid attention to some pretty subtle remarks made. But oh well, I suppose they couldn't catch everything

 

In one of the early drafts of ESB, Yoda trained both Ben and Luke's father (who wasn't the same character as Darth Vader at that point in the plans), and on Dagobah if I'm not mistaken. By the time the movie was shot, the 'Luke's father' aspect would obviously be reconfigured so that Ben would have trained him instead (since it was established in ANH that Vader started his training under Ben, and the Darth Vader and Luke's father characters were being merged), I wouldn't be particularly surprised if the rest of that early conception was still floating around there as backstory for the rest of the OT. Meaning something like, Ben Kenobi seeking out the Jedi Master Yoda in his life-suffused swamp home, to learn about the Force. Yoda, in the days when the OT was being made, was supposed to be a sort of guru. He taught others about the Force but didn't go out and fight or anything.

 

It's possible that Ben Kenobi told him that for Luke to understand that Yoda is someone above him who may have counciled him back in his early days. I don't think Ben was outright saying Yoda was his Jedi Master, but someone who was a major influence to him.

 

Obi-Wan even hinted in TPM that he had received some training by Yoda in a comment he made to Qui-Gon.

 

We don't know much about the development of The Phantom Menace, but Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan's relationships and relative ages seem to have flip-flopped around. I can't remember but I think there may have been a point when they were just supposed to be more or less colleagues (?), or Qui-Gon was supposed to be a 'mentor' who wasn't in the entire story but only part of it. That would certainly provide a transitional story-form between the OT conception and what ended up in the prequels.

 

Obi-Wan actually states that Yoda was "the Jedi Master who instructed me". But yes, the purpose of the scene with Yoda and the younglings was to establish that Yoda is the Jedi instructor for all the younglings until they are assigned to a Jedi.

 

And he's been known to refer to characters like Dooku as "my old Padawan" - despite later tie-in materials clarifying that Dooku's Padawanship was actually under another Master, Thame Cerulian:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Thame_Cerulian

This was resolved as Yoda giving Dooku a lot of extra instruction during this period.

 

Yeah, but that's EU material. I was just taking the movies into account.

 

true. Still, I could see Yoda, as Grand Master, and for 800 years the Trainer of Younglings- not having time to take a full time Padawan himself and traipse round the galaxy- but occasionally referring to his most advanced students as "my Padawans" despite it not being technically correct.

 

Sure, I wouldn't have a problem with that addition if Yoda hadn't directly address him as "Padawan". It just seems an(other) unnecessary contradiction from the EU.

 

Maybe. I liked that particular novel that introduced Thame though.

 

They were supposed to be collegues as Obi-wan was supposed to have gone alone to Utapau/Naboo to meet with the Trade Federation and then on to Tatooine. Once Lucas began to go in a different direction, he came up with the training methods as established in AOTC. This was first put out in the EU with the release of both "Jedi Rebellion" and more detailed in "The Rising Force". In fact, the latter had expressly reconciled things and it was only through AOTC, that the larger audience got that. Well, the ones who didn't go, "WTF?"

That's not really a contradiction. Yoda refers to the Youngling who answered the question as a Padawan. The Younglings were still Padawans and they were all his Padawans, regardless of the introduction of Thame in the EU.

 

Obi-Wan never said Yoda trained him, he said Yoda instructed him, it's a stretch but it can be interpreted simply as Yoda was the one who told Obi-Wan to watch over Luke and possibly gave him advice over the years after Order 66. Yoda may have told Obi-Wan to bring prospective Jedi to him for training. I don't know why SW writers choose to go this route when it would be easy to go with established storylines, but instead we find out that Obi-Wan was never Yoda's padawan and Dooku was never Yoda's padawan.

 

Correction: they were all padawans. That does not make them his padawans. Does Yoda calling Anakin a padawan make Anakin HIS padawan? Essentially Yoda is like the teacher than they all had for a certain class. Not their homeroom teacher that they spent all day with.

 

Yoda didn't train Anakin, whereas he did with the ones we see in AOTC and the others. This falls back on Lucas's idea of a Force guru for Yoda, by having him be the oldest and most experienced of all Jedi. Thus allowing him to have trained many of the Jedi during his lifetime, but in Anakin's case, he wasn't going to and so Qui-gon was going to. And then he made Obi-wan promise to do it, since he was dying. It wasn't just for one class. It was the ways of the Force. There were other Jedi who did other things, like Lightsaber combat and basic education, but the Force was supposed to be Yoda's department. Especially early on.

 

The introduction of Qui-Gon was an unnecessary contradiction from the PT to the OT.

 

True. It's the "Fought well you have, my old Padawan" line that led people to think that Yoda trained Dooku all the way to Jedi Knight status.

 

Yeah I don't know why they moved away form that trail of thought. Imagine if Yoda saw so much potential in Dooku, that Dooku was the one padawan he took on in his 900 years as a Jedi, but he ends up being the biggest failure of the Jedi. That would have been a great story arc, and brought Obi-Wan's line "I thought I could instruct him as well as Yoda" full circle.

 

Yoda trained lots of Jedi, I am sure that he trained Obi-Wan to some degree more than he trained Anakin. The first thought I had was proximity to the Jedi council. If Obi-Wan lived in the outer rim he may have only heard about Yoda.

 

It's a little thing called a "retcon".

 

It's funny, I never even thought about all that until now lol, but yeah Obi-Wan does tell Luke that Yoda trained him. Even when Yoda is in communication with Obi-Wan, Kenobi mentions that he was not much younger when Yoda began training him

 

Obi-Wan probably took a few electives, some art appreciation with Yoda while in school.

That scene with all those little kids with baby lightsabers was painful to watch. So painful.

 

Actually:

Yoda: "Much anger in him. Like his father"
Ben: "Was I any different when you taught me?"

Ben was not responding to the "He is too old" remark. Which comes after this, anyway - Luke's the only one who responds to it:

Luke: "But I've learned so much."