Yoda's mysterious pseudo-axioms.

In each PT movie, Yoda says something to punctuate the end of a scene only to then receive an ironic, metaphorical commentary/response from another character's next spoken line (despite the transitional gap between their "conversation").

TPM:
Yoda: "Your apprentice, Skywalker will be."
...FUNERAL...
Skywalker: "What will happen to me now?"

In other words, Anakin becoming Obi-Wan's apprentice in and of itself has nothing to do with Anakin's future. "This is what will happen to you." "What?"

AOTC:
Yoda: "Very good."
...BATTLE...
Gunray: "This is not looking good at all."

Yoda sure sounds a lot like the Emperor, complete with cane-assisted walking down the platform. "This is good." "Wrong."

ROTS:
Yoda: "Failed, I have."
...LAVA DUEL...
Kenobi: "I have failed you, Anakin."

Yoda failed in general and Obi-Wan failed a specific person, this failing itself the result of Yoda's failure 13 years prior in allowing for the situation to occur. "I failed." "Me too."

What does everyone think about the authoritative words of Yoda trailing off into the galaxy only to be tangentially picked up and spun around by another character as if they were referring to what he had just said?

 

It's from different points of view, so that could be one reason for this.

 

Huh...I'm not really sure what to make of that. Interesting, though.

 

Wow, that's deep!

 

Welcome back, MisterVader! As always, very interesting.

If memory serves...

TPM

Yoda: "I sense much fear in you."

---

Jar Jar: "Yousa thinkin' yousa people gonna die?"

(Self-explanatory.)



ROTS

Yoda: "And a little more knowledge might light our way."

---

Gunray: "The plan has gone as you had promised, my Lord."

(Yoda and Gunray are both useful idiots who did their fair part to deliver the galaxy into the hands of the Devil. The difference? Yoda confesses his lack of vision, and in doing so, makes his first baby-steps toward redemption; the obtuse Gunray is ignorant of the full breadth of "the plan"--greed being his powerful ally--and is consequently betrayed and murdered.

 

Thank you, drg4 and everyone else.

Something else of particular interest in the "exchange" of Yoda and Jar Jar in TPM ("Much fear I sense in you." "Yousa thinkin' yousa people gonna die?") is that Padmé's position on-screen looking out the window in TPM is identical to Anakin's as he does the same thing in the council chamber in ROTS. He's thinking that his people (Padmé, his unborn child) are going to die. Not to mention that Jar Jar's first appearance in the swamp, up to and including his dismissal by and effort to guide a Jedi, is remarkably akin to Yoda's first appearance in TESB.

The subversion of Yoda's unchallenged OT wisdom continues in other aspects of the PT as well. The exchange between Anakin and Obi-Wan before their duel in ROTS is ridiculously scathing in this respect.

Anakin: "If you're not with me, then you're my enemy."
Obi-Wan: "Only a Sith deals in absolutes. I will do what I must."
Anakin: "You will try."

This dialogue is followed by the beginning of the duel and then Yoda's "forceful" entrance into Palpatine's office.

Yoda: "I hear a new apprentice you have, Emperor. Or should I call you Darth Sidious?"
Palpatine: "Master Yoda, you survived."
Yoda: "Surprised?"
Palpatine: "Your arrogance blinds you Master Yoda. Now you will experience the full power of the dark side."

Obi and Ani are riffing on Yoda's "Do. Or do not. There is no try," revealing a chain of Jedi hypocrisy when it comes to the topic of absolutes. Don't try. Just do or don't. There's an absolute if there ever was one! And even Obi-Wan's "ONLY a Sith..." makes the same mistake, and his "I will do what I must" is eerily similar to Qui-Gon's rigid "I shall do what I must" from TPM, which was even aimed at Obi-Wan himself in reference to his disapproval of Anakin's initial training!

Yoda is metaphorically Sidious' new apprentice--his arrogant, absolutist, FUTURE failings from a previous movie "surviving" from beyond. Yoda is symbolically "experiencing the dark side" through his ignorant follies--only a Sith deals in absolutes? Then Yoda's a Sith. Not only Sith deal in absoultes? Then it's a shame that Yoda's philosophy backfired so wildly. Then again, maybe "the Sith and the Jedi are similar in almost every way." It's not "surprising" that Yoda ended up as an exiled swamp hermit at all, but the irony of this result is fascinating to no end.

In short, Yoda's axiom is deconstructed before our eyes and ears--and immediately afterward, he literally walks in and enhances our increasingly hard-boiled opinion of him by acting a fool. This then causes a disturbance in the Force, i.e., in the movies, an echoing tension between parts and whole, exploding divergent implications throughout everything he's ever said or done.

The message here, in my opinion, is that clear-cut answers are easy and intellectually dishonest. It is not the case that the PT is morally ambiguous compared to the OT, but instead that its morality is more advanced, disillusioned, and in-line with the multiperspectival per se. These movies engage with their opposites more thoroughly than almost any other movies I've seen, and the effect is that situations and ideas are explored and problematized as opposed to being heaped together into reconciled, consoling, false assertions about reality. The PT questions the authority of the OT and itself at every turn, and this is one of the underlying principles that makes it valuable to me.