"He is the chosen one...he will...bring balance...train him!"

You're limiting yourself to only the PT when in the OT we see that they have let go entirely and yet the Jedi's teachings haven't changed. Qui-Gon seems to have taught them something, but the Jedi still teach letting go, selflessness, resisting the Dark Side, and letting the Force guide you. It also wouldn't invalidate their message even if they had as of yet been unable to achieve it. They were still right that Anakin needed to let go, something that even Anakin eventually comes to see is the truth.

I'd say all Qui-Gon taught them was letting go of their physical self, as even if they had let go of their attachments and were selfless, they wouldn't ghost without that part.

All Qui-Gon needed to do is tell Obi-Wan to make sure Anakin is trained rather than telling him to train him. Qui-Gon accurately assessed that Obi-Wan would become a far greater Jedi Knight than he was.

 

The trick with attachments is that you cannot have fear, anger and hate. Anakin had fear, anger and hate for those in his life that he cared for and the end result is that he became evil.


What is easily said is cannot be easily achieved. It amazes me that the Jedi never realized this. It also amazes me that they never realized that one cannot simply let go of all attachments. There is a time or moment when a person should finally realize that he or she is ready to let go of attachments. But forcing yourself to not have attachments, because that is a pre-requisite for being part of a religious order sounds rather ridiculous to me. And resorting to rules and lectures in order to make sure that an individual does not have emotional attachments also seems rather stupid. Which is what the Jedi struck me as being in the PT - including the so-called "all wise" Yoda.

 

No one ever said it was easy. That's why Yoda tells Anakin to train himself to let go of all he fears to lose. That's it. That's all it is. It's not that hard to do. You go out in the world, do you let fear stop you? No, you don't. How do you do it? By conditioning yourself to be not afraid. That's there is to it. A Jedi must not have attachment as we see, because the power that they weild is strengthened by emotion. And when that happens, the dark side takes ahold. It presents a lie which the person believes because the Force shouldn't lie to them. It can do all these wonderful things, why can't it do this? By not having attachments, will a Jedi avoid the dark side.

 

If following the Jedi code were easy, Yoda wouldn't need to lecture Luke about how being a Jedi requires the "deepest commitment" etc. But, while it may be difficult to adhere to the code, it is not impossible. Jedi are supposed to be mentally disciplined enough to do it, in the same way a martial artist has to have mental discipline in order to break 20 bricks with a chop. Its not unreasonable for the Jedi to expect their padawans to adhere to it, regardless of how tough we might think it is. Luke had a few months of training at the most, with a single Jedi Master, after receiving a couple of bare minimum rudimentary lessons from Obi-Wan Kenobi, before he faced the Dark Side and won. Anakin had over a decade to train, with plenty of Jedi Masters to help, including the same two that end up training Luke later, and when he was faced with the choice to stay with the Light or go Dark, he chose Darkness. If the Jedi code were impossibly tough, how is it that Luke had enough self-discipline after only a few months training, and Anakin did not, after over 10 years worth? The failure is Anakin's.

 

Indeed. Though, you should probably copy and paste that over into the Anakin/Jedi failure thread.

 

It's not supposed to be easy. The Dark Side is 'quicker, easier, more seductive.'

"It will be a hard life; one without reward, without remorse, without regret. A path will be placed before you. The choice is yours alone. Do what you think you cannot do. It will be a hard life, but you will find out who you are.". - Qui-Gon Jinn

 

That's not in the movie. Sooo it must be EU, and not everybody uses/reads that EU stuff.

 

^^^



Of course Yoda needs some serious Jinn to go along with that bitter 'exile' tonic!

(Sx3 - please excuse the 'EU' references that follow!)

From Polis Massa:

YODA: A great Jedi Master, you have become, Qui-Gon Jinn. Your apprentice I gratefully become.

Then, on the Tantive IV:

YODA: An old friend has learned the path to immortality.

OBI-WAN: Who?

YODA: One who has returned from the netherworld of the Force to train me . . . your old Master, Qui-Gon Jinn.

Suddenly, the rebel Jedi ideologue Qui-Gon Jinn is idolized, placed upon an intellectual pedestal by his vaunted Jedi Council doubter.

With his dying words, as Jinn walked that thin line teetering upon the edge of the living force, he is adamant about training Anakin. He KNOWS something that the rest of the Jedi refuse to see. The Jedi seemingly half-heartedly grant Jinn's dying 'wish,' and pay the terrible price for their self-inflated arrogance and constipated training of the Chosen One. The price for that arrogance? Jedi after Jedi staring into the horrific mask of Darth Vader, the Emperor's attack dog, as he hunts them to their death.

Moral to the story: "Never look a gift force in the mouth!"

 

Yoda never doubted that the Sith had returned or that Anakin was the Chosen One(other than in RotS, but that was 13 years after Qui-Gon's death.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MACE WINDU: I do not believe the Sith could have returned without us knowing.

YODA: Ah, hard to see, the dark side is.

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YODA: Confer on you, the level of Jedi Knight the Council does. But agree on you taking this boy as your Padawan learner, I do not.

OBI-WAN: Qui-Gon believed in him.

YODA: The Chosen One the boy may be; nevertheless, grave danger I fear in his training.

OBI-WAN: Master Yoda, I gave Qui-Gon my word. I will train Anakin. Without the approval of the Council if I must.

YODA: Qui-Gon's defiance I sense in you. Need that, you do not. Agree with you, the council does. Your apprentice, Skywalker will be.

Don't get me started on how Lucas's decision to lower Yoda to the level of being Qui-Gon's apprentice hurts the story.

 

You know I'm down with the dirty, nitty gritty, I'm always quoting the Novels.

I knew I liked Jinn for reason.

They failed indeed. They failed to train him well enough, so that he WOULDN'T make the choices that he made. Too stern on the wrong things, too lax when it came to others. After reading the EU, that boy needed a few good old fashioned arse-whoopins, and should have been held more accountable as a young adult... neither happened and the results were tragic when he became a man.

 

They trained him well enough. It was up to Anakin to follow through on that training. Qui-gon believed whole heartedly that the boy would succeed, despite what the Council believed.

 

Luke had yet to learn of his abilities, the true fate of his father, how his mother died. Yet "from a certain point of view" Obi-Wan and to a large degree Leia were responsible for the death of Owen and Beru. Luke resolutely accepts his aunt and uncle's death as the work of the Empire and uses it as inspiration to follow Ben and be like his 'dead' father.

Anakin leaves his mother alive on Tatooine. His thoughts dwell on her as he stands before the council simply because she is still alive. There is no evil Empire to hate, as with Luke. There are only the Jedi and the Republic. And both keep him from his mother. When he has visions of her suffering, he does not go to the Jedi with his concerns. Could this be a reaction instilled by Anakin's initial appearance before the council, when they chastised him for having attachments to Shmi?

Anakin keeps this immense worry to himself. Only when he confides in Padme after his nightmare does he express his concerns and gain the courage to determine his mother's fate. When Shmi is found near death, ultimately dying in his arms, Anakin blames both himself and the entire Jedi order for her death, for his blind allegiance to the order 'in his mind' resulted in her capture and death at the hands of the Tusken raiders. So while Luke was inspired to hate the Empire, Anakin had a growing dislike for the Republic.

Ben led Anakin to the Jedi arts, while Palpatine paved the path Anakin would take toward the dark side. Palpatine soothed Anakin as he was forced to 'conform' by the Jedi after Qui-Gon's death, whle Luke was openly cherished as a "new hope" for the almost vanquished Jedi order. Father and son had similar but vastly different growing experiences, but Luke was seen as special by Ben and Yoda while Anakin was seen that way only by Jinn, who dies very early in his Jedi experience. The rest of the Jedi doubt both Jinn and Anakin. Could this be "why they fail!"

Had the Jedi nurtured Anakin as Ben and Yoda later do Luke, its is quite possible that Anakin might have fulfilled his Chosen One status under entirely different circumstances, remaining a Jedi throughout the entire process. The reality of the OT coming first precludes that possibility as a matter of circumstance, and so my opinion is only speculation regarding non-linear circumstances. Yet the clear fact remains that the Jedi order failedl Anakin, somehow learn their lesson and use that with Anakin's son, then do all in their power (aided by Jinn) to NOT fail Luke as they did Anakin.

 

That's because it was the Empire's fault. The Stormtroopers are the ones who massacred the innocent Owen and Beru, not Leia and Ben.

That wouldn't surprise me. It's also probably because Anakin knows that the Jedi will simply tell him to let go of his attachments rather than going to Tatooine to see if anything has happened.

No. Yoda acknowledged Anakin may be the Chosen One. YODA: The Chosen One the boy may be; nevertheless, grave danger I fear in his training. The Jedi also never say Jinn fails. Anakin does, but that's because he decides to let the galaxy become enslaved, the Jedi destroyed, and the Republic perverted to save his wife.

Luke is also a far better person than Anakin was(largely because he wasn't raised with a Sith Lord whispering in his ear.) He understands why the Jedi's wisdom is correct and is willing to confront the harsh truths of the world(such as "No, I am your father.") when Anakin flees from them ("You must let go of that which you fear to lose.")

 

CHRON!!!

you are the Master of this domain.
Your summation/synopsis/soliloquy (even though you did address us) was spot on.
The son and the father share very little in terms of their upbringings. The Jedi failed to bring the best out of Anakin, that's how I see it. The danger actually wasn't in his late start, the danger was how they handled his late start. People can say what they want, but the Jedi look like absolute fools for not paying to free Shmi.


And what about Padme? A queen no-less. I'm sure she could afford the price of a slave. All her outfits may have been worth squat in the Outer Rim, but I bet they cost a pretty penny back on Naboo. She's lucky Anakin didn't think about that in the garage; otherwise, she might have gotten Force choked long before she ever made it to Mustafar.

 

Anakin understood that Padme didn't go back for Shmi. He also understood the Jedi or the Republic. What bothered him was that he couldn't save his mother, not that she was still living on Tatooine. He was afraid that he couldn't protect her from harm.

 

Following that logic, its Bail's fault, as he is the one that sent Leia to Tatooine to find Ben in the first place. But, it removes the aspect of personal responsibility. Leia didn't order the deaths of Owen and Beru. Even with the droids having been purchased, that didn't require Darth Vader to order the executions of whoever purchased them, regardless of whether he knew it was his stepbrother or not. The Empire, the Stormtroopers that actually did it, and Darth Vader, who gave the order, are responsible for the deaths of Owen and Beru Lars, not Leia or Ben. Even if you accept a certain point of view, I fail to see how Obi-Wan had anything to do with it, nor how Leia is responsible to a large degree. She gives R2D2 the plans, however she was uninvolved in R2D2's decision to use the escape pod, uninvolved in the Jawas decision to take R2 and C3PO, unnvolved in their decision to stop near the Lars farmstead, uninvolved in Owen and Luke's purchasing of R2D2 and C3PO, uninvolved in the Empire finding out who the Jawas sold them to, uninvolved in Vader's decision to execute anyone. IF you refuse to accept the direct responsibility of the Empire, and blame Leia, then at best, you can state she made a decision that eventually led to their deaths, through a chain of events that she acted as a catalyst for, completely unintentionally. And how is it Ben's fault? He doesn't run into Luke until after all of the events are set in motion. All of this occurs while Luke is out looking for R2D2, and meets Ben. These events and the deaths of the Lars are somewhat concurrent. Ben had nothing to do with that string of events.

You should have stopped after your first sentence. ANAKIN leaves his mother alive on Tatooine. Thats exactly right. ANAKIN leaves. It was his choice to leave her there. The Jedi didn't keep him from his mother, his decision that he wanted to be trained did. Qui-Gon never promised Anakin that he would be able to visit, never promised him that Shmi would be protected from all harm. They didn't keep Anakin from his mother, his commitment did. Anakin was not forced to become a Jedi, he chose to become one.

Considering he slaughters the entire Tusken village, I think its safer to say that he laid the primary blame for Shmi's death on them, not the Jedi. Please, find evidence that Anakin blamed the Jedi for her death from the films...you could perhaps argue that he blamed himself for not being powerful enough, but, where does he lay the blame for Shmi's death on the Jedi?

 

Its far easier to give personal attention to one Jedi apprentice than it is to a galaxy of thousands.

--Then shame on them for getting too big for their own britches.

 

Yeah, because 20 lost Jedi since the Great Sith War (EU) out of tens of thousands is proof the Jedi way was a failure...

NOT. Anakin is a statistical anomaly for the Jedi. The Jedi hadn't gotten too big for their own britches, Anakin was just too into himself to commit to the Jedi way fully. Funny how none of the other Jedi who were trained had any problems learning how to cope with the "lack" of personal attention...Sorry, but if it works for 99.999% of Jedi, I would say failures are due to character flaws within the individual failing, not the system. The system works. The Jedi success rate proves it. It took a Sith plot, that needed to be in the highest reaches of the Republic to undo it. The Sith had to take control of the entire galaxy in order to eliminate the Jedi. It took an absolutely masterful job by Palpatine to succeed. If Palpatine had to go to such great lengths to wipe out the Jedi, obviously the Jedi earned their position.

 

Davi is right. It lies more on Anakin than anyone else. But we're getting too far off course, as we already have a topic on the issue of Anakin's failures.

 

Great lengths?
Palpatine didn't lift a finger until ROTS. He did it all from the comfort of his posh office/ hideout. Yer right DS, time to get back on topic.

 

I think its very easy to get this topic off course towards the failure thread, because I think they are really closely related to each other. Anakin's character flaws are behind both the Jedi Council thinking it would be dangerous to train him, despite Qui-Gon's wishes, and later on, lead to Anakin's corruption/turn to the Dark Side. The Jedi had no choice but to train Anakin, in my opinion, the alternative, that he could be set loose and the Sith get him was too great a chance to take. So, their hands were forced...What is really the issue here is Anakin's character, which is also what is the real issue with the "failure" thread. Both threads relate to Anakin's character, so I think its understandable that it went off topic towards that.

With that being said, the Jedi were in a pickle. They didn't want to train him, they saw the character flaws, but, they also couldn't abandon him for fear of the Sith getting their hands on him. I stand by my original premise that had the Jedi not trained Anakin, Palpatine would have found the time to do it in secret. Had that happened, even if Anakin still marries Padme, and Luke and Leia are still born, they are born into a Sith legacy, and the galaxy is FUBAR. The Jedi saw the potential anger in Anakin, but, even though he couldn't possibly be a perfect student, they train him anyway. Obi-Wan gets a lot of flak from Anakin apologists, however, what Jedi Master, even Qui-Gon, could have shielded Anakin from the influence of Palpatine? The Force told the Jedi to train Anakin, so they did. Unlike Anakin, they were able to put aside their personal feelings, their doubts, and did what they believed the Force told them to do. They put the will of the Force above their personal feelings regarding Anakin, whereas Anakin puts his personal feelings above the will of the Force.

 

But the Force didn't tell the Jedi to let little Ani go get mentored by a politician.
In so doing, they allowed an outside influence to have a lasting impact on the boy-wonder. They also unwittingly allowed him to form yet another attachment, to Palpatine. Boy did that come back to bite them in the backside. Like the quote from Gladiator, Palp's was the one who poured the honey-potion in Skywalker's ear.

 

It didn't tell them not to allow it either...

 

Based upon Kenobi's dialogue in AOTC about Politicians, we know that the Jedi a leary of them and their motives. So the "Big-Dummies" sign once again, gets hung around their necks for allowing the prodigy to get interned with the type of people they already don't trust. The Jedi keep looking dumber and dumber and dumb....

 

We know Obi-Wan is leary of them, but given that Mace, Yoda, etc. seem to meet with the Chancellor regularly by AotC, the rest of the Order may not feel that way. Mace even suggests telling the Senate that the Jedi`s ability to use the Force has diminished.