Saga Lucas' original Jedi plan

It's clearly a Chiang painting, and he was the one who used that type of uniform in other paintings before. He also had less stuff used in AOTC than in TPM, and didn't work on ROTS at all. I heard somewhere online (so take it with a grain of salt) that he was a bit frustrated that the design aesthetics of the prequel movies were moving farther from what he established in TPM/what his work looks like. He might have used this design just because he felt it looked better, even though it wouldn't get used. And/or, because it's viewed from the back here, it's hard to tell if this is truly a different design for the Jedi uniform or is just a Chiang-ized stylization of it.

There's a painting he did of the Jedi fighting Dooku in which it's easier to see the costume's details. If I'm remembering everything correctly, there are shoulder pads and gauntlets, but it's not quite as ornate as the TPM options.

There are a number of possibilities relating to this:

1. Chiang simply liked that design better.

2. We know they were developing new/altered looks for some Jedi costumes (The Art of Episode II). What they ended up with was close to what was in TPM, but perhaps they thought there might be room for more variation. Of course, when doing the Clone Wars tv series, the characters were shown with just those sorts of additions to the Jedi robes, so maybe there was something going on behind the scenes? Some back-and-forth, perhaps?

3. We don't know at what stage of the script-writing process those paintings were done. The AOTC script was finished exceptionally late, and because of that - or even just because of the way concept departments are dealt with sometimes - the artists might have only had very general ideas of the context of certain work. It's possible, for example, that the landing pad painting was 'a Jedi confronting Boba Fett and the young clone boy X designed last week.' In such a case, perhaps he just threw in his 'generic cool-looking Jedi.'

Also, some of Ed Natividad's drawings for Obi-Wan (?) on Kamino have him with a ponytail/topknot. And Chiang's drawings for the droid factory sequence - done in reshoots, so it was late in the process - show Anakin with film-accurate attire, though it's still Chiang-ized (anything he draws will bear his own style, even if it's clearly supposed to be the film costume).

I hope we will see some elegant jedi wearing the newest fashion like Lucien Draay in future sw movies.

But we did not! There're actually very few visual links between TPM and OT. Artoo, lightsabers, villains in black cloaks, Tatooine, Jabba's cameo and maybe the area where the duel takes place. Jedi garb is instantly recognizable, just like the lightsabers. We're all used to it now, but when I saw TPM first, it didn't feel like a familiar Star Wars universe at all (or almost).

I agree with the sentiment, but I think they were stuck after ROTJ. Imagine as a newcomer to the saga watching I-VI - the peasant robes would look out of place in ROTJ if you hadn't seen them in the PT as a standard Jedi outfit.

I agree, absolutely.

There was potential for something really exciting and creative, showing the Jedi to be far more than we ever imagined. When I heard about the prequels I thought the stuff in the OT would be the tip of the iceberg in terms of the Jedi. I think far more could have been done, to be honest. Lucas sacrificed, "Holy ****, that's what the Jedi used to look like-!" for, "That's obviously the Jedi."

Thankfully, a lot of the comicbooks and video games have experimented with the Jedi in both appearance and character.

It's easier for comic books, games and even TCW: they don't have to worry as much about consistency.

They better come up with something creative in the ST

@Darth_Nub BTW here's the image I meant (not the best scan, but good enough for now):



The Jedi really do wear leather boots in the films. Perhaps it's just the way Chiang likes to paint leather (though the arm braces and shoulder pads are different... and the specific sheen of the leather is rather more like Luke's boots in ROTJ). It's hard to see Obi-Wan here. I wonder if there's a better version of this image online somewhere.

This is a good point, and should be emphasized. The Jedi having a distinctive look to them would defeat the much of the purpose of the Jedi. Remember, what we see in the PT is an anomaly - they're really not soldiers or military leaders, and even in AoTC pretty much have to be dragged into that role when there's seemingly no other choice. Most of the time, they're supposed to be more like James Bond - secret agents who can fight when they need to, but do a lot of investigating, infiltration, negotiation and such. Because of that, the ability to blend in to the background and to not stand out as Jedi Knights on first glance is really important. Having a "Jedi look" to them would be like FBI or CIA agents who were supposed to be doing undercover work going around wearing black suits and sunglasses and looking like Hugo Weaving in the Matrix movies.

So Jedi tend to wear the simplest and most nondescript (species and culture-appropriate) things they can. Remember, in ANH, Obi-Wan and Owen are dressed virtually identically. They're just simple working-class clothes. If there were Jedi on Earth, they'd wear jeans and pullovers.

A lot more people than just Jedi wear robes and hoods. Jedi wore them so that they wouldn't have some stylish wardrobe that made them higher in status than everyone else. The Jedi served the Republic, and so went by peasant's robes.

Ben's old robe seems a lot like everyone else's on Tatooine.

IMO I like the whole robe thing

Even Luke's outfit in ROTJ doesn't stand out much.

It could also just be a tradition of Force wielders to wear robes. I've always seen the correlation between the Jedi and the monks of our history, like the Shaolin monks and and monks of christianity. Jedi are kinda like the knights templer or hospitalers...