PT The Cloud of the Dark Side

I'm not a fan of this story element myself. What do you think?

Is the cloud of the Dark Side anything more than a lazy plot device that enables Palpatine to take over the galaxy from under the noses of the Jedi?

Does it add something to the story rather than simply moving it from A to B without too many questions arising?

I see many aspects of Star Wars in a different light (especially the PT) having read your opinions on here. Good luck

 

The shroud of dark side was a term used by Yoda to describe the lack of foresight the Jedi had about the future at the end of AOTC.

Seeing as Palpatine was slowly gaining more and more control, it was as if the dark side was a giant shroud slowly revealing itself.

 

Ok, I'm probably getting mixed up between the shroud and the clouding of everything.
It's just that it is very convenient that the Jedi's abilities to use the force are diminished. From a storytelling perspective.

 

What is convenient about it? We are never really shown the "diminished powers" of the Jedi, we just hear them talking about it. Yoda and Obi-Wan's powers didn't seem diminished when they were taking on the Sith.

 

I think that their abilities diminish because the Chancellor was so vital in the role of the Republic. The last person that they would suspect to be the Sith Lord would be Palpatine, you could guess.

 

I think their foresight abilities diminish because the Force is no longer in balance. Starting with the Sith and now war, the galaxy is rife with anger, hatred and fear and all everything else is blotted out. So when they reach out into the Force to sense the future they are thrown back by the dominance of the dark side.

 

That makes more sense.

 

I have no reply to this. I just love your icon.

 

I actually liked it. And it dovetails well with ROTJ, where you have this Emperor who is so confident in his foresight and ability, and yet he fails to sense Skywalker right under his nose, and fails to see that his fate is about to fall on him.

His power of sight was diminished as good was being restored to the galaxy.

The force has a will.

 

That's how I saw it. But how the Sith did it was never really explained, though.

 

Read the books about Darth Plagueis, it is more explained in there than in the movies.

 

I did, but I was talking about the films, guy.

 

Yoda said it pretty simply "the shroud of the dark side has fallen." I think the fact that the Sith are now active in the galaxy is enough to shroud the Force in the dark-side.
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The Cloud of the Dark Side gives the Jedi no common sense.

 

I'm fine with it, it's both literal and a metaphor at the same time. The galaxy is becoming a darker place, with all the nasty elements of sentient beings running rampant, with the Force literally becoming darker as a result, and the two feed each other in a vicious cycle. People are making the Force darker by their actions, and a darker Force is inspiring more dark actions in people. Evil is often described as some kind of dark mist in many fantasy stories, and in this case I imagine the mystical energy field that is the Force slowly changing from light to dark.

The Sith accomplished this over centuries by supporting every bit of darkness they could, be it greed, political corruption, injustice, suffering, war, etc. Without the Sith, this darkness could be contained, with the Sith funding it at every opportunity, helping it flourish, it grew beyond the Jedi's control. This is something that is actually hinted at in the movies and is backed up in most EU sources, including Star Wars: Darth Plagueis. However, Darth Plagueis also included meditation as a way of shifting the balance, which I found terrible in both premise and especially execution. (it's literally mentioned as an afterthought)

The Sith are behind it all. It's not that people aren't terrible on their own, it's that with the Sith fomenting as much darkness as possible it becomes greater than it ever could without them, it becomes unnatural, it breaks the balance of nature, the balance of the Force.

The Rebellion and The New Hope actually turn the tide in a very similar manner, but for good.

 

Agreed.

 

It doesn't hinder their physical powers no, this is why it appears to be so convenient.
It has just always seemed to me to be a case of "How am i gonna make it believable that the evil dude's dastardly machinations totally manipulates these superheroes who have an amazing sense of erm...sense, whilst they are working alongside each other?".

And this always seemed the answer to me. "We'll get em to mention it in a chat".

Yeah, its a nice parallel now you have brought it to my attention.
I never questioned how the Emperor could be wrong ,I just always accepted that the future was "difficult to see" and the way it played out in the OT was just the way it played out, nothing was completely predestined, Luke made a choice. No half baked excuse for Palp's poor second sight required.

OK, I like this. I'm not familiar with any EU really (old school Marvel comics, ROTS novelisation aside), in fact it is quite interesting, but it still seems a poorly thought out element in the films themselves.
I roll my eyes and shake my head when it's mentioned, Ah! That's explains your dimwittery, but next time i watch i will bear this in mind.

The Force is mysterious and unexplained itself I suppose. It allows the Jedi to do magic. I've never questioned that. But now I'm arguing with myself.

 

I don't think the mere existence of a prophecy means that everything was predestined. Lucas said something about having the choice to either follow your "destiny" or not follow it, a statement which becomes functionally meaningless if in fact there is really no choice. Always in motion is the future.

 

Have you noticed how Yoda loses his own shroud -- his brown cloak -- in the following movie?

"Failed, I have."

The falling of this metaphysical shroud, or Yoda's glum pronouncement of it, in AOTC, as the last spoken words of the movie (alright: "Begun, this Clone War has"), seemed to dampen the spirit of this elfin Jedi master greatly. In AOTC, unlike TPM, he wears a grey-white cloak. In ROTS, he's back to brown. It's a pretty auspicious detail, but I never see anyone commenting on it.

I wouldn't call it a lazy plot device. I'd call it inevitable. Palpatine -- and George Lucas -- needed some way to trick the Jedi mightily. And as a blinding, distorting, confusing haze, not to mention death-bringing thing (for good and ill), the Dark Side is, perhaps, best represented as a veiling cloud, or, indeed, a shroud (a death garment). Of course, AOTC opens to a planet wreathed in fog (a true "city in the clouds"), with an upside-down camera further adding to the eerie malaise with which its maker apparently sought to invest this poetically jarring middle installment.

In short, I like the "shroud" device. It makes sense (or as much sense as it should) and enriches the mythology in, I think, a coherent and satisfying way. One can actually look back on TPM and say that it might be the only installment where the shroud isn't falling, fallen, or slowly lifting, but simply absent, or descending from such a high height that no-one really notices or feels anything (sans, maybe, Obi-Wan, right at the beginning, who is quickly dismissed for his "bad feeling" of "something elsewhere, elusive"). This shades the abilities characters improbably demonstrate in that installment, like Jar Jar's "luck" on the battlefield, or Anakin's against the occupying droid control shop. The elysium fields of Naboo are sure to slip away as the Force clouds over and becomes less hospitable to the old ways.

The Jedi, in this fashion, do not have a clean hold on things. They are not perched in their tower forever and a day. In this manner, the "shroud" iconography clearly represents change, and is a striking portent of the social cataclysm that awaits them, as well as a measure of how removed from the teleology of the Force -- the ways of life -- they already are. This is interesting because it doesn't so much contrive a situation where the Jedi can't see, but rather, where they are responsible, in large part, for their own decline. Pair up Yoda's prognostications, for instance, with Qui-Gon's sanguine maxim to Anakin: "Your focus determines your reality." The Jedi's focus went bad because they grew old and got stale. Their bureaucratic mentality paralleled that which had festered and taken hold in the Senate. Indeed, Palpatine's promise that he would take hold of the bureaucrats and put an end to corruption is, in fact, a veiled assurance that he would clean up the Jedi Order, by plotting to bring about its downfall. THEY are the bureaucrats. THEY are the source of their own corruption. They blinded themselves -- just as Palpatine did years later. As a moral lesson, it works. One should not be a stranger to stillness. But in order to keep your balance, you must keep moving.

 

No matter how many analogies that make no sense you come up with, you're not going to change my mind.

 

Palpatine likes to watch the Jedi preform their battle strategies.

 

Good catch!

 

Could you explain your thinking here please, i don't follow. Why are the colours important? How is it auspicious?

Just let your thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letterbox

 

Colors sometimes may symbolize alignment, or potential alignment. For example, garbing Luke in black in ROTJ, at a time when he is at theoretical risk of turning to the dark side. Or Anakin in ROTS. In Yoda's case it's a little different; it's safe to say he was in no danger of turning, so alignment is not quite the issue, but the shift back from white-gray to a more neutral brown could be taken as symbolic of the Jedi "losing their way", so to speak.