Full Series The Jedi in Clone Wars

At times they are really powerful, and just send enemies flying with their minds. We have seen some amazing feats in the movies - making X-wings fly, choking people who are miles away, stopping lazer bolts in the air, all kinds of things, and Anakin is supposed to be incredibly powerful ("Powerful jedi was he, powerful jedi...) but we constantly see them getting captured by a small number of droids or pirates with blasters, seemingly unable to do logical and simple force moves to get their weapons back, knock enemies over or do anything at all while they have binders on their hands, and force powers/senses are shown to be extremely limited and weak in Clone Wars. Even if Anakin had never reached his potential, he is still spoken of as though he was very powerful but we never see it. We see a few dark siders show off being incredibly powerful (but also pathetic at times) - and I get that jedi can't be invincible and at times the danger has to seem real to add drama, but this is really inconsistent.
When a jedi arrives, the bad guys should know that shiz is about to get real, rather than think they have a fighting chance (remember how Watto reacted to Anakin being a jedi, or how young Anakin believed "no one can kill a jedi!"?) and the jedi shouldn't be getting whipped so badly all the time by not-so-powerful bad guys IMO.

While vision is being clouded by the dark side, there is no discussion of how it is limiting their powers while they're warring, it just seems that the jedi have been somewhat neutered in TCW.

 

They are powerful, but not invincible or omnipotent. Powerful beings can be outnumbered, defeated and killed. Those aren't mutually exclusive.

 

A Jedi Knight is equal to one hundred warriors, which Lucas wrote in AOTC and has been official ever since. But it is also true that the Jedi can be overwhelmed by sheer numbers. This is why in ANH, Obi-wan spends his time relying on stealth and mind tricks when dealing with Stormtroopers. When Luke is facing off with Jabba's men, he's dealing with small numbers on both skiffs and then on the Sail Barge itself. When Obi-wan and Qui-gon are dealing with the Battle Droids on the Federation ship, they are in smaller numbers. Same within Theed. On Geonosis, the matter is different. The Jedi are fighting ten thousand Battle Droids, Droidekas and Super Battle Droids, as well as thousands of Geonosisan warriors. That's too much for about a hundred Jedi in the arena. The ones who died during Order 66 were taken by surprise. Ki-Adi-Mundi sensed the danger, but was quickly overwhelmed. Aayla barely had a chance to defend herself. Plo Koon did sense the danger, but didn't have a chance to mount a defense. Stass Allie didn't have any warning. Same with Obi-wan. There was too much danger everywhere which put them at a disadvantage.

They have to be conservative with Force shoves because of the concentration factor required to pull it off. When Kylo Ren catches blaster bolts in TFA, he's only dealing with two people firing on him. One being Poe and one being Rey. He can use the Force in that situation, but if he were to try it against a dozen Stormtroopers, he'd be killed quickly.

Yoda lifted the X-Wing, but it took a bit out of him to do it. He can't just chuck it as easily as Vader did with the various bits of debris that he tossed as Luke, all of which are smaller than a fighter. Even Palpatine using the Senate Pods required gravity to make it go faster and Yoda had to stop the rapid descent and then build up to the Force shove.

The Droid Army isn't afraid of the Jedi, since their emotions are limited and that's why they work as effectively as they did. The Confederacy leadership, which were organics, were afraid of the Jedi as we saw when Nute and Rune were panicking at the thought of the Jedi being on their ship. Much less when they were making their way to the bridge. Grievous wasn't afraid of the Jedi since he surrounded himself with droids and had his own weapons.

 

Because if they were always super powerful we wouldn't have any story to tell. The Clone Wars would have lasted a week at best.

 

Characters that can do anything are not compelling. And when are Anakin's skills pathetic?

The only instance I can think of when they were a little underpowered was probably the Slaves of the Republic arc.

 

Yes - in TCW . In the movies, maybe the powers are inconsistent if you nitpick, but generally the Jedi and sith are in-universe realistic and consistent with their powers, but in TCW they're really not, and are often portrayed as being far weaker, or just not thinking to do the obvious thing... And in similar situations in other episodes they sometimes do what they should/could have done in prior episodes.
If this is the wrong place, sorry!

 

I can't really highlight specifics but there are lots of moments where I thought (surely he could choke those people, lift them, push them, or summon his lightsaber and cut the handcuffs" or seen them trapped in situations that should be no problem for a jedi, and you never see Anakin excel and be that amazing jedi that he's built up to have been when people look back on him. I'd have loved to have seen him shock people with immense feats and do crazy things, still within reasonable limits as opposed to making him a superhero.He doesn't appear to be any more powerful than Asoka or Obi-Wan. The only character who really convinced me that he was powerful in TCW was Palpatine... And at times, Maul, though he also seemed a bit weak at times too.

It has nothing to do with them not being all-powerful, but there is a certain expectation of their abilities and they are shown to be underpowered and underwhelming IMO.

Safage (? the brother of Maul) was inconsistantly really strong and weak - his physical strength seemed to give him an advantage over the jedi but not the sith...

 

Darth Sith Saber

I changed the title of the thread so it could fit all the Jedi in the Clone Wars instead of just Anakin.

 

I've just seen the first few episodes of Rebels, Canaan seems much more powerful than the main characters were often depicted in TCW to me.

 

Kanan is dealing with fewer Stormtroopers at a time than the Jedi were fighting Battle Droids. He's also using a blaster which the Jedi seldom used outside of fighters and personal starships like the Twilight. That doesn't make him more powerful.

 

This is a great post!