PT Yoda's portrayal in the PT a most silly criticism

Actually it isn't baseless at all. Lucas himself stated in 1981 during the development of ROTJ:

Kasdan: A Jedi Master is a Jedi isn’t he?

Lucas: Well, he is a teacher, not a real Jedi. Understand that?

Kasdan: I understand what you’re saying, but I can’t believe it; I am in shock.

Lucas: It’s true, absolutely true, not that it makes any difference to the story.

Kasdan: You mean he wouldn’t be any good in a fight?

Lucas: Not with Darth Vader he wouldn’t.

So, the OT was clearly written in this context, so it should come as no surprise, that many who watched the films held the same views. Since it is a retcon on the part of Lucas, I don't see why it is not a valid criticism, as AOTC and ROTS Yoda is clearly inconsistent with the original conception of the character.

 

No, it's being wary of his interpretation vs what Lucas actually said.

Yes, he does. Who's arguing the opposite?

Or not, as I've pointed out before.

To me, it's not common sense to cherry pick the events of the movies to fit your own view. Filoni did/does that. When Lucas had to change the ending of an episode of TCW because the Jedi were being painted in a bad light, you know there's a conflict of views.

Bolded for emphasis. "Forced to". As in, having no other choice.

 

It's baseless because the content of said interview was only made available recently neither you nor anybody else could make that claim based on what the movies show us. The fact is that Yoda's protrayal in the PT doesn't contradict what was established in the OT or public material made available at the time.

No. That context was clearly not relevant at all to the events of the movies, and as such nobody was bound to them.

Those who've watched the films didn't have access to that conversation, and its content can't be interperted based on what ended up in the movies (precisely because it's not there at all).

It's not a retcon because it's not something established in the movies. It's a behind the scenes conversation whose contents are not final and is subject to change during the development of the movie (turns out they were not relevant at all, as seen in the movie itself). And it's not a valid criticism because nobody could use that as a basis for their argument since it wasn't available to virtually anyone.

 

My problem with that scene is and always will be that it just looks incredibly silly. And yes I've heard the arguments about how it makes sense from a narrative/character perspective, lack of reach and strength etc. and I will go as far as conceding that for the most part, it makes sense for him to fight that way. But that doesn't mean it doesn't look absolutely absurd to have a Dooku using some sort of elegant fencing technique against some whirligig green blur hopping and flipping all over the place. It actually works better against Palpatine because he's so hammy and flamboyant and throws around lightning like confetti so both fighters are equally exaggerated and over the top in different ways.

 

No, but many interpreted the scenes as such, based on what was seen in the films. Hence, this is their basis for criticism against Yoda's portrayal in the PT. They felt the PT depiction of Yoda was out of character, based on what they had seen in the OT. This is as valid an opinion as any other on the matter. We know now, that the films were in fact written in this context. Thus we can conclude, that their interpretation of events was correct, and the character of Yoda was in fact changed during the development of the PT.

Nobody was bound to them. That doesn't change the fact, that the films were written in this context, and that those that interpreted the dialogue this way, were right.

Sorry, but you have absolutely no evidence to argue, that it wasn't there, anymore than anyone else at the time had concrete evidence to argue that it was there. Many people DID interpret the films this way based on what was seen at the time, and it has been proven after the fact, that this interpretation of events was correct. As such, it's only logical to conclude, that the dialogue did contain this subtext, and many at the time read between the lines, and came to the correct conclusions, despite lacking hard evidence. The fact that the dialogue can be interpreted in a different way now that the PT has been released, doesn't change that.

 

It`s a really silly nit picking, actually. It's implied in the OT that all Jedi were once great warriors.

 

ah ha. so lucas changed his mind (proof lol). it makes me feel better to know i interpreted OT yoda well (i try to see things in their proper context but i can get diverted by my preferences). and i felt like lucas had changed things on us in the PT. but now i no longer care... i really liked how i imagined everything in the past from the OT (before the PT came out), but the new story has taken over... revisions accepted.

 

Not at all. Yoda literally says: wars not make one great. In the OT Yoda once was the antithesis of the idea, that all Jedi are great warriors. In fact the greatest were not.

 

But Yoda also tells Luke to kill his own father, and lies to him while doing so. Yoda and Obi-Wan's plan to defeat the Sith is to have Luke kill them, not redeem them.

And who's to say Yoda in the PT hasn't decided that 'wars not make one great'. Maybe, just maybe, he learnt something from the conflict and progressed as a character?

 

Yeah, Yoda fighting in the Clone Wars and getting into lightsaber battles does not in the least go against "wars not make one great" statement. It's growth. It's character arc. If Yoda doesn't change in the 20+ years between ROTS and ESB, then that's not interesting in the least.

 

The idea that he learned that the hard way is a legitimate theory. Obi-Wan says both that he did fight in the wars, and that Yoda was his teacher, so the inference that Yoda was (or had been) involved in fighting at one point or another was valid even before we saw him do just that. My own personal preference would be for a Yoda who doesn't need to fight or even draw a lightsaber to solve problems but I wouldn't go as far as saying him doing either of those things (in the PT era anyway) would be out of character.

 

Exactly. It would make sense. "Jedi Master who instructed me". Obi-Wan is referred to as "General Kenobi" so his instructor has to have been around to guide or at least consult the Knight now turned general in a war. If Obi-wan and other knights "fell" then why cant a Jedi Master?He's not exempt from making those same mistakes. I doubt the intention was that he was the only master, so how can multiple wise Masters such as Yoda, allow the knights to become warriors going against the more pacifistic nature of the Jedi Code? Their collective mistake was intended so the criticism is weak.

 

The same Dark Lord of the Sith that he can push 15 ft across the room to land on his back?

As for the other responses, arguing for a special kind of 'Lucas Logic' that doesn't have to make sense or be consistent is silly. And if your headcanon reason for Yoda pulling out a saber to fight Dooku is because fighting with a sword is a higher level form of fighting than all the telekinetic powers available, then so be it.

 

Nothing in that exchange suggests that Yoda never fought with a lightsaber. All it's saying is that he would be no good in a fight now. Yoda is directly based on Kambei Shimada from Seven Samurai, a wise ronin who is weary of war despite having once been a great warrior himself. Despite his reservations and wariness of war, he comes out of retirement to train and fight with other samurai to defend a peaceful village against injustice. Kasdan himself has noted as such:

Pursuant to this fact, in the initial story treatment for TESB written by Lucas, Yoda in fact actively displays his lightsaber skills to Luke on Dagobah:

Obviously, the idea for this scene was dropped because it would have been impossible to portray with the technology available. A remnant of the concept was to be retained in the final film in scenes where Yoda, clinging to Luke's back, instructs him in lighstaber combat (thus explaining his newfound proficiency in the duel against Vader), but these scenes were cut after being only partially completed because of time and budget constraints:



And what Lucas says to Kasdan in that exchange from The Making of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi is perfectly consistent with what is shown in the prequels. Obviously, Yoda actually was a "real Jedi", since he's a Jedi Master. Lucas was clearly speaking inartfully in an off-the-cuff attempt to get across the concept that Yoda has a different role than Jedi Knights like Obi-Wan Kenobi: Yoda's role is that he's more of a teacher; he doesn't go out and fight people. And this is exactly what we see in the prequels. Yoda doesn't go out on missions and fight people like Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan do. He stays at the Temple and serves on the Jedi Council as a sort of sage and spiritual advisor to the more active Jedi, and he also teaches Younglings.

He only starts going out into the galaxy and actively fighting with the advent of the Clone Wars, and this is portrayed by the films and confirmed by Lucas to be an unnatural role for Yoda, something he's not supposed to be doing. You're supposed to see Yoda's actions in AOTC and ROTS as being jarring and inconsistent with what we see of Yoda in TESB.

But the idea that Yoda didn't even know how to use a lightsaber, ever, is not one that is even borne out by the OT. Yoda was a "great" warrior. You're not supposed to think that Luke was wrong about that. Yoda saying that wars "don't make one great" is supposed to be all the more surprising and poignant because of that fact. But the idea is that Yoda's warrior days had been when he was more youthful and less wise, and that he had since evolved to a more enlightened understanding, much like Kambei Shimada, the character he was based on. But he still knew how to fight, and he could instruct other Jedi on how to do so, even if his own fighting days were long behind him.

The prequels only modified this backstory slightly (at most) by portraying a retired, guru-like Yoda as having backslid from a teacher's mentality into a warrior's mentality during the extraordinary circumstances of the Clone Wars, and by establishing that Yoda's forgetfulness of Jedi principles during this moment were in fact both a symptom and cause of the decline which led to the Jedi Order's destruction and his ultimate flight into contemplative exile. In other words, Lucas enriched the story immeasurably without ever fundamentally betraying Yoda's character as portrayed in the OT.

The exact details of the story were of course always evolving, but the fundamental concepts behind the characters generally stayed pretty consistent. This is the case with Yoda just as it is with other characters.

 

i think often the mystic/shaman can guide the warrior; and that sounds like what GL was talking about in the above quote.

 

Sure, but this part....

Kasdan: You mean he wouldn’t be any good in a fight?

Lucas: Not with Darth Vader he wouldn’t.

...suggests that Lucas was not trying to say that (contrary to his original conception of the character) Yoda was totally inexperienced or unable to fight, but rather that he wouldn't be proficient enough to go up against the sorts of foes Luke has to face. "Not with Darth Vader he wouldn't" is a statement that clearly implies Yoda may be able to fight, but that he wouldn't be able to fight someone like Darth Vader (or, by extension, the Emperor).

Which make sense, because even Obi-Wan was getting too old to do "this sort of thing" by the time of ANH. Yoda himself is already significantly older, even taking into account differences in species lifespans.

What Lucas seems to have been getting at in that (again, off-the-cuff) conversation with Kasdan is the beginnings of the idea that there are two classes of Jedi: the knight-errant type, and the guru-teacher type. This idea seems to have evolved and solidified in the prequels to become the Jedi Order as we now know it: an organization which includes wandering master-apprentice pairs and independent knights who go off on their own on missions across the galaxy, and sages who reside in a Temple to advise, instruct, and counsel the rest of the Jedi.

We see the Jedi Order working in its natural manner in Episode I and the beginning of Episode II, but with the outbreak of the Clone Wars this balance is disrupted, and the sages on the Council are pressed into service as generals along with all the rest of the thinly-stretched Jedi Order. Even so, we are shown that Master Yoda possesses powers beyond any ordinary Jedi (he can redirect and even absorb Force lighting with his bare hands) but must resort to lightsaber combat when up against a foe with whom he is roughly matched in pure Force ability (Count Dooku, Darth Sidious). This is a concept that had been alluded to by Lucas as far back as the early development of The Empire Strikes Back (bold mine):

You can see how it's possible to come up with quite different (and oftentimes much more interesting) conclusions about the nature of Lucas's development of the saga when you go into it without a blatantly anti-Lucas agenda, like Michael Kaminski seems to have done (to a certain extent, let's say). No one's denying that Lucas's conception of the saga changed in various ways over the years, but what's more far more fascinating and striking is the ways in which it did not--and there are far more consistencies in his overall vision for the saga than it is fashionable for critics to admit.

 

it doesn't make a lot of sense to me that when yoda is 900 he is no match for vader or the emperor if when he was 861 (i added 10 years b/t anh and rotj--i don't expect it to be precise) he was as powerful as the emperor and would have probably creamed anakin/vader. he was able to fight very well in rots as though age was little limitation. i know that people can decline rapidly but if you imagine a 86 yo vs. a 90 yo human former warrior, especially considering this person leads a largely sedentary lifestyle... it's not a great difference. so... since yoda was already in the winter of his life in rots, and since vader is aging and so is the emperor (another character in the winter of his life come rotj), i'm not sure i can fall back on GL's statements being about yoda's age.

if it came down to raw power, yoda and obi-wan's best shot was still in rots (though they needed more jedi than just the two of them). they expect luke to somehow be able to handle both the emperor and vader in rotj despite how luke is not as powerful as yoda at least used to be, so i can't see it as about power, aging, or anything of the sort. luke doesn't win because he can defeat the emperor in combat. eta: and even if luke has more midichlorians... he hasn't really grown into his full power in rotj probably? i'm sure his powers will be incredible in tlj.

i accept that on his death bed in rotj yoda couldn't take on vader. but anyway, RO demonstrated that vader himself is quite the fighting machine. i don't see physical fitness as a huge obstacle when one has the force. aotc and rots set that precedent.

 

Thats wierd, because anytime Yoda was going to fight Dooku or Palpatine they were some of my favorite scenes from the movies. Maybe its because I grew up with the prequels first so seeing Yoda fighting isn't jarring for me. I just mostly assumed that the only reason we didn't see Yoda with a lightsaber in the old movies was because he was a puppet and it would of been to difficult to have him fight someone.

The dude has been a Jedi for nearlly 900 years I would think he would of had to pick up a lightsaber sometime in his life. If anything I always assumed that he had to be extra good at fighting because he had to make up for his size.

 

I don't think we can draw any solid conclusions one way or another about how much of a toll twenty years or so would have on Yoda's ability to be active and fight. What we know is that Lucas originally envisioned Yoda (or Minch) as being an extraordinary warrior, then at one point during the development of Return of the Jedi he made that kind of vague off-the-cuff statement to Kasdan which at most suggests Yoda would not be a match for Darth Vader at the present time, then we have the prequels where Yoda is indeed an extraordinary warrior. Taking this all together collectively, I think we can reasonably conclude at the very least that Yoda's portrayal in the OT doesn't definitively suggest anything about Yoda's proficiency as a warrior in times past.

It's also important to keep in mind that using the Force to manipulate your aged body into executing unnatural combat movements seems very much like it would be a feat tinged with the dark side--not accepting your body's natural limitations, not accepting the aging process and the passage of time, etc. This very neatly explains why the compromised Yoda of the prequels has no trouble at all doing what he does, along with such other older characters like Count Dooku and Sidious, who are both obviously firmly on the dark side. Note that Qui-Gon Jinn, as an older man in TPM, conspicuously does not execute any such dazzling twirls and acrobatic flips during his duel with Maul. Compared to his Padawan, he is much less agile and considerably slower in his maneuvering, which of course ultimately leads to his death. He, like Ben Kenobi in ANH, is at a point in his life where he's accepted his age and his limitations and has no desire to subvert them unnaturally.

 

i think... when you put it all together... it kind of does suggest they went a bit over the top with yoda.

in the cartoons people can practically fly with the force.

you just can't tell me that at yoda's age (in the final 30 years of his natural life) he is so naturally agile... he has to use a cane to walk. i mean, come on. lol

 

Yoda's saber scene in AOTC remains the moment that got the biggest (positive) crowd reaction of all my SW theater viewings. Just a great action scene. And thematically, I love that Yoda wasn't "above using a saber," that he experienced war on a ground level. Makes his words to Luke in ESB that much more relevant.

 

Since your previous "points" have been rebutted already, I'll just address this:

You are the one with the burden of proof, that there's evidence in the movies to support your personal interpretation. As it is, there's none. Interpretation is not evidence. Neither is an excerpt of a behind the scenes conversation that address Yoda's role in the movie. And who's content became irrelevant as far as what's actually shown. The fact is that Yoda's protrayal in TESB and ROTJ don't contradict his protrayal in the PT, despite your baseless and subjective interpretation.

 

I don't agree with that interpretation. Lucas clearly states a Jedi Master is not a real Jedi. Kasdan interprets this as meaning, that because he's not a real Jedi, he's no good in a fight. Lucas partially confirms this, by saying he would be no match for Darth Vader. It's not, because he chooses to be a teacher, and somehow magically loses his fighting skills, that he's no match for Vader. It's not because he's too old, that he's no match for Vader. It's because he is a teacher, and not a real Jedi. The two titles are described by Lucas as being mutually exclusive. You are one or the other. Yoda is a great trainer, but not a great boxer. Darth Vader is a great boxer. Obi-Wan is a great boxer, but put Yoda in shorts, and have him square off against Vader, and he would be beaten to a pulp. This IMO is what Lucas is saying.

(In case you were wondering, Angelo Dundee’s (trainer of most notably the “Greatest” Muhammad Ali, and Sugar Ray Leonard) top 3 fights as well as Gil Clancy (Trainer to World Champion Emile Griffith), Cus D’Amato (Trainer to World Champions Mike Tyson, Floyd Patterson), Ray Arcel (Trainer to World Champions Roberto Duran, Benny Leonard) to name a few of boxing’s greatest trainers and strategists who…never actually fought).

 

i think this isn't even fully about yoda; it's also about upping the power bar with the force. or perhaps not so much the power bar, but the expression of those powers. and if the fans get high off of this, they kind of have to continually up it. and the problem with that is that once characters become too powerful the story has to find excuses about why they couldn't use their powers for x, y and z if they work for a, b and c. so this actually makes you want to make the force itself more changing because then these incredible powers rise and fall with the undulations of the force. so perhaps sith can fly at one time but later they can't.

the other factor is that some *places* are stronger with the force than others. not only is this in the cartoons, but yoda supports it in ESB.

 

Yoda being a wise old man who didn't use lightsabres was a perfectly valid interpretation of that character in 1983 (and please stop using the strawman that that means he would never have fought with one ever in his 900 years, we're talking about ESB Yoda here). It's really quite arrogant to think that this interpretation was always baseless, given what we knew of the character right up to 2002. Is it a cut and dry Owen Lars is Obi Wan's brother retcon? No, but to act like no change whatsoever was made to Yoda is dishonest. The same thing can be said for Palpatine, who went from being a sorceror calling the lightsabre a Jedi's weapon (and quipping that all of that was feeble) to wielding one himself in ROTS.

The lore of SW has continually shifted over the last 4 decades and I notice this kind of schism in what fans see occurs frequently. Assumptions about characters born from some movies are changed later by other movies, and some fans accept it, some question it, and others will insist the changed version was always the case and 'really, how stupid are you for not getting it'. I remember hearing some fans had a problem with Luke using the Force to grab the lightsabre in the ice cave. It was a new power that came out of nowhere. But I remember too seeing all the post-hoc reasoning to explain that it wasn't out of nowhere (I bet you guys right here would argue that the telekinesis was there all along in ANH).