PT An interesting observation - "overwhelmed" Jedi in AOTC

The opening crawl, with the relevant excerpts emphasized:

There is unrest in the Galactic
Senate. Several thousand solar
systems have declared their
intentions to leave the Republic.

This separatist movement,
under the leadership of the
mysterious Count Dooku, has
made it difficult for the limited
number of Jedi Knights to maintain
peace and order in the galaxy.

Senator Amidala, the former
Queen of Naboo, is returning
to the Galactic Senate to vote
on the critical issue of creating
an ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC
to assist the overwhelmed
Jedi....

What exactly are the Jedi overwhelmed by? Yes, Jedi are keepers of the peace, so it makes sense that with systems that are considering seceding that they might be sent out to.... I dunno, do something. But I feel like this is only addressed by two lines in the film. Funny enough, both from Windu

"[Obi-Wan]'s just returned from a border dispute on Ansion."

Ok, so, a border dispute. Doesn't sound like a particularly violent issue to resolve - yet also, nor does it sound like one related to the separatist movement. The line would imply, if anything, the border dispute is localized on the planet itself

And later, after Palpatine establishes the GAR:

"I will take what Jedi we have left and go to Geonosis and help Obi-Wan."

Again, referring to "what Jedi we have left", implying they're not functioning at full capacity. But these Jedi, for the most part, aren't dead. They're just out elsewhere, busy doing.... something. Paragraph 2 of the opening crawl suggests the Jedi are overwhelmed trying to keep the Republic held together, but paragraph 3 mentions that the GAR's purpose is to "assist the overwhelmed Jedi"

I mean, a clone army isn't made to act as diplomats. Doesn't the opening crawl therefore suggest that there's some kind of violent conflict or conflicts going on around the galaxy? I mean, realistically, separatist movements don't just start up with no fuss with the secessionists going "Ok, we're our own thing now." It makes sense that there'd be some escalating series of conflicts and battles leading up to such a thing. But for one, no such thing is directly mentioned at any point in the movie, and for another, this is Star Wars

I can't help wondering if this is a plot point that was thought through but never made clear, or a missed opportunity to be a plot point, giving some more needed context to the separatist movement

What does everyone think?

 

I always took it as the Jedi were stretched too thin around the galaxy.

 

I always thought they were out mostly doing negotiations and diplomacy stuff, WRT planets or systems that are considering leaving the Republic. Like the Ansion border dispute, whatever that is.
I think the implication is that those sometimes turned violent, but that's not really important.

 

That's the thing, though - the opening crawl explicitly says that the creation of an army would assist the overwhelmed Jedi

If the problem with that is if they're just spread thin resolving political and diplomatic issues, what's the point of an army? Even as corrupt as it was by that point, the Republic isn't the sort of government to use military force to scare dissenters into cooperating. If it were purely an issue of the Jedi being too busy negotiating politics and ****, the issue would be over expanding diplomatic corps or whatever, not a grand army

So I can only assume there's at least some violent conflicts going around the galaxy based on that

 

As they say, si vis pacem, para bellum. I imagine that's one of the reasons they'd want an army; the promise of peace, or as a detriment to escalating hostilities. (Weren't there some TCW episodes about that? It's been a few years so I'm not sure.)

That said, I do agree that the implication is that these negotiations sometimes turned violent (Come to think of it, I think there have been few real-world border disputes that didn't involve violence).

 

I assume they’re doing similar ambassador type negotiations as Obi-Wan and Qui-Gonn were assigned in TPM. The idea being that the belligerent parties come to the table to reach a settlement because “we dare not go against the Jedi”. However there’s more planets than Jedi, and if everyone starts having problems at once then they can’t put out all the fires at once. Perhaps people get a little bolder knowing that the Jedi’s ability to dispatch reinforcements is more limited at the moment than it otherwise might be. So when the Republic says “hey! Play nice or the Jedi are going to put you in your place.”, it now becomes “hey! Play nice or these soldiers will put you in your place”. It’s the old cliche of “oh yeah? You and what army?” followed by “me and this army!”

 

The separatists are getting violent. There’s attacks from separatist factions and terrorist attacks etc that’s why they are making it difficult for the limited number of Jedi to keep the peace.

 

I imagine there were small violent skirmishes and brushfire conflicts all throughout the time period between TPM and AOTC. A huge amount of them becoming linked to the rising separatist movement probably didn't happen until just a couple years before AOTC starts. The Jedi and Republic thought they could probably resolve the crisis quickly
through show of force with some Judicial peacekeepers and Jedi. As Mace says, "Were keepers of the peace, not soldiers."

However, more and more systems are uniting under the allegiance of the Separatists, so it becomes a bigger issue than localized disputes unrelated to one another. Add in that we see a Separatist-linked terrorist attack in the opening of AOTC, and it becomes more obvious that even Coruscant isn't a safe-haven.

Now this was Legends, but the border dispute of Ansion was shown in the AOTC tie-in novel, The Approaching Storm, and had Anakin and Obi-Wan dealing with a faction looking to join the Separatists.

 

I never thought about that issue, but as the opening crawl states, there's a limited number of Jedi knights and there's a vast galaxy (well, the Republic, to be more precise) with a lot of conflicts (that are not wars) going around.
One can only speculate about the need for an army, but I'd say their main purpose was something like UN peace corps. Just to be there, to prevent an escalation, so that the Jedi or the diplomacy can work and find a solution that works both ways.

 

As Anakin mentioned while dining with Padme, he recently has had to enter into aggressive negotiations. He's presumably telling her out his last mission; Ansion.

Now, going into EU, if you read The Apprching Storm it is about this Mission to Ansion. In it we learn there is more underneath this mere local border dispute than just locals. The Separatist leadership is pulling strings behind the scenes and adding fuel to the fire for their own purposes. One of which being; overwhelming the Jedi, as per Dooku's request.
And we learn that this is going on more and more across the galaxy.

Going with EU or not, it stands to reason Palpatine would be behind the said overwhelm-ment, just as he's beind the Separatist threat.

 

The Battle of Malastare Narrows, where Trench disappeared and was thought dead before his return:

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Battle_of_Malastare_Narrows

was one of these "pre-Clone War conflicts" that kept the Jedi busy.

 

The Jedi are overwhelmed because they need to be for the story to happen. This screenplay was written in a rush; not everything makes sense/has an explanation.

 

No, there is a perfect explanation. The Jedi are simply too few and vastly outnumbered by the enemy, as well as too scattered around the battle areas. How is this in any way illogical or a plot hole? There were simply not enough of them, it's as simple as that. So how does "overwhelmed Jedi" in the opening text not make sense when it exactly describes the situation as it is?

 

"2+2=5 makes perfect sense because it says so in the opening text."

 

And the opening crawl of a new hope just says there’s a Death Star and rebel spies stole plans for it...

 

What does that have to do with anything? 2+2=5 is false (ask your math teacher), while the Jedi facing a strong foe that outnumbered them is not. I'm not following your "logic" here.

 

If you disagree with me, that's fine.

 

We haven't even agreed on WHAT exactly to disagree on.

 

The topic makes sense to me. There's not all that many Jedi, it's a vast wide galaxy, and with so much political and social unrest from system to system they are simply super busy out and about trying to help put out one fire (violent or not) after another-and it's just getting to be a bit much for the size of their order.

 

The Jedi are overwhelmed for an obvious reason, which is explained in the opening text.

According to Brian Jones's "George Lucas: A Life", Lucas wrote the screenplay for almost a year even before this. He has written 14 or 15 drafts.

 

But do what? The Jedi was a religious order serving as some kind of peace keepers, diplomats . . . you name it, for the Republic. The Jedi Order was not the Republic's standing army. And if the Galactic Republic had wanted to deal with the Separatists, utilizing only the Jedi was not going to do it, despite them being Force users.

 

The opening crawls are sometimes a bit off. Maybe it’s because they’re written early on but should probably be tweaked before the film is done. ...in the TPM crawl, it says two Jedi knights are sent to negotiate but Obi-wan doesn’t become a knight till the end of the film!

 

The only draft that's ever been publicly released is the "Jar-Jar's Great Adventure" script. The only changes made to that script were the late alterations that Jonathan Hales made DURING FILMING. Did it ever occur to you that Lucas could simply be lying about any other drafts? Just because you read something in a book doesn't mean it's true. Where are these other drafts? Can you prove they actually exist?

 

Why would he lie about it? The numbers may be an exaggeration, but given George's attitude towards releasing what he considers "unfinished films", I'd say he likely never saw a reason to show people those drafts.

 

Plus, Lucas keeps changing his mind.