Bad Move by Yoda and Mace?

ok, this may be a dumb question
but if the council was so against taking anakin as a padawan because he was too old
but they decided to (*against Yoda*) anyway because he is the chosen one
why did they just let kenobi be his master?
i know its not like he was incompitent or anything
but he wasn't a master
he was still basically an apprentice just before he took anakin as his padawan
if the council was so concerned
why not let yoda be his master
or mace windu?
or do it as a group?
i know kenobi made that dying promise to qui gon
but come on
they could easily order anakin to be their padawan
the council's decision would have more weight than qui gon, who was more rogue than master it seemed anyway
this whole mess would have been averted
possibly
just curious to anyone's opinions


Please do not post your thread titles in all caps.

 

The OT would have to be changed if Yoda or Mace was to train Anakin.

*Rushes to edit before George sees this*

 

look at it this way, at the time of TPM the council is essentialy broken, they're still good people, but they have too much politician in them.

even yoda so don't start

the refusal to train anakin was not a statement that "this boy will never be trained, take him back where you got him", noone ever said that.

their point to me was more one of 'you have a mission to go finish qui-gon, we'll talk about it later'

a statement that qui-gon basicly rejected right in front of them till he was forbiden to do otherwise.

when qui-gon dies finishing his mission a problem is presented to the council, who after having time to finish deliberating the anakin situation decided to have him trained.

who to train him?

well being good politicians none of them would take up the responsibility personaly, and they may not have been available anyway.

obi-wan is the next logical choice, though yoda would have been better, he was probably the lone dissenting voice and as such would refuse to train him.

for the council members training anakin is a lose lose proposition, having him trained on the other hand is just fine.

 

I've thought about this myself, and to be honest, I've always gotten the feeling that the Council wasn't particularly fond of Anakin. He was disrespectful, tempermental, and arrogant, trained by a Jedi who had defied the council's initial decision that Anakin not be trained. Personally, I always felt somebody other than Obi Wan should've aided in the training...but after seeing how Yoda and Mace reacted to the situation, I doubt any of the other Jedi Masters would want to interact with the kid.

I suppose part of it is age, too. The younglings are the ones we see training with Yoda, and it's confirmed by Lucas that the Padawans then move on to more personalized training with a specific trainer. Still, given Obi Wan's amateur nature (only in Master rank, mind you, he was a competent Jedi otherwise), I do feel that if Yoda bent to Obi Wan's will to train Anakin, he or other Jedi should've been more interactive with the kid's training. You could argue he wanted Obi Wan to learn on his own why Yoda didn't want Anakin being trained, but that seems incredibly petty if you consider the damage Anakin wound up causing and how much Yoda seemed to honestly fear for the kid's future as a Jedi.

Ultimately, I'm going to say it was a combination of bias and age that led to a less interactive method of training Anakin. They weren't happy with Qui Gon and Obi Wan's combined decision to train Anakin with or without their consent, and the child's age and attachment was a major concern for all involved that few wanted to take part in. Actually, if you think about it, it's rather painfully ironic. Yoda is always shown as a pillar of wisdom and stability for most the other Jedi. The one person he didn't actively make himself available for and who never sought him out personally was the one Padawan who went too far astray.

 

Painfull to think about it like that,guess it is true though.I think they were too afraid of Anakin. Who will train the person who has more midichlorians than the great Yoda?Perhaps the balance never ment to come from a Jedi but a Sith and the prophesy told so. Remember how disturbed Yoda and Mace are in TPM when the One is mentioned?They do not seem very happy about the chosen one even before they are introduced to Annie. Maybe they decided they needed the space to watch him undisturbed. The failure of Yoda is that he will probably never ask Anakin why he was in a lot of pain,remember his remarks in AOTC? Tragicaly, this little thing could have saved Anakin. To be forgiven by Yoda about the Raiders.

 

i'm not sure if it's ever been said anywhere, but i got the impression from yoda and obi-wan's talk at the end of TPM that most of the council was in favor of training anakin.

it just seemed like they looked at it an thought 'well if we train him as a jedi we can keep an eye on him and possibly control his outcome, if we let him go he could potentialy wind up doing great harm and we'll still have to deal with it' and so decided to have him trained.

but none of them was willing or able to take the job or responsibility themselves.

it's just an impression and if anyone can either confirm or deny it with something more concrete i'd appreciate it.

 

I agree
it seems like the council was for it
at the end of episode I
yoda says he doesnt agree with the council's decision that he should be trained
but just the fact of knowing the risks of training a boy who is older
with attachments
and with anger in him already due to slavery
why would they entrust this to a knight?
who just came on his own
not a master who previously had other padawans
not that there was anything wrong with obiwan
but if they feared anakin so much
why not keep a closer eye on him?

 

Ironically, I do think that filters into it too. While certainly afraid of this clouded future that Yoda kept seeing from Anakin and the great power he has already, there's also that intrigue that he really could be the Chosen One. Thus, I think Anakin tended to get mixed signals from the Jedi Council - a case he doesn't often help with the obnoxious aura he tends to throw around. On one hand, they wanted to push him to the limit just to see how far he could climb, if he really was what they were waiting for. On the other, they were afraid of the instabilities of his personality and how they continued to affect his training. Thus, I feel they were conflicted as to how to deal with Anakin, and I think Anakin picked up on that tension to a degree. Same with Obi Wan, actually. The council pushed for Anakin to take on his own mission but Obi Wan wanted to hold him back - and with good reason, mind you, but it's still a sense of indecision. While pushing and indulging him to be the best, they're also trying to restrict him, and that doesn't always work out well.

As for the end of TPM...I'll rewatch it again tonight, but I always thought it was more a kind of resignation to Anakin's training. Obi Wan was going to do it no matter what, so they just decided to go along for the ride and see what happens. He was the Chosen One, after all. It's not like they absolutely were against him training. I think it's simply that experienced told them that cases like Anakin simply didn't work out.

Ker-Soth: You actually bring up another big point about the treatment of Anakin, which I think is probably one of the biggest mistakes we see made in AOTC. If Yoda so clearly experienced Anakin's suffering and darkness, why wasn't Obi Wan told? Surely even if the visions weren't clear, he still knew something was wrong. To me, that was an immediate situation that demanded Obi Wan's awareness. He is, after all, one of the people who has the most influence on Anakin's life. But don't get me wrong - Padme is guilty of this too. Knowing how pivotal Anakin's power was, why didn't she do the right thing and tell Obi Wan about Anakin's slaughter? Why keep it secret? Was it because she was already so caught up in love with him that she didn't want to put him in a more precarious position and upset him? It's a sad wonder to think this event may have been completely overlooked until it was too late because nobody had the strength to speak out about it. I'm wondering if that's going to be a plot point in ROTS, to be honest.

 

wow interesting response to ker-soth, gave me more to think about.

though in yoda's defense he may have forgoten for a while to tell obi-wan about what he felt.

i mean within what seems a very short period of time to me, maybe even under 24 hours the whole galaxy kinda goes to hell and yoda is dead center of it all trying in vain to hold it together.

if it sliped his mind briefly i realy wouldn't be shocked.

i am certain it would have to be discussed bettween them at some point before ep3 begins though.

 

Sadly Chaotic_Serenity and Malikail the trilogy is a tragedy. It is all about chances that characters have to 'save the day' and how situations lead them into missing those very chances. Obi-Wan himself knows that Anakin was on Tatooine when he sent the transmittion from Geonosis. Everyone that is important to Anakin get their chance to save him and they all miss it. In many ways Anakin is like Achilles ,though the movie was a horrible adaptation of the original epic,he is in the path of destruction and all that could have been done are void. No matter what happenes the path cannot be changed anymore.

Chaotic_Serenity it is not their fault, there is a higher force that blinds them so that in the end the Force will be served.

 

Ker-Soth: Oh, I'm quite aware that destiny played a large role in forcing Anakin off the straigth path and into the darkness, but that doesn't make Yoda or Padme's actions any less negligent. Ben didn't make Anakin's decisions for him, but in the OT he is certainly willing to take responsibility for the fact that he wasn't ready to train Anakin. Sometimes what you could have done is more damning than what you did.

Like you said, this is a trilogy where people had chances to speak up or act out in order to stop something, but didn't, and I find it fascinating to find these major turning points. Nothing can be done about them, obviously, and I'm sure they were meant to work out the way they did, but it still makes for an interesting question of "What if" or "why?" If the PT is worth nothing else, it certainly shows us that our heroes are capable of horrible mistakes.


Malikail: Forget about it? Hmm...I'd say he'd let it slip his mind in light of the battle of Genosis and such, but we see a little downtime on Coruscant. Why not speak up there to Obi Wan when the three of them are alone? Nobody was around to hear it except for Mace, and Yoda had already spoken to him. And it doesn't seem like anything was said because I think action would've been taken with Anakin. Ah well, I guess we'll have to wait until ROTS to see.

 

And it doesn't seem like anything was said because I think action would've been taken with Anakin

i honestly hadn't thought about that.

yea slip his mind is what i was getting at, hmm.

i wonder if there's a reason from yoda's point of view not to bring heat down on anakin.

could it be that yoda thinks it will make things worse and wants to talk to anakin alone?

that doesn't sit right with me though, i'd still think he'd tell obi-wan.

i wonder if this is an oversight or deliberate, most of the time it's safe to say that everything is deliberate.

GL is quite taunted as 'directing well into the editing room', i can't believe he'd let the whole movie go without alluding to it.

it would take less than 15 seconds of screen time, i know it's precious but still.

 

-it certainly shows us that our heroes are capable of horrible mistakes.-

-Chaotic_Serenity


But if they never made mistakes they would be heroes would they? In a sense being a hero is pulling yourself together after you've messed everything up and try to fix yout mess.

If they are not ready to face the most dreadfull of enemies, their own guilt, then they are just people who manage to be at the right place at the right time and with the right line in their mouths all the time.

We cannot connect to that because none of us is like that. The very drama of their mistakes is what makes us feel closer to.Their fault is that they will probably not find the strength to correct their mistakes in time, not the fact that they made these mistakes.Too philosophical perhaps?

 

If Yoda or Mace was to train Anakin, they would have to drop out of the council, which they couldn't do.

 

If Yoda or Mace was to train Anakin, they would have to drop out of the council, which they couldn't do.

huh?

i didn't see anything to say that a council member can't have a padawan.

please don't bring the eu into this.

if it's not an eu thing where did you draw that conclusion?

 

My "view" of the Jedi Council is like a city council, they tell others what needs to be done within their city, or in this case, their organization. I don't think (opinion) that the council members did any more specific one-on-one training after they join the council. Now, I understand they could still keep in touch with their old padawans, see how they're doing, etc., but I feel their duties change once they join the council. I'm saying this because I think this is why neither Yoda, nor Mace, nor anyone else on the council would (or could) train Anakin. I also think OB1's insistence on training Ani is why they didn't assign any other Masters to train Ani. They probably didn't want to put the burden on anyone else, either. That's just how I see it. It seems they let Qui-Gon bend the rules more than once while he was around, and I think it rubs off on OB1. But then again, does it really matter? Negative things can still happen even if it is the "by the Code". I'm assuming when Yoda, the leader of the Jedi, trained Dooku as his padawan, it was by the book, or code. And look what happened to Dooku.

 

you made 2 very good points, and one factual error:


I also think OB1's insistence on training Ani is why they didn't assign any other Masters to train Ani.


They probably didn't want to put the burden on anyone else, either.

these are very good points i can't argue with at all.

makes alot of sense to me.


I'm assuming when Yoda, the leader of the Jedi, trained Dooku as his padawan, it was by the book, or code.

yoda is not leader of the council, the movies make it 100% clear mace is.

yoda backs him in public every single time, even when they dissagree.

the bold part is imo better worded as a leading member of the jedi, or oldest and wisest of the jedi.

please lets not sink to the level of trying to pretend yoda is co leader of the council either, there's nothing in the movie to indicate this.

i love yoda but i think on this board more than any other people have let their love of yoda get out of hand thus they fall into the YiGC.

i'd rather join the darkside personaly than the YiGC, at least the darkside is capable of being objective, the YiGC is not.

 

Agreed. How can one join the YiGC?