PT Did the prequels ruin the Jedis ?

"I am a Jedi. Like my father used to be."
When Luke says this you can actually feel that Luke is proud of being a Jedi and to resist the dark side.

But then prequels came and taught us that Jedis were highly arrogant, misguided, and failures. (Don't get me wrong, I love the prequels. But representing Jedis like this is the only thing I dislike about them. I even like Jar Jar and consider him underrated.)

-Jedis forbid love and attachments. This alone proves that Luke is not a real Jedi in the eyes of the Jedis that were in the prequel era since he loves his friends and he even loved his father despite this that he was an evil person.

-Jedis train children at a very young age. Why? To turn them into their own mindless soldiers. Similar to the way that Hitler trained German children from a young age to make them loyal and obedient soldiers.
It also doesn't help that Jedis love to kidnap the force-sensitive children from their parents.

-Qui Gon Jinn was the only good Jedi in the prequels(He was the only Jedi that valued Jar Jar Binks. He decided to take Jar Jar with him instead of letting him being imprisoned and that helped the Naboo to form an alliance with the Gungans.)
He was the first one that managed to become one with the force.
But he wasn't a member of the Jedi Council. why? because the Jedi order wasn't really good.

-Jedis never suspected that Count Dooku has turned on them. Because they were highly arrogant.

-Jedis rarely visit the outer rim planets. This is why the outer rim planets were in the same state that they were in the Original Trilogy era. Full of slavery and villainy.

-The prequels showed that the Jedis were the main reason that Anakin turned to the dark side but the OT had the theme of Luke learning from his father's mistakes and making the right choice in the end.

Unfortunately, the way that the Jedis were represented in prequels had some consequences on the Star Wars:

1. Luke gave up being a Jedi in TLJ since he realized how the Jedis were failures.

2. In both Kotor games, Jedis are shown as evil. (

Spoiler

They decided to do nothing against the Mandalorians that are invading the Republic, they completely screwed a mind of a person and turned that person into their weapon, they also decided to drain the force from the Main Character in Kotor 2.

3. In Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order,

Spoiler

Cal Kestis gave up training Jedis to fight the sith because the Jedi Order was a failure and he would make another failure. (So, Obi-Wan and Yoda should have also refused to train Luke by that logic.)
Yeah, he decided to trust in the force(Doing nothing) and allow Palpatine to control and ruin the galaxy instead of training Jedis to fight him.

4. And due to this a lot of fandom and YouTubers just love to instantly call Jedis as the real bad guys of Star Wars.

So, why Luke wanted to be a Jedi anyway when they were failures?

 

The Jedi were not arrogant, misguided or failures. That some Jedi display arrogance, which is considered a flaw by the Jedi (as stated in the prequels), doesn't make the Jedi as a whole (or their ways) arrogant.

Nor were the Jedi misguided or failures. If there's one thing George Lucas establishes in the prequels (and reinforces in the originals) is that the Jedi and their ways are right. The fact that they were betrayed and persecuted doesn't make them failures. It makes it a tragedy and their return through Luke a triumph.

Had Anakin followed the Jedi's guidance and teachings, had he followed what he was trained to do, he wouldn't have fallen. It's when he disregards and goes against their ways that he fails and falls.

 

George wanted to make jedi a order of monks, therefore the lifelong dedication to the force and no attachment rule.
And jedi are few, far to few to police an entire galaxy.

Maybe, maybe the Chosen One had to find his own path to fulfill his destiny. He did destroy the Sith after all. And according to Jedi tradition, Anakin should not have been trained a jedi, Qui-Gon Jinn disobeyed the council.

 

Not sure what's that supposed to mean. He found his path. He became a Jedi. What he didn't do was walk the path all the way through.

He only fulfilled his destiny by acting as a Jedi.

And as Lucas has explained time and time again, Anakin was indeed too old to be trained as a Jedi, and the fact that he was taken into the order so old was a source of the problems that Anakin never managed to surpass and ended up causing his fall:

"This is obviously a very pivotal scene for Anakin because this is reuniting with his mother and his youth and, at the same time, dealing with his inability to let go of his emotions and allow himself to accept the inevitable. The fact that everything must change and that things come and go through his life and that he can’t hold on to things, which is a basic Jedi philosophy that he’s unwilling to accept emotionally. And the reason that is, is because he was raised by his mother rather than by the Jedi.
If he’d have been taken in his first year and started to study to be a Jedi, he wouldn’t have this particular connection as strong as it is and he’d have been trained to love people but not to become attached to them. But he has become attached to his mother and he will become attached to Padmé, and these things are, for a Jedi, who needs to have a clear mind and not be influenced by threats to their attachments, a dangerous situation. And it feeds into fear of losing things, which feeds into greed, wanting to keep things and wanting to keep his possessions and things that he should be letting go of."

"Plotwise, we’re dealing with the insistence of Qui-Gon in taking on this young kid and training him, even though, in theory, the child should have been trained by Yoda until he was about seven or eight years old. And then when he was seven or eight, he’d be given a Jedi. He’d become the Padawan learner to a Jedi.
So here we’re having Qui-Gon wanting to skip the early training and jump right to taking him on as his Padawan learner, which is controversial and ultimately the source of much of the problems that develop later on."

 

Thanks for answers guys. I never like the way that I see in the internet that "The jedis were evil" a lot from youtubers and articles.

Those criticisms I had from the Jedi were criticisms that I had no defense for and just wanted to see if there are really explanations for it.

 

On the contrary, I thought the PT did some great world building that helped us see the Jedi in their prime. This was GL's intention, and I feel that mission was accomplished. As for Sidious deceiving them and their ultimate fall in the end-I don't think any of that is the fault of the Jedi, other than a background sense of complacency perhaps.

 

Not at all for me. I still got the feeling that being a Jedi was something very meaningful and I’ll never forget the joy of seeing the Jedi in full action in TPM.

I much prefer that the prequels gave layers to the Jedi. I’m not interested in a simply Good vs Evil story. It makes the films more subjective and means that people have different opinions about characters and arcs as we can clearly see from this thread.

Yes the prequels showed them as being arrogant in some ways. But Arrogance is something that’s often attributed Mace Windu in particular, who actually was absolutely bang on correct about the chancellor in the end. They’re all different people and have different characters, so I liked that we got to see some different personalities

Were they complacent at times and have faults? Absolutely. Did that make the Jedi any less of a wonder to me ? Definitely not

 

Not really no just a bit complacent! It shows how smarter the Sith are though in epic fashion!

 

It is indeed an unfortunate narrative that has been gaining ground in the last few years but that is not supported by the movies or the guy who created the Jedi themselves. Same thing with the false narrative that Luke was some new type of Jedi or that he was meant to reform them, when that's not the case at all.

 

I don't know if pride is the word I'd use, in fact I might use humility, but fair enough.

Hm, well, the Prequel Trilogy doesn't teach us that. It doesn't represent them that way.

Caught in delimmas and conflicts of duty? Ok. Overpowered by the Sith? Sure. Arrogant? It's stated and shown the Jedi suffer from arrogance, but "highly arrogant" is an exaggeration.

They forbid attachments, selfish love. They don't forbid selfless love, in fact they encourage it.

Luke's realizations and choices after he cuts off Vader's hand proves he is a real Jedi in the classic sense, as Yoda had said. The fact he chose to love his father despite his evil is everything the Jedi teach - which was something Luke did not want to do up to that point. Before that, Luke's love was conditional on his father returning to the light.

The selfless love Luke and Anakin have for each other at the end is the same selfless love the Jedi taught all along.

Nowhere in the films or even Extended Universe is this established. It's mentined once by the Dagoyans in the cartoon series, but it was just like, their opinion, man.

Qui-Gon was enough of a maverick to occasionally defy the Council when he felt the Will of the Force was directing him to. Who was right in the end, is a matter of debate, I suppose, but this is why wasn't on the Council.

I think it's because it had never happened before/in over 1000 years, so why make that leap? It's established they didn't sense the creation of the Clones because their powers were diminishing. Palpatine could cloak his darkness, it's no stretch to see how Dooku could slide by. Yoda did sense it when he was in proximity to him.

Republic jurisdiction. Outer rim planets were not part of the Republic, unfortunately.

The PT shows Anakain wanted to be a Jedi and also keep his attachments. As someone taken in too old, and unwilling and/or unable to let go of his fears and attachments, it was a matter of him being a square peg in a round hole. We're shown it was for the most part his choices and Palpatine's manipulation that drove him to the dark side.
(With arguably a pinch of Obi-Wan not addressing the attachment issue efficiently enough).

Luke didn't learn from Anakin's mistakes, he learned by making the same ones. Based on attachments.
Yet ultimately seeing first hand where those mistakes would lead him. His father served as a tragic cautionary tale.

Well, George Lucas was not part of any of the Disney/EU productions you speak of, so take them with a big grain of salt. Study George's work carefully and make your own decisions.

 

To be fair, the Skywalker line shows that strong force potential can be inherited, so the jedi ban on procreation seems stupid.
And when it became obvious that Anakin was too unstable, the jedi could have also allowed him to leave the order and found a family with Padme. He might not have turned a Sith and return to the jedi temple to murder absolutely everyone.

Luke was also guilty of attachments. Obi-Wan told him that he needs to destroy Darth Vader, but Luke refused because he was his father. So according to Obi-Wan, Luke already failed. And he had strong feelings for his sister, which he should have hidden to protect her, also fail.
I don't think the books were out-of character with giving Luke a liasion with Mara, seeing how much he flirted with Leia in ANH, ESB.

 

Technically there's no ban on procreation - just on long-term relationships of any kind. Jedi gets intimate with someone - no real objection from the Council. Jedi starts dating them, and forming a long-term relationship - that's a no-no and the Council will make it clear that they have to break it off if they wish to stay Jedi.

Family ties will be the same sort of thing - Jedi will be strongly discouraged from forming close times with their old family, female Jedi who get pregnant, hand their child over to be raised by the Order, and avoid forming a tie with them as much as they can.

And so forth.

I would guess that Tiplee and Tiplar (twin Jedi) were trained in different "Jedi clans" (groups of younglings, exemplified in AOTC with Bear Clan), and kept apart as much as possible, during childhood, to keep any sibling emotional bonding to an absolute minimum.

 

But isn't the jedi order one big family? You can hardly argue that Obi-Wan wasn't attached to Anakin.

 

Mace Windu wasn't that arrogant imo.

He was just doing his job. And him killing Palpatine was a right move since if he instead listened to Anakin then that would easily give Palpatine a chance to unleash order 66 on the Jedi.

Another criticism I see some people use against the jedi is this that they didn't consider Anakin as a master even though that Anakin being on the council at his young age was a much bigger achievement.(And Anakin was just being greedy.)

Some also say that Jedis should have freed Anakin's mother even though that:
1.Shmi Skywalker was on outer rim territory which wasn't in Republic control.
2.Watto never accepted republic credits.(The only credits that Jedis would obviously have)
3.She was already freed by Owen Lars and it was the Tusken Raiders that killed her not the slavers.

 

They are a family of sorts - but Obi-Wan's attachment to Anakin is exactly the kind of thing the Jedi don't want - it nearly prevents Obi-Wan from dealing with him when he goes bad.

And a case could be made that it was exactly this attachment that prevented Obi-Wan on following through, and killing the mutilated Anakin - allowing the Emperor to rescue him and put him in the Vader suit.

 

This is where I disagree with the Jedi. They make a far too dogmatic distinction between "selfish" and selfless love. Love by nature has its "selfish" side, just like "jealousy" is a part of love. It's not in itself "evil" or "selfish". Human emotions are far too complex to strictly put them into categories like good or bad. Sure, the Jedi as a philosophy may have tried to be good. But they failed. And from my point of view their failure IS partially due to their strict dogma. They put emotions into fixed categories instead if viewing them as parts of a whole. Attachment is just as natural as other emotions. But the Jedi somehow try to demonize it instead of accepting it as part of human nature.
The Sith are much more natural in accepting ALL emotions, at least from what I have seen of them. "Good is a point of view" actually makes a lot of sense to me, though it was probably not meant that way by Lucas. In fact several statements by Palpatine appear reasonable, like "in order to have full knowledge of the Force you need to understand all aspects of it", NOT just the "light" side. Again, Lucas would probably deny it, but that wider view somehow makes more sense than the Jedi's dogmatism.
And since you mention Taoism, precisely in this philosophy there is no absolute "good" or "evil". Everything in life has a light and dark side. Refusing to acknowledge either is refusing to accept the whole picture. You surely remember the concept of Yin and Yang? There can be no absolute light without dark, and vice versa. It's about balance. There are no absolutes. In fact, maybe the Sith are closer to the original Taoists, while the Jedi are more comparable to Middle Age European Christians?? I'm no theologist or philosopher though. It was just an impression I get from the movies.
This is where I think the Jedi failed, especially Obi-wan, "ONLY the Sith deal in absolutes". I think he is wrong there. The Jedi do as well, only they don't admit it. No, I don't think they are "evil", but definitely flawed in their ideology.

I agree to a certain extent. The Jedi certainly do indoctrinate, only they think it's for their or future followers' own good. That's one of their flaws. They take away a person's freedom of choice to follow a certain religion or not. But it's not just Hitler who did that, in fact all the major religions do the same thing until today. Why are young children "baptized"? Are they asked if they want to be Christians? I don't think so. It's indoctrination, simple as that.
By the way, the plural of "Jedi" is also "Jedi".

 

They were different from how we had seen them before. Both at their height but also the cusp of their fall. So they had to have flaws, that are why they fell.

 

There's no ban on procreation. There are vows and a commitment to a selfless way of life, so they forego all attachments, personal goals and wordly pursuits to serve an higher, selfless purpose.

What?! Anakin could have left the order at any time and do whatever he wanted. But in his greed he wanted to keep his cake and eat it too. He knew that what he was doing was wrong but did it anyway. He was selfish and greedy, and that's what led to his fall. Not him being a Jedi. Had he behaved like the Jedi that he was, then he wouldn't have fallen. He indulged his flaws instead, so he fell.

Luke was guilty of attachments, yes. And that's why he failed by rushing to Cloud City out of fear and attachment instead of letting go and finishing his training. However, Luke was able to overcome that flaw at the very end of ROTJ, he was able to let go and be a Jedi.

No, Obi-Wan never told him that he needed to destroy Darth Vader. What both Obi-Wan and Yoda told him was that he needed to face Vader. What Luke refused was the reality that by facing Vader, he would need to be ready for the possibility of killing him. And that was a flaw on Luke's side.

 

Killing Vader, destroying Vader. Semantics. The reality is that Obi-Wan told Luke that his father is dead and Vader just a machine. That's dehumanizing to make Luke give up on his father, to do the utmost against Vader.

 

No, it isn't. Again, Yoda and Obi-Wan tasked Luke to face Vader, not to kill/destroy Vader. As Lucas explains:

"A Jedi can’t kill for the sake of killing. The mission isn’t for Luke to go out and kill his father and get rid of him. The issue is, if he confronts his father again, he may, in defending himself, have to kill him, because his father will try to kill him."

The problem with Luke was that he was refusing that very real possibility outright, which is something that he shouldn't do.

 

The stark distinction between selfishness and selflessness is pretty self-evident, and does not require any dogma to discern.

Human nature has selfishness and jealousy within it. And no, they're not evil in themselves, but they do lead to a path of suffering. The good thing is we can let those go. We don't have to be a slave to them.

Exactly, emotions in themselves should not be judged. It appears the Jedi know this.

It seems to me they viewed them as a whole, alright. What they did do was distinguish which of those emotions lead to suffering, and practiced letting go of those.

It's not so much a dogma, but a way of life that reduces suffering in the galaxy.
(Which is basically our most important task, many would say).

Fair enough, but the Jedi realize it leads to biased action and suffering.

It's important to understand the meaning behind the word attachment in the Buddhist sense. Many Westerners assume it means caring, loving, closeness etc. but it simply means clinging to impermanent things for a permanent sense of pleasure. And as we know, all things inevitably change.

That is an unfair assessment, I'd say. To accept it is to indulge in it and to let it control your actions. The Jedi simply cannot do that and also responsibly maintain peace and justice, and a clear connection with the Will of the Force. The Jedi Way of non-attachment works for them.

It works for others too, if they choose that way of life. But it's not for everyone, and it's not prosthelytized.

Yes. Well, except for life-affirming ones. But most especially, they accept the ones that lead to self-gain and suffering.

Lucas speaks to this quite often. Basically the Sith go against nature. They try to dominate everything. And to do so they chose to indulge in the things that hinder life, freedom, compassion, joy etc. in their greedy, all-consuming quest to always seek more and more power for themselves.

Whereas, while the Jedi of course acknowledge that greed, fear, hate, etc. exist, they choose not to indulge in them.

Simply put, there's the laws of nature and balance and there's the choice to go against that. I wouldn't say the Jedi refuse to acknowledge this.

The interesting thing I've noticed is that many people's interpretation of the Jedi is basically also Anakin's interpretation of them. Especially after Palpatine had chipped away at him for so long.

But most people aren't Jedi or Busdhists, so it's natural to tend to identify with Anakin's 'regular person' side.

I'd say the Jedi are more like Taosits while the Sith are more like a reverse-flipped version of Christianity; repress the light and focus only on the dark.

There's a bit of irony in Kenobi's words, but in the context, he was referring to Anakin's drawing of a line between him and Kenobi; if he is not with him then he is against him.

Kenobi did not want to be against him. He wanted to help him come back. But Anakin shut that down, without allowing any room for discussion.

This was also Kenobi's not-so-subtle way of letting it be known he knows Anakin is in league with Sidious, and that he will thusly do what he must, should Anakin go on the offensive.

Members into the Jedi Order are free to step away. By the time they're old enough to make their own decisions though, I'd assume most have come to see the value in giving one's life to service for the good of the Galaxy.

Babies are Christhened. From what I've seen, young children are asked if they want to be baptized. And I've seen some chose not to.

Yes familial, educational and cultural indoctrination are real and can be quite problematic, but as a member of a relativley free society I've even seen some children choose not to follow their parents' beliefs. It's not quite so absolute

 

I find it baffling that so many people equal "natural/normal" to something okay or legitimate.

Something being natural doesn't make it okay to act upon. Everyone has the capacity for good and evil. And yes, good and evil (light and dark side) do exist. They are "natural". To pretend that good and evil don't exist is an amoral view, which is nothing but an excuse for evil to flourish one can't tell right from wrong.

That moral relativity is precisely what Palpatine uses to seduce Anakin. He calls Anakin's act of revenge against Dooku as something "only natural".

What the Jedi teach and the main characters learn, is to renounce evil and do good. And to renounce evil is to not give into the dark side. To not give into selfishness, anger, fear, agression, greed, etc, all of which are easy to give into and act upon but bring decadence, pain and suffering. To do good is to be selfless, which is not easy to give into, but brings virtue, joy and prosperity.

 

I think one major challenge is that SW fans had a lot of time to imagine what the Jedi were like. And then... they were different than some expected, and GL decided to introduce some challenging philosophical topics without the time to delve into them (although they are touched upon).

Want to see how attachments can be dangerous, or even unhealthy, or bad? VERY dangerous, potentially, when very powerful people are led astray by them? Step up, Anakin Skywalker. Despite years of training by some of the galaxy's spiritual masters, the death of his mother sends him on a homicidal rampage, killing men, women and children. So attached to his dream of becoming a Jedi is he that he hides this terrifying failing from his mentor, and his relationship with Padme as well. Then, unable to bear the thought of the pain he would feel from losing Padme - and let's be clear, it is fear of this pain that motivates him - he is willing to hands-on murder children, murder former friends and colleagues, and sell the galaxy into slavery in an attempt to avoid it.

So, yeah, attachment CAN be unhealthy.

But the movies didn't have a lot of time to delve into Jedi philosophy, Stoic philosophy, Eastern philosophy, etc. Which in part has led some to come away believing the point of the Prequels was the Jedi were weird, they hated emotion, they were arrogant meanies who screwed everything up... which is a shame, as I'm confident that wasn't GL's point .