PT {+The Misconception Of The JEDI ORDER+}

Old EU, yes, Ki-Adi-Mundi was allowed to be married because of the low Cerean birth rate, so a "dispensation" was granted. But the human race was not in danger of disappearing because of a low birth rate.

George Lucas is the one who said in an interview that the Jedi were not required to be celibate.

Over the decades, it was not a point of contention about Jedi and families, but it wasn't until some years later that GL decided on the forbidden love/marriage angle for Anakin, making all prior "families ok" suddenly come across to many as hypocritical.

I personally hate to blame the Jedi for hypocrisy when such is the result of the Creater's decisions down the line.

And for those who think the Jedi are "unemotionally promiscuous," I really think you need to consider the definition of attachment GL intended all along that does not clearly get communicated in the films: the ability to "let go" when and if necessary, a recognition that most things in life are impermanent and cannot be held onto. That would mean one could feel deeply for another and possibly end up in an intimate relationship as long as one could accept that the relationship could change or dissolve over time, perhaps into no relationship at all or a different type of relationship.

 

Basically, being human.

In the old EU, many Jedi had been allowed to marry and have families before Lucas declared no attachments and no families. A retcon was introduced that the Jedi once allowed families within their Order, but following the last war with the Sith, the Jedi began training Jedi from a young age and brought an end to family dynamics. Ki-Adi-Mundi was an exception due to the nature of his species necessitating that he reproduce. Other Jedi like Keiran Halcyon and Quinlan Vos chose to do as Anakin did and maintain a family in secret. Luke would later excise this rule when he started his Jedi Order. This was done in order to maintain continuity with the Halcyon family as Corran Horn's whole backstory was dependent on his being the grandson of a Jedi Master, while with Vos it was part of the storyline that was developing and used to end his story when the Clone Wars ended.

 

There was a lot of retconning when it came to Jedi families - splinter factions of Jedi like the "Altisian Jedi" (led by Djinn Altis).

Probably the oddest example of "Jedi Master with family" was Thracia Cho Leem:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Thracia_Cho_Leem

who married several times without any of these "explanatory retcons" or any overt censure. This was because it was in between TPM and AOTC that Lucas came up with the "no marriage" rule, and for some reason nobody was interested in explaining her activities away.

 

If the Jedi aren't in the business of freeing slaves (ie Shmi to help Anakin) then they shouldn't have been in the business of caring so much about birth rates of other beings that the Jedi Code was overlooked. There should have been no dispensation made for Mundi. He should have remained on his world and not been taken into training as a Jedi. He never even helped his species male birth rate anyway, he had only daughters.

Not to mention they made him a member of the Council before he was a Jedi Master, of their own volition, not because they wanted him to spy on someone either.

 

That was well before Lucas made the edict that non Masters never sat on the Council. You have to remember, Lucas didn't pay close attention to the EU. He didn't know of the things that were written like Ki-Adi-Mundi having kids and being a Knight on the Council. This is another reason for chucking the old EU, since it was filled with things that were retconned by each film.

 

Right. As above, GL did not consider himself bound by the EU, so of course there would be contradictions. Now, all contradictions can't be "hand wiped away" by what I say, and you of course have every right to your own head canon, but blaming the movies for going against the old EU is, well, unnecessary

And if you want to believe the jedi shouldn't "care about the birth rates of other beings," that's your right as well, but the Cerean people were part of the Empire. This was something within the scope of the Jedi to allow, IMHO. Freeing all slaves literally COULD NOT be, as any action to stamp out slavery outside the Republic could well be considered an act of war and interference with another government/culture with a heck of a lot of problems, and probably action that would still fall far short of freeing all slaves.

Out of curiosity, do you consider any country or organization (UN, EU, some alliance) morally culpable for allowing the apparently horrific conditions of the average North Korean? Morally, shouldn't we march into or bomb the government out of existence to allow a better life for those citizens? Or do we not intervene? Are "we' equally complicit and morally bankrupt for keeping out of another country's affairs?

 

darth-sinister No. Being unemotionally promiscuous doesn't define being human (as if all Jedi are human. So much for "world-building"). Emotions are always a part of relations unless you are a nutcase.

Having and forming attachments is being "human". Being prohibited from forming attachments is not.

If you are going to strictly apply "human" to it. The promiscuity of humans comes from the emotional impulse to procreate. To populate. Ki-Adi didn't have to break the code and be allowed attachments in order to ensure the survival of his species. He just needed to be promiscuous.

The only reason that attachment is given such spuriously negative consequences is because Lucas settled on making Anakin's relationship with Padme a factor in him turning. In order to do that he invented the phenomenon of people who are attached to their mother are prone to being prompted to do evil things. Which is utter nonsense.and not relatable to any normal human behaviour.

I suppose the amusing thing about this is that George Lucas's first feature was about a society that outlaws love and the only attachments that are permitted are computerised, purely perfunctory, unemotional pairings intended for the greater good. And yet people think Lucas is making an unambiguous point with Anakin about how attachments can be a bad thing if you are told you must give them up.

 

Ok, I thought I read somewhere that Lucas had knowledge of some sort of what went into EU materials. Like some type of checks and balances thing. It could have been referring to just one work and not all and I misinterpreted it. I tried to steer clear of the EU for a very long time. These posts don't mean this is my 'head canon'. My discovery of this Mundi material was recent as I was searching for statements made to or about Anakin and I am trying to work through my thoughts on what I found.

I am not blaming the films for going against the EU. I am just trying to figure out where I stand on all this. Nor am I looking at this as a political issue either. I see this as somewhat of a hypocritical Jedi code / religious type thing. I get that Lucas says Jedi can be compassionate but I don't see compassion in their canon actions as portrayed. Or if it is portrayed then it seems to be inconsistent to me.

 

The only thing Lucas did in the EU was to tell them not to cover certain things like Yoda's species

 

Yes, GL said not to cover certain things like Yoda's species, but he also said he was not bound to anything in the EU - it was the EU author's creations, not his, and he would contradict the EU if against his vision.

I've said a million times and I'll say it again, to understand why "attachments" are bad, you need to understand GL's definition of attachment, and it isn't "love," or "emotional connections." Because the truth is, if you're right, the Jedi were 100% hypocrites and I wouldn't admire them.

But we are not using the same definition of "attachments" and none of us will reach anything close to mutual understanding if we don't agree on the definition of the words we're using.

"Attachments" as used in the movies (and unfortunately not clearly communicated as such in the films) is an unhealthy emotional attachment, whereas holding onto the attached person/thing is all about the perspective of the attached person. You don't mourn someone who died because the world lost a great person...you mourn them because you lost your spouse and you are bereft of the benefits they give you, for example.

No doubt in the real world there is no one who doesn't have some combination of healthy/unhealthy aspects to their relationships, so I suppose off the top of my head a good example might be someone who will kill a spouse who wants a divorce, because if "person A" can't have "person B," then no one will and "person B' has to die.

Anakin's belief that HE can't live without Padme shows how attached he is to her as a necessary component of HIS life. There's too little of loving Padme for herself and to much loving her for what she provides to him.

 

I think it's fairly clear from the films that the Jedi aren't expected to be soulless robots. Obi-Wan is the most by-the-book Jedi of the main characters, yet he is a well-adjusted person who clearly does have emotional connections with other people such as Anakin and Dex. What he doesn't have is a dependency on others. That's what makes Anakin's relationship with Padme problematic. It's like the difference between an alcoholic and someone who drinks in moderation. When your sense of well-being is dependent on some outside influence then you may become an unpredictable and dangerous person. Naturally this is going to be a serious concern if you happen to be a mystic monk who practices with the arcane primal energies of the universe.

 

Lucas was aware of certain things because they were brought to his attention. He had to sign off on Luke being married, Chewie's death, Palpatine's cloning, Boba's survival, etc. But stuff like Jedi families were never brought up to him, because everyone assumed that Jedi families were common. And at one point, they were. The second draft of ANH featured the backstory of the Jedi Bendu springing up from one man teaching his twelve children and they taught their children and so on. Lucas didn't follow through with it when he worked on the third and fourth drafts, leaving it rather vague.This vagueness is what Kevin J. Anderson and Tom Vietch used when writing the early history of the Jedi Order, in the early to mid 90's. When Lucas signed off on Luke's marriage, it was only in part due to his decision to not make the ST and because Luke was creating his own Jedi Order. But he did say that if he had made the ST, Luke wouldn't be married and Palpatine would never have returned.

 

No offense, but this reminds me of my parents and their friends discussing how misunderstood the successive leaders of the Soviet revolution were and how they couldn't have known or done anything about all the human rights atrocities that sometimes happened in that big sprawling system.


Anyway. Lucas signed off on Luke's marriage. So that implies that the concept of Luke having an attachment was consistent with the Jedi he had depicted in the movies. And yet the OT is supposed to be consistent with what he came up with for the PT which is that you cannot be a Jedi and have attachments. Return Of The Jedi supposedly resolves the problems created by Anakin having an attachment withe Vader and Luke letting go of their attachments.

It can't be both. Unless we're allowed to just impose whatever tenuous values we like on the movies in spite of what was originally conceived..

e.g. ROTJ resolves the galaxy's fall into darkness because both Vader and his son are now wearing all black clothing, so it balances out.

 

Lucas allowed the marriage Skywalker marriage, because he was never bound by it.

"There are two worlds here," explained Lucas. "There's my world, which is the movies, and there's this other world that has been created, which I say is the parallel universe—the licensing world of the books, games and comic books. They don't intrude on my world, which is a select period of time, [but] they do intrude in between the movies. I don't get too involved in the parallel universe."

--George Lucas, Cinescape interview, 2001.

STARLOG: "The Star Wars Universe is so large and diverse. Do you ever find yourself confused by the subsidiary material that's in the novels, comics, and other offshoots?"

LUCAS: "I don't read that stuff. I haven't read any of the novels. I don't know anything about that world. That's a different world than my world. But I do try to keep it consistent. The way I do it now is they have a Star Wars Encyclopedia. So if I come up with a name or something else, I look it up and see if it has already been used. When I said [other people] could make their own Star Wars stories, we decided that, like Star Trek, we would have two universes: My universe and then this other one. They try to make their universe as consistent with mine as possible, but obviously they get enthusiastic and want to go off in other directions."

--Starlog interview, 2005.

TOTAL FILM: "Are you happy for new Star Wars tales to be told after you're gone?"

LUCAS: "I've left pretty explicit instructions for there not to be any more features. There will definitely be no Episodes VII-IX. That's because there isn't any story. I mean, I never thought of anything. And now there have been novels about the events after Episode VI, which isn't at all what I would have done with it. The Star Wars story is really the tragedy of Darth Vader. That is the story. Once Vader dies, he doesn't come back to life, the Emperor doesn't get cloned and Luke doesn't get married..."

--Total Film interview, 2008.

As to Luke's wearing black, the original intention was that it was the Jedi uniform. He changed this while making TPM, though the EU had already gone with the idea of the brown robes that Obi-wan wore, was what Jedi wore during the time period of the Clone Wars.

And Lucas never made up his mind about marriage, until he wrote the PT, because he had two different ideas about that and he decided to use his original one.

 

To me, if the movies do anything, they illustrate the danger of certain kinds of attachments, very clearly - through (unsurprisingly) Anakin.

Anakin loved his mother - so far, so good. Anakin loved his mother so much that when she is murdered by the Sand People, he goes on a berserker rampage and murders "men, women, children"... not so good (to put it mildly). Anakin loves Padme. He loves her so much that the thought of the pain he would feel, should she die, is so utterly terrifying that to spare himself that pain, he is willing to murder his former friends and colleagues, personally kill children, and help bring about the end of freedom and democracy for billions upon billions of beings, selling the galaxy into slavery to a Sith Lord.

Right there, you have pretty clear illustrations of why "attachment" - the wrong kind of attachment, an attachment that yes, creates fear and terror of loss, that tempts one to compromise, horribly, once's principles - can be a dangerous thing, and can lead to suffering for the person with that attachment, and for others. If you think about it a moment, I am sure you can think of many examples where fear of loss motivates some awful stuff - fear of losing wealth, of losing status, of losing youth, of losing power, etc.

I think the problem is that a lot of folks imagine that the Jedi's implied solution - or that of a Stoic, or a Buddhist, or any of the other philosophies that embrace similar concepts - is some kind of joyless, robotic, cold indifference, and with all due respect, that's really not the case. Granted, the movies don't spend much time diving deeply into the Jedi philosophy, but while you can point to grim Jedi (Mace, and to some extent, Qui-Gonn), I don't think Obi Wan, or Yoda, the two most prominent Jedi examples that we spend the most time with, are portrayed as cold, uncaring, automatons. The point isn't to "not care about anyone" - a closer description would be to try to care about EVERYONE, equally, or to at least be on the watch for attachments that cross the line from being healthy to those that are potentially self-destructive.

 

And that was a retcon, created to explain why he had a family in one of the early comics where he was the main character.

 

Retcons are the root of all evil...

 

Lucas also disallowed a lot of things, especially early on. So, even if he didn't feel bound, he still cared about what the early EU was doing.

 

Only if it went too far off the rails of what "Star Wars" was about. He didn't want Vader to be resurrected because that interfered with his redemption, but he didn't mind Palpatine. And he didn't want the PT interfered with, so the restriction on Obi-wan and Anakin.

 

How does Palpatine being resurrectable nor interfere with Anakin's redemption?

A resurrectable Sith makes a mockery of the prophecy that Anakin was supposed to fulfill in order to be redeemed.

 

To me, the jedi did come across as cold, indifferent and uncaring overall.
I think the problem is the acting, the actors say their lines quite flatly, almost wooden and thus they come across as they don't care.
Qui-Gon had some warm scenes with Shmi where I got the genuine sense that they did care about each other. But there were too few such scenes.
The council in TPM, to me, didn't show much empathy for Anakin missing his mother. All they did was to point out how bad things could come from this. No "We understand that you miss your mother and it is fine for you to feel that way now but take care not dwell to much on this.
Or something like that.

And when the Jedi were wiped out, I didn't much care because they didn't seem to care very much about anything.

Even Yoda, he directly said in RotS NOT to mourn.
That if someone close to you dies, then you should not mourn or miss them, just be happy that they are dead and move on.
That is cold and quite heartless.
My brother lost his wife to cancer a few years back and if I had come to him the day she died and repeated what Yoda said, he most likely would have punched me in the face.
He mourned and grieved and was able to move on and is fine now.
But he needed the mourning. Had he not done that, then I would have worried.

As you said, in TPM Anakin had a normal, healthy attachment to his mother.
In AotC that attachment is not healthy and he reacts with violence and hate when she dies. Under very horrible circumstances mind you.
Why did Anakin's attachment to his mother get worse?
Is it all Anakin's fault or did the circumstances around him make his attachment get twisted.
He is responsible sure but as I said in another thread, I think the Jedi didn't have the best approach to deal with the attachments he had. They expected him to do what all other Jedi did, don't be attached. That he had an attachment that other Jedi did not was not a factor.

I know some argue that it is all Anakin's fault, that he was unable to let go and it would not have mattered what the Jedi or anyone did. He was unable to let go of any attachment and would go nuts if his mother died regardless of circumstances.
To me, this approach has Anakin as someone doomed from birth, that he can never let go of attachments, ever.

I think that Anakin would have an easier time to let go of his mother if some things had been different.
Like if she had been freed from slavery and he was told this. Knowing that she was free and alive and well would have helped put his mind at ease.
Maybe allowing the occasional letter or telephone call might also have helped.

The Jedi rules, at times, comes across as dogmatic and rigid.
The order, at least to me, seemed to be presented as flawed, stuck in their ways and Palpatine exploited that and this didn't give the best circumstances for Anakin.

I don't mind having flawed Jedi, just that again, they came across as cold and distant and not terribly interesting. So I wasn't engaged with them.
Tony Stark is a flawed character but also an engaging one so I want to watch what he does.

Bye for now.
Blackboard Monitor

 

In 1989-90, Lucas wasn't working on the PT yet. That is when "Dark Empire" was first being developed and in Tom Veitch's proposal, Darth Vader was to return and it would be determined that the Empire had duplicated his suit and was having someone pretend to be him, in order to continue the myth of Vader. Lucas said no to this and afterwards, a new version was proposed with Palpatine being brought back as a clone. However, Veitch has told two versions of this; one where it was Lucas's idea to clone him and another where Lucas just signed off and it was all his idea. By the time Lucas started work on the PT in 1994, he had made up his mind to not make the ST afterwards. And by that point, Howard Rothman had told him about the way Paramount was handling the "Star Trek" books and comics, in relations to the shows and films, and so they decided to adopt that policy. But as he also said later on, if he had made the ST, he wouldn't have gone in the direction that Lucas Books went in. And what little we do know when he changed his mind and before the decision to go in a different direction that lead to the final film, supports this notion.

 

And thank you too, a civil discussion is often interesting.

About the Jedi.
I can sort of see what Lucas going for and what his intention was.
But to me, intent and result are not the same.

I get that he wanted Jedi to be a bit formal, calm, , in control, reserved etc.
The republic was a more civilized time and all that.

But I don't think the end result managed to convey that.
Playing a reserved character is often harder than someone who shows more open feelings.
And it comes with the risk that the character could come across as cold and unfeeling and that they don't care.
You need to show that you have feelings but isn't ruled by them.

To take Star Trek and the Vulcans. They are people that temper their emotions with logic and try not to let their feelings run away with them.
The great actors that played Vulcans, ex Leonard Nimoy, Mark Lenard, they were able to show that the character had emotions even if they weren't fully visible.
Less great actors instead made the Vulcans come across as stiff, aloof and wooden and with all the emotions of a potty.

That is the main problem I have with the PT Jedi. Far too often they come across like they don't care as opposed to being reserved and controlled.
I don't think that was the intent but that is how it came across to me.

They lacked warmth. Qui-Gon had some warm scenes with Shmi in TPM and I really liked those.
There I got the sense that he cared about her and she liked him for that. It wasn't anything related to the plot and you could cut it and it wouldn't have any major impact. But it was a quiet character scene, where some genuine warmth was shown. I liked it a lot and I could have done with more of that.

Bye for now.
The Guarding Dark

 

^ The reservedness of the Jedi came off as posturing. Smugness, in some cases. Only Obi Wan seemed to possess a genuine ironic detachment from the ideals he has adopted while genuinely trying his best to live up to them. That twinkle in his eye in the PT (but which is mostly absent in TPM though) is consistent with the causal wisdom he exudes in A New Hope. Yoda's chided, almost pathetic stature in ESB is supported by the PT in the sense that he seems to have had it coming.