ST Too much use of the Force?

One thing that should be noted in regards to the laser deflection thing is that it isn't only about seeing the future. When a Jedi is in touch with the Force it can help guide their actions as well, so as long as they're at peace the Force guides the lightsaber to where the blaster bolts will be.

 

I'm not a fan of Spiderman or Harry Potter, I'm a fan of SW.

And SW, at least the first three films, contain a mix of many different elements. And that's how it should continue to be, with the force having an appropriately strong presence, not an overpowering all-dominating one.

 

I was mostly making a joke, but the other portion of me was trying to make the larger point that it's common for whatever sets the "heroes" of sci-fi/fantasy films and stories apart from the other characters in the film or story to be a pretty prominent plot element.

 

Pretty prominent is okay in my book.

I just don't want another PT.

 

Wait, the same PT that had a massive Gungan/Battle Droid battle, and the creation of an enormous non-Force using Clone Army that takes on the army of Battle Droids multiple times? Most of the big action sequences in the PT didn't involve the Force at all - it was kept within the main characters and their personal story arcs.

But I also think you may be referring to the fact that there were just a lot of Jedi in the PT? And I totally hear that argument, but I also think that that was necessary to give us the scope of how important the Jedi were to the galaxy at the time.

Agree to disagree, I guess!

 

I do have to confess that there are times when I think the Force was overdone in the prequels. In the OT, it was something only a small handful of characters were attuned to, so it was something really special. In the prequels, just about everyone and their cousin was walking around with a lightsaber.

Sometimes I think they would have been better off if they made no more than a small handful of Jedi in the prequels. Say for example the Jedi council were the only Jedi in those movies.

 

Why is this even up for discussion though? Despite being set in the age of the Jedi, the PT still featured prominent non-force users in Padme, Jar Jar, Panaka, Bail, Grievous, Shmi, etc. Both trilogies feature the Force prominently, alongside main and supporting characters who are not Force users.

Obviously this next trilogy will do the same.

 

Another thing, Yoda engaging in combat should have been saved for Sidious. Think it was unnecessary for him to face Dooku in AoTC

 

Seems a few decades late to be complaining about that, no? Lucas stated before Return of the Jedi was released, in print, that the prequels would feature a lot of Jedi. It was always in the original plan.

Personally the moment I was old enough to comprehend the following implications set down by old Ben:

"Your father's light saber. This is the weapon of a Jedi Knight. Not as clumsy or random as a blaster; an elegant weapon for a more civilized age. For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. Before the dark times... before the Empire."

I imagined a world pre-ANH with lots of Jedi. Why? Because you can't be the "guardians of peace and justice" for the entire old galactic Republic on the backs of "only a small handful of characters".

That the old republic had plenty of Jedi running around was established over 20 years before TPM was released.

 

Which is I guess what happens when you have an evil Emperor who purges a vast majority of Force users from the galaxy.

 

The Droids, too.

 

Gee, I didn't realize there was a statute of limitations regarding us talking about things we might have changed about these movies. I guess all discussion of the OT must cease immediately because all those moves are decades old.

It isn't exactly my biggest criticism of the prequels, but it really is a valid point that characters having Force ability is significantly less special in the prequels than in the OT because there are so darn many of them. It loses a "coolness" factor.

There is no way those characters you listed are as prominent as Leia, Han, Chewie, Boba Fett, Lando, Wedge, Tarkin, Jabba. (And yes, as far as the OT is concerned, Leia counts as a "non-Force using character").


Other than Padme, there really just aren't any PT main characters who aren't Force users. The OT had plenty of 'em.

 

That's because the PT was about the fall of the Jedi Order from one who was one of their own. There's no way that seeing the Jedi in their prime was going to involve fourteen Jed defending a large galaxy from evil.

 

No, I'm merely wondering what you expected considering Obi Wan setup the expectation of plenty of Jedi running around during the old Republic days within the first 45 minutes of the original Star Wars back in 1977.

Well, no.

Jango Fett is more important to the PT than Boba was to the OT. By far. Non-force user.
Jar Jar is more important to TPM than Chewie was to ANH. Non-force user.
Panaka has far more impact on TMP than Wedge does in ANH. Non-force user.
Grievous is major villain in ROTS, just like Jabba is in ROTJ. Non-force user.
Shmi is far, far more important to the overall saga than half the people you mentioned. Non-force user.

You're confusing personal preference and popularity with character importance.

The very fact that you seriously discounted major non-force users, characters vital to their films, like Grievous, Panaka, Jar Jar, and the MOTHER of Anakin Skywalker, by saying they aren't as important as characters like Boba, Wedge, Jabba, and Tarkin is more telling of your personal saga prejudices, not the actual importance of any of those characters.


There are plenty of important non-force users in the PT, just as there are plenty of vital force users in the OT.

Leia is revealed as a force user during the OT, and a potentially powerful one at that. How does she not count as a force user? That's like saying that Luke can't be Anakin's father in ANH because it wasn't revealed until the very end of TESB.

 

Indeed 14 in a Galaxy of Trillions. That be pointless waste of time to even bother plus not much of a fall from grace.

 

Oh, it was exactly what I expecting, but I think it possibly could have been better done.

And please spare me the "Obi-Wan's dialogue" part. There are plenty of inconsistencies from the OT to the PT where something spoken in the OT got disregarded for the sake of storytelling.

Nah. Boba is actually in 2 movies, and capturing Han was certainly on par with anything Jango did. They are, at best, a wash.

I'm talking about the entire trilogy, not movie-for-movie. Chewie is a far more important character in the OT than Jar-Jar was in the PT. Heck Jar-Jar was hardly even in E3.

Again, I'm talking about the entire trilogy. Panaka was only in 1 movie.

Agreed. These are a wash.

Shmi is not exactly a major character. She has a supporting role in E1, and very minor role in E2 and isn't even in E3.


By the way, where's the PT equivalent of Han? You're little character-for-character list conveniently left out one of the OT's most prominent characters.

I don't think any impartial analysis of the OT would consider Leia a "Force using" character.

Actually, it is nothing like that at all.

It's reasonable to suggest that the PT needed all those Jedi. But no impartial analysis of the 2 trilogies could ever possibly conclude the non-Force users in the PT are as prominent as the non Force users in the OT.

 

That is why it is called Fantasy!

In the OT we had Luke, who was training to be a Jedi, and 2 retired Jedi in exile. The Prequel Trilogy was when the Jedi flourished, and fought in the Clone Wars. With no Sith(except Dooku), and only an army of non-Force users to fight, they needed to have the ability to deflect laser blasts. If they couldn't, then their lightsabers would be mostly useless in the war.

 

My problem with the PT Jedi is that there's an implication that we're supposed to be rooting for them, but with the exception of Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon, they're just not very likable. Even Yoda lacks the spark that made him so memorable in the OT. And everything hinges on the actions (or inactions) of this group of people I don't enjoy watching. And when the films try to show off the Jedi at the height of their powers, it just comes across as goofy more often than not. The duel in TPM is about as much as I can stand. A lot of the rest, with pointless flippy-do moves and feats of strength that don't amount to much (overusing Force lightning, Dooku trying to bring the roof down), just bores me. It suffers from the same "lots of flash/little meaning" syndrome that the PT exhibits as a whole.

In the OT, every time the Force is used, it means something to the story. That's not really the case in the PT, which cheapens the entire thing. More isn't always better. So I'm hoping that Kasdan and Abrams feel the same, and dial back the Force use to make it meaningful again and not just for cheap thrills.

But, I'm a person that generally dislikes the PT from top to bottom, including the overarching story in the three films. Hater's gonna hate.

 

I love the Jedi and love the use of the Force in every Star Wars film, but I'll totally concede this point. The PT institutionalized the Jedi and turned them into a bureaucracy that needed to be overcome way too many times. They came across less like the heroes they actually are/were and more like obstacles.

 

I hope the ST Jedi are similar to Zayne Carrick.

 

Or Clone Wars-era Luminara Unduli

 

Well that's really a completely different point than you were making earlier. So I can't address that.

So because the PT has a couple discrepancies with the PT, the ENTIRE setup for the scope of the Jedi in the Old Republic should have been tossed too?

And that honestly makes sense to you all because you think it was a good idea to see a "handful of Jedi" be the keepers of the entire galaxy?

You think being the template for the entire Clone Army, later early Stormtroopers, and Boba Fett himself, is on the same level of capturing Han Solo. Seriously?

Jar Jar was responsible for helping set up a major ground attack in the Battle of Naboo and then was the being who ensured senator Palpatine would eventually become the all powerful Emperor Palpatine.

Please tell me what Chewie, a character I do love, did in the Star Wars saga that remotely compares.

I'll give Wedge the slight edge here, but across three films Wedge doesn't do much. His moment of glory is helping take down the first AT-AT.

Let me reiterate this.

Shmi Skywalker is the mother of Anakin Skywalker. She is the sole parent. Without her there is no Anakin/Vader, no Luke, no Leia.
Without her choice to allow her son to go with the Jedi, there literally is no saga.
Without her torture and death, there is no turn to the Dark Side.
She is more important to the actual story and main thruline of the Star Wars Saga than Boba Fett, Jabba the Hutt, Chewie, Wedge, Tarkin, or many other supporting characters. The fact that she "isn't even in E3" bares such amazing irrelevance to this conversation. Prior to the PT neither Yoda nor Palpatine were in the first Star Wars episode. Did that diminish their importance?

LOL, what? Did you miss the entire point of this debate? I never said EVERY PT non-force user had an OT non-force using equivalent.

I simply said that the PT, for all the Jedi running around, had quite a few important non-force using characters.

You're the one who started this nonsense about how Wedge, Boba, and Chewie are more important to the story than characters like Shmi, Jar Jar, and Jango.

And nobody said that. You made an assumption and ran with it.

Your assumption was wrong.

 

Yoda is one of my top three favorite characters. I grew up on him.

But I prefer the AOTC and especially ROTS incarnation of the character. The PT made me even more of a Yoda fan.

I think one of the biggest mistakes George made with the PT was not personalizing the Jedi more. Obi Wan, Qui Gon, Anakin, Yoda, and Mace Windu are the only Jedi in the actual films that are fleshed out enough to care much about their fates. And three out of five of those characters already have a long history with much of the audience.

While I find the Order 66 sequence quite powerful, how much more would it have been if we had some real personal investment in each of those slain Jedi?

 

True, though Ki-Adi-Mundi's death gets me every time. For whatever reason I latched onto his character in AOTC (still have my AOTC Ki-Adi figure as a treasure). Order 66 was devastating and totally emotionally heavy, but yes, would have been even more so if any of those characters had been developed beforehand. But then again, wouldn't that have made TPM and AOTC really bloated films?

 

Not really, I liked the force usage in the Prequels, and when it came to duels, the force was pretty much non existent aside from jumping, the occasional push, and some lightning, there wasn't much variety to be had.