Wars not make one great...

One thing that really disturbed me about AOTC was the Yoda-Dooku saber duel. Most people who I have talked to really liked this part of the movie and I guess from a certain stand point that is understandable. I mean it is clear that he is strong with the force and all of that, but it is just not what Yoda is all about.

The only person in the original trilogy to refer to Yoda as some sort of bada$$ was an untrained Luke. "I'm looking for a great warrior," Luke says, to which he is rebuked by Yoda himself, "Wars not make one great." I think that this line really shows what Yoda was, a true master of the light side of the force. I believe that the Jedi were not meant to be warriors, but mediators, and scholars who use their force abilities to that end. As such, Yoda's true mastery would be towards those ends not his combat ability. However, it is assumed by many that Yoda, as the leading member of the Jedi Council and a Jedi who is very strong with the force, that he must be a great fighter. I think that Yoda's true power comes from his knowledge of the force and his self discipline. Why is it that he must be portrayed as some master duelist that fights like a superball. I like the image of the old Yoda, tiny and frail limping with a cane. It shows that his strength comes from within and is not necessarily something that can be seen or touched, or used to do battle.

Thoughts?

 

Having Yoda fight with a lightsaber was the easy way out for the not-so-imaginative-as-he-likes-to-think-he-is George Lucas. They said beforehand that we would see why Yoda is the master. Well, I didn't see it. Is jumping around like a frog on speed being the master? I hate the scene, and people just laughed at it in disbelief in theaters.
How could Yoda have shown that he is the master? By showing that war does not make one great. By showing that he is a keeper of the peace. A Jedi Master. He could have done this in numerous interesting ways, through cunning dialogue, mind powers, by using his great levitation abilities. But with a tiny green saber? BAH!

 

This is humorous. ReeYees, after complaining that the characters in the PT don't grow, hates that Yoda is actually growing.

It's called learning, people. Yoda isn't going to be so wise or be an old war torn hermit without going through an actual war ("There hasn't been a fullscale war since the formation of the Republic"; "I will not let this Republic, which has stood for a thousand years, be split in two"). Yoda, like the rest of the Jedi, has become corrupt and is playing into the sith's hands.

Cometgreen

 

I believe that much of Yoda's anti-war/fighting attitude comes out of the Clone Wars. Yes, even the 900 year old Jedi Master still has things to learn.

After all, remember Yoda's line from TESB:

"Decide you must how to serve them best. If you leave now, help them you could. But you would destroy all for which they have fought and suffered."


Now, watch AOTC as Yoda decides to hold the enormous pillar from crushing Obi-Wan and Anakin instead of finishing off Dooku. This scene perfectly mirrors the quote.

-Yoda had to decide how to serve Anakin and Obi-Wan best.
-He could help them by stopping the pillar.
-But, if he did, he would destroy everything for which they had fought and suffered for: to capture Dooku.

In this instance, Yoda makes the wrong choice and saves his friends instead of the higher goal (stopping Dooku, and therefore the Clone Wars, and therefore saving countless millions of lives).


So, when Yoda sees Luke doing the same thing he did in AOTC, his mentality has changed. The war has changed him and he's realized that there is a higher goal you must keep in my besides your friends when you're fighting a war.


Anyways, hope that made sense, because I've been thinking about it for a while.

 

ATOC has made a delicious irony of the line, "wars not make one great," in that Yoda is the very person who led the troops into the first battle of the Clone Wars. Hell, he even named the "Clone War." As others have written, he is going through a major learning curve, knowledge which he is able to pass to Luke in EST and ROTJ. Although he is not responsible for the Clone Wars, he was a major, albeit unwitting, player in them. Once he fully realizes his role, the true purpose of the war, and how he was a mere puppet of Palpatine, he learns that "wars not make one great" (unless they make you an Emperor!)

 

I never noticed that Sithman.

 

I don't get this. Where did the idea that Yoda was a pacifist come from? He said war didn't make you great, not that he'd never ever fight at all. He's a Jedi. The lightsaber is the weapon of a Jedi. They are not used for cleaning out his giant fuzzy ears.

Being a warrior does not make you great. That does not change the fact that sometimes you have to fight. Some things are worth it.

 

I think that Yoda's true power comes from his knowledge of the force and his self discipline.

I agree. He's not a "Jedi warrior" like Mace. He doesn't hack away at battle droids. Yoda only fights when absolutely necessary and only against the most dangerous opponents.

Why is it that he must be portrayed as some master duelist that fights like a superball.

I don't see this as taking away from our previous image. He's still the same character; his ability to fight comes from "his knowledge of the force and his self discipline." He fights Dooku because he has to. He doesn't emphasize or seem proud of his saber techniques- unlike Anakin- and knows that the true power of the Force lies elsewhere. That's what he teaches Luke anyway.

Then again, I'd take him less seriously if he couldn't fight. He's the GFFA's most powerful Jedi; it stands to reason that he'd know how to wield a saber.

I like the image of the old Yoda, tiny and frail limping with a cane.

He still is the old Yoda. By the time we get to ESB and see him again, he will be old, frail, limping with a cane. That doesn't mean he was always that way.

It shows that his strength comes from within and is not necessarily something that can be seen or touched, or used to do battle.

His strength from within is how he's able to do things he doesn't want to do- i.e. fight. Still, his ability to fight is only a small fraction of what Yoda is capable. I think that viewing the Saga in order will make that more evident. AOTC is only the second chapter after all.

 

i always interepreted that line ("Wars not make one great") from yoda to mean that he was speaking from experience....yes, he fought in the clone wars but he's not bragging about it because it was such a terrible thing...its not like he was hoping a war would start so he could prove his testicular fortitude.....in this case..... we have seen him in a little action in the clone wars....i think in the jedi's case they avoid all conflict until it is absolutely necessary.....yoda didn't provoke count dooku...dooku started throwing things at yoda and yoda (in knowledge and defense) blocked those attacks....."A jedi uses the force for knowledge and defense, never for attack"....well from the movie i saw it looked like yoda was pretty reluctant to fight count dooku until he had to and he was also pretty unhappy about having to go get the clones in order to save obi and anakin......yoda did and still does everything he can to avoid conflict but sometimes it is necessary......


...the cloner

 

A lot of how you feel about the yoda duel has to do with how you take this line, that much has been proven with these posts. Some of us might not like the irony while others believe it was a belief that Yoda took out of his experience in the "Clone Wars".

I liked the duel, but thinking of that line does make me a little uncomfortable and if you are a die-hard crazed fan that uses the movies as their bible taking every line literally, it would really hurt the enjoyment of watching "the lovechild of Kermit and Miss Piggy" fight like a samurai against an old style movie fencer.

 

I took his line to Luke as a sort of rebuke, for thinking that being a Jedi would mainly be a "Great Warrior".

 

Fighting like a samauri would have been preferable to fighting like a superball.

I can see what y'all are saying about Yoda's character development and learning from his experiences in the PT era, and that those experiences color his attitude in the OT. BUT...

The problem I have with this is that in the context of the OT's mythical structure, Yoda was not a character, he was the oracle. The truths that he presented were beyond question-- indeed learning to overcome his doubt in Yoda's peaceful, contemplative ways was Luke's first step to becomeing a Jedi.

Yoda was presented as immesurably old. He'd been training Jedi for 800 years, and one got the sense that his knowledge and experience went back even farther than that. To wit, the philosophy that Yoda dropped was timeless and universal.

Quotes from the great Jedi Master appeared in lists of great axioms. Libraries used Yoda's image to promote reading and contemplation. A statue of the Master wouldn't have seemed entirely out of place in a Zen garden.

Then in the PT, set merely 20-something years before the OT, not only does he not seem quite so wise, not say anything of compare with his OT wisdom, but he seems to blatantly contridict his philosophy.

Yes, "Wars not make one great" alone is not enough to say that Yoda never waged war. But consider his entire demeanor. Consider the one lesson from Yoda (the most important lesson, it seemed) that Luke only realized when he looked down at his father's crumpled, handless body-- that the mere presence of a weapon is a channel for the Dark Side.

 

I think too much of that is inferred, not fact. Yoda is, and always has been, foremost a Jedi. Jedi carry lightsabers. Jedi are amazing warriors, though they only fight when they have to fight.

Any sense of him being an oracle, some wise old man on a mountain somewhere is an image people have created themselves. The only thing he contradicts is that contrived notion.

 

Jedis being amazing warriors is as much inferred as them being contemplative scholars, if not more so. Not only does the greatest Jedi try desperately to get Luke to abandon violence, but it is only after Luke casts his weapon aside that he can truly say that he is a Jedi, like his father before him.

 

It makes sense for Yoda to be an awesome fighter with a Lightsaber---the only Jedi Knight that could defeat Count Dooku in a Lightsaber battle,his awesome abilities come from his vast amount of personal experience that he has accumulated over hundreds of years (873 i think) it makes sense to assume that Yoda has been in fights with Battle Droids or other armed opponents before and had no choice but to fight them and got to be pretty good at it too,also Jedi Knights have Difficult dangerous jobs to do on a regular basis and its a Hard and extremely Tough lifestyle to live, Combat Training begins from an early age especially involving Unarmed Combat self defense fighting moves and of course Lightsaber Defense and use.

There are Seven different Forms of Lightsaber Combat,the first being the oldest is usually mastered at an early age by Padawan's and then Jedi Knights begin training using a different form which will best suit their personal needs in the field of work they do.

Like Dooku using the Form II which was designed to defend Jedi against other Lightsaber using opponents, or Obi-Wan using Form III which is mainly Defense against Blasters and attacks with little offense, Anakin and Yoda use Form IV which is more aggressive and involves alot of up close fighting movements and flips and cartwheels.
Vader and Luke use Form V which is Aggressive and focuses mainly on Attack moves and constant upfront fighting involving dueling and also deflecting Laser Blasts in such a way that the laser is deflected directly back at the attacker instead of harmlessly away in another direction,Coleman Treblor uses Form VI which isnt aggressive and kind of weak---it mainly utilizes the basic defense movements and little else,it was designed for diplomatic jedi that need to be skilled in politics and negotiation, Form VII the last Form is used by Mace Windu and Darth Maul and focues primarily on attack it involves violents overly aggressive moves as well as lots of jumps,flips,cartwheels and acrobatics,and also violent physical attacks that are used even during deadly lightsaber duels,you have to enjoy violence and fighting to be able use this formwhich bring users very close to the Dark Side---and most users are also high level masters of multiple forms.

 

Just because Yoda said wars don't make one great doesn't mean he never fought.

 

I think that Yoda's true power comes from his knowledge of the force and his self discipline. Why is it that he must be portrayed as some master duelist that fights like a superball.

Well it has been said that a jedi's strength flows from the force. So, since Yoda seems to be the best at controlling the force, I would assume that he is the strongest. And being strong, I think, has a lot to do with fighting. Yoda just thinks that wars aren't fun.

 

Why does strength, for a Jedi, have to have anything to do with fighting. This is just my point. Wars not make one great, the ability to fight does not make one strong.

 

"Decide you must how to serve them best. If you leave now, help them you could. But you would destroy all for which they have fought and suffered."

Now, watch AOTC as Yoda decides to hold the enormous pillar from crushing Obi-Wan and Anakin instead of finishing off Dooku. This scene perfectly mirrors the quote.

-Yoda had to decide how to serve Anakin and Obi-Wan best.
-He could help them by stopping the pillar.
-But, if he did, he would destroy everything for which they had fought and suffered for: to capture Dooku.

Wow, Sithman, thanks for bringing that to light. Nice symmetry!

 

NamoromanThis is just my point. Wars not make one great, the ability to fight does not make one strong.

Interestingly enough, Vader makes almost exactly the same point in ANH regarding the Death Star-- that knowledge of the Force makes mere physical power seem petty. Of course, his was a sinister, twisted, and selfish desire for the power of The Force, but even from a fallen Jedi one can see their true philosophy.

 

Not only does the greatest Jedi try desperately to get Luke to abandon violence

Uh... huh? When was that? Before or after he was training him to destroy the Emporer?

 

You're right, he was training him to take down the emperor. But look, the emperor wanted him to fight, he wanted him to take his jedi weapon and strike him down. Ok, he didn't actually want to die, but he wanted Luke to try, and fail, which he does. The whole situation goes according to the emperors design. Luke becomes increasingly angry until he is made so powerful by his emotions that he is able to best Vader. It is then that he realizes what he must do, his inflated power was from the dark side. He throws away his lightsaber making him defenseless in the face of a true master of the dark side. Facing certain death he stands tall and tells the emperor that HE (the emperor) has failed, that he (luke) is a Jedi like his father before him. This is what yoda trained him to do, albeit he didn't directly say "then when you beat Vader throw away your lightsaber and die at the hands of the emperor." How can I tell the light side from the bad? When you are calm, at peace. Hacking away at vader with rage in his eyes he was dark. Standing defenseless, yet calm and collected in the face of death he was light. This was when luke became a jedi. I say it again, wars not make one great.

 

No one is debating that, what I'm saying is that Jedi are not pacifists, and they realize that war is sometimes necessary. Yoda fighting does not diminish him in any way.

 

great post sithman

 

More Kudos to Sithman... I too made the connection with his ESB quote to the PT, and it works...