PT Was Qui-Gon given Obi-Wan's Role in TPM?

This re-occurred to me today. In ROTJ, Obi-Wan tells Luke: "When I first knew him, your father was already a great pilot, but I was amazed at how strongly the Force was with him. I took it upon myself to train him as a Jedi."

In TPM, it seems like Qui-Gon took on the role that Obi-Wan had described.
-- Qui-Gon was amazed at how strongly the Force was with him
-- Qui-Gon was the only Jedi who was willing to train him; Obi-Wan agreed with the Council's initial decision that the boy shouldn't be trained.
-- In fact, Obi-Wan tells Qui-Gon: "The boy is dangerous. They can sense it. Why can't you?"
-- Obi-Wan only ends up training Anakin to fulfill the promise that he made at the request of a dying Qui-Gon Jinn

With all of this, it doesn't seem like Obi-Wan took it upon himself to train Anakin as we were told in ROTJ.

In-universe: Obi-Wan could've just omitted the details pertaining to Qui-Gon and just talked about how he
fulfilled his promise and about the master-padawn relationship they created.

Out-of-Universe: It seems like Qui-Gon Jinn was given the role that maybe Obi-Wan should have had.

In the interest of discussion, I am not declaring this. Rather, I am suggesting that it may seem like this, and I wonder what all of you think.

 

Actually Obi Wan did take it upon himself to train Anakin. It was based on Qui Gon's dying wish. But Obi Wan didn't have to follow thru on it. Especially when the Jedi council was against it. And during the film we see Obi Wan follows the code very closely. And he even gets on Qui Gon for not following what the order does. So whatever the primary reason was for him to train Anakin was, he was still willing to train him regardless of what the council said.

 

The Jedi Council changed their views after the Battle of Naboo, as Yoda points out.

Yoda: Qui-Gon's defiance, I sense in you. Need that, you do not. Agree with you, the Council does. Your apprentice, Skywalker will be.

 

Yes I know that. But Obi Wan was willing to go against the council to train him on his own if he had to. So in that respect he did in a way take it upon himself. Yoda knew he was going to train him with or without the councils approval.

 

It seems Obi-Wan was being a true Jedi in this situation, and taking responsibility for training Anakin. It would have been easy to place the blame on Qui-Gon, and fulfilling his dying wish, but as Obi-Wan trained Anakin he began to have faith in him and see him as the Chosen One, right up until the moment he found out Anakin was actually a Sith Lord.

 

Obi-Wan was also amazed at how strong the Force was in Anakin. He exclaims about it out loud when he sees the results of his midi-chlorian test.

He also took it upon himself to train Anakin. No one forced him to do it. Yoda even urged him not to. But he wanted to do it. Yes, Qui-Gon's dying wish influenced his decision, but the decision was ultimately his alone.

 

Lucas originally had Obi-wan operating on his own going to Naboo, with Qui-gon being a Jedi friend who joins him when he and Padme go back to Naboo with Anakin. Lucas then came up with the idea of having Obi-wan training Qui-gon and Obi-wan dies fighting Maul, leading Qui-gon to change his name out of respect for his former friend/Master. Finally it became what we know now. Lucas had decided to change expectation and show how Obi-wan would change and evolve from a by-the-book Jedi to being like Qui-gon.

 

Yes, in the rough draft Obi-Wan filled the Qui-Gon role. He was also about 30 and a full Jedi at the time. He would have discovered Anakin and take him for training, like ROTJ said. Yoda would have been his master and Qui-Gon was pretty much just there for Maul to kill to look threatening.

I really wish that would have happened instead of what we got. Obi-Wan was pretty sidelined during TPM and it caused continuity issues with the OT.

 

Weren't aspects of Obi-Wan filling in for Qui-Gon in Mos Espa filmed? My memory on the situation is vague, but I recall seeing a still of Obi-Wan dueling Maul on Tatooine.

 

No, it didn't. Yoda still trained Obi-wan first. The Younglings scene in AOTC...



which was already set up before the film was made, was created to maintain continuity. So nothing was lost.

That was a publicity photo.

 

Obi-Wan: You will go to the Dagobah system.
Luke : Dagobah system?

Obi-Wan: There you will learn from Yoda, the Jedi Master who instructed me.


Yoda: Much anger in him... like his father.

Obi-Wan: [voice] Was I any different when you taught me?

Yoda: You are reckless!
Obi-Wan: So was I, if you remember.

Are you trying to say that the original interpretation was that Yoda was training little kid Obi-Wan? It wasn't until Lucas changed it without any care about continuity. He had to pull this scene and explanation out of his ass to cover the mistake. If you are going to make a Prequel, you have a responsibility to try and make them connect and to not screw things up. There was relatively little told about the era it would have been easy. Here is another quote that is now false

Obi-Wan: When I first knew him, your father was already a great pilot. But I was amazed how strongly the Force was with him. I took it upon myself to train him as a Jedi. I thought that I could instruct him just as well as Yoda. I was wrong.


Notice how it makes it sound like he wanted to train Anakin on his own, not because of a dying wish. Obi-Wan then spends AOTC treating Anakin like a burden and not a friend. It makes Obi-Wan look like a compulsive liar. Qui-Gon, while a good performance, was ultimately a hinderance to the plot. Lucas could have made everything line up without far-fteched retcons, but he did not. His idea of creating harmony between the trilogies was to add CGI clutter to the original films.

 

Lucas still didn't screw up. No, originally Lucas didn't have Qui-gon in mind. But his inclusion doesn't change anything other than Obi-wan had three Jedi Masters training him. One who taught him the ways of the Force (Yoda), one who taught him to fight with a Lightsaber (Cin Dralling) and one who taught him how to be a Jedi in the field (Qui-gon Jinn). We don't know, nor even Lucas at the time, how the Jedi training went. There was no set method. In the first two drafts, the Jedi were trained from a very young age. In the first draft, Annikin Starkiller and his brother Deak were seventeen and eleven and were training with their father for a number of years. In the second draft, the Jedi were mainly made up of families who trained over a lifetime. Luke was seventeen, while his younger brothers were about eight. They weren't training with a Lightsaber yet, but they were in the earliest phases compared to Luke. Then Lucas had Vader as being twenty years younger than Obi-wan, but no timeline for when they started training. Lucas finally nailed it down when he went to work on the PT.

So now, it is Yoda was referring to Obi-wan when he was between eleven and thirteen. Back when he was still training Obi-wan and before Qui-gon took over.

Uh, no. Lucas never specified how they met and how their relationship began. He could have chosen not to follow through on his promise to Qui-gon, but he did and he believed in Qui-gon and thus he believed that he was best to train him. He doesn't let Yoda and the Council train Anakin, instead electing to do all of it himself. Thinking that he could do as well as Yoda still remains the same. As to how they were in AOTC, we must remember that Lucas is also dealing with his earlier retcon. That Anakin and Vader are the same man. So he has to balance the good friend that was Anakin Skywalker, with the tense relationship with Darth Vader. Hence the two are at odds in that film, when Anakin is still in training just as Vader was still in training and having issues with Obi-wan, as originally written in 1976.

 

I can appreciate the way it turned out but it doesn't sit well with me.
Feels like something was lost with only having Obi-Wan and Anakin interact for mere minutes in TPM.

 

Clearly, Obi-Wan must have been younger than Luke is in ESB, since Yoda claims Luke is "too old to begin the training." Luke is only 22 in ESB. In order for Yoda's reluctance to make much sense, I'd say Obi-Wan must have been more than just a few years younger. So, based just on the OT, Yoda probably would have trained Obi-Wan when he was in his early to mid teens. And of course TPM implies that Yoda continued to teach Obi-Wan even when he was Qui-Gon's Padawan, so it all fits together perfectly well.

I have a feeling you never really thought through the original implications of the timeline given by the OT. It's a lot closer to what we got than you seem to think.

 

So you really were against the change of Vader becoming Luke's father then?

That is the single biggest continuity change in the history of Star Wars. If you are troubled by the very minor one which is easily dealt with in regards to Obi-Wan's instruction then you must be livid with that one.

I can only assume that TESB is for you the movie when it all went terribly wrong and Lucas lost it?

 

I thought the "Too old to begin the training" referred to the training from birth that the Younglings get. In TPM, IIRC, the council also says that Anakin is too old to be trained.

 

It does now, but at the time when TESB was made, it was unclear how old the Jedi were when they were first being trained. That's why when the "Jedi Apprentice" series began, they started with Obi-wan being one month shy of turning thirteen and having anger issues which hurt his chances of being accepted by an experienced Jedi. When TPM rolled around and we see that Anakin is nine and is still too old to be trained, that's when the picture started to become clearer. Because Lucas wrote that, he already knew where he was going in AOTC and ROTS with the Younglings.

I'm not saying that Lucas didn't change things, but he could get away with it because so much was never locked down due to starting in the middle and having to fill in the gaps as he went.

 

Yeah, I'm ignoring the information we got in the PT for the sake of argument. The OT alone implies that Yoda must have trained Obi-Wan at least as early as adolescence. And it's implied in TPM that Yoda continued to instruct Obi-Wan all the way up to his knighting. So in ESB Obi-Wan could have been referring directly to his reckless attitude during Episode I, when he was very close to Luke's current age.

In fact, that may be why these two scenes are made to mirror each other:



Yoda: Qui-Gon's defiance I sense in you. Need that, you do not.



Yoda: You are reckless!
Obi-Wan: So was I, if you remember.

 

That was true from a certain point of view;

 

I think the word "instruct" was always a weird choice of word. When talking about Jedi training in the OT, they always talk about training, teaching/learning, masters, learners, and such. "Instructed" made it sound like Yoda wasn't Obi-Wan's main teacher/master, or at least the only one.

 

"Was I any different when you taught me?"

 

Oh, yes, sorry. Still, I think he would've said more clearly that Yoda was THE master/teacher for him, if that was the case.

 

Yoda does call Dooku "My old Padawan" in the PT, when he generally doesn't do so to anyone else.

 

Because Dooku actually was his personal padawan. Obi-Wan was only taught by him like the other younglings in a class, plus some personal instructions while he was already Qui-Gon's padawan, like mentioned in TPM.

 

Yoda was the one who taught him the ways of the Force, which is what Luke needs. Once Yoda had finished training Luke, had he lived and Luke didn't leave, that would be the limit of his work because I'm pretty certain he wasn't going to go around like Qui-gon did with Obi-wan and Anakin did with Ahsoka.