The problem, though, as I said, is that this is never addressed in the OT. I like the idea of doing that kind of story, but there is no reveal. If you were a new viewer and watched them I through VI, you'd spend IV-VI thinking that the Jedi weren't great at all and maybe find yourself confused as to why Luke doesn't find this out. Flawed works, but the whole organisation is shown as a political arm with little spiritual focus, and the whole thing seems off to me.
There's also a modest amount of doubt in my mind about exactly how much of this Lucas intended to portray. He's a hit-and-miss writer and the PT has a lot of sloppy plotting. Furthermore, he changes his official story on what was "originally intended," so it's hard to know what he was thinking. Did he intend for the Jedi to be corrupt? To be flawed? To be ineffectual?
Here's (just) one problem with the portrayal of the Jedi as flawed or as having become too wrapped up in bureaucracy: we don't see this enacted through characters. Yoda is portrayed as wise, Mace is heroic and wise, Qui-Gon is brash sometimes but mostly wise, Obi-wan grows from apprentice to the master we know is effective (and wise!), and in short, we don't see any Jedi (aside from Anakin) who are flawed. While the council is portrayed generally as sluggish and complacent, none of that is apparent in their personalities or actions. So there's this weird disconnect where they're flawed or bureaucrats, but also wise and action-heroes.
And, of course, none of this is addressed in the OT, it's just abandoned. There is no "restore the Jedi" outside of the idea that Luke should rebuild the Order, not correct it. Why not? Because Lucas doesn't mesh his trilogies together. He ignored that aspect of it (Leia remembers her mother, etc.)
Sorry, I might have gone too harsh there. I understand flaws, but first off, Yoda is never portrayed as flawed in the PT or OT. The council as a unit are, but Yoda individually always seems to be right. With Anakin, that's a great point: they don't do anything. Why not? Do they think he'll just course-correct on his own? Do they sense nothing? Can they observe nothing with their eyes? If they think he's a volatile powerhouse, why not pay more attention to his training than just letting Obi-wan go off and do it?
And I'll re-iterate here that all of this is beside my main point here, which is that Yoda goes from leading armies and being embroiled in politics to walking away for some 20-odd years and doing nothing at all. Why? Because the prequels end roughly 20 years before the OT. It's not character-driven or plot-conscious storytelling. It's sloppy.
Now, does this mean everyone must hate the PT? No, not at all, and while I don't like them personally, I don't think people who do are wrong. They enjoy them and that's fine.
But it's still sloppy writing.
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Otter (24464)
a year ago
Of course the OT films didn't give a good picture of what the Jedi had been, how could they? We met a couple of Jedi, and while they were good and noble and we loved them, we also saw Ben lie to Luke and Yoda make a prophecy that was proven wrong. So even then, we could have realized that the Jedi were flawed, and weren't quite what Luke wanted them to be.
And IMHO Lucas absolutely wanted to portray the Jedi as flawed and ineffectual in the Prequels, because if you want to summarize the prequels in as few words as possible it'd be "The Fall of the Jedi". So, Lucas showed them as past their prime and vulnerable, that was both believable and necessary to the story, if not everyone's idea of fun. Which is a different problem with the prequels than the believability of the story (and why I'm not agog over "Andor", it's no fun).
As for Yoda's 20 years of "doing nothing", I'm going to reiterate that he's not human and it's silly to expect his perception of time to be just like a human's. It took me a year to recover from a recent trauma, so maybe Yoda took a decade to just get over the trauma and another to re-establish his relationship with the Force, and that time was NOT wasted! The fact that he stayed on Dagobah and did whatever contributed directly to the fall of Palpatine's Empire, so maybe that's what the Force wanted him to do.
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Ace_Spade (9431)
a year ago
The reason the OT didn't comment on it was because that part hadn't been planned yet, but that's outside of the films. My point here is the lack of connectivity. The Jedi fall in the PT and "Return" in the OT, but there is no moment where Luke vows to avoid their old mistakes or correct the past. That lack of payoff isn't a problem when all he is doing is restoring the Jedi, but if the PT is about the fall of the Jedi, then the OT has no follow-through and the story is fumbled.
I'm trying to think what my concept of Jedi were prior to the PT. I don't think I pictured them as perfect. It just would have been nice to see those imperfections played out more in the PT other than as a vague concept. Again: I see Lucas making statements about how the Council are ineffective or too political (mostly complaints from Anakin - not really a reliable source) but when we actually see Jedi in the PT, they aren't like that. At most we get lip service about the ability to use the Force being "diminished," but that's tell-don't-show (another frequent problem in the PT's writing) and there is little follow-through on what that means or for how long or what the Jedi have done about it. We never see this stuff, it's just said and then contradicted. The Council are complacent, but they lead troops, make plans, and send out agents. Jedi are too political, but Yoda and Mace don't let politics sway their wise leadership. Their Force power is diminished, but Yoda and Mace both hold their own in fights against Palpatine.
The Fall of the Jedi sounds like a great story, I just feel like I didn't watch a good version of it, and I don't think it syncs up with the OT very well - at least as-told.
Even if Yoda needs longer than a human to get over something, I'm still not sure I'm buying 20 years of isolation and inaction - especially with the Rebellion starting up. Heck, Bail Organa was one of the Rebellion's movers and shakers, so you know he was on that stuff quick. Yoda didn't sense any of this? You make a good point, that his species or his temperament might have mourned longer, gotten bitter or something - this is a good argument, even if I'm not completely buying it.
On the other hand, I can't buy "It's what the Force wanted," as a good explanation. The Will of the Force as plothole paste won't cut it for me.
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Otter (24464)
a year ago
"The Fall of the Jedi sounds like a great story, I just feel like I didn't watch a good version of it"
On that we are agreed! I like the prequel films more than most, and even I only think they're half good, because everything about Anakin and Padme is pretty damn awful. The scenes about the Jedi order and my beloved Palpatine are much better, not perfect as the dialogue is indeed clumsy and there's tell-not-show-ing, but well. The scenes still hold my interest, but if they don't work for you I can see why.
As for Yoda, we don't know that he was doing *nothing*. He may have been physically ill, he may have been writing down the accumulated knowedge of the Jedi for future generations, it may take his species longer than humans to recover from a trauma and we take long enough, struggling to survive may have taken more time than he realized, but... if he was just communing with the Force that may have helped bring about the fall of Palpatine. We have no clue what he was really up to or what he could do just through the Force, so Yoda's years on Dagobah seem like a really odd thing to get hung up on.
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Ace_Spade (9431)
a year ago
I figured we'd find some common ground somewhere. I'm not a prequel fan myself. There are individual scenes or sequences that I like, but that's about it. I like Mace fighting Palpatine. Christopher Lee automatically elevates material.
My main hangups aren't Yoda, it's the quality of the writing combined with the effects-first approach to filmmaking. I was going to say "excessive green screen," but that's not really the problem; my problem is that the effects seem to be the focus, not the fact that they're there at all. Those two things also created some really bad performances. The writing doesn't give even skilled actors anything to hang onto and build a character out of, and Lucas doesn't work with actors well enough to compensate.
With Yoda, the lack of connection for his story is just one dangling thread. Obi-wan also just went into exile and did nothing until the OT (I haven't seen the new series, but at least as far as Lucas' writings go, he went from saving the universe to ignoring it), Yoda did as well (and although some of your explanations are plausible, none are offered in the films), and we get other connection problems. Leia knows her birth mother, Yoda trained Obi-wan (okay, maybe as a kindergarten Jedi "youngling," but really it was Qui-gon), and so on. There's just a lot of dangling threads or misfires with connections. Yoda is one of these things.
I'd compare this to The Matrix with Cypher being able to talk to Smith in the Matrix. How? Okay, maybe he wrote a program, sneaked around, and deleted whatever passes for browser history in there, but the movie doesn't give us any of that. Now, I love the Matrix. One of the best sci-fi movies of all-time. But I know that's a flaw in the film. The difference is that it's one of a couple of errors, not one of a half-dozen (on top of writing problems, etc.) The reason I find it harder to give the PT a pass on this stuff is because of the sheer volume of problems which stack up (main thing is the writing).
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Otter (24464)
a year ago
As for Obi-Wan telling Luke that Yoda had trained him, I think Obi-Wan was keeping up with the half-truths, manipulation, and bamboozling the dopey kid from the afterlife! Yes, I know that was really down to lazy, inconsistent writing, but occasionally I enjoy a round of the Geek game of "Rationalize The Inconsistency". It can be a fun game, when a person is in the mood. Perhaps my fondness of the game is why I seem to be more forgiving of inconsistencies and lazy writing than you are right now.
And as for Obi-Wan doing "nothing" on Tattooine, NO SPOILERS, the streaming show did a decent job of addressing that. Yoda had gone to a wild place where he could safely commune with the Force and telekinetically yeet fish out of the swamp when he needed to eat, but Obi-Wan had said he'd keep an eye on Luke, and that meant fucking Tattooine. So there were years on Tattooine spent working shit jobs to survive, being afraid or unable to commune with the Force, being bitter, hopeless, and traumatized after what he'd been through, but sticking to his self-appointed mission because giving up on it would mean the final death of the show. ITTY TINY SPOILER, as you can imagine the show covered the period when he started to get over that, and I liked the show overall.
As for the movies not spelling certain things out, I'm fine with that! Movies by their nature need to pack a lot of information into a very short period of time, and deliver as much information as possibly through visual means or implication, and avoid clumsy expository dialogue (which Lucas can't write anyway). That's one of the reasons the "book is always better than the film", books can deliver depth and detail in a way that films cannot. Of course the fans are curious about what Ben and Yoda were doing for 18 years, but there's no way to fit that information into an action-packed romp of a film, without slowing it down and boring the mainstream. You just hope that someone will deliver the real story in the sequel or novelization or something, or the streaming show 50 years on.
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Ace_Spade (9431)
a year ago
I enjoy film analysis and dissection, and yeah, that includes some geek games as part of the enjoyment, but I get less forgiving based on the quality of the writing and the overall film. It's not empirical or anything, but if I feel like the movie is awesome, but flawed, I'll rationalize for it. I guess when it comes down to it, the PT just doesn't give me the same reasons for suspension of disbelief.
I'm fine with movies not spelling things out, but when they raise questions, those questions should - in my opinion - be answered. I have no problem with mysteries or question marks within the world, but the PT frequently expects the audience to fill in the gaps or make assumptions for stuff that just doesn't make sense, and after a while, it gets tiresome, especially because the films won't even deliver a good line.
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