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Putting the right guy in power never worked historically since power corrupts. The power structure is the problem. That’s one of the core ideas of anarchism
Wasn’t a big part of the Jedis’ problem their standoffishness?
Far from wielding power, they played at peacemaker and diplomat long after open war had erupted, resorted to questionably sourced mercenaries to do their dirty work, and relied enormously on prophecy to save them without properly understanding what it implied.
“Too Little, Too Late” might as well have been the motto of the late Jedi Order.
The power structure is the problem.
The lack of structure was a recurring problem for The Old Republic and the Jedi Order. The Trade Federation’s greed went unchecked early on, because the Jedi-as-space-cops presented no material threat. The Senate routinely dithered in the face of adversity, as it was easily subverted by staling tactics and backstabbing. No standing military meant a reliance on an assortment of killer robots, mercenaries, clones, and bureaucrats-turned-shock-troops, none of whom proved to be particularly reliable.
Far from “power corrupts” as the theme of the Prequels, I might argue the real moral was “power abhors a vacuum”. If you’re not willing to occupy the center of political gravity, someone else will.
I mean, it has worked historically, just extremely rarely. Singapore was one such recent example.
The issue is that people die and the next person usually fucks everything up again.
Anarchy has similar issues.
The real problem is just us; humans.
That’s the next core idea: power structures attract the wrong people. Take Stalin who was worse than Lenin. Lenin had benevolent ideas but got corrupted, Stalin took that position with bad intentions from the start.
Fatalism only serves the status quo.
It’s not fatalism, but fact. Humans are the real issue. We weren’t biologically evolved to deal with such large groups, along with certain other DNA quirks.
That said, with technology and/or time such a flaw could be fixed so that we either are able to overcome our biological shortcomings, and/or technology allows us to achieve structure without hierarchy while also preventing hierarchy from springing up as well.
I don’t even know where to start. At least understand that this is beyond the realm of facts. And there is a reason, anarchists try to keep things on low levels, in small groups, as far as possible and build “communities of communities” bottom up. I don’t understand how technology is supposed to help there but there are structures that prevent hierarchies already.
It helps with self sustainability, communication, lowering costs of needs, efficiency, etc.
Renewables for example decrease the reliance on government significantly for example.
It’s also one of the main ideas behind the American constitution but we try to regulate power with checks and balances but because it’s kinda hard to understand having multiple leaders that rule over different parts of the government and make sure no one gets corrupt people over time seem to have only given a shit about who is in charge of the military and now we have presidents that can effect normal citizens by enacting laws and are unanimously considered our leader
Too bad the person he’s talking to is far more corrupt than Yoda.
And yet, people trashed The Last Jedi for leaning this direction 🤷🏽
People trashed Last Jedi for everything but that. That was the one highlight and people were upset it wasn’t followed up on in Rise of Skywalker.
I fully agree. The last Jedi was a joyless cash grab but at least they got the theme set right.
Maybe in your circles but I heard and read plenty complaining about Luke casting aside the old ways
…people were upset it wasn’t followed up on in Rise of Skywalker.
Fair warning, I am coming at this as a fan of TLJ who found it really worked for me after falling in love with Star Wars as a little kid in 1983, but one of the great sins of TROS is exactly that.
Every movie before that had its retcons, sometimes pretty significant, but no movie simply rolled back the previous one or refused to engage with it like TROS did. I’ve been forced to accept that there is pretty significant contingent who didn’t connect with TLJ like I did, but Disney and JJ took absolutely the wrong lesson from the backlash in how they responded. The fans who care that deeply view an installment they don’t care for as an annoying relative, but one one to be addressed, rehabilitated if possible, explained if not. Dave Filoni built his entire career on this.
What is that from?
Tried googling some key phrases and just came across a comment about it being from the Clone Wars novelization. I’m not sure which book that would be though.
Star Wars The Clone Wars by Karen Travis
Chapter 9
The quote being anti-Jedi pretty much gave away the author
God I wish she’d finished the republic/imperial commando series. The only reason i dont read it once every year is because it hurts too much to know that theres no new book to round it out and complete it.
At least we got a summary how it was supposed to end. And from people at LucasArts we learned how Sev’s story would have continued.
Sith are just The Satanic Temple with cool glowing sticks
I think not. I’ve never hear of the Satanic Temple rolling into a Sunday School and slaughtering all the children.
You’re just believing Satanic lies. The truth is right there in Jack Chick comics!
“You know what would be really interesting to do? Don’t denounce me as a Stalinist but, for example – it’s my old temptation – to rewrote Star Wars… presenting Palpatine and Darth Vader as good progressive egalitarian centralist fighting reactionary feudalist, all the Jedi bullshit. It would tell a completely different story, from the others point. What do they [Jedi] stand for? All that, ‘Republic’, what strange of Republic is when you have a Princess Leila, knights, kings and so on? No, Palpatine the Emperor and Darth Vader, they are - my god - progressive Bonapartist revolutionaries trying to get rid of the old world.”
From: Žižek on Reshooting Star Wars https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_DroaGggbc
But tbh I think that if we take the original trilogy, the Rebels are cleary fighting a reactionary imperialist power, ie. an analogy to the Vietnam war
I don’t want more crazy political views
Agreed but I did sometimes wonder what the ideal galaxy would look like to the rebels? Obviously it’s a fictional world, and they wouldn’t all hypothetically agree anyway, but would it be regressive or progressive?
Disclaimer: I don’t know a lot about Star wars
I think the pre-sequel shows have done a great job of showing the New Republic as a feckless liberal state too afraid to make any actual change. They are too distracted with trying to distance themselves from the Empire with incomprehensible amounts of bureaucracy and trying to reform Imperial Agents. The New Republic is so wrapped up with appearing to be the good guys that they neglect the citizens of the galaxy amd just let everything rot.
But tbh I think that if we take the original trilogy, the Rebels are cleary fighting a reactionary imperialist power, ie. an analogy to the Vietnam war
Lucas was very explicit that this was always the intent. It’s not reallt subtle honestly, asymmetric jungle freedom fighters fighting wealthy imperialist?
As ive grown older i find myself disagreeing more and more with the jedi whom as a child i idolised as paragons of good. But palpatine, vader, and the empire are so many things before being “poor good revolutionaries” trying to take down the status quo simply from the good of their golden hearts. Theres always more than 2 choices people :)
Andor did a good job of not giving a shit about the Jedi and also showing how terrible the fascist empire was. The whole prison episodes were really amazing.
Tap for spoiler
And all those prisoners for some hinges in the Death Star cannon.
I thought the old lore said light/dark had to be in balance, or bad shit starts going down
Lucas had an uninituative meaning of “balance”. It wasn’t light and dark being equal, but dark side users being eliminated.
A better word would have been “tranquility”. If the force is naturally a calm lake, then dark side users are making waves I suppose is a clearer analogy.
Nono… There was no mistake there.
Before the Clone Wars, there were lots of Jedi everywhere in the Galaxy, and only a couple of Sith.
Anakin did bring balance.
Nope, Lucas meant the dark side being wiped out.
Lucas’ intention was that Anakin brought balance, eventually, by killing Palpatine and then himself rejecting the dark side. Thus wiping out the Sith.
But then Disney said “hey! We’d rather make an endless river of money!” and pulled a new empire and sith lord out of thin air to make another movie.
What he intended and what he showed us are two different things. By the end of ROTJ, there were no more Sith and no real Jedi left. Luke called himself a Jedi, but didn’t really follow the strict rules and didn’t completely shun the dark side. He simply used it without anger. At that point, balance was truly restored.
The idea of the prophecy and balance with Anakin as the chosen one hadn’t been thought of when ROTJ was made.
By the time Lucas had come up with the prophecy, the EU had established Luke in the post-ROTJ as unquestionably a Jedi. Luke rejected the dogmatic aspects of the old Jedi order as early as Empire Strikes back, and as more EU material was written he continued that trend, building a new Jedi order in the model of his ideas. However rejecting specific old organizational dogma can be seen as stripping away the excess bloat of a system and finding the “true” core of it. Think of Luke as a religious reformist in a way, rejecting the institutions of a religion while not rejecting the religion itself. He was Martin Luther with a lightsaber.
Think of Luke as a religious reformist in a way, rejecting the institutions of a religion while not rejecting the religion itself. He was Martin Luther with a lightsaber.
So he’s a splitter…
But seriously, we all know that Lucas was flying by the seat of his pants writing the sequels and that his wife is the real hero of Star Wars. Everything that came afterwards was created by someone else. In the end Lucas’s story, Luke still used dark side powers. He called himself “Jedi”, but he was simply a Force user with wild ideas about the past. There were no strictly light side users or dark side users anymore. There was simply the Force. If you want to take extended canon into account, Yoda even stated this when he destroyed the last of the Jedi archives. He understood that balance could only be truly restored by letting go of the past.
Oops. Forgot to add /s at the end.
Still, thanks for the link. An interesting read.
My mistake. I have seen quite often the thinking that wiping out mass numbers of Jedi brought the Sith-Jedi balance closer.
George can let us take it from here. He’s done enough damage.
Lucas doesn’t actually have any inclination as to what “balance” means and just leaves it to the fans to decide. It’s what made Star Wars resonate so well since fans can just project their own opinion onto the narrative. The Jedi/Republic had good intentions, but were corrupt beyond fixing, while the Sith/CIS/Empire were comically evil at times, they were also the only path that could actually root out the problems of the Republic.
And that’s exactly what happened. Jedi tried to eliminate the Sith, the balance was lost, the Sith created the Choose One to bring back balance to the force, a whole lot of death and destruction ensued, and balance was restored.
I’m convinced that Count Dooku was a character quickly shoehorned in as a villain when the filmmakers got pushback from execs for having Jar Jar Binks as the actual Sith Lord (with Palpatine merely being the Apprentice).
What execs? The Prequels are basically the highest budget indie film project ever. Lucas had total financial and creative control.
Not execs, read the OP. The theory is GL got scared of fan reactions to jarjar so he didn’t want to make jarjar that central.
Don’t quote the old magic to me @hyperhopper, I was there when it was written.
It’s a fun fan theory, up there with Chewie/R2 being secret leaders of the rebellion and pre-prequel theories about “what actually are the clone wars”, but it relies on George Lucas being incredibly subtle in a trilogy where every other metaphor is written on giant billboards with spotlights on them. I mean the whole thing is a setup to “Jar Jar is Snoke”.
There were similar rumors that Lucas had the entire sequel/prequel trilogies planned out at the end of RotJ from the mid 80s until the prequels came out. Down to the EU books/comics (which he famously doesn’t care about) being Lucas’ plan all along. It was just “the man” keeping him from making the movies. That the man didn’t stop him making the original Star Wars before he was an extremely famous extremely wealthy movie maker was handwaved away.
It’s the fun logic hoop fan version of “No Trump/Musk is actually playing 7D chess! What he actually meant was…”
Man, I really wish that all went somewhere.
Sexy padme and sexy Obi-Wan
Somewhat redeeming
I did a rewatch of the prequels just to show a friend all the Darth Jar Jar evidence that never comes to fruition. We were robbed of a better experience.
A valid criticism. Coming from the mouth of something trying to replace it with something worse. A classic villain move.
I did enjoy the old EU Luke being a more reformist and grounded iteration of Jedi teachings. He started by rejecting Yoda’s warnings not to try and save his friends. He put friends over the high minded ideals of Jedi enlightenment right there in Empire Strikes Back. Then in ROTJ he spent the entire movie rejecting the obvious approach of simply killing Vader, instead trying to reach Anakin. Over and over Luke put people he cared about over esoteric codes.
(Remember when the original trilogy and much of the EU establishing Luke was written, the prequels and Clone Wars hadn’t been fleshed out, and Jedi were implied to be even more high minded and classical than they were shown in the prequels).
I never noticed but, is he pouring wine over ice?
There are a some type of wines that you can enjoy on ice during summer in France. So nothing too alarming here. But don’t do that with a Pomerol or I’ll chop your head myself.
I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. Could be sangria.
The Council needed age limits and term limits.
Yoda’s husband Paul was investigated for insider trading because of some extremely well timed trades just prior to battles with the empire.
Damn that’s some crooked lore.
This is essentially Arcane’s Heimerdinger.
The Sith and the Empire didn’t help anyone either though, they made existence considerably worse for everyone other than a select few. They weren’t saviours or good guys, they were evil despots who sought to use lies to overthrow the existing power structure so they could fill the void with their totalitarianism.
What this meme is pointing out though is that they didn’t just use lies to overthrow the existing power structure, they also used truths.
You use truths to make lies seem more believable
Any complex truth can be twisted when it is overly simplified and points are selectively chosen to support the bigger lie.
Yeah the Sith here are the type of fascist regime to rise to power on the backs of a frustrated population. Pointing out all the flaws of the current system to garner support with no intention of actually making it better.
One set of assholes talking trash about another set of assholes. Neither completely evil or completely good.
To me, the scene that most defined what the Jedi order had become and why it needed to end was at the big fight scene at the end of Attack of the Clones where Yoda and Dooku were dueling. When Dooku pulled a pillar down with the Force and then Yoda used the Force to catch it to prevent it from falling on to Obi-wan. He then made a spectacle of it by spinning it around before throwing it back at Dooku. What he should have done was just use the Force to move Obi-wan and Anakin to a safe position and continued to pursue Dooku. That scene just demonstrated how full of himself Yoda had become. And it took until his duel with Palpatine before he realized that he was a large part of what had gone wrong with the Jedi order. I also always felt that he intentionally withheld a lot of information about the Jedi order from Luke in order to prevent him from rebuilding a similar system.
High acceleration has… undesirable effects, let’s say, on a sack of meat and bones. “Space magic”, sure, but I’d argue that in a high-stress situation like the middle of a fight it’d be a lot less risky to move the pillar. If you fuck up calculating how much force (lol) to use, you might end up with Obi-Was instead.
I have a really hard time separating a character’s decisions and the director/cinematographer decisions
Like, did Yoda do that or did someone decide he would do that because test audiences thought it looked cooler (or something like that). I hope I conveyed that properly
Aren’t the director’s decisions basically the same as the character’s? I mean, they’re fictional so the only insight into their character is what we’re shown by the media (i.e. the director’s choices).
Sure, but it’s one thing to think “Yoda was full of himself” and another to think “director wanted a cool looking fight”. They’re basically saying you shouldn’t analyze the thing too much because there wasn’t THAT much thought put into it. Not every move had the character’s thoughts and feelings taken into consideration.
You mean to say that fantasy characters don’t have a fully fleshed out character like real life people do?
I’m shocked I say
I think you conveyed it excellently - not solely because it was the exact thought I had. I would have used more clumsy wording though.
I don’t remember the scene exactly. But it might be that the pillar was falling fast enough that he couldn’t move them (or it would be risky). Moving the pillar was way safer.
Regardless, he takes it and starts spinning it around before throwing it which was entirely unnecessary and only for show. He could’ve just as easily deflected it to a safer location.
