Jedi Mind Trip

This is one of those blog topics that's the result of a few different people saying things that are related.  In this case it was about Jedi in Star Wars.

First there was Michael Offutt's post from May 11.
And then there was an article on Facebook from IGN or io9 or something like that quoting Clone Wars co-creator Dave Filoni on a Disney+ show about the epic lightsaber fight in Episode I.  (I forgot to share the article or send it to myself so it got lost in the thick brown soup of my Facebook feed, so it's unlikely I'll ever be able to find it again.)  Offutt also references it in another blog post too.

The gist in both instances was that by Episode I the Jedi Order had lost their way.  In Filoni's words the Jedi had become too political, which wound up dooming them to getting caught up in Palpatine's machinations.  In Offutt's first article he talks about how Jedi like Mace Windu were too content to be warriors while others had forgotten Jedi were supposed to be about peace and love and stuff like that.

In talking about the lightsaber fight in Episode I, Filoni says the famous John Williams piece was called "Duel of the Fates" because it really determined the fate of Anakin and thus the Jedi Order and the galaxy itself.  Had Qui-Gon Jinn not died, he might have been the father figure Anakin lacked who could have tamed him enough to not become a force for evil.  Whereas Obi-Wan was too young and inexperienced and more like an older brother who's forced to take care of the younger sibling after the parents are suddenly killed, like Matthew Fox in Party of Five for instance.

Offutt talks about how Ahsoka Tano saw what the Jedi Order was becoming and that was why she walked away from it, which is true to me.  Offutt goes on to talk about how Luke Skywalker was really forged as a weapon against Vader and the Emperor, which is why he was a crappy teacher.

On that latter thing, I don't think we can really blame Luke.  And maybe Anakin would have turned even if Qui-Gon had lived.  In both cases they were what you could describe as "wartime Jedi."  In The Godfather the top adviser to the mob boss is called consigliere.  At the start of the movie, the Godfather (Marlon Brando) has his adopted son Tom Hagen (Robert Duval) in that role.  Later, after the Godfather is badly wounded and his oldest son Sonny (James Caan) is murdered and his youngest son Michael (Al Pacino) takes over, he spins Tom Hagen off to the mob's interests in Vegas.  Why?  Because the Corleone family is at war with the other families and Tom is not a "wartime consigliere."  He was trained as a lawyer and businessman, not a field general.

By the same token, because of the Clone Wars, Anakin and many other young Jedi were trained to fight more than they were trained in all that other hippie Jedi stuff about peace and love.  Padawans like Ahsoka and Kanaan Jaris were also brought up during wartime and thus it was harder for them to learn and embrace the old ways.

After Order 66, most of the Jedi were killed and the historical knowledge was destroyed or hidden away, so those who survived didn't have access to the old ways.  Luke especially didn't have the benefit of ever learning in the Jedi Temple on Coruscant.  He got a little teaching from Obi-Wan and then some from Yoda before he left for Bespin and then not much after that before Yoda died.

In a way it's unfair to complain that Luke was trained as a weapon because maybe if Luke had stayed on Dagobah and not gone to Bespin he could have learned more of the old ways from Yoda.  By the time he came back, Yoda was dying, so there wasn't time for all that.  Luke just had to do the best he could.

Which in the sequels the idea of Luke going searching for Jedi lore was a good idea, but then that putz Rian Johnson had to make him a whiny crybaby going off to the first Jedi temple to die and blah, blah, blah.  Maybe the better way to go about it in Episode VII would have been instead of the whole "treasure map" thing  would have been for Poe to be searching for Luke when the Empire captured him and then Fin and Rey to continue the quest with Han until Rey, using the Force, finally caught up to him.  Or something like that.

Rey of course is another wartime Jedi who didn't really get a full education.  She just had some lessons from Luke and Leia and some of Luke's notes.  You know how a copy of a copy is much worse than the original?  Jedi with incomplete knowledge training Jedi with even less complete knowledge is probably not going to work out all that great.

What might be interesting is a TV show about rebuilding the Jedi Order after the sequel trilogy.  Maybe have some young Force users trying to find Jedi relics and stuff to rebuild the Order.  It might work better as an animated series just to spend less on effects and locations and such.

I heard about Disney doing a new book series about the "High Jedi Order" thousands of years in the past.  Maybe that will help show how the peace and love Jedi Order became too political and then too war-like.  Or not.  Whatever.

There you go, some rambling about Jedi.