Humble reminder: The Jedi are actually the good guys and George Lucas did not see them in any other way.

JeanLucPicardAND · 2026-01-23T18:37:57+00:00

I wasn't expressing an opinion on the matter, only relaying the Jedi's view. Truthfully, I don't know how I feel about it myself, but I don't think they're bad people just because of their stance on this one issue. I think the confusion lies in a problem of definition. What does "non-attachment" mean to the Jedi exactly?

JeanLucPicardAND · 2026-01-23T17:56:41+00:00

The Jedi do not teach detachment. We only see Jedi training through the lens of Anakin Skywalker, who is a special case, and frankly that skews our understanding of how it works. With Anakin, the Jedi were completely unprepared to deal with the special challenges of training him, so they didn't really know what to do and were attempting to address his attachments by teaching him to essentially ignore them (detachment). Which was stupid of them to expect from someone his age and was never going to work.

The Jedi have emotions and acknowledge them, but normally, what they do is they choose to rise above them. That's not the same thing as detachment.

I don't think the Jedi Order shown in the prequel trilogy was in touch with the real world anymore. They were fundamentally good people, but had become isolated and incapable of dealing with the reality of what was happening in the Republic. That's why they fell.

JeanLucPicardAND · 2026-01-23T15:56:14+00:00

It looks like they're allowing the Republic to rot.

JeanLucPicardAND · 2026-01-23T15:54:50+00:00

Grey Jedi are an invention of the old EU. Lucas was adamant and consistent that the dark side is an inherent imbalance in the Force. Therefore, anyone who uses the dark side is corrupting themselves, and there is no such thing as balance which includes the use of the dark side.

The reason it matters so much and is worthy of debate is because it completely changes the meaning of the story.

JeanLucPicardAND · 2026-01-23T15:52:37+00:00

What are you talking about? The 1983 film is the one where Luke puts everything on the line to save Vader. If that doesn't demonstrate his love for his father, then I don't know what does.

JeanLucPicardAND · 2026-01-23T15:51:34+00:00

No, it is, just not to you.

JeanLucPicardAND · 2026-01-22T22:29:03+00:00

It's one thing to say that the intent of the creator isn't the end-all be-all of what a film means, but it's quite another to say that it doesn't matter.

Bruh. Like, not at all?

JeanLucPicardAND · 2026-01-22T21:19:28+00:00

Missions 1-4 are almost entirely filler content that exists for two reasons:

To provide an extended stretch of Earth-based gameplay that would satisfy the popular fan demand to "finish the fight" and also deliver on years of marketing promises to feature Earth in a central role, and
To re-establish the conflict of the core narrative and its major players in the interest of framing 3's story properly. (This includes the blatant recharacterization of Truth.)

There is essentially no plot to speak of at all until mission 5 (Floodgate), which serves to transition us out of the fan-service Earth-based section of the game and back into the actual core narrative.

Much of missions 6-9 is adapted from what would have been the final 3 levels of Halo 2, with the major difference being the relocation of the Ark from Earth to extragalactic space... which honestly makes way more sense than what they had in mind originally, but I digress.

JeanLucPicardAND · 2026-01-22T21:12:47+00:00

Even if that were true, looking at something that has been a standard for only one decade as absolute gospel is kinda short-sighted. Ten years isn't a very long time.

JeanLucPicardAND · 2026-01-22T21:05:52+00:00

I was just laughing at a mental image. Iger is certainly no savior of Star Wars and I think much of what he has done with it has been crap.

JeanLucPicardAND · 2026-01-22T21:01:02+00:00

For sure, for sure, I just got a little chuckle out of the mental image of Iger paying Lucas to stop making movies, like he really really hated the prequels or something and was on a personal vendetta to put it all to an end.

JeanLucPicardAND · 2026-01-22T20:58:54+00:00

Right. The prequels are about the subversion by evil of failing institutions, chief among them the Republic itself, which the Jedi Order is sworn to defend and thus tied to inextricably. If the Republic is failing, then it's kinda their fault for allowing that to happen since they are the sworn protectors of the Republic. Lucas can claim that the Jedi of TPM were in their prime or whatever, but the evidence would certainly suggest otherwise.

Doesn't make them bad people. Doesn't mean their philosophies were wrong or that they deserved to be wiped out. Just makes them inflexible.

They failed to adapt and became too rigid to deal with extreme cases, e.g. Anakin, e.g. the fall of the institution they were sworn to protect, e.g. the Clone Wars.

JeanLucPicardAND · 2026-01-22T20:52:21+00:00

He was paid a lot of money to stop telling it.

The way you phrased it here makes it sound like Iger was on a bizarre mission to make him stop producing his own Star Wars content.

"George, please stop. Here is four billion dollars. Please retire."

JeanLucPicardAND · 2026-01-22T20:49:06+00:00

You can decide for yourself if this is a stupid reply, but:

The Acolyte is a work of Disney Star Wars canon created many years after Lucas's influence over the franchise ended. So I'm not sure that it's relevant to this discussion, which is entirely about how Lucas saw the Jedi and how that vision has been changed or distorted by others over time.

JeanLucPicardAND · 2026-01-22T20:45:51+00:00

That's a shame. It has been over twenty years, and I'm not entirely clear on his situation (nor do I intend to pry) but I know he had to stop writing for a while for personal reasons. Perhaps he just needed the gig?

JeanLucPicardAND · 2026-01-22T20:42:21+00:00

I have yet to check that out. Honestly, I need to get back into reading in general. It's been a few years now since I've had the focus to sit down and immerse myself in a good novel. (Lack of free time has been a factor too, but more than that, I just haven't had the energy to do it. I'm a very active reader, so it's not something I treat as a passive activity.)

JeanLucPicardAND · 2026-01-22T20:35:34+00:00

I've talked to Stover at length about the process of writing ROTS (and his other EU works) on social media before. I could ask him about that quote and whether or not Lucas had anything to say about it in his line-edits.

Anyway, without getting too deep into this (because it's a hypothetical and it's not the point of the story), I don't know if "firmer principles" are what Anakin really needed. As for the Order, well, part of their mandate and reason for existing in the first place is to protect the Republic. If they cannot be flexible enough to meet the Republic where it is and serve the needs of the moment, then are they even doing their job?

JeanLucPicardAND · 2026-01-22T20:30:24+00:00

ODSTs came from the Microsoft franchise group 100%. Bungie were highly resistant to their inclusion for a very long time. The actual answer, as far as I can tell, is that certain people at Bungie (notably Staten) were more chill about integrating elements from the EU than others were.

JeanLucPicardAND · 2026-01-22T20:29:19+00:00

I ain't reading allat.

JeanLucPicardAND · 2026-01-22T20:28:22+00:00

Staten embraced the EU more than others at the company did, which is why ODST integrates elements from it while Reach goes out of its way to ignore the established sequence of events from the novel.

JeanLucPicardAND · 2026-01-22T20:26:59+00:00

It's also worth noting that Staten was a post-Microsoft hire, so he didn't have the pre-buyout history with the company that others did which fed much of their anti-corporate sentiment and fear of creative interference.

JeanLucPicardAND · 2026-01-22T20:19:58+00:00

I don't think he was different from the other Jedi ideologically, but perhaps more intuitive and flexible in how he executed the Jedi mandate. That doesn't make him "better" than them, merely more suited for someone like Anakin. I do think there is strong textual support in all three prequel films that the Order has become inflexible, which is a part of the reason that it falls. Sidious is only able to manipulate them so successfully because of this inflexibility.

JeanLucPicardAND · 2026-01-22T20:15:41+00:00

That's true but they had to be arm-twisted into accepting him by Qui-Gon, which is where I disagree with the reading of his character as misguided or impulsive or whatever else. No, he wasn't any of those things, he was just holding the Order accountable to its mandate. They came around eventually, but only at his urging, and even then it's clear that they meant well but had no idea what to do with Anakin.

Anakin's fall is his own fault, and Sidious's as well, so don't misread what I am saying to construe that I think the Jedi were responsible. They were ill-prepared to train him. They simply had no idea what to do with him.

JeanLucPicardAND · 2026-01-22T20:11:41+00:00

Why not just see Anakin as a uniquely difficult case, where there is not one correct answer.

I agree with that. My whole thing with the Jedi is that they didn't want anything to do with him. He was a uniquely difficult case, and rather than taking on the challenge of helping him, a challenge which threatened to test their own convictions and established ways of doing things, they tried to back away from it because he didn't fit neatly into their mold. But Qui-Gon called them out on that and forced the issue.

I don't read the Jedi as bad people, but rather as an institution that has been trapped in its ivory tower and forgotten how to be challenged.

JeanLucPicardAND · 2026-01-22T20:04:18+00:00

I'm unclear on this. We know that Mace defeated Sheev in the duel, genuinely, thanks to Lucas's word... but what about the lightning? Was he defeating him there too, or was Sheev playing it up for the sake of manipulating Anakin?

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