Sfdebris.net

A couple of days ago I posted a forum that asked the question was the politics in the Prequels as bad as everyone makes it out to be and the general response seems to be, "It's not that bad but it could have been better."

One of the reasons I asked this question is because of a scene in The Last Jedi when Luke goes to teach Rey her first lesson on why the Jedi need to end in which Luke briefly rants about how the Jedi, quote, "At the Height of their powers they allowed Darth Sidious to rise to power, create the Empire and wipe them out."

To go over to Avengers: Endgame for a moment there are a number of scenes in that film that can be called fan serves or pandering and I do agree with that assessment but truth be told, I LOVED most, if not all of those moments. I LOVED Cap wielding Thor's Hammer, I LOVED that Tony's Last Words were I Am Iron Man, I LOVED how Tony, Steve and Thor all got the chance to say goodbye to their loved ones via Time Travel. And yes, I also LOVED the female Avengers Team Up bit. This is Pandering but I enjoyed it because it was coming from a good place and it helped that I found all these moments to be satisfying.

But the bit with Luke saying how the Jedi "Let" Palpatine take over bugs me because it seems to be a way to pander to the people who hate the Prequels. It's like Rian Johnson was using Luke as a way to vindicate what many people who dislike those films by going, "See, Even Luke thinks the Jedi were dumb so you can now use this to stick to anyone who tries to defend those terrible films."

This, for me, is pandering done wrong because it's encouraging the fandom to indulge in their negative emotions to, corny as this sounds, to let the hate flow threw them and use this moment to continue that hate.

And what really bugs me is that I do not agree with this assessment of the Prequels because the Jedi DIDN'T just let Sidious take over the Republic as they Were trying to actively stop him but ended up falling into his trap. The way Luke talks about this moment makes it sound like the Jedi Knew of Sidious' plot and didn't try to stop him when they were completely in the dark and Sidious was using his political skills to manipulate the Republic to give him as much power as possible.

The reason I love the the female Avengers team up moment is because, A) It's Awesome. You have a tone of great kick@$$ characters fighting side by side to help save the galaxy. And B) The Woman are NEVER condescending to their male counterparts so it creates this atmosphere of genuine respect and camaraderie that is just as effective, for me, as the moment when the Avengers Originally assembled back in 2012.

This moment is meant as a awesome action scene and EVERYONE in the theater I was in cheered at this moment just as much as when Sam said, on your left or when Steve Hit Thanos with Thor's Hammer.

But this moment with Luke, it just feels forced and, again for me, comes off like Johnson just giving the people who dislike the Prequels what they want to hear.

But that's just how I see it, what about you guys, how do you see this moment with Luke in TLJ. And as always Please keep comments polite and civil, we're all friends here.

Well, that's all they do, pander, don't commit to anything 100% the way.

Yukaphile wrote: ↑Tue May 14, 2019 5:58 am Well, that's all they do, pander, don't commit to anything 100% the way.

Wait, are you talking about Star Wars or Marvel cause I think the MCU is pretty committed to just about everything they do.

Star Wars. Lucasfilm.

In way Jedi were responsible for allowing Sidious to become in power because of how far they had went from being servants of force. They were more about they traditions and rules than serving force. Something that Sith knew about and took advantage from. This makes Qui Gon one of last true Jedi because he was all about serving force so much so that Jedi Council called him Gray Jedi for not doing what they wanted.

The Jedi always had potential to reform, both the Exile in teaching them how life without the Force is not an empty life, and in Anakin in - in theory, at least - to learn more human values, but they feared them both, and it doesn't help Anakin was put into the hands of a new and untested Master. I think Qui-Gin would have done a better job. He'd had an apprentice that betrayed him previously. He could have corrected for it, after Obi-Wan.

Winter wrote: ↑Tue May 14, 2019 5:25 am But the bit with Luke saying how the Jedi "Let" Palpatine take over bugs me because it seems to be a way to pander to the people who hate the Prequels. It's like Rian Johnson was using Luke as a way to vindicate what many people who dislike those films by going, "See, Even Luke thinks the Jedi were dumb so you can now use this to stick to anyone who tries to defend those terrible films."

I think that the idea that the Jedi were incompetent and let Sidious ride to power is not a criticism of the prequels, rather, it is a criticism of the Jedi that the prequels made.

I don't think Lucas wanted us to see the Jedi as hyper-competents who were tricked by Palpatine because the plot demanded it; rather, he wanted us to see the Jedi Order as decadent and overly rule-bound. Really, I think the Jedi were portrayed much as the New Testament portrays the Pharisees.

Shit, I'm not a fan of Last Jedi, and even I gotta agree that the Jedi did fail big time. The novel confirms this, in Legends, if you go with that continuity, that they were still fighting the Sith "as they used to be," not grasping that they had evolved and changed their tactics over a thousand years. And everyone paid the price for it.

It's not really pandering, it's just repeating one of the main thematic thrusts of the prequels. I don't care for the prequels, but the hubris, blindness, and complacency of the Jedi leading to their fall was a deliberate theme Lucas put into them.

I'm not sure I feel what the OP is saying. I was under the impression that depressed!Luke wasn't supposed to be a model for behavior/attitude, but was more a model of what not to do, while Rey's more optimistic and activist stance was the "right" option that Luke eventually came around to.

It's important to differentiate between the stated beliefs of characters and the "takeaway" from the narrative as a whole. For example, no one is supposed to come away from Revenge of the Sith thinking that Palpatine is in the right, even though he's the character whose ideology gets the most screentime.