Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens - Page 54

On May 05 2013 02:02 sc2superfan101 wrote:

Yeah, and all that shit happened centuries ago. In the modern world we kind of look down on people who let children (infants) join their military cult (Kony anyone?). Star Wars is like... 10,000 years more advanced than us, at least. The fact that the leading moral "yard-stick" of a hyper-modern civilization is still stuck in a 13th century mentality concerning the rights of children should be a tip-off that maybe that plot-line is stupid.


A wise old being who is hundreds of years old, to me, has to be some kind of warped to still be some major player in world galactic politics. I mean, how long has this douche been on the damn Council, sitting up their in his Ivory Tower? And how does that mesh with the eccentric little hermit-Kermit we all know and love?

And no one knows who Yoda is! There is literally no indication that either the Emperor or Darth Vader have even the slightest clue as to who Yoda is. According to prequel logic, they should know that he is alive and still opposing them. But whenever they see Luke they say: "Obi-wan has trained you well". That heavily implies that they don't know of Yoda's existence or they would assume that since Luke has powered up considerably over the years since Obi-Wan's death that he is receiving extra training from the only other Jedi still alive. I would think that one of the first questions they would ask him would be: "Where the f*ck is that asshole Yoda at?"

There is some indication in the original three (V and VI, to be exact) that Yoda might have been vaguely involved with the Fall of the Republic, but only as a minor player who flew beneath the notice of either Anakin or the Emperor.

It also doesn't make sense having Yoda be a huge player in the movies (I, II, III) on a thematic level. His character in the originals is eccentric, jaded, exceedingly wise, and utterly unconcerned with the mundane. Bringing him out of the swamp and slapping him down as the leader of the Jedi Council jars with that impression horribly. Suddenly Yoda can't be too eccentric or jaded or why would anyone put him as a leader? Him being jaded with Luke suddenly isn't the result of his seven hundred years, the "I've seen this all a hundred times before" syndrome, but as a result of Anakin's betrayal. You would think someone who is over seven hundred years old would have seen worse than that in his time, and plenty of it. He is suddenly forced to be concerned with the mundane, even if only in implication because he is the leader of the galaxy's most powerful military force/police force. Instead of having an eccentric old warrior who is mysterious, we're left with a goddamn career politician. It completely destroys the mystery and romance of his character.

That's also why having him show up as a major player is a bad idea: Yoda and the Emperor share something in common in V and VI: they both show a kind of disdain for the light-saber, subtly revealing a part of their philosophy. Those who are high-level Force users tend to be less than concerned with mundane aspects of life. The reason we don't see shelves of paperwork on the Emperor's desk is because the Emperor isn't the type of man to be concerned with the something so crude as that. The reason we don't see Yoda doing some light-saber sparring with Luke is because Yoda isn't the type of person to consider the light-saber to be all that useful. When Luke goes into the cave to face his dark-side, Yoda straight up tells him that his light-saber and blaster won't help him. In Episode VI, Luke only achieves victory when he throws down his light-saber in front of the Emperor and refuses to fight.

But if Yoda is in the prequels as a major player, we the audience demand to know: why didn't he stop the Emperor? So either they have to fight using Dragonball Z powers ("I can see your shwarzt is as big as mine!") or they have to have a lightsaber battle. Either of them gives off the same thematic impressions: these men (Yoda, Palpatine) are not the ethereal, intelligent, unconcerned men that we know and love and hate. It's like when they give every dark user of the Force "Force lightning" abilities. It destroys the intensity of the later climax. Throughout the entire trilogy (IV, V, VI) we see the Force as an invisible power. When suddenly the Emperor busts out with lightning, you get a real sense that it's because he's so powerful that when he uses the Force it causes the air itself to burn. It is a rude awakening to how out-classed Luke is. It is tense because we, the audience, can't see any way for Luke to escape something so powerful and terrifying. When every low level dark-force wielding bastard is throwing around lightning like it's nothing, and when the Light-side guys block it with their lightsaber it destroys the mystery, and thus the weight, of the later scene. It's the same reason you don't have the Emperor let out an old-man fart: we're supposed to think of people like the Emperor and Yoda as a kind of ascended beings. Seeing them fight on any visual level (something necessitated by putting Yoda in as a major players) ruins their mystery. It ruins the idea of the Force not being a quantifiable, material concept. It ruins the idea that the power to destroy planets is insignificant in comparison. It turns them into entirely mundane beings who still haven't moved beyond settling their dispute with a dick-showing contest.

And the prequels are full of that crap. Everything mystical about the Force is quantified and explained until it becomes nothing more than telekinesis. Everything mystical about the Jedi is lost until they become nothing more than sword-wielding SWAT teams combined with the Navy Seals combined. All for the cheap effect of "That was in the originals so it has to be EVEN BIGGER in the prequels!"

And, at the end of the day, that is why these sequels will fail: they will take what little mystery is left to the series and quantify it even more. They will almost certainly cast the original actors, so now we get to see Han Solo and Luke and Leia Skywalker as old farts. Great...