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Ren-Vader dynamic potential major spoilers/theories


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Guest El Chalupacabra

 

I suppose that is entirely possible, but I am hoping not.

 

One of the problems I had with the post ROTJ EU stories was that Luke had jedi falling to the dark side all the time, including his own nephew, and even himself for a short time. In the latest novels, the problem is so bad he essentially is exiled for his trouble. Basically, Luke is the most powerful force user ever, but also one of the worst failures as far as jedi masters go, if the EU it to be believed.

 

I can handle the movies depicting Luke as a hermit electing to withdraw from the galaxy as a teacher of Jedi, after some tragic event that was beyond his control, that he feels guilty over. But, I really don't want to see the problem of Luke being a horrible Jedi master being recreated in the movies where a bunch of his students end up turning to the dark side, like in the EU.

Do you have any idea how many Jedi fell to the dark side, from both the old and new Orders? More than one can count. Training anyone in the ways of the Force is always risky because it opens the door to the lure of the dark side, which, as nearly all Star Wars media has confirmed--in both the films and the EU--is an ever-present temptation throughout the life of any Force user. I would find it foolish to think that Luke didn't know what he was getting into when he reformed the Jedi. To lose students to the dark side is to be expected. It's like not expecting to lose any troops sent off to war.

 

I don't have a problem with it at all.

 

The thing is a lot of those who fell to the dark side during the Old Republic became the Sith, who eventually were wiped out by the Jedi, save for two.

 

We really don't have a confirmed number for the jedi who actually fell to the dark side since the Sith went into hiding. The only hard number we have are the lost 20 as Driver pointed out, plus Dooku, Anakin, and the few during the clone wars, including Ahsoka who either left the order, or fell to the dark side. So I don't think it was all that common, plus when a jedi did fall to the dark side, I think the Jedi Order was pretty vigilant about nipping it in the bud and killed said dark sider off, to prevent the return of the sith or dark side. And since the dark side tends to breed hubris, said dark sider probably set the stage for their own death, anyway.

 

But when it comes to Luke specifically, one, maybe two students falling, OK chalk it up to bad luck or the student was a bad seed to begin with. But with as many who fell, including his own nephew, and himself for a short time, the only thing I can conclude is Luke was doing something wrong. And I don't like that, and prefer not to see that repeated in the movies.

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To me, and this was a big failing of the EU, is that in ROTJ, LUKE WON.

 

He defeated the darkside. He beat the Sith, and he proved Yoda wrong in returning Anakin from the dark side. Most importantly, he defeated the dark side in himself.

 

To me, it always seemed that Luke after ROTJ was not a Jedi in the traditional sense. He became something else, something better. The Jedi way was flawed-- even with the PT being crap, you can see that was one thing Lucas was trying to tell us. For Luke to do the same things, teach the same way, and make the same mistakes seemed contrary to me. As a result, this is what turned me off from the EU from nearly the beginning of it.

 

And I know I'm not alone-- because as soon as TFA was announced my biggest worry was that the return of the darkside/Sith invalidated what Luke did. It seems like, even with its very title, the new movie is not glossing over what Luke did and is making something out of the darkside returning to power.

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Do you have any idea how many Jedi fell to the dark side,

 

 

 

 

 

Two, Anakin and Count Dooku

 

 

 

Excuse me, I didn't say that. Don't include it inside the quote section. ;)

That's kind of an incredibly narrow-minded assumption considering how often the Jedi warn of the dangers of the dark side in the films. Hell, Yoda warns Anakin and Luke as soon as he meets them about it as if it is an ever-present danger that any Force user has to struggle with.

Technically, 22 according to the movies. But all of them in ancient times aside from Dooku and Anakin.

 

But that was mentioned in a deleted scene in a movie I'd just assume wasn't canon, soooooo....

It was twenty. The Lost Twenty. No idea where you're getting the two extra from.

But two things: 1. As someone else mentioned, those were Jedi who had left the Order, not necessarily fallen to the dark side. 2. Those were Jedi Masters only. It did not include Knights and Padawans.

Further--and this is partly from the EU and partly my own conjecture, so take it for what you will--the earliest of the Lost Twenty statues was that of the Jedi Master Phanius, who would leave the Order, unite the disparate Sith clans, and emerge as the new Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Ruin, two thousand years before the films (one thousand years before the Sith were seemingly destroyed, ushering in the Rule of Two). So it is my assumption that these twenty Masters do not represent the entire history of the Jedi Order (25,000 years), but rather from a certain period of time onward. Additionally--and this is all me here--I have always understood it that these were perhaps not simply Masters who had left the Order, but those who had done so as a result of the Jedi Order somehow failing to live up to its duty, therefore placing part of the blame for the loss on the Jedi. It's kind of a sobering reminder that those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.

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To me, and this was a big failing of the EU, is that in ROTJ, LUKE WON.

 

He defeated the darkside. He beat the Sith, and he proved Yoda wrong in returning Anakin from the dark side. Most importantly, he defeated the dark side in himself.

 

To me, it always seemed that Luke after ROTJ was not a Jedi in the traditional sense. He became something else, something better. The Jedi way was flawed-- even with the PT being crap, you can see that was one thing Lucas was trying to tell us. For Luke to do the same things, teach the same way, and make the same mistakes seemed contrary to me. As a result, this is what turned me off from the EU from nearly the beginning of it.

 

And I know I'm not alone-- because as soon as TFA was announced my biggest worry was that the return of the darkside/Sith invalidated what Luke did. It seems like, even with its very title, the new movie is not glossing over what Luke did and is making something out of the darkside returning to power.

You know, I do partly agree with this. This is why I agree with George Lucas that Star Wars as a film franchise ends with Return of the Jedi. The films end there, and any film after Jedi is invalid (unless it doesn't concern the Skywalkers). However, it's obvious that Luke and company have a big future ahead of them after Jedi, and that is what the EU is. The future is best left to the EU because the main conflict that encompassed the films is now resolved.

 

Think of the post-Jedi EU as one big epilogue.

 

Further, I don't mind Luke's New Jedi Order being extremely flawed, and for him to have made some major mistakes. To rebuild a 25,000-year Order with next to no resources for a good few decades is no easy feat. It's going to be on wobbly legs for a while.

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Guest El Chalupacabra

 

It was twenty. The Lost Twenty. No idea where you're getting the two extra from.

Well, seems I was mistaken. According to this, the lost 20 are Jedi Masters who left the order, which included Dooku. But there's a difference between leaving the order, and going to the dark side.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Lost_Twenty

 

 

Also, Vader apparently considered himself #21, but he was never made a master officially by the order, and we can't count Ahsoka, since she was a padawan

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So over a hundred books count as an epilogue to the OT, but 3 new movies don't?

If you read what I wrote, the core of the Skywalker saga was resolved in Return of the Jedi, thus ending the Skywalker film saga. George Lucas said something similar. Paraphrasing, he said that the saga of the fall and redemption of Anakin Skywalker ends with Return of the Jedi, after which there simply is no more story to tell on film. He then went on to acknowledge that "after that, there are books" and other media that continue to tell the future of the "kids and the grandkids," but that the film saga is--personified in the story of the father and son--is done.

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Clearly something raises the force's hackles and requires its intervention to get things back to "balance". Whether that something is the Knights of Ren or the First Order is something we'll see. I don't see the force as a particularly fast reacting entity. It was a relatively long time after Palpatine started climbing the political ladder that Anakin was conceived. Yet this time the "awakening" happens in the plot, and people can feel it. Does an awakening of the force feel different from a disturbance? Is it more intense than the feeling of an entire planetary population being killed simultaneously?

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That line from the teaser about the awakening is such a great callback to the Emperor's line from TESB. It's great that it is the first thing we actually heard from TFA. Coincidentally, I had a conversation about this with Clive Revill at a con this afternoon. He mentioned how amazing that disturbance line was and how it seemed like Lucas had no idea where he was going after Empire (and mentioned how silly the speeder bikes were, which isn't really surprising considering his background on stage). We talked about how it seemed like they needed to get some good people in place to right the ship, but that it seems like they have done that now.

 

(On a mostly unrelated note, I felt bad for him because very few people were going to talk to him compared to the other guests, but it was also nice that nobody else was waiting when I went to his booth so I got a chance to chat with him for a bit.)

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And yet he wrote outlines for another trilogy that he sold to Disney. That they chose to discard them is irrelevant. Lucas was prepared to continue his story.

He submitted ideas, yes, but not full-hearted stories. This tells me that Lucas had sort of a vague idea for the direction his universe would proceed in (admittedly different from most of the EU) but he still considered his saga to have been complete. He didn't seem too heartbroken when those ideas were discarded.

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1. When I said 22 I meant 21. The lost 20 plus Anakin. forgot Dooku was considered #20.

 

2. The SW saga was retroactively made to be about Anakin when the PT was made. So I have no trouble accepting the new movies going beyond that. I do still think the saga episodes are about the line of Skywalkers, and that Rey or Kylo are likely a Skywalker or Solo. I know some people find that apocryphal, but...

 

3. We can all like what we like, but when you are talking canon, I personally think the media the story originated in trumps all. Star Wars was a movie first and last.

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Game of Thrones is different, books and TV kinda are just each their own thing. For instance if the books now do something that contradicts the show, the show won't go through hoops to reconcile it.

 

Star Wars is different, all the non movie stuff is essentially made to support the movies. I never thought they'd make sequels but I always knew for sure that on the off chance they did, they would completely ignore the EU. I don't really care about the whole "canon" thing. My take is basically this, if something not in the movies doesn't contradict the movies or isn't completely ridiculous and you want to think it "happened", then fine. Just know that if while making one of the movies they want to disregard something from outside they movies, they will do it without a thought.

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Guest El Chalupacabra

 

3. We can all like what we like, but when you are talking canon, I personally think the media the story originated in trumps all. Star Wars was a movie first and last.

Agreed, and I pretty much limit actual canon to what we see on screen, personally.... but I can be sympathetic to someone who is invested in EU novels and games. Literally, for a generation, there has been a plethora of both.

 

Canon isn't so clear cut for some. Just because a new movie is coming out this December, and the new caretaker of the Star wars saga decided to proclaim only the new movies count and the video games and novels created from 1990-2012 don't count. Kind of hard to tell someone who may have literally spent $1000s on books and games that all the hundreds of hours of reading or gaming now mean nothing and never happened from a story stand point.

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To me, and this was a big failing of the EU, is that in ROTJ, LUKE WON.

 

He defeated the darkside. He beat the Sith, and he proved Yoda wrong in returning Anakin from the dark side. Most importantly, he defeated the dark side in himself.

 

To me, it always seemed that Luke after ROTJ was not a Jedi in the traditional sense. He became something else, something better. The Jedi way was flawed-- even with the PT being crap, you can see that was one thing Lucas was trying to tell us. For Luke to do the same things, teach the same way, and make the same mistakes seemed contrary to me. As a result, this is what turned me off from the EU from nearly the beginning of it.

The New Jedi Order series dealt a lot with this. While the whole galaxy was being invaded from the big Insect Borg, Luke and all of his protege wear dealing with kind of existential and ethical questions about what it meant to be a Jedi. It was kind of cool to read about it from that perspective.

 

I'll get flogged by the begrudging EU purists for saying this, but that series is all I ever really cared for. Not even any of the Thrawn stuff did it for me, but the fresh approach that NJO brought is really the only thing now "un-canonized" that I was ever a big fan of.

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I just noticed the line about Luke defeating the dark side within himself. I never felt like that aspect of things was earned. When was Luke ever really seriously tempted by the Dark Side? Rushing away from his training was about his love for his friends, not being evil. Rather than arrogantly storming Jabba's castle sabers blazing with murder in his eyes he was measured, thoughtful, practically begging Jabba to not make him kill as the solution. The only real moment of temptation was the very end of the trilogy when he almost kills Vadar. That's not earning the struggle. At least the PT (clumsily) tried to earn the struggle with the Dark Side.

 

PS. Well you have the moment in the cave I guess. But that's it.

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All of those moments are Luke conquering the dark side.

 

You win by refusing to play with it. It's like the son of an alcoholic refusing to start drinking. He's making the choice to defeat that demon that's destroyed his family by never letting it take over to begin with.

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I just noticed the line about Luke defeating the dark side within himself. I never felt like that aspect of things was earned. When was Luke ever really seriously tempted by the Dark Side? Rushing away from his training was about his love for his friends, not being evil. Rather than arrogantly storming Jabba's castle sabers blazing with murder in his eyes he was measured, thoughtful, practically begging Jabba to not make him kill as the solution. The only real moment of temptation was the very end of the trilogy when he almost kills Vadar. That's not earning the struggle. At least the PT (clumsily) tried to earn the struggle with the Dark Side.

 

PS. Well you have the moment in the cave I guess. But that's it.

Remember that Star Wars has very little subtext, everything is very literal. Using the force in anger is using the dark side. Yoda says once you give into that, you will be consumed, end of story. In Return of the Jedi Luke refuses to fight Vader, until Vader pisses him off.

 

He kicks Vader's ass using the dark side-- he is angry and mad, and wailing away on him. He lops off his hand, probably out of revenge, and then realizes by seeing his father's own cybernetic hand that he's on the exact same path as Anakin. The Emperor confirms it, saying if he kills Vader he can take his place.

 

Luke pulls back, gets his cool-- which again, according to the ultimate Jedi wisdom of Yoda, is not possible.

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