Star Wars Episodes 1, 2, & 3

[stray]

Where do they say that Jedi can't get laid, or that they can't have friends? It's unhealthy attachment (where you can't let go) that they advise against. Anakin in the 3rd movie becomes the archtypical wife beater, only with magical force powers.
Look at Clieg Lars. He was sad that Shmi died, but he didn't swear some nutty blood oath on her grave because he could let her go. In the end, Anakin didn't care about other people beyond what they meant to him. He thought he possesed people like things. That's what led him to the Dark Side.

Your main point makes sense.. But as for getting laid, I think there was a scene in Ep 2 where Anakin first took Natalie Portman as a bodyguard..? He said something to that effect.. That he (and was forbidden to) didn't have relationships. Umm except that's what he did in the end. He never said anything about friends. I think it was just marriage. I think they even had to hide their marriage, right? Only Obi-Wan knew.. Then later, Yoda.

Wow, I remember too much about these fucking movies. 

[Fordel]

For what it's worth, the first Kotor game made a deal about Jedi not being able to have relationships.

[Ratman_tf]

Your main point makes sense.. But as for getting laid, I think there was a scene in Ep 2 where Anakin first took Natalie Portman as a bodyguard..? He said something to that effect.. That he (and was forbidden to) didn't have relationships.

Since when are relationships required for having sex?

Umm except that's what he did in the end. He never said anything about friends. I think it was just marriage. I think they even had to hide their marriage, right? Only Obi-Wan knew.. Then later, Yoda.

I'd think marriage would be forbidden, since it's a form of attachement to another. Still not 100% sure, since you don't even need to like another person to be married to them.   

[stray]

I'm pretty sure he was referring to the whole shebang.. I doubt I can find like a youtube clip of that specific scene, but it seemed like it was alluding to real life religious orders and their restrictions.. Like it came off like Jedi had a Buddhist/Catholic monk lifestyle.

[Ratman_tf]

I'm pretty sure he was referring to the whole shebang.. I doubt I can find like a youtube clip of that specific scene, but it seemed like it was alluding to real life religious orders and their restrictions.. Like it came off like Jedi had a Buddhist/Catholic monk lifestyle.

Ah. And I see Obi-Wan having a drink at the bar in Ep. 2 and that leads me to believe that Jedi are allowed to partake in 'little sins'. Or at least, it's not the end of their careers.

If attachement is forbidden, it means Jedi make perfect FWB. 

[stray]

Hey, even as an older man, he clearly brainwashes some guards, lies and bullshits.. all so he can get into a bar.. have a drink..chops a dude's arm off.. and then proceeds to make a bullshit deal with a Wookie and his shady co-pilot. So yeah, he's not really a good "monk" per se. He doesn't get laid much though, I imagine.

[Ratman_tf]

Now that I think about it, I think I can guess what Yoda's advice to Anakin would be, if he'd confessed his infatuation with Padme.

"A playa, a Jedi must be. Spread the love, my young Padawan, and you will see that she's not that special after all."

[Ironwood]

More likely something along the lines of 'Put Bro's before Ho's, you must.'

[Ratman_tf]

What gets me is when people blame the Jedi for Anakin's fall because their rules sucked. If you ask me, the mistake was made by Qui-Gon. Anakin should never have been trained as a Jedi. If he had a destiny, then Qui-Gon should have trusted in the Force instead of meddling with Anakin's fate.

[stu]

Wasn't it Qui-Gon's trust in the Force that led him to recruit Anakin rather than leave him there? Besides, once the kid was found, Palpatine would have caught wind of it and Vader would have ended up raping Padme rather than just giving her a gentle caress in Ep. 2. as an even more hateful Sith Lord.

Anakin's deceit and Yoda's inability to stymie the corruption eating away at the Republic destroyed the Order. Yoda had been building an army for the next Jedi-Sith War while one of his top lieutenants was laying the groundwork for the Order's collapse. Obi-Wan may be partly to blame. He knew about Anakin and Padme but never confronted his buddy about it.

[Lakov_Sanite]

What gets me is when people blame the Jedi for Anakin's fall because their rules sucked. If you ask me, the mistake was made by Qui-Gon. Anakin should never have been trained as a Jedi. If he had a destiny, then Qui-Gon should have trusted in the Force instead of meddling with Anakin's fate.

I call bullshit on this, the jedi were douchebags towards anakin from the start. Maybe in some magical fantasy EU they were wise teachers but every scene in the movies they treated anakin like an outcast and a renegade from the start. Honestly if your whole life is people shutting you down, how do you think you'll turn out?

[Ironwood]

Like me.

[Ratman_tf]

I call bullshit on this, the jedi were douchebags towards anakin from the start. Maybe in some magical fantasy EU they were wise teachers but every scene in the movies they treated anakin like an outcast and a renegade from the start. Honestly if your whole life is people shutting you down, how do you think you'll turn out?

They shut him out because they knew he was a dickhead who got in through a loophole. And Anakin proved them right by whining and bitching whenever things didn't go his way. So they didn't make him a master when he wanted it. Wah. So they forbid exclusive relationships, and he goes behind their backs. And he even admitted to Padme that he was being a little shit. He chose to be a smark, and got his ass lit on fire for it.

That's a little hyperbole there,  . But I honestly think Anakin was as much at fault as the Jedi were.

[Surlyboi]

Anakin was as much to blame as the council.

Ratman summed it up pretty well. He was saved from a life of slavery on a shitty little backwater and all he could do after that was whine about how much he was suffering. Seriously dude? You're a fucking jedi, badass of all badasses in the galaxy and you're bitching. Wanna go back to fixing fucking droids for a Toydarian cheeseball that'll eventually sell you and your mom to some random moisture farmer that'll get the shit kicked out of him by tuskens. Tuskens who would, by the way, not be as easy a bunch of targets if the council hadn't, y'know, let you join the fucking club.

[WindupAtheist]

The Jedi are pretty fucked up regardless. Recruiting young children, training them for combat from practically the time they're out of diapers, then telling them "Oh yeah no marriage/love/family/whatever for you!" when they get older? Heh, yeah, I guess those five-year olds should have considered whether they ever wanted to get married before they... signed up... er... were taken.

I mean Palpatine may have fucked over apprentices like Dooku and Anakin, but at least they were full-grown and powerful men when he recruited them. Not, you know, toddlers.

[Surlyboi]

Yeah, but he pretty much fucked up Maul from go.

That said, yeah the order was quite broken, but there's plenty of blame to go around.

[NowhereMan]

Eh, plenty of religious institutions recruit children at a very young age. When you're talking about a life that's so radically different from the mainstream in many ways the only chance you have that someone will cope with it is to ensure that they're brought up in such an environment. When they've grown up not really knowing any attachments except to their teachers and masters they aren't so tempted to run off and get married the first time they act as a bodyguard to some foreign princess.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I call bullshit on this, the jedi were douchebags towards anakin from the start. Maybe in some magical fantasy EU they were wise teachers but every scene in the movies they treated anakin like an outcast and a renegade from the start. Honestly if your whole life is people shutting you down, how do you think you'll turn out?

They shut him out because they knew he was a dickhead who got in through a loophole. And Anakin proved them right by whining and bitching whenever things didn't go his way. So they didn't make him a master when he wanted it. Wah. So they forbid exclusive relationships, and he goes behind their backs. And he even admitted to Padme that he was being a little shit. He chose to be a smark, and got his ass lit on fire for it.

That's a little hyperbole there,  . But I honestly think Anakin was as much at fault as the Jedi were.

He was 10....and a slave, yoda seriously can't cut him a little slack? 

I'm not talking about grown up anakin here...if they had found him in his early/late teens this would have made sense.  We're led to believe that he was treated like dirt from the beginning, at the end we're talking 10+ years with the jedi yet through no fault of the jedi's treatment he turns to the darkside? Again, bullshit.

How much younger do you really need to take in jedi? I mean you can just start recruiting from the womb if you want...

I don't believe that a good order of knights could not turn around one angry little kid. Supposedly jedi are raising children left and right but as soon as one comes in with a little baggage they freak and start treating him like the black sheep? It all rings of bad writing, poor understanding of human behaviour and a script that was meant for a young adult anakin from the get go.

[AutomaticZen]

Where do they say that Jedi can't get laid, or that they can't have friends? It's unhealthy attachment (where you can't let go) that they advise against. Anakin in the 3rd movie becomes the archtypical wife beater, only with magical force powers.

It's pretty much canon from Old Republic until Palpatine came about.  People do stupid shit when their loved ones or favorite toys get kidnapped or killed, so the Jedi just said 'fuck it. no relationships.'  It's brought up a couple of times in the expanded universe.  The general idea is you can have friends, but if push comes to shove, you follow the Jedi teachings over saving a friend.

The last few years worth of novels (the Skywalker/Solo clan) has pretty much prove that the old school Jedi council might've been right. 

The Jedi were fucked up anyways.  The main line of succession Master-Padawan went...

Yoda > Dooku (became Sith) > Qui-Gon > Obi-Wan > Anakin (became Sith)

Why?  Because the fuckers trusted the Force so much that couldn't be bothered to have a damn psych evaluation.

How much younger do you really need to take in jedi? I mean you can just start recruiting from the womb if you want...

They try.  They have a list of force-sensitive children, that they come and take around 4-5 years old.

Order 66 is still the most badass plot ever.  Stone cold, Palpatine.

[stray]

Yeah, I thought the order 66 part was well done. Then again, like I said, I hate the Jedi. 

[Tebonas]

Don't forget that most of the previous Jedi were snatched at a young age and grew up in a somewhat emotion-free environment.

Of course they didn't know how to handle an emo kid. How should they?

[stray]

Of course they didn't know how to handle an emo kid. How should they?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W45HCyvY-Gg

[SnakeCharmer]

"In the name of the Galactic Senate, SHUT THE FUCK UP!!"

[Sir T]

Good god, am I the only one that actually remembers that Yopa's big objection to Anakin was that he forsaw massive danger in training him as a Jedi. He said it straight out. He was following his guiding principles but Gui-don said "nope, I know better" When you have a big red alert sign screaming over your head about training you, you cant complain when people start getting pissy when you are bieng, you know, trained. And you certainly cant complain when the person who gave the goddam prophecy acts like a bit of an ass when he sees a trainwreck coming straight for him due to people not doing what the fuck he told them.

I hate the film, and I don't obsess of this film (who's only purpose was to market toys) nor try to geek over the cracks in the so called plot, but even I remember that from the fandom penance

[Lakov_Sanite]

Self-fulfilling prophecy.

[Khaldun]

The whole no-attachment thing is complete fucking retardery though in two important respects (here I'm not talking Lucas, I'm going deep-geek inside the mythos and talking about it on its own terms).

First, we're told on a number of occasions that the Force, the Living Force at any rate, is the energy of all living things, that flows through all life, connecting everything that lives. Fine. Life is about attachment, it's about passion, it's about engagement. How can you possibly understand the Force by taking yourself out of life, by being detached from how almost all living beings exist? I can buy detachment as a mental skill, just as I argue to students that you make much better arguments for your own position by learning how to argue for positions other than your own. But detachment as an all-consuming way of life, as a permanent commandment?

It makes me wish that the EU would introduce a third class of Force users, neither Sith nor Jedi--basically sensualists. Force-users who drink and fuck and eat and love, who immerse themselves in life. I dunno, I haven't read many of the books, maybe there's something like that already?

Second, the Jedi have their position in the Republic because they're incorruptible cops, judges and soldiers combined into one. For that, I get the value of detachment: you wouldn't trust anyone else with that kind of authority if you thought they had strong interests in political outcomes, or self-interests in terms of getting rich. But, on the other hand, this is one reason that it's laughable when a celibate priest (of which there are obviously fewer than the Catholic Church would like to pretend) talks to Catholic couples about marriage. What does he know about it? Similarly, are you really going to accept the judgment of a Jedi cop when he or she knows shit-all about life the way that ordinary folks experience it? If you're a soldier or an ordinary policeman, you're obviously going to respect the badassery of the Jedi, but are you going to trust them, follow them with a whole heart? The detachment thing might work if the Jedi lived up in a bunch of caves somewhere far away from other beings, and wandered rootlessly from place to place. It doesn't work if they're sitting up in a giant fucking temple right near the heart of political power, noisily intervening in everything they take a fancy to intervening in. Naturally almost everyone hates and mistrusts them, because they don't know word one about real life and yet insist they should get to tell everybody else what to do.

[stray]

It makes me wish that the EU would introduce a third class of Force users, neither Sith nor Jedi--basically sensualists. Force-users who drink and fuck and eat and love, who immerse themselves in life. I dunno, I haven't read many of the books, maybe there's something like that already?

Zorba the Jedi?

In a way, that's kind of a general fiction archetype, I would say. And one of my favorites. The whoremongering, drunk, yet wise, badass. It would be interesting seeing a Jedi character like that.. I'm trying to think of someone similar in science fiction.. Not really sure. Kind of a staple of warrior literature/history though. Including Asian literature, who Lucas tries to borrow from with the Buddhist detachement thing.

[Cyrrex]

The whole no-attachment thing is complete fucking retardery though in two important respects (here I'm not talking Lucas, I'm going deep-geek inside the mythos and talking about it on its own terms).

First, we're told on a number of occasions that the Force, the Living Force at any rate, is the energy of all living things, that flows through all life, connecting everything that lives. Fine. Life is about attachment, it's about passion, it's about engagement. How can you possibly understand the Force by taking yourself out of life, by being detached from how almost all living beings exist? I can buy detachment as a mental skill, just as I argue to students that you make much better arguments for your own position by learning how to argue for positions other than your own. But detachment as an all-consuming way of life, as a permanent commandment?

It makes me wish that the EU would introduce a third class of Force users, neither Sith nor Jedi--basically sensualists. Force-users who drink and fuck and eat and love, who immerse themselves in life. I dunno, I haven't read many of the books, maybe there's something like that already?

Second, the Jedi have their position in the Republic because they're incorruptible cops, judges and soldiers combined into one. For that, I get the value of detachment: you wouldn't trust anyone else with that kind of authority if you thought they had strong interests in political outcomes, or self-interests in terms of getting rich. But, on the other hand, this is one reason that it's laughable when a celibate priest (of which there are obviously fewer than the Catholic Church would like to pretend) talks to Catholic couples about marriage. What does he know about it? Similarly, are you really going to accept the judgment of a Jedi cop when he or she knows shit-all about life the way that ordinary folks experience it? If you're a soldier or an ordinary policeman, you're obviously going to respect the badassery of the Jedi, but are you going to trust them, follow them with a whole heart? The detachment thing might work if the Jedi lived up in a bunch of caves somewhere far away from other beings, and wandered rootlessly from place to place. It doesn't work if they're sitting up in a giant fucking temple right near the heart of political power, noisily intervening in everything they take a fancy to intervening in. Naturally almost everyone hates and mistrusts them, because they don't know word one about real life and yet insist they should get to tell everybody else what to do.

All correct.  The other thing about not allowing attachment is that it simply won't happen.  They get attached anyway.  Whatever evils they thing they are preventing by condemning attachment end up, in every case, paling in comparison to the evils committed by Jedi trying to cover up their attachments.  This is a constant theme.  Even in small ways it manifests itself.  People scratch their heads about why Kenobi never intervened, but it's for the same exact reason.  He becomes attached to Anakin, becomes blind to his sins and ultimately has no idea what to do about it.  So he does nothing.  Yoda?  Same thing, the old hypocrite.  Windu is so afraid of becoming attached that he goes to the opposite extreme (blind devotion) and it's just as costly.

[Ironwood]

The Jedi are pretty fucked up regardless. Recruiting young children, training them for combat from practically the time they're out of diapers, then telling them "Oh yeah no marriage/love/family/whatever for you!" when they get older? Heh, yeah, I guess those five-year olds should have considered whether they ever wanted to get married before they... signed up... er... were taken.

I mean Palpatine may have fucked over apprentices like Dooku and Anakin, but at least they were full-grown and powerful men when he recruited them. Not, you know, toddlers.

Actually, Zhan's 'Outbound Flight' deals with this dilemma also.  Jorus C'Boath basically decides 'fuck you lot, I'm taking your kids', no matter what age.

I was shocked when he turned to the Dark Side.

SHOCKED.

[Ironwood]

It makes me wish that the EU would introduce a third class of Force users, neither Sith nor Jedi--basically sensualists. Force-users who drink and fuck and eat and love, who immerse themselves in life. I dunno, I haven't read many of the books, maybe there's something like that already?

No, seriously, STOP.

[stray]

Eh, I think it'd be a funny storyline. Kind of like those trek episodes where you find the occassional vulcan who embraced his emotions.

[stu]

Tag & Bink were Force Sensitive. Yeah, I guess it doesn't count.

[WindupAtheist]

Anakin in the 3rd movie becomes the archtypical wife beater, only with magical force powers.

I always thought the entire Anakin/Padme thing made perfect sense, so long as one took it as the relationship between a clingy obsessive violent-tempered manchild with mommy issues and a lonely personally-unfulfilled woman who had spent her entire post-puberty life up to that point fucking around in politics instead of dating and learning how to spot and avoid that guy who seems really into her but is probably a fucking psycho.

[Merusk]

The entire point of the no attachments/ no emotions and only take them early thing is the POWER the Jedi wield.   

The whole thing was inspired by legends of the Shaolin Monks.  Sure, they could fuck you up a thousand ways from Sunday but they had the lifelong training, willpower and self-discipline to avoid doing so.  I have no idea why Shaolin live a life of poverty, but I expect the primal human desire to protect and obsess over our possessions has something to do with it.

Now imagine a guy with all the mytical badass power who's simply born with it.  He'll come into the power and be able to manipulate it on a subconscious level (as QuiGon mentions Anakin already doing) and may even be able to learn to control it on his own.  Do you want to take the chance he'll turn out to be Ted Bundy, or would you rather catch him young and try to raise him in an environment that will at least let other folks of similar power deal with him should he flip out?

None of this explains why the Council would turn away kids, particularly one as strong as Anakin was going to be.  It's a Kid's mythology so there's not going to be a dark "You're too dangerous to live, kid" subplot, but there should at least be a "well we're going to lock you up over here now.."

  I suppose some will chalk it up as another part of the Jedis' arrogance.  "Meh, they're not REALLY a danger, we can handle them if they ever do anything bad, we're the Jedi!"

[Ratman_tf]

All correct.  The other thing about not allowing attachment is that it simply won't happen.  They get attached anyway.  Whatever evils they thing they are preventing by condemning attachment end up, in every case, paling in comparison to the evils committed by Jedi trying to cover up their attachments.  This is a constant theme.  Even in small ways it manifests itself.  People scratch their heads about why Kenobi never intervened, but it's for the same exact reason.  He becomes attached to Anakin, becomes blind to his sins and ultimately has no idea what to do about it.  So he does nothing.  Yoda?  Same thing, the old hypocrite.  Windu is so afraid of becoming attached that he goes to the opposite extreme (blind devotion) and it's just as costly.

I like to rail against "The Jedi were the fuckups", but if you catch me on a good day, I'll agree and say "Shit happens." All roads can go ill, and any good intention can go bad. A person can be attached and not go apeshit and blow people away if, say, his wife cheats on him. Or another person might. Add in a mystic prophecy that no one really understood, and I personally don't blame any of the characters. In the end, maybe it was all fated to happen that way.