Quote:
Originally Posted by AcGold
Yeah I think you're pretty close to hitting it right on the head. The story to me was always an attempt to describe what evil is and how it works. The way you describe the influence of will and arrogance was a major part of that. Agree about the prophecy part as well.
What I really like about the movies is how meaningful small moments actually were. Everything was planned thematically to tell this moralistic story of the nature of good and evil.
How much the Jedi were culpable? Probably a significant amount, there were moments a simple adherence to a basic moral compass would have helped but they just plowed ahead.
Hey this kid can be the destroyer of the light side it was told in prophecy, ah whatever we're Jedi let's train him anyway. It's probably why Qui-Gon had to die, his penance for not following the obvious path of not training the abused kid with super powers.
|
I think that the story is really about how easy people are willing to surrender to evil and authority.
You look at the Clone Troopers, they were hero's worked with the Jedi side by side (especially if you watch the excellent clone wars series) and then without malice or hatred but because they were trained that way they turned on the Jedi because of orders.
The Death Star had millions of people on it, they couldn't all be evil nor could every officer in the Imperial Navy. But they were willing to give up their freedom and do something morally wrong for the order and security that Palpatine offered.
In the book Dark Lord, Palpatine mused that the Jedi and even Vader didn't understand the true power of the Dark Side of the Force.
They got stuck on the Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate and hate leads to suffering.
But the truth according to Palpatine was simple. You had to gain control over those emotions because by doing so you would be able to overcome morality in order to serve a higher goal.
Palpatine also believed that the drive for power allowed him to re-order the galaxy and take away authority from those that were unworthy of it. He believed that only the Sith should rule because everyone else couldn't rule.
The Jedi had to die for two main reasons.
1) The Sith really believed that the Jedi were fairly evil and corrupt due to the Jedi committing acts of Genocide at the end of the Hyperspace war (again sadly not part of Canon anymore). When the Sith were defeated by the republic, the Jedi ordered the entire Sith civilization to be exterminated.
Hence why Palpatine told Anakin that "Evil was a point of view"
2) The other reason was that the Jedi would never understand or be able to live in a galaxy run by the Sith and that their philosophy of serving the republic and the lesser beings in the galaxy was foolish and a corruption. The Jedi should have used their power to rule.
In the end Palpatine nailed it on the head. The Jedi failed because they had accumulated great power and wealth and were afraid to lose it and because of that attachment to their wealth and power they fell, not to the darkside, but from the lightside.
To Palpatine Darth Bane was right and its one of my favorite fictional sayings, and I used it in that game we played on the board a while ago.
The Weak serve the strong, this is the nature of things.