This is one scene that I wish the prequels didn't undermine. It was cool when the Jedi were some mythological idea rather than people that everyone should've known from a decade or two ago.
Yeah they alternate between “everyone remembers” and the occasional “huh?”
It’s a very distracting inconsistency for me tbh
I wonder if it's meant to be imperial propaganda/censorship. Like maybe everyone knows deep down the Jedi were real, but it's frowned upon to talk about it, because the Emperor is trying to erase them from memory.
It could also be that the galaxy is a big place and the Jedi were never that numerous. So even when they were a thing, most people would go their whole lives without ever seeing one. I can see how they would become semi-mythological in that case.
But we know the real answer is simply that Star Wars is not a franchise that values verisimilitude in worldbuilding or writing. It's a fantasy world with a veneer of sci-fi.
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It's been a while since I watched the prequels, but the idea I got was everyone knew the Jedi existed: they were major players in the galactic senate as you referenced. But very few people would ever get to see Jedis use force powers. They might see them brandish a lightsaber. Which to a culture who had space ships, blasters, and the ability to block lightsabers (even if the materials were rare), laser swords might have seemed antiquated and quaint.
And the powers the Jedi seemed to use in populated places the most often were mind powers which aren't necessarily observable: even Luke watching Obi-Wan mind-trick a stormtrooper was baffled. Seeing Yoda throw ships around might be a thing only a handful of people saw in a century and became little more than legend.
Ooor I might be rationalizing a lot of plot holes without realizing it. :)
But very few people would ever get to see Jedis use force powers. They might see them brandish a lightsaber
Approximately 10,000 Jedi were in the Order at the start of the Clone Wars. At that time the galaxy was home to over one hundred quintillion (100,000,000,000,000,000,000) sapient beings. Almost no one ever saw a Jedi during their lives.
You're not rationalizing anything they pretty much spell that out in the movies.
That and everyone seems to underestimate how much effort the empire had been putting in to hunt down remaining Jedi. Even saying the word Jedi was enough to be thrown into an interrogation cell and be subjected to who knows what kind of torture. When there's that much fear around something it can fade into memory within a single generation.
There were millions of planets in the Republic, and only about 10k Jedi at any one time. The vast majority of people would never have seen one. The vast majority of planets would probably go generations between having one visit. It is entirely believable that most wouldn't think that Jedi were real.
I think the idea was that they were so rare that most people had never met one in their entire lives or even heard of one being active. Then too they didn't take credit for stuff they did, and while people like Padme knew, yet they were also the ones most likely to be killed during the transition to the new order).
But the big one is that the Emperor did a strong active disinformation campaign - e.g. COVID is fake so don't worry about it, just get back to work in the sun and that'll protect you - altogether leading people to believe, or at least say, that the Jedi were "fake news". As in not really, but in an authoritian world, it had better be, or else, capiche? That's the part that I worry we all need to learn, as in soon, to deal with our new reality: that Truth no longer matters, so much as adherence to authority/compliance.
Imagine trying to shit on someone’s faith, then the person calls down Jesus himself to put your fingers in their nail wounds and then he makes his dad hurt you for good measure.
Point is how’d that guy not believe in the force before that? No “parlor trick” is that good…
I took it that they disagreed on the usefulness of his power. Vader said nothing compares to the force and the guy disagreed. I don’t think he was swayed into thinking the force would crush the rebellion because he, an individual, got choked.
I could see it, but even in the original trilogy, Vader was not demonstrated to ever be particularly restrained in his use of the force. He would have at least known that Vader had a habit of casually force choking to death anyone that pissed him off a little with zero repurcussions. Even if he thought that wasn't powerful enough he would have kept his mouth shut.
Maybe he just wanted to be chocked. He was definitely asking for it.
Poor guy was drowning in debt and terminally ill, and this was the best way to secure his kids education.
Now they talk of him as a fool.
I know. The prequels maybe weren't well thought out. That shit talker would have served among the Jedi and during the purge.
Jedi are supposed to be incredibly rare, about 10,000 in a galaxy of quadrillions. It's perfectly reasonable to be skeptical of them (Other than the ten thousand years of historical proof of space wizards doing cool shit with physical records).
However, Lucas hates math, so, like, a couple million clones can fight this war, right? Now this one cog actually probably did meet a Jedi because the only universe worse at reconciling feasible reality with background details is 40k.
The EU actually did a really good job of explaining this attitude with an Imperial propaganda campaign that painted the Jedi as frauds running the Republic from the shadows, justifying both the skepticism and the purge to the citizens. RIP.
I don't think he wasn't believing in the force, he just wasn't buying the mysticism surrounding it and didn't think it's such a big deal. He knew Vader is a powerful force user, but the Death Star is literally one shotting entire planets, so the force didn't feel that significant to him in the grand scheme of things.
Darth Vader doesn't call HR
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRjb5yrr9MVniw7UiKdJZnOMzuBGYLcUj
Which is a good thing because Imperial HR doesn't mess around.
"Gee whiz, Eddie, if you needed money so bad, why didn't you come to me?"
Almost the exact same head position and everything!
Well, okay. But Vader was going to kill him right then and there in front of everyone. Tarkin saved his life, and only because he was annoyed by the display.
The thing that really makes him a G is that Jedis in his fictional world can actually use the force while a religious figure in the western parts of our world can't do much besides using the force of social conformity which is not that threatening at all if you think about it.
Everyone seems to underestimate how much effort the empire had been putting in to hunt down remaining Jedi. Even saying the word Jedi was enough to be thrown into an interrogation cell and be subjected to who knows what kind of torture. When there's that much fear around something it can fade into memory within a single generation.
You reminded me I made this edit: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZPREp6XM2/
Fediversers gots the TikTok allergy (mirrored for 48hr)
I don't blame them.
