#the truths you cling to depend on your point of view motherfucker

[underwaterspiderbird]

even lucas can get things wrong. he's good with broad concepts that can evolve and be refined on, but he sucks ass at writing & when he gets something wrong, he gets it royally wrong. trying to force the jedi's worldview on everyone was one of those mistakes & even he acknowledges it. he even loves the acolyte and says its everything he could have hoped for and more. your own guy, who's own farts & old takes you suck up like air, sang praise of the Acolyte for how it shows everything we've ever known about star wars but from a point of view that isn't shoving jedi propaganda down the viewer's throat. sith may have their flaws as a group too but at least they value autonomy & self-empowerment. jedi are like fundamentalist christians who preach about how bad hate is while simultaneously despising anything that exists differently than them & justify committing atrocities to them with "well they were dark and bad so they deserved to die". at least they're not thought police who were systemically dominant for the better have of forever & subsequently got a free pass to either slaughter or brainwash anyone who doesn't agree with them.

a person considered "dark" and "evil" who values common decency & autonomy and channels their "darkness" into positive change that benefits them and their loved ones will always be a better person than someone considered "holy" and "righteous" who uses their platitudes of goodwill to justify the genocide of anyone they deem wrong & unnatural, kidnaps & brainwashes the children of the cultures they trample, & then throw those away those same children the moment they disagree with the jedi. ur colonizer is showing

"The idea of it..."

This is obviously a reference to the ol' argument:

"The Jedi weren't bad but the Jedi Order as an institution needed to go."

So as a quick reminder I thought I'd point out:

1) George Lucas describes the Jedi's eradication as a sad thing, not something sad-but-necessary:

"[The] Jedi getting killed through the Order 66 of the clones is just done as one of those kind of inevitable pay offs in terms of getting rid of everybody, the Emperor is getting rid of all his enemies, but there’s a certain inevitability of it all and a sadness to it.  - Revenge of the Sith, Director’s Commentary, 2005

2) Out of 770 George Lucas quotes, I've never seen him refer to the Jedi Order as "an institution" once.

He does refer to the Republic itself as an institution.

"[In The Phantom Menace one of the many storylines is] the story of a young queen who's faced with the total annihilation of a people, and how she can get a sluggish political institution to pay attention to what's going on." - Premiere, 1999

He might be referring to the Senate instead of the Republic as a whole, but the point stands: he's not talking about the Jedi.

Which tracks with what Lucas defined as Dooku's reason for leaving the Order: his disenchantment with the Republic/Senate, not the Jedi themselves.

But let's go slightly further:

The Jedi Temple was designed as a place of worship that would contrast with the corporate coldness of the Senate.

Also, the Jedi were originally designed as a more organized police force. As the script evolved, they were turned into peacekeepers, diplomats.

Mace's room was redesigned so as to not convey that the Jedi were mired in bureaucracy and protocol.

And when describing the political situation of the Prequels, Lucas doesn't blame the Jedi, but rather the corporations and Senate:

"But as often happens when wealth and power grow beyond all reasonable proportion, an evil fueled by greed arose. The massive organs of commerce mushroomed in power, the Senate became corrupt, and an ambitious named Palpatine was voted Supreme Chancellor." - Shatterpoint, Prologue, 2004

Wow, it's looking like not only is the "Jedi Order as an institution needed to go" narrative not a thing per Lucas, but

3) Lucas went out of his way to make it clear that the Jedi aren't the issue, here, the Republic/Senate is.

So how did we get this narrative?

Well, it comes from a generation of fans and Star Wars creators who were not the target audience.

You know the type. It's the kind who, when asked if they like the Prequel Trilogy, will respond that they liked...

... but not the execution.

AKA they disliked the Prequels, but then EU books and The Clone Wars came out and provided them with enough material to form a headcanon justifying why they didn't like the Jedi, despite wanting to: it's because the Jedi are meant to be disliked! Totally!

The Jedi failed as an institution is an idea that comes from authors who wanted to engage with the material (it IS Star Wars, after all) but not the narrative that George Lucas had crafted, whose work then influenced older fans who preferred the author's retconned version of the story to the original one.

The rest is history.

As Prequels producer Rick McCallum put it:

"The myth begins on paper. During preproduction, filming, and postproduction, the myth becomes visible through the work of hundreds of dedicated people. Following the film's release, the myth becomes public and the public makes it its own." - Rick McCallum, Mythmaking: Behind the Scenes of Attack of the Clones, 2002