Here.

And suddenly I know exactly why my villains are so motivated...

Because applying logic to movies works soooooo well.

Jedi do have non lethal options and they use them al the time. Negotiation, Mind trick which they point out as being bad. Would it have been better to lightsaber down the storm troopers?

Ok major flaws I find in these points

1: There's no proof that the Jedi actually abduct children. For all we know the parents of all those kids had the same reaction "My kid can become a Jedi?! Awesome where's the paperwork to sign them over?!"

2: Just because the Jedi aren't dumb enough to hesitate during combat doesn't mean they don't regret taking lives. We see very brief periods of events spanning 13 years in the PT and 3.5 in the OT.so naturally we aren't going to see things not considered important to the story.

3 The Jedi do use non-lethal means when doing so is a reasonable option.

4: The Jedi were asked by the head of state of the Republic to intervene in the Naboo incident so they di not decide to go in on their own.

They tried to arrest Palpatinele it was only after he killed multiple Jedi Masters and started bragging about controlling the senate that one Jedi Master decided he needed to die. And the Jedi viewed themselves as being at war with the Sith especially after Order 66. Given Palpatine's rank and authority over the military no one sane would claim he wasn't a legitimate military target.

5: Ok first we aren't even sure Dooku's body survived the ship's entry into Coruscant's atmosphere. If it didn't there was definitely no investigation into the cause of his death. Second Dooku was an enemy officer in a time of war so investigating his death in battle probably wasn't high on anyone's to do list.

6: We never see the Jedi using the mind trick to do anything but protect themselves and others or attempting to do so. The closest we see to that rule being broken is war time interrogations seeking vital data and an attempt to get parts need to free a planet from an invading army. (And don't get me started on the insanity of there being no exchange rate for Republic credits on Tatooine)

Being that it is all fiction it can be rationalized in various ways. I found the article rather humorous.

And suddenly I know exactly why my villains are so motivated...

Wipe them out, all of them.

This article reminds me a lot of people who try to justify the Empire as a benevolent government who is only trying to keep peace and order throughout the galaxy and it's the pesky rebels that are the real bad guys because everyone is super okay with a galactic dictatorship.

It's funny and novel the first couple times you see it and after about the third time I just roll my eyes and move on.

This article reminds me a lot of people who try to justify the Empire as a benevolent government who is only trying to keep peace and order throughout the galaxy and it's the pesky rebels that are the real bad guys because everyone is super okay with a galactic dictatorship.

You mean the Rebels weren't the bad guys? I'm so disappointed. My take away was so completely different.

There's a few obvious distortions and overlooking elements going on, but it's funny. The interesting thing is when I started watching TCW I posted on the EotE forums to say "wait - are these supposed to be the good guys because objectively speaking..." And then I got several cryptic replies along the lines of "just wait..."

What I especially liked about TCW is the way it started with the PT's indulgence of the Jedi and assumption they were right, and then added all sorts of nuance and depth, primarily through the increasing awareness of Ahsoka of reality vs. what she'd been brought up to expect. The thing is, once you factor in TCW, the Jedi turn out to NOT be the "good guys". Not in a full sense of the word. I recall Anakin responding to Ahsoka's questions at one point with "There are many Jedi who feel the war is wrong and we shouldn't be involved. Political idealists... Remember, Dooku started as an idealist". Or something very much like that. The voice actor playing Anakin puts a very nice little touch of disparagement on the term "political idealists". Good guys? No, the Jedi really did lose their way and Palpatine played them perfectly:

"It's just a trade dispute - you care about protecting the republic, don't you? You certainly wouldn't want to see Naboo invaded and suffering prolonged. The hospitals on Naboo are already running low on vital medicinces, I have heard..."

"You're already involved, if there's a war, there will be a great deal of suffering. You can end this now by just finishing it before it starts by attacking the droid factories on Geonosha. Take out the ships before they launch and you'll stop this war before it begins."

"A clone army? Prepared by one of your own, it seems! He must have forseen this and prepared. And there's no time to think is there? The republic is about to fracture and you can take this army he left you and prevent that."

And later...

"Yes, citizens. I too want peace. But the Jedi have drawn us further and further into war with their clone army and promises the victory is imminent. How many times have we been told that victory is at hand?"

Mace: "Uh, you told them that."

"Did I, master Jedi?"

And of course the coup de grace:

"It was me, me all along! Ha ha ha! And I control the courts, the army, I bet you want to kill me now, don't you? Go on, baldie. Strike me down - you know you want to..."

See, this is why I don't run with the Jedi order as presented in the PT. Headcanon is much more reasonable.

1: There's no proof that the Jedi actually abduct children. For all we know the parents of all those kids had the same reaction "My kid can become a Jedi?! Awesome where's the paperwork to sign them over?!"

The Force and Destiny core rulebook even mentions that Force Sensitive kids were not abducted. It goes on to mention that idea was a common misconception.

There's a few obvious distortions and overlooking elements going on, but it's funny. The interesting thing is when I started watching TCW I posted on the EotE forums to say "wait - are these supposed to be the good guys because objectively speaking..." And then I got several cryptic replies along the lines of "just wait..."

What I especially liked about TCW is the way it started with the PT's indulgence of the Jedi and assumption they were right, and then added all sorts of nuance and depth, primarily through the increasing awareness of Ahsoka of reality vs. what she'd been brought up to expect. The thing is, once you factor in TCW, the Jedi turn out to NOT be the "good guys". Not in a full sense of the word. I recall Anakin responding to Ahsoka's questions at one point with "There are many Jedi who feel the war is wrong and we shouldn't be involved. Political idealists... Remember, Dooku started as an idealist". Or something very much like that. The voice actor playing Anakin puts a very nice little touch of disparagement on the term "political idealists". Good guys? No, the Jedi really did lose their way and Palpatine played them perfectly:

"It's just a trade dispute - you care about protecting the republic, don't you? You certainly wouldn't want to see Naboo invaded and suffering prolonged. The hospitals on Naboo are already running low on vital medicinces, I have heard..."

"You're already involved, if there's a war, there will be a great deal of suffering. You can end this now by just finishing it before it starts by attacking the droid factories on Geonosha. Take out the ships before they launch and you'll stop this war before it begins."

"A clone army? Prepared by one of your own, it seems! He must have forseen this and prepared. And there's no time to think is there? The republic is about to fracture and you can take this army he left you and prevent that."

And later...

"Yes, citizens. I too want peace. But the Jedi have drawn us further and further into war with their clone army and promises the victory is imminent. How many times have we been told that victory is at hand?"

Mace: "Uh, you told them that."

"Did I, master Jedi?"

And of course the coup de grace:

"It was me, me all along! Ha ha ha! And I control the courts, the army, I bet you want to kill me now, don't you? Go on, baldie. Strike me down - you know you want to..."

This comment. This is the comment of somebody who understands.

The Jedi are the good guys. But they are imperfect.

I found it interesting in the F&D corebook that it mentions a sector of space that has long been thought of as a lost cause to crime and poor development, but that the Empire has been making efforts to develop it where the Republic did not. It was strange to see a basically positive action of the empire mentioned in a book that is mostly about the negatives. That said, the empire is in many ways an American Empire analogue, so it makes sense that lots of people would be able to see things from its side.

Also, I maintain that a large part of the dislike for the prequels stems from them framing the Jedi as competent heroes through music, lighting, marketing, etc, but making them out to be incompetent villains in actual plot. Whether this is an intentional ironic portrayal or missteps in execution is up for debate.

Something else worth mentioning is that the F&D core talks about the Jed'ai (don't remember exact spelling) as precursors to Jedi. They believed that both the light and dark side needed to be used to maintain balance. That's a pretty big indicator that the Jedi creed could be a fatal misinterpretation of the force. Even the OT has Luke Skywalker reject what is asked of him by the Jedi (to assassinate Vader) and instead embrace a different way from them. But now you get into the films having a message that portrays institutionalized religion as being forever corrupted by politics and instead advocating a focus on individual spirituality, family, and friendship.

I'm pretty sure the Jedi were intended to be portrayed as arrogant in the Prequels.

The problem lies in most people seeing the Jedi as pridefully arrogant with a holier than thou disposition. I think the intended arrogance was based off of self-assured complacency (with the Sith being a long since dead threat). And then the writers of the (now Legends) EU missed the point. I enjoy SWTOR, but one of the prologue Knight cutscenes has Orgus Din say that the Jedi are better than everybody else because they don't have attachments. Because a man was distraught over losing his wife. This is the kind of stuff that leave a lot of people with a bad taste in their mouth about the Jedi.

Muddling the issue further is TCW does a pretty good job at making interesting characters. I wasn't expecting to like Ahsoka, but I did. Characters with seconds of screen time in the movies (Plo Koon, Kit Fisto, Luminara Unduli, Barriss Offee) all get developed into complex characters that I actually like , making them everything the Jedi should have been.

I'm pretty sure the Jedi were intended to be portrayed as arrogant in the Prequels.

The problem lies in most people seeing the Jedi as pridefully arrogant with a holier than thou disposition. I think the intended arrogance was based off of self-assured complacency (with the Sith being a long since dead threat). And then the writers of the (now Legends) EU missed the point. I enjoy SWTOR, but one of the prologue Knight cutscenes has Orgus Din say that the Jedi are better than everybody else because they don't have attachments. Because a man was distraught over losing his wife. This is the kind of stuff that leave a lot of people with a bad taste in their mouth about the Jedi.

Muddling the issue further is TCW does a pretty good job at making interesting characters. I wasn't expecting to like Ahsoka, but I did. Characters with seconds of screen time in the movies (Plo Koon, Kit Fisto, Luminara Unduli, Barriss Offee) all get developed into complex characters that I actually like , making them everything the Jedi should have been.

Yes, very much this. Yoda's flaw, I think, was in having too much faith in his Jedi Order to be able to get their hands dirty and yet survive as what it was. Or perhaps that he simply couldn't see so great a change as it actually falling. It had lasted a thousand years or more - that it could fall in a few decades? I think he deplored how things were going, regretted it, but never believed it could actually be fatal to something he so loved and so ancient. Ultimately, the Jedi violated one of their basic principles in the most fundamental way. The Galaxy was moving away from them, the Light side ebbing and the Dark Side growing and their influence and position waning with it. And they had grown attached to how things were and tried to fight the tide. Instead of receding and being diminished in influence and status, they tried to cling to what had been and lost everything instead. They could have been sidelined as the Republic began to fall apart, and they would not have won, perhaps becoming isolated from politics and power, or dispersing through the galaxy into exile. But they would have endured. But they tried to hold on and the tighter they closed their fist, the more everything slipped through their fingers.

Being that it is all fiction it can be rationalized in various ways. I found the article rather humorous.

Which given the nature of the website was entirely the point.

Cracked articles should never be taken 100% seriously, and always with tongue planted firmly in check.

It's also worth remembering that the Prequels represent the Jedi in an impossible situation - one that Darth Sidious has engineered from the outset to give the Jedi no way out.

The Clone Wars put the Jedi in a situation they're not meant for (outright war), leaves them no way to stay out of the situation (they're already hunting the Sith, and the Separatist Crisis is too big a deal to ignore for an order of peacekeepers), and whittled down their numbers and their ethics over a period of three years... at which point, those remaining could be crushed to the applause of the masses. They were presented with a war they couldn't avoid, and which they couldn't win (because one man was orchestrating both sides), and which would make them vulnerable.

The Clone Wars - in their entirety - are a trap for the Jedi Order. That can't be overlooked in any consideration of Clone Wars era Jedi.

More importantly, everything wrong with the Jedi in that article is something EU Luke more or less fixed.

It remains to be seen if Disney Luke will also fix it all.

Oh dear lord, all the butt-hurt nerds in the comments (and this thread)!

Yes, this piece is wrought with inaccuracies and faulty reasoning.
But it's a joke piece.
He does bring up some valid points, despite that though.

But in essence, this is a joke piece, and many people still got their panties in a twist over it.
Nerds be way too serious, yo!

The thing that truly went wrong for the jedi is they became way too full of themselves and they believed their press too much.

There's also this:

I actually really enjoyed that article.

It's also worth remembering that the Prequels represent the Jedi in an impossible situation - one that Darth Sidious has engineered from the outset to give the Jedi no way out.

The Clone Wars put the Jedi in a situation they're not meant for (outright war), leaves them no way to stay out of the situation (they're already hunting the Sith, and the Separatist Crisis is too big a deal to ignore for an order of peacekeepers), and whittled down their numbers and their ethics over a period of three years... at which point, those remaining could be crushed to the applause of the masses. They were presented with a war they couldn't avoid, and which they couldn't win (because one man was orchestrating both sides), and which would make them vulnerable.

The Clone Wars - in their entirety - are a trap for the Jedi Order. That can't be overlooked in any consideration of Clone Wars era Jedi.

It's also worth pointing out that according to the background the Jedi Order existed for 20,000+ years. Including the previous 1000 years of galactic peace. Certainly any institution is imperfect but they had a really good track record. They were doing something right.

Qui-gon is one of my favorite characters and is in a lot of ways an antidote to some of the issues the Jedi Order seemed to have but....

The Jedi Council bucked tradition to "allow" Anakin to be trained. Yoda didn't think Anakin should have been trained. Tradition - and Yoda - believed that training Anakin could too easily result in a Jedi prone to the dark side. And they were ultimately right.