This is part of my series of posts looking at whether the Star Wars prequels are as bad as people claim they are. You can read the last post here:
The Princess Diary
One of the things that always bugged me about the original trilogy was this exchange:
LUKE How far away is Yoda?Will it take us long to get there?CREATURE Not far. Yoda not far. Patience. Soon you will be with him.Rootleaf. I cook. Why wish you become Jedi? Hmmm? Hmmm?LUKE Mostly because of my father, I guess.CREATURE Ah, father. Powerful Jedi was he. Hee hee.Mmm, powerful Jedi.LUKE Oh, come on. How could you know my father?You don't even know who I am.I don't even know what I'm doing here.We're wasting our time.CREATURE(sighs) I cannot teach him. The boy has no patience.OBI-WAN / BEN (off-screen) He will learn patience.CREATUREHmmm. Much anger in him, like his father.OBI-WAN / BEN (off-screen) Was I any different when you taught me?CREATURE No, he is not ready.LUKE Yoda. I am ready. I.... Ben! I can be a Jedi.Ben, tell him I'm re-.YODA Ready, are you? What know you of ready? For eight hundred years have I trained Jedi. My own counsel will I keep on who is to be trained! A Jedi must have the deepest commitment, hmm? The most serious mind.(to the invisible Ben, indicating Luke)This one a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away... to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing. Hmph. Adventure. Heh! Excitement. Heh! A Jedi craves not these things.(turning to Luke)You are reckless!OBI-WAN / BEN (off-screen) So was I, if you remember.YODA He is too old. Yes, too old to begin the training.
He is too old and reckless because he wasn't trained as a child! Because neither you, nor Obi-Wan trained him!
Hasn't anyone else wondered why Obi-Wan and Yoda, who both seem to be quite old themselves, and as far as they know, the last of the Jedi, left Luke and Leia untrained even though both of them knew where they were? By the end of The Empire Strikes Back, we can assume that they wanted to keep Luke hidden from Darth Vader, in case he came to try and corrupt his son. However, at the end of Return of the Jedi, we find out that Leia is also his daughter, and nobody seems to be doing anything from stopping her getting close to them!
It seems like they both know each other, probably through the senate. And it seems the sight of Grand Moff Tarkin and Darth Vader together is not that uncommon, based on Leia's comment. That makes it likely that she and Vader have met before. She recognises him straight away.LEIA Governor Tarkin, I should have expected to find you holding Vader's leash. I recognized your foul stench when I was brought on board.TARKIN Charming to the last. You don't know how hard I found it signing the order to terminate your life!LEIA I surprised you had the courage to take the responsibility yourself!
And he appears to recognise her - at least enough to use her correct title.
You would think that if Obi-Wan or Yoda was even remotely concerned about either of the twins being corrupted by the dark side, they would have stepped in before Leia rose to enough prominence to draw the attention of high ranking officials. So we have to hope the prequels explains some of this.
In The Phantom Menace, Qui-Gon and crew encounter young Anakin Skywalker on Tatooine. Qui-Gon realises he's force sensitive (lol, the immaculate conception) and ends up taking him away to be trained at Jedi school. He is interviewed by the Jedi council, and Yoda concludes that he's too old to be trained.
YODA : (Cont'd) Master Qui-Gon more to say have you? QUI-GON : With your permission, my Master. I have encountered a vergence in the Force. YODA : A vergence, you say? MACE WINDU : Located around a person? QUI-GON : A boy... his cells have the highest concentration of midi-chlorians I have seen in a life form. It is possible he was conceived by the midi-chlorians. MACE WINDU : You're referring to the prophesy of the one who will bring balance to the Force...you believe it's this boy?? QUI-GON : I don't pressume... YODA : But you do! Rrevealed your opinion is. QUI-GON : I request the boy be tested. The JEDI all look to one another. They nod and turn back to OBI-WAN and QUI-GON. YODA : Trained as a Jedi, you request for him? QUI-GON : Finding him was the will of the Force...I have no doubt of that. There is too much happening here... MACE WINDU : Bring him before us, then. YODA : Tested he will be.
Later...
And later still, they decide on his fate.INT. PALACE OF THE JEDI - COUNCIL CHAMBERS - SUNSET ANAKIN stands before the TWELVE JEDI. MACE WINDU holds a small hand-held viewing screen. In rapid succession, images flash across the screen. ANAKIN : A ship...a cup...a speeder. MACE WINDU turns the viewing screen off and nods toward YODA. YODA : Good, good, young one. How feel you? ANAKIN : Cold, sir. YODA : Afraid are you? ANAKIN : No, sir. MACE WINDU : Afraid to give up your life? ANAKIN : I don't think so. ANAKIN hesitates for a moment. YODA : See through you, we can. MACE WINDU : Be mindful of your feelings... KI-ADI : YOur thoughts dwell on your mother. ANAKIN : I miss her. YODA : Afraid to lose her..I think. ANAKIN : (a little angry) What's that got to do with anything? YODA : Eveything. Fear is the path to the dark side... fear leads to anger... anger leads to hate.. hate leads to suffering. ANAKIN : (angrily) I am not afraid! YODA : A Jedi must have the deepest commitment, the most serious mind. I sense much fear in you. ANAKIN : (quietly) I am not afraid. YODA : Then continue, we will.
(Notice the parallels between this and The Empire Strikes Back?)INT. TEMPLE OF THE JEDI - COUNCIL CHAMBERS - TWILIGHT ANAKIN, OBI-WAN, and QUI-GON stand before the TWELVE MEMBERS OF THE JEDI COUNCIL. KI-ADI : The Force is strong with him. QUI-GON : He's to be trained, then. The COUNCIL MEMBERS look to one another. MACE WINDU : No. He will not be trained. ANAKIN is crestfallen; tears begin to form in his eyes. QUI-GON : No??!! MACE WINDU : He is too old. QUI-GON : He is the chosen one...you must see it. YODA : Clouded, this boy's future is. QUI-GON : I will trin him, then. I take Anakin as my Padawan learner. OBI-WAN reacts with surprise. ANAKIN watches with interest. YODA : An apprentice, you have, Qui-Gon. Impossible, to take on a second. MACE WINDU : The Code forbids it. QUI-GON : Obi-Wan is ready. OBI-WAN : I am ready to face the trials. YODA : Our own counsel we will keep on who is ready.
Obi-Wan is in a bind, on one hand, the Jedi council said not to train him. On the other hand, his master's dying wish was to train the boy. It's a tough choice (no, I'm not being sarcastic. I think the bond between master and apprentice can be quite strong).
However, Obi-Wan may have been a bit emotional when he made that agreement - does that count as forming a binding contract under duress? Either way, being the good guy that he is, he stays true to his word, and by the time Attack of the Clones rolls around, we see that he has taken Anakin on as his padawan, and the Jedi council seems to have just rolled with this...
From quite early on in AotC, we learn that Anakin is an "act now, think later" kind of person. I don't know if this was a nod towards the later movies, but he loses his lightsabre, which Obi-Wan picks up.
And then there's this line from Obi-Wan:
Sorry, tangent again, but it does serve to start to make you wonder whether Anakin was too old to be trained.
Later in the movie, we see some of the younglings being trained.
They are really young and already doing lightsabre training, which hints that they were even younger when they first began their training. Compare this to when Luke first does lightsabre exercises, he's at least in his late teens (I think he was supposed to be sixteen in the movie, but that's never explicitly mentioned. The script lists Leia as "about sixteen").
It's not wonder Yoda thinks he's too old by the time he makes it to Dagobah!
We learn some of the reasoning behind this later. Jedi are meant to be detached (the are the peacekeeprs of the galaxy, after all), and Anakin seems to really struggle with this. Obi-Wan even mentions this to Yoda and Mace Windu.
Anakin really struggles to keep his emotions in check. Throughout the last two movies, Obi-Wan constantly has to remind him to be patient and think before he acts.OBI-WAN I am concerned for my Padawan. He is not ready to be given this assignment on his own yet.
YODA The Council is confident in its decision, Obi-Wan. MACE The boy has exceptional skills. OBI-WAN But he still has much to learn, Master. And his abilities have made him... well... arrogant. YODA Yes, yes. A flaw more and more common among Jedi. Too sure of themselves they are. Even the older, more experienced ones. MACE WINDU Remember Obi-Wan, if the prophecy is true, your apprentice is the only one who can bring the Force back into balance.
This hints at the main reason the Jedi council is reluctant to train older kids - it's hard to unlearn habits, and if you've already learned things like fear, anger, arrogance, then you'll have a much harder time being detached. Plus, violence isn't always the solution, and if your first instinct is to bash some heads in, because might is right, then you may not be doing the right thing.
OK, so they backed a loser, no big deal, right? Except this guy also happened to.... slaughter the entire next generation of Jedi and end up the apprentice of one of the first Sith Lords to appear in centuries.
I bet Yoda was fighting a pretty strong urge to say, "I told you so" right about then. Except he's a highly disciplined Jedi Master, so he wouldn't.
As horrifying as it was to watch, it gives a pretty damn good reason why Yoda and Obi-Wan were both hesitant to train Luke, given how much like Anakin he seemed to be.
I think the prequels did really well in answering the question of why Yoda and Obi-Wan preferred to watch Luke rather than train him. I guess they still had hope that there were other Jedi who survived.
It seems that at the end of Revenge of the Sith, the plan was to split up the twins and then... what? Hope Palpatine dies of old age? We can't really tell what happened between the end of RotS and ANH, but based on what we see in ESB, the only people actively fighting are the Rebel Alliance. Given how most people in the original trilogy seem to think the Force is some hokey religion, I doubt there are many Force users around.
I've heard it argued that Luke has never heard of it because he lives on a remote planet, but Han Solo is a well-travelled smuggler. If there were active Force users around, he would have heard of them. Especially since lightsabres can deflect laser bolts, so a good blaster is useless against a Force user!
Even in the earlier Darth Vader force choke scene, the person he's choking (and Pyro is going to be on my ass for not remembering his name) doesn't even seem to believe him, hence the line, "I find your lack of faith disturbing".
It also doesn't even answer the question of why Leia wasn't trained - although it could be argued that as the daughter of the Queen of Alderaan, she is too high-profile to be trained in secret. Which just adds another point to the argument of why it was so stupid to leave her there in the first place.
On this point, I think there things that the prequels handled really well, in particular establishing a good reason for why Luke was never trained, and also explaining why Luke and Leia were hidden in the first place and never told about their heritage. But they provide a weak reason for explaining why they did what they did at the end of RotS. I mean, Obi-Wan went into hiding, why didn't he just take Luke with him? Sure, his last apprentice was a disaster, but as it was mentioned many times throughout the movie, he was too old.
Imagine if Luke / Leia / both had been trained from birth. By both Yoda and Obi-Wan! It might be that having too many force-users in one place would attract attention. A wrinkly green dude would probably stand out. And I don't know how the Star Wars society perceives single fathers. Hopefully the same way they perceive single mothers. To be fair, I doubt that either of them was trained to raise two human infants, they probably didn't want to accidentally kill them through negligence. But at least do a Harry Potter and take them to Hogwarts once they're old enough to be trained! Not just watch Luke like a creeper for his whole life.
I do have to cut them some slack, it seems that the dark side of the Force had been clouding their thoughts for a long time, and they weren't really sure who or what they could trust - another thing that the prequels did really well. I think they did an amazing job with Senator / Emperor Palpatine. It was probably safer to wait (which seems to be the Jedi modus operandi - minus Qui-Gon and Anakin) and see what happens than jump in and blindly train these kids.
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