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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.
the galaxy is a big place and the Jedi were never that numerous
Ding ding ding
DISNEY RETCONNED SO MUCH
The Jedi intentionally did not get involved in big matters, because they were never supposed to be leaders. They basically just tried to keep the peace. So if they did their jobs properly, not many people should know about them beyond myths and legends.
I mean honestly, who would believe you of you said you saw a guy wearing robes and welding a sword that looked like someone took the shot from your pistol and made it solid.
Coruscant was a planet that was almost completely covered by miles of the densest city you can imagine, the only natural spot left was a preserve for what was left of the natives.
Countless billions of people. There's no way for them to even know for sure the exact number, due to sensor limitations, shielded areas, misreported census... You name it.
There were a few thousand jedi at most, most of whom were out on various pilgrimages, missions, journeys, research, whatever. Scattered all over, with the biggest concentration being the jedi temple.
And honestly, when was the last time you paid attention to the people inside your local mosque/church/synagogue/temple/crack den?
So yeah, most people would have only heard of jedi as some kind of legend, whispers of great deeds long past, and rumors of what they've done recently.
And really, even after the clone wars, I could see most people having no idea the jedi had major roles in the GAR. I don't know the names of most generals in WW2, especially non-allied generals beyond a couple major battles. So if your world wasn't ravaged by the war, why would you even care about some general in some war that didn't really change your family's lives much?
The empire also worked to scrub them from memory, repurposed the jedi temple, and people who grew up with imperial education on an imperial sector capital planet, the most you would have heard is the hushed whispers around a sleepover because you know you're not supposed to talk about them. If you heard of them at all before entering the academy.
So if they did their jobs properly, not many people should know about them beyond myths and legends.
Except for the big galactic war like 20 years ago where the news would've been all Jedi General soandso defeats separatist forces in such and such planet, with news footage of the Jedi flinging around droids like ragdolls and flipping and cutting through them.
And then of course the 20 years of war movies after, that sure, due to Imperial propaganda would be painting the Jedi as sinister evil dudes preparing to take control of the galaxy, but they still would've been showing all their terrifying powers.
Jedi would be as well known as the F-117 Stealth Fighter is in reality. Do they know all it's technical specifications? No. But they have an idea of what it does - indeed, a somewhat exaggerated idea, even, so the average person would think Jedi are even more powerful than they really were.
I'm not sure - just think...
Within less than thirty years there has been:
A sudden massive increase in the number of people who believe the MMR vaccine causes autism.
A global pandemic that large numbers of people: Swear didn't happen, or Was artificially created, or Was a hoax to encourage people to have vaccines that contain something sinister.
Widespread demonisation of an entire religion.
A sharp increase in people who don't believe the holocaust happened.
A baffling increase in people who believe the Earth is flat.
In short, people are stupid and surprisingly willing to believe nonsense, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary.
Were the Jedi actually magical? Nah it was just propaganda by a corrupt council. It was all special effects - seriously, a sword against blasters? Wake up, sheeple.
This is absolutely you trying to head canon reality away. There is no way you will ever convince me George Lucas was that socially conscientious/nuanced in his storytelling. It’s not his style at all and he would’ve said something indicating this. He wasn’t thinking about the anti-vaccine movement and the ability to use media to gaslight the public in the 1970s/80s and 90’s/early 2000’s.
I think you might have misread my comment. I don't think George Lucas was trying to make a comment on any of the above.
Except for the big galactic war like 20 years ago
You must not have continued reading...
Yeah, I'm one of those people who thinks the only good Disney Star Wars is Rogue One, and I particularly like the fact that it established the idea that it's possible to follow the force like a religion but not be a Jedi. Maybe in times of great pressure you can manifest 1% of a Jedi's power if you are an extremely devoted adherent of that faith, but it's not the same thing as what the Jedi could do at all. So it makes sense that people would be aware of the force, but the idea that there were this sect of wizard warriors who had mastered its use would be unimaginable to them.
I am one with The Force, and The Force is with me
Chirut was best ProtoJedi. (sorry, Plo Koon is best jedi)
It's like watching someone on Fool Us who actually gets one over on P&T vs a real-life Merlin.
I blame Disney for a lot of decisions but that is not one of them. Lucas made them the generals for the Republic in the prequels. There is no way to argue they flew under the radar/were somewhat obscure after that. Throughout all the prequels they had an incredibly strongpresence/line of communication with the galactic government.
Shame too. It would be very cool to have a “I’ll believe it when I see it” culture more around it. That’s part of what makes Han’s arc so beautiful. At the end of a new hope he is “beginning to believe“ even if he has not suddenly a force wielder. He stops for a moment going against the grain all the time and embraces his humanity and allows the force to work through him to do good for good’s sake
Being fantasy has nothing to do with being consistent in worldbuilding, the godfather of the genre was VERY consistent.
If you're talking about Tolkien, he wasn't the originator of the fantasy genre. It existed long before him and was generally known for being very inconsistent in worldbuilding. His main innovation was inventing a style of fantasy worldbuilding which was actually realistic.
Star Wars came more from serials like Buck Rogers than straight fantasy.
I disagree. Maybe aesthetically to some extent but the story and writing are more inspired by classical fantasy stories. It's a story about a poor farmer who joins a wizard on a quest to become a knight, save a princess from a dark wizard who serves an evil king. That's a fairy tale.
And it's also the modern canonical example of the Hero's Journey/Monomyth structure.
You can disagree as much as you'd like. Lucas said the main inspiration was serials.
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. :)
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.
Misinformation and propaganda can make a society forget a lot…
Maybe, but after that film, it seems like everyone's heard of the Jedi and the Force.
I agree with you on the bad writing, and destruction of cannon built through movie and book in the 70s and 80s. But it’s Disney’s bitch now, and will do whatever daddy Disney needs for money.
I'm probably in a minority, but I honestly think that whatever Lucas would have done for sequels would have been no better than what Disney did. I thought the prequels were god-awful and the best Star Wars movie was Empire, which was not his movie. Even Star Wars would have been nowhere near as good without Marcia Lucas' involvement in the editing process.
Don't get me wrong, George Lucas had some good ideas, but he's had a whole hell of a lot more bad ones since then.
Lucas was good at special effects, writing and directing were never his thing. Star Wars is only a thing because of the pioneering methods he used to make people feel like they were part of this saga, not watching an episode of lost in space. He killed it all with the rereleases, and then erasing his original films from history.
Thankfully, there are still ways to see the original films. Lots of "despecialized editions" and the like are out there. One of the most interesting are the 4K77/80/83 restorations which bring back the original film grain. It's a little less watchable as a movie, but very interesting to see how different scenes used different film stock for different reasons, without modern color correction, etc.
97% of project 4K77 is from a single, original 1977 35mm Technicolor release print so if it goes from blurry to sharp, grainy to not grainy, bright to dark, that’s because it also did that in 1977. Color correction was a single correction per reel – the optical audio track was used to white balance the image, and the contrast adjusted to ensure that there was no clipping of the highlights or crushing of the blacks, so if the color changes from shot to shot, or it goes from very dark inside to very bright outside, that’s how it is on the print. Film has a greater contrast range than home video, and of course was graded for viewing, reflected off of a giant silver screen.
Star Wars was shot on four different types of film stock, some grainier than others. (Kodak 5243, an intermediate, probably for composites, 5247, a fine grain 100 EI tungsten stock that the live action must have been shot on, and 5253, an intermediate used as a separation stock that all visual effects elements were shot on, plus the CRI stock [Magid, Ron. “Saving the Star Wars Sequels,” American Cinematographer, February 1997.])
The Effects, the music, the editing all continued right up to the last possible moment. Some scenes were shot out in the deserts of tunisia, where the sand got into everything including the film stock. Some scenes were also filmed with nylons over the lens, others were not. Scenes filmed outside, particularly in the desert, that are supposed to be only moments apart in the narrative, may actually have been filmed hours or even days apart, with the sun and clouds in constant motion and the lighting conditions changing greatly. Color correction and film printing back then was a photo-chemical process, so not all of these shots match as perfectly as they might if shot today and corrected using Davinci Resolve, watching the scopes and turning the color wheels. This also meant that no two prints would be 100% identical, and that the alignment of the Cyan, Yellow and Magenta layers of the Technicolor prints was not always perfect – which is why you can often see green or red fringing on objects in project 4K77.
Many of the visual effects shots were created using a technique called “optical printing”. Each element of the shot (starfield, X-wing, Y-wing, Tie fighter, laser blast) would be shot separately, with the ships against a blue screen. They would be combined by projecting all the images at once onto a new piece of film, a process that often allowed additional dirt, dust and hairs to be baked into the film, softened the image, and added additional layers of grain.
All of these factors mean that scenes filmed on set at Elstree, where Vader and Tarkin are just chatting in a room, are a heck of a lot cleaner, sharper and less grainy than those of R2D2 and C3P0 wandering about in the desert. It’s easy to forget that this is how it was for twenty years – all of these flaws can still be seen on the Betamax, VHS, CED and laserdisc releases of the 1980s.
https://www.thestarwarstrilogy.com/project-4k77/
Not downloadable directly, but if you don't mind sailing the high seas or can figure out the Internet Archive's archaic search, you can find them.
Well thank you for adding to the list of stuff I need to do once I get home
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.
You'd think a guy wouldn't get into Vader's inner Death Star circle if he didn't believe in such things.
Sycophants and idiots are exactly who end up in leadership in dictatorships. Admiral Motti probably believed all the propaganda.
Part of the impact of that scene is that up to that point, the Death Star was not under Vader's command, but he kind of comes in there and starts bossing everyone around anyway.
There were millions of planets in the Republic
Really? We always seem to circle back to the same three.
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.
