I still don’t belive this was good storytelling, I think that Lucas bringing in characters from the extended universe just to kill them off was akin to vandalism. I also still don’t belive that this montage was done so much to show the cruelty of the emperor, but to crib from the Godfather. Kill them off, fine, we knwo they had to die, but at least give enought respect to the writers, characters and fans who made them popular.
Look at the saga of Darth Vader. Lucas presents us with a protagonist, Anikin, but dosn't do anything to make us care about him.
After the first two movies, my thought was the same “why do I care if this little jerk falls to the darkside”.
And why, in the end, after knowing that he slaughtered a roomfull of children in cold blood, do I care if he is redeemed?
On the other hand, the humble medium of comicbooks somehow made me like a character enough that when Lucas killed her off, I decided to expose myself to the tender mercies of the pit.
To be fair, it was established in the earlier movies that the Jedi’s skills with the Force weren’t what they used to be. Maybe that made it easier for them to get ambushed the way they did, because they had to channel their efforts on the obvious threats in front of them.
As for “Jedis who die like a punk,” I thought the OP was going to refer to the three props who went with Mace Windu to confront Palpatine. Those dipsticks went down in the first ten seconds of the fight, and were as effective as a hanky against a hurricane…
Well, I definitely agree that there were some major issues with this story. It’s just that I think not expanding on characters who played basically no part in the story is not one of them.
If Lucas hadn’t included Jedi that were already involved in the SW story, people who are intimate with the non-film material would have been upset they weren’t there. If she was part of the SW universe, she belonged there, but her story did not.
This is just fan-wankery here, but the way I see it:
Jedi are good at blocking shots when expect one to come. Being encircled by battle droids means that a Jedi can expect shots to come from everywhere. Wearing a blindfold and being told “okay, this thing’s going to start shooting at you” gives one a pretty good idea that something’s going to be shooting at him. The Jedi had been fighting the Clone Wars alongside the troopers for months and the Jedi just weren’t expecting the clones to start blasting without warning. (Even so, when Ki-Adi-Mundi turned around to see his troops leveling their weapons at him the heads should have been flying because he knew something was wrong then.)
Look at the way Obi-Wan interacted with Cody in the hangar - there was camraderie there and perhaps trust. Being killed with no warning and no explanation is a complete betrayal, which is what Palpatine was going for. And if you’re told to kill a Jedi and all you have is a gun, you don’t want to miss the first time.
Yeah, their powers must’ve really declined since the last movie. I think Eonwe hit it right on. Lucas wanted the badass jedi for the cool fights, and then was stuck when he had to kill them quickly. Pure hackery
Agreed, and they were supposed to be amoung the better swordmen in the order.
One of them, Kit Fisto (hows that for a name BTW) was another one of those Jedi who I felt deserved a hero's death. At least Kit died in battle though, so it didn't suck as much.
Oddly enough, the one jedi (besides Mace Windu) who didn't go down like a punk, was that kid at the temple who saved Senator Organia, was played by an actor named Jett Lucas. Guess who his dad is!
It’s funny–I thought the OP was going to complain about how badly acted her death was. From the movie, it looks like she trips over a tree root on the Planet of Flourescent Gumballs, hitting her head on a Psychadelic Mushroom, only to have the clone troopers use her as target practice.
And let’s face it, the only reason she’s really all the popular is that she’s the “hot” Jedi.
Not quite. She is Force-choked and hurled across a room by her evil husband, then goes into premature labor with TWINS, and basically dies of her injuries plus lack of a will to live.
It certainly is in the top five reasons, but it’s not the only reason. The jedi order is sorely unenlightened when it comes to female masters. I think it’s only natural that people take notice of the few that are introduced.
And I agree that the two jedi that Sidious skewers within 4 seconds of powering up his lightsaber are the real punks.
Hmm…in case you hadn’t noticed Harborwolf is only in here to whine and bitch about Lucas.
Anyways, they were all caught completely off guard. Not a little. This wasn’t rounding the corner into some guy with a knife which a Jedi could, of course, disassemble easily. This was having their own men who they’d led in combat for years gun them down. Does it get any more unexpected than that? Keep in mind that the clones would have had many, many opportunities to kill their Jedi Generals. But they hadn’t yet. So why is the Force telling me…I should…turn around? Wait, that can’t be right [BLARGH!]
When the Clonetroopers made a mistake (Obi-Wan) or the Jedi had a warning (Yoda) the Jedi sure seemed to do pretty well, didn’t they?
Martin Hyde - that’s a nice bit of optimism. However, IIRC in Attack of the Clones when we see the battle on the ground I believe that the clones were shooting blue bolts. But it’s been awhile, so I could be wrong.
They didn’t sense the betrayal because the clones didn’t feel that they were betraying anyone. There was no emotional shift in the clones before destroying the Jedi. Sure, they probably felt “threatened,” but then, they were all in warzones. Their “Spidey-Sense” was probably a four alarm fire every moment of the day.
Republic forces throughout Episode III were shooting weapons that produced blue energy blasts (except for, IIRC, the Jedi fighters, which fired GREEN blasts). Even the Republic Star Destroyers were whipping out blue blasts of energy at the Trade Federation battle cruisers.
Yes, the only stun blast we’ve ever seen in Star Wars (Episode IV), was blue – but it also looked nothing like a normal blaster blast, but was instead a volley of concentric circles.
And another point regarding Jedi abilities: Most of the Jedi who were fighting at the end of Episode II died in Episode II. Something like 40 Jedi went to Geonosis, and about 12 or 16 or something came back. How were most of them killed? By being encircled and shot down.
I like this explanation best. If the clones were ‘hard-coded’ with the order to assassinate the Jedi (as others have suggested), then carrying out that order would have been perfectly natural to them. There was no hesitation or dark influence that the Jedi could ‘sense’
Can’t work. They’d been fighting droids with as much emotion as tin cans, and the spidey sense still worked when in a stadium surrounded by droids. That’s pretty easily a five to eight alarm if not an outright skull cracker.
As jedi they are trained to go on their feelings regarding danger. Again, remember what we saw of Luke’s training. These were supposedly Jedi Masters. The dude with the big pink head only blocked two shots before he went down and he saw them coming.
