Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi

He was a political representative before he became dictator. His name should be public record.

Then again, this is a setting where the Jedi managed to fade into obscure myth and legend in twenty years. People in Star Wars have a remarkably short memory.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Aug 21st 2018 at 9:24:58 AM

It’s my theory that Palpatine just killed everyone who knew about the Sheev name besides Tarkin because he hated it so much. That was Order 67.

That literally makes more sense than "no one knew it, somehow."

It's indicative of the franchise's need to pour over everything from the earlier works. "Well, we the audience don't know so it must be a huge mysterious secret. Kind of like how there must be an explanation for the parsecs thing in the Kessel Run."

Edited by Larkmarn on Aug 21st 2018 at 11:32:22 AM

Tbf twenty years is still a long time.

twenty years isn't long enough to forget a thousand years of tradition.

It'd be like the French thinking the Catholic Church was a legend.

Although the Catholics are still extant.

All right then, it'd be as if the French thought the Templar knights were just an old story.

Edited by blkwhtrbbt on Aug 21st 2018 at 11:43:48 AM

It’d make more sense if it were something like communist China, where heavy government censorship has made the youth unaware of the history and the elders punished if they mention it.

To be fair, it's worth noting that the Jedi were never a very big group and were probably always a legend of sorts. The Republic probably has far more planets then there are Jedi. Jedi would probably always be viewed along the lines of gods.

Though also to be fair, there's definitely some Early-Installment Weirdness here. It doesn't make sense that Han wouldn't believe the Jedi existed, given that he's friends with Chewbacca who personally met a Jedi (and would probably believe him).

Personally, if I were a Star Wars writer I'd say that Han does believe in the Jedi, but not the Force. He thinks the Jedi were just some guys with psychic powers pretending to be following some form of divine will. He thinks the Force they "pretended" to serve obviously doesn't exist, because it clearly didn't save the from Order 66. Nor has he ever felt like a divine will has served him, either.

@ Kelly Marie Tran: Man, remember when the worst sort of person you'd find discussing fandom online was somebody making completely empty threats to kill you in your sleep for shipping Harry/Ginny? I'm almost nostalgic for that time.

That is 100% canon. It's the entire reason they needed an army—though the number of clones is up for some debate due to Unit Confusion.

Also canon. The Emperor knew he couldn't eradicate the memory of the Jedi entirely, so he turned them into traitors and charlatans. Not counting the clones, there were a very small number of people, relatively speaking, who had ever witnessed Force powers. Legends also had a few people who expressed disbelief in the Force; one lawyer tried to use it against Obi-Wan in a trial (specifically he tried to dismiss Obi-Wan saying "the Force told me," not Obi-Wan's telekinetic powers).

And don't underestimate dictatorships' propaganda, either. It's been reported that in North Korea, some people believe the Kim family are literally gods.

There is also an extremely limited number of Jedi even at their peak, it is entirely possible that many in the galaxy never met one first hand and it is certainly plausible that there would be skepticism over the source of their abilities. Given the technology level as well as variety of alien species, the appearance of telekinesis, telepathy and superhuman abilities could easily be written off as tricks and illusions. It's not like someone in Fullmetal Alchemist claiming that Alchemy isn't real.

Han not believing in the Jedi doesn't make a huge amount of sense no matter which way you slice it. He's from Corellia, within the galactic metropole and a trading hub, which, even if it had fallen on hard times during the Empire, was still on like three major trade routes. It's unthinkable that Jedi were never in Coronet City during his childhood — and he was thirteen when the Empire was formed. Secondly, as mentioned, he's friends with Chewie, and he's seen one — Yoda, no less — in action. Third, if he's ever actually believed in the Imperial kool-aid, Solo didn't show it, where joining the Navy was about getting off Corellia and not about serving the Emperor. I think a guy like him would be one of the first to be open to the idea that the Jedi existed, based purely on that, since he already, by age nineteen, thinks the Imperial party line is dumb.

Now, a lot of this comes down to a line from ANH being recontextualized in a changing franchise, and Han as he was in ANH without anything else known about him, is pretty different from the character he later became. Honestly, his Arbitrary Skepticism about the Jedi comes across as an artifact from when he was simply the ferryman and we didn't need to go too in depth into his past and his personality.

Though, despite what's commonly said, this isn't actually a PT-induced plot hole. Everything in the to indicates the fall of the Republic and Jedi was within living memory.

And yeah, Jedi being the stuff of legends and nothing else really doesn't make sense even keeping in mind there weren't a lot of them. Because even if there weren't a lot of them, they were the primary peacekeeping force of the Republic. Like... that's major, even if you haven't seen them. Everyone knew who the Jedi were. Backwater slave hicks on Outer Rim planets knew who the Jedi were. Them fading into legend in 20 years is nonsensical as long as peoples' memories last longer than 20 years (they do).

I get the impression it's more like the fact people just dismissed Jedi miracles.

I mean, a random fly alien on Tattooine knew what the Jedi Mind Trick was. Literally nothing but Early-Installment Weirdness explains it.

... which is weird, because they actually could've really easily worked in something along these lines.

Also, keep in mind, Palpatine's speech establishing the Empire specifically mentions the Jedi. They weren't Orwellian Retconned out of existence. Doing so would be particularly nonsensical, in fact, because his power is built on "gee whiz, gotta fight those nasty Jedi."

Like, there's no good explanation for why nobody believes in the Jedi in 0 BBY, and then the prequels went out of their way to make it so the "not so great" potential explanations become nonsensical.

Maybe Han is just being contrary. Like, people talk about the Jedi, so he talks shit to shut it down. Or maybe he's heard a lot of talk about them and is just sick of it or something like that.

Alternatively, he just figures they couldn't have been a big deal, because if they were, they wouldn't have gotten wiped out in the first place.

Two if you count Chewie's adventure with Ahsoka Tano in Clone Wars.

Quite. It's like not believing in the FBI.

That's actually a good point. It's hard to make the argument that the galaxy knew of Jedi but disbelieved in their superpowers when the franchise is littered with characters going, "LOL your thoroughly-documented and undeniably existing Jedi Mind Control Superpowers are of no effect on me and/or my people!"

Edited by TobiasDrake on Aug 21st 2018 at 3:28:04 AM

I love how that's THE Jedi Mind Trick. That one. Like, it's still stupid that Sheev's name was some kind of secret in-universe, but that, like the Kessel Run, is a very Legends-EU thing to do. Everything is canon. Every character has a name and backstory and action figure. Everything is potentially significant. It's so dumb it wrapped back around to being great.

The Jedi being myths wouldn't have made sense even when A New Hope was the only film. The continuity issues were there from the start.

Edited by VeryMelon on Aug 21st 2018 at 7:39:25 AM

The real reason Palpatine slaughtered his parents in Darth Plagueis was because they named him Sheev. His siblings were just collateral.

Han never said he didn't believe the Jedi existed, he expressed skepticism of the Force, especially in religious terms. The exact exchange was:

• Han "Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no substitute for a blaster at your side, kid."
• Luke "You don't believe in the force, do you?"
• Han "Kid, I've flown from one side of this galaxy to the other. I've seen a lot of strange stuff but nothing's made me believe there is one all-powerful force controlling everything. There's no mystical energy field that controls MY destiny. It's all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense."

The Force as a religious concept is not Jedi exclusive, it's not even force sensitive exclusive, and it seems the new canon is emphasizing the the muggle-centric "Church of the Force" idea. The Rebel Alliance and, later, the Resistance say "May the Force be with you" sincerely.

Vader is called out for his "sad devotion to that ancient religion".

So.

that's something.

Hell, Tagge or whoever wrote up Vader after the choking incident on the Death Star and in the report said he would perfectly happy to discuss their respective religious beliefs in a more civilized fashion off duty.

Religious differences ? The guy showed you his psychic powers Tagge.

That's Richard Dawkins level of atheism right there.