I Hate Jedi!

[Ash DuQuennes]

Well, not really. But it got your attention,right?

What I really hate are stoopid Jedi fanboys.

Like this:

if i were jedi i would goto alderan and deflekt the deth star laserbeam with my lightsaber and save the planet cause im a jedi and jedi are leet!!!@1211111

I'm sure most of us have seen and had to put up with this on at least one occasion. If not, you are either:

1) Lying,
2) In hibernation,
3) Lucky. Seriously, go buy some lottery tickets. And remember who luvs ya, baby!

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On a message board I frequent, someone posted an opinion poll WRT lightsaber color preference. The poll options were blue or green. Not red. Not purple, 'cause you are not a Bad Mother@#$%&! (unless you are Samuel L. Jackson , in which case, I humbly apologize). Not orange, yellow, pink, or any other color in the rainbow.

Blue, or green.

One of the poll respondants selected blue, and in commentary, also expressed a desire for some decent body armor, as somone sooner or later was going to invent grenades as an effective anti-Jedi tactic (and not some wimpy/crappy down-powered d20 grenades).

I, in a response meant to be humorous and mildly illustrative of the futility of body armor against certain weapons, linked to a military demotivational poster showing a Sergeant instructing the gunner of a Mk19 fully-automatic 40mm grenade launcher to "See that guy? %$#@ him and evryone around him!"

For those not in the know, the Mk19 fully-automatic 40mm grenade launcher is a weapon system in the U.S.'s (and some other nation's) military inventory. It has a maximum effective range of 1,500 meters (just shy of 1 mile) for point fire, and 2,000 meters for area fire. It has a cyclic rate of fire of between 5 - 6 rounds per second. It has a sustained rate of fire of 1 round per second, because you don't want to overheat the barrel of a weapon system shooting bomblets capable of turning you into a reasonable visual imitation of a cherry slushee.

A Jedi fanboy replied. His gist was that it was a bad idea to launch KE projectiles at people with precognitive and telekinetic abilities. They can just stop them, turn them around, and throw them back at you.

I thought about that. I thought about everything we canonically know the Jedi to be capable of, from seeing it on the movie screen, to what we know they are capable of in comics and cartoons, and then what we know they are capable of various rpgs and video games, and finally, what we see them do in various novels.

And I admit, if we take the EU at face value, fanboy might have a point.

But Word-of-God are the movies. Full-stop. Nothing else.

Sure, Georgon the Hutt says other stuff is canon, too. As long as your license fee check clears. And you waive any/all rights from now into perpetuity on the stuff you have created, as he just might want to stick it in one of his movies at some point, and doesn't want to trouble his legions of accountants with the bother of writing you a royalties check every financial quarter. Like Paulie Cicero in Goodfellas, it's "%$#@ you, pay me!" until you can't or won't, and then he turns his back on you.

So I then rethought the Jedi fanboy claim in light of what we see the Jedi capable of in all six movies. I even considered the chipmunks-on-crank fight scenes of the prequels.

And he's an idiot. The best we see any Jedi capable of doing to avoid a flight of grenades launched at a rate of 5-6 grenades/second for, say, a 10 second burst, is run away very, very fast.

Then another Jedi fanboy says that Jedi can stop bullets just like Neo does in The Matrix. Now you see, this is the general level of intelligence (lack thereof) and critical thinking (deficiency) displayed by much of the Star Wars and general sci-fi community. I blame it on whenever they took the science out of the science fiction and began telling magical fairy tales. With ray guns and starships.

Where was I? Oh, yeah. Neo and The Matrix. Neo never stopped a single bullet. It's central and critical to the entire plot of The Matrix Trilogy that there are no bullets.

Let me repeat that:

THERE ARE NO BULLETS.

D'ya remember the little bald boy sitting on the floor in the living room when Morpheus first takes Neo to see The Oracle? He tells Neo, "Don't try to bend the spoon; that's impossible. Try instead to see The Truth: there is no spoon."

So no, the Jedi are not going to stop dozens of bullets fired at them by holding up their hand and TKing them to stop. At best (and this is consistent with what we see them doing with their "force shoves" and what not) they're going to TK up a "shield," a disk or plane of "force" in front of them for the bullets to hit and defelct.

But we never, ever, not one single time, see them do that. Anything dangerous shot, hurled, or thrown at them, we see them put up their hands and catch it.

It.

Singular.

We never, ever, not one single time, see in the movies any Jedi attempt to Force-catch multiple flying objects, much less multiple flying somethings with the kinetic energy of a 0.5 kilo projectile flying ~240 meters/second.

That's ~860 km/hr, ~535 mi/hr.

Yeah. Try force catching 30+ exploding baseballs being fired at you at 535 miles and hour, all in one 5-second span of time.

[Grimace]

heh heh heh. My, my Ash, you ran into a nest of them.

While I don't necessarily agree or disagree on all points, I think some of the points you have are valid. Myself, I could give a fig what ol' Georgon the Hutt (love that name for him) says or thinks or claims is "canon". Thus I take what I see and like in the movies, take what I read and like in books/comics and toss the rest into the rejected pile.

Whatever site you go to where that nest of fanboys is, I'd suggest lessening your time there lest you go insane.

[Sarge]

Don't sugarcoat it, Ash, tell us what you really think.

I think the problem has gotten worse since the CW cartoons came out. Cartoons are one of the most common forms of superhero stories, so the fanbois see Jedi as superheroes. Therefore, you can forget about realism, plausibility, science, and common sense; none of those affect superheroes, so they won't affect Jedi either.

[Ash DuQuennes]

Without divulging too much info (don't want to start, or be seen to start, a cross-board exchange; those never end well), this message board purports to be enlightened, and dedicated to fighting ignorance.

These raving Jedi fanboys/girls are normally intelligent, educated, high-functioning members of society.

And yet the "Set Mind to Level: STOOPID!" switch gets thrown as soon as Jedi, lightsabers, etc., are brought up.

[Fingon]

The problem is nothing new. Exaggerating the abilities of those we venerate and tell stories about is as old as, well, telling stories. The Bible, Ramayana, Beowulf, the Greek epics, and Scandinavian mythology being notable examples. Heck, ANY mythology, ancient or modern, uses it . . . just think of any comic book. Ever.

But I am completely with you about fanboys. I hate 1337 ]3|)1 |'0\/\/3RZ! I enjoy a good action sequence as much as the next guy, but unless what happens in a scene in some way contributes to the story, the scene is ultimately gratuitous. That was one of my biggest problems with the prequels, and especially with the newer material-- long action sequences that did little or nothing to tell a compelling story. And I cannot accept showing lights and explosions at expense of storytelling, which is exactly what happened.

In addition, the very nature of the Force changed. From what I can tell in the older movies, the Force was basically a physical embodiment of an ideal. Sort of an extended metaphor about overcoming personal weakness and finding inner strength through disciple and courage (or hatred, whichever flavor you preferred). The special effects certainly were there in part to look dang awesome, but really most every time the force came up it was part of telling a story: Luke pulling his lightsaber out of the snow in time to free himself, Yoda lifting up the X-wing, Vader choking his subordinates, the Emperor unleashing electric bolts of evil on Luke. . . these were story telling devices which contributed to the underlying message of the films.

That, however, changed. And, to be honest, I think the biggest culprit are the video games that came out after RoTJ. Like Jedi Academy or Dark Forces. As soon as "force powers" came into existence, things began to go downhill. I think the best example is when I saw Episode III, when Yoda smashes the guards in Palpatine's room into the walls when he walks in. Again, story telling-- Yoda saying "I don't have time for this" and demonstrating how powerful that little green guy is. People in the theater started chucking, and I joined along; it was a pretty humorous scene. And my friend looks over and says: "What's so funny? He just used Force Wave. That's all."

WHAT?

The transformation of the Force from a profound and universal allegory to a catalog of special moves and abilities is, in my opinion, one of the greatest losses to Star Wars.

[Aluco]

I hate Superman. [/shrug]

More later on the suspension of disbelief and action movies without Jedi as a defense of Jedi.

[Vanger Chevane]

Without divulging too much info (don't want to start, or be seen to start, a cross-board exchange; those never end well), this message board purports to be enlightened, and dedicated to fighting ignorance.

These raving Jedi fanboys/girls are normally intelligent, educated, high-functioning members of society.

And yet the "Set Mind to Level: STOOPID!" switch gets thrown as soon as Jedi, lightsabers, etc., are brought up.

I think you've misidentified the problem, I believe it's simple Munchkinism. Poeple are trying to do "Super-cool Jedi Stuff" without considering any of the realities or balances that should be present.

There's already been a discussion on these boards about how useless & suicidal it'd be to attempt to block a Turbolaser, possibly even a Starfighter Cannon shot. The "Jerki" you describe blithely ignore any reasonable limiting factors in favor of their god-like fantasy. Surely an attitude Of The Dark Side.

In the Alderaan example, I'd love to hear a "Jerki" explain in a reasonable & plausible manner how they're going to move a stick that starts out a few centimeters in diameter and sharpens to a point orders of magnitude faster than the speed of light in order to even interfere with a planet-cracking beam whose tributaries are about as wide across as one's torso, if not bigger.


Add to that the Most Serious responsibilities that come with the ability (as in I, Jedi) to manipulate the Energies that form the Universe. Get that wrong, the potential for a Cataclysm you and a few million of your closest neighbors aren't coming back from becomes a possibility.

These "Jerki" are giving Grandmaster level abilities to someone with the attitudes of a child. I'd hate to see the swath of utter destruction they'd leave behind them "just trying to help".

[gmjabreson]

As a former Mark 19-3 gunner, I can tell ya that idea of stopping those things is a realllllllly bad idea. Max range is actually 2212 meters, and you can fire over 200 rounds before the first one actually gets to the target.
I agree, it sounds like metagaming, munchkinisms, etc. I also agree that the video games have degraded the "awe inspiring" powers of the Jedi and made them puffy marshmallows that can do anything. I won't even go into the mental accuity that would be required for a Jedi to stop a single bullet (hypethetically), let alone an entire magazine (30 rounds) or an entire belt (200 rounds) of "slugthrower" rounds.
One thing that fanboys forget is the mental focus that would be required to achieve such feats, which if you are already in a fiercely pitched combat you won't have the time for such a major distraction.
Luckily until today I fell under option 3. Until today. Oh God, I'm ruined! I think I'll go with 3po and enjoy an oil bath to get cleaned from this.

[gmjabreson]

I hate when computers act up and do double posts, but that's what I get using a laptop after I swore for years I'll never get one. Maybe I should start a thread about laptop touch pads.....

[Donovan Morningfire]

While I don't doubt there are the Jedi fanbois/grls that take things too far, it's kind of hard to ignore the cool factor involved with Jedi and lightsabers, especially if you were a kid when the Original Trilogy came out, or your initial exposure to Star Wars was when you were little, even if it was Phantom Menace (which probably did a lot to heighten the "Jedi = Awesome!" mindset with the lightsaber duel at the end).

But you get the same sort of people in any fandom. You see in in Star Trek, you see it in a slew of shonen-style anime series, you see it comics (BatGod anyone?).

Though for over-the-top/over-powered Jedi, few things top the 2D Clone Wars series that came out just before Revenge of the Sith. At least it looked cool, and there's even been a psuedo-canon tongue-in-cheek justification in that it's an "inspired by real events" series done by that Dantooine Kid that was watching Mace Windu go to town.

[Fingon]

I'm taking a writing fiction class from Brandon Sanderson at the moment, and one of the things he said about writing stories, but specifically magic systems, is that limitations and weaknesses are always more interesting than strengths. That's why Batman is inherently more interesting than Superman, or why Luke sneaking around Cloud City is far more tense than Obi-Wan wading through thousands of droids. And it seems to me that these kind of stories you're talking about, Donovan, are the ones which don't really give the heroes any weaknesses.

[Donovan Morningfire]

And it seems to me that these kind of stories you're talking about, Donovan, are the ones which don't really give the heroes any weaknesses.

Pretty much.

I think that reasoning is also why so many more of Marvel's characters, particularly Spider-Man, seem that much more relatable to readers than DC characters. Marvels' main cast of heroes are flawed in some way, with the tricky part being how extensive are those flaws. I would say also consider the recent Marvel films, which I think do a great job of capturing the essence of that particular character, both the good and the bad, though it'll be interesting to see where the other sequels take these heroes; Iron Man 2 showed that Tony still had issues even after his revelation and choices made in the first movie. I think one of the contributing reasons for the popularity of the recent Dark Knight Trilogy (aside from Ledger's tour de force performance as the Joker) was that you get a better glimpse at what a psychological mess Bruce Wayne is; this is a man with astounding wealth, and yet he routinely puts his life at risk beating criminals to a pulp in close-quarters combat.

To bring this back to Star Wars, one of the biggest problems with post-RotJ stories is that Luke's transitioned entirely from that "green farm boy" to being a Jedi messiah, and too few writers really knowing how to handle someone with that much perceived power. And it's hard to make someone that powerful be that interesting; again, Batman (lonely rich kid with psychological issues to spare) vs. Superman (alien that hit the Superpower Lottery). I think that's also why Zayne Carrick from the Knights of the Old Republic comic book series proved to be as popular as he did, was that he was "one of the other Jedi," the regular ones that get left in the dirt by the Skywalkers and Revans and what-have-you. Zayne was capable, but he wasn't an uber-badass Jedi warrior, and more often than not got by on wits and cunning than combat prowess or power in the Force.

[Genghis12]

I put myself in-universe in TPM at Anakin's house: "I don't think so... no one can kill a Jedi Knight." / Qui-Gon: I wish that were so.

I don't think Qui-Gon was lamenting the fact that Jedi were immortal superheroes; he's lamenting just how darn easy it ACTUALLY is to kill one.

If we limit to movies (which I don't agree with) Aurra Sing's still got a collection of Jedi sabers.
When the Jedi (well everyone besides Qui-Gon) didn't think Maul was a Sith, there's a bunch of options, including well-skilled Zabrak leg-breaker.

That said, I still don't think it's smart to lob physical objects at a Jedi, regardless of how quick they're travelling, these are people who can sense far quicker moving bolts of energy. IF they can sense it, they can control it.

The key is to either overwhelm their senses, or ability to control the objects. Then they go down just like everyone else.