The KnightFall: Some Scathing Criticism of the Old Jedi Order and Its Masters.

[Alexeikruchev]

Good day, Community!

 

I personally have a hypothesis about the Old Jedi Order at the time of the Clone Wars, the months leading up to The Knightfall Tragedy, that it had become heavily philosophically and theologically corrupted. While I hate to point the finger at Yoda, who many revere as being the quintessential Jedi Grandmaster, I personally find myself to be increasingly critical of him, and the broader Order. We have canonical proof that Yoda, In spite of purported mastery of all 7 classical Lightsaber forms, in combat only chose to rely on one or two of them- Ataru, Ataru, Ataru, followed by , against a few droid battalions, a little Soresu/Shien for redirecting blaster volleys at them in TCW. In the movies, we see him fight in two major confrontations, and one minor: We have Yoda Versus Dooku, Yoda Versus Sidious, and Yoda Versus Two Poor Clone Bastards. (Bastards is technically correct, because all clone troopers are, by default, fatherless, and this is not, in fact, being used as a profanity). In all three cases, we see him go about his fights in identical fashion: he launches an immediate, unrestrained, ballistic-missile offense against his opponent in a puerile Ataru style. Flying, flipping, somersaulting, slashing, hacking, and tornado-of-death-ing against his foes. Against Dooku, this works fine, forcing a retreat, and after a limited attempt at Force based combat, Dooku disengages. Yoda wins a tactical victory, but chose to selfishly put the needs of two of his favorite pupils, Anakin and Obi Wan, over the good of the galaxy by stopping Dooku's escape. A blunder which, in hindsight, cost the galaxy at least a decade of war, millions if not billions of lives, and led to the downfall of the Jedi Order- at the hands of Sidious and Anakin Skywalker. Whom, if Yoda had not been philosophically corrupt, and had allowed the Jedi to sacrifice themselves for the Greater Good of the Republic, would never been able to betray the Order. Funny how that happens?

On to Sidious: Yoda, in spite of his age and power and experience, chooses to engage a Dark Lord of the Sith, whom he has -NO IDEA THE SKILL LEVEL OF-, arrogantly and aggressively launches an attack against on his own, instead of taking Obi Wan with him as support, OR going with Obi Wan to handle the fallen Anakin- which in either case would likely have led to a very different outcome, given Obi Wan would not have been killed so easily. He does so, unforgivably, by predictably mimicking his exact attack pattern from his duel with Dooku- and fails miserably to pierce the Sith Lord's defenses effectively. All Yoda manages to do is wear himself out, allow the Sith Lord to take the literal high ground, and then beats a hasty retreat. His hyper-specialization in Ataru, the most aggressive of all Jedi lightsaber forms, failed him, failed the Order, and failed the Galaxy. Not once, but twice.

 

Fortunately, his hyper-specialization did bring about one positive outcome: Yoda was able to decapitate, smoothly, two clone troopers who were triple his height on the Wookiee Homeworld. So, there's that. (So Impressive, Am I Right or Am I Right?!). Never mind this made no significant difference in the course of events, aside from Yoda being around to fail miserably shortly thereafter against Sidious.

 

Props for Yoda for being around to train Luke decades later, and props to him for surviving Sidious- given how poorly Yoda fought against him, it's a true testament to his ability that he even survived. Or maybe Sidious just knew he didn't need to finish off Yoda, since Yoda was going to do... exactly what Sidious needed him to do after his disgraceful defeat. Flee into exile and abandon the hundreds of surviving Jedi to their scattered, confused, leaderless, existence and doing nothing to save the Order that was in his charge from it's fate... instead, choosing to hide out and gamble everything on one of two newborn babies.

 

Against an Empire, and two Sith Lords that single handedly annihilated the Old Order.

 

What is my point? The Jedi Grandmaster of the Old order was a hyper-specialized duelist, who, when it counted, was not confident in his varied skill set, and rather relied only on one. In conclusion:

The ideological corruption of many Jedi, even the masters, lead to an Order which was fractured and to a large extent bloated and complacent. The very ideals of the Jedi Order were compromised clearly in not just the actions of the Jedi's leadership, but also their individual fighting styles. The end result was a crushing Sith victory, a high water mark the Sith had never before reached, save perhaps in the time of KOTOR II, and then, for far shorter a season.

 

Thanks for your attention, and please leave any comments- assenting or dissenting, both are welcome! Discuss below!

[raandomname]

While I agree with you that Yoda was in many ways a moron, you are overemphasizing the point about his fighting style imo. In the end it were his other mistakes and failures that were much more significant.

Edit: the OT Jedi as a whole were morons: not or barely investigating by whom and why the clone army was created, failing to notice palpatine taking inacceptable amounts of power, failing to notice/prevent the inefficieny and corruption of the senate, failing to do what they are actually supposed to: helping others and instead just sitting around in the temple studying holocrons, Obi-wan being to much of a coward to kill Vader and for some inexplicable reason only starting Luke's training untill he is almost an adult, which is specifically what you should NOT do, the Jedi basically kidnapping children for them to become Jedi, in general holding on to strongly to the corrupt senate, instead of actually trying to achieve reforms

Edited April 1, 2015 by raandomname