This is where it’s important to remember that the Jedi Order’s “failure” during the Prequel Trilogy is not because of complacency or bureaucratic stuffiness. That’s also incorrect, as is the idea that their enforcement of the “no-attachment rule” or their inherent philosophy was their failure. Lucas has gone on record several times by stating that when Anakin bucks the trends of the Order by emotionally latching onto his wife, it’s
Anakin who is the root cause of everything that comes next—not the Jedi and their stuffy, rigid philosophy, as so many believe. This is exemplified in this quote from
The Making of Revenge of the Sith:
“What drove me to make these movies is that this is a really interesting story about how people go bad. [This] is about a kid that’s really wonderful. He has some flaws—and those flaws ultimately do him in.
“The core issue, ultimately, is greed, possessiveness—the inability to let go. Not only to hold on to material things, which is greed, but to hold onto life, to the people you love—to not accept the reality of life’s passages and changes, which is to say things come, things go. Everything changes. Anakin becomes emotionally attached to things, his mother, his wife. That’s why he falls—because he does not have the ability to let go.”
Anakin was not “let down” by the order, he was let down by his own actions. While it’s true that the films establish that a huge chunk of his fall is due to his own beliefs and mentality being opposed to the philosophy as the Order, that’s never due to the Jedi being wrong. It’s Anakin himself being incompatible with the core Jedi philosophy, which itself is designed for a faction of superhumans who are spiritually inclined to keep their emotional attachments and breaches of power in check due to their Force alignment being precariously tied to how they regulate themselves. Because of their connection to the Force, they’re
more susceptible to becoming a force for evil than the average person. This is why I have to roll my eyes every time I see someone shriek:
“Ugh, the Jedi are such monsters! How do they expect regular people to function with these rigid rules about attachments?” That’s the entire point…Jedi AREN’T regular people. If a regular person loses themself to grief, or anger, or interpersonal obsession, the consequences are exclusively human, and locked within the parameters of their own physical matter. You know what the consequence for playing fast and loose with emotional restraint is for a Jedi?
Turning to the Dark Side and becoming a destructive font of power without even being aware of it. Hence why they live by different rules of restraint compared to the average person, because the consequences are far more dire.
This is at the core of what being a Jedi in the Star Wars universe is—whether it’s as the robed and spiritual version we see in the PT, or the scrappier and more guerilla version we see under Luke’s tutelage in
New Jedi Order and beyond: there are degrees of lenience in the kind of emotional and interpersonal restraint each iteration of the Order emphasizes (as demonstrated by Jedi marriages in Luke’s time), but the message is still the same—let your attachments rule you, and you risk a Dark Side turn. This is one of the reasons why Luke chooses to not to be an active participant in the takedown of his nephew Jacen, because after the destructive emotional way he reacted to his own wife’s death, he doesn’t trust himself to deal with Jacen as coolly and calculatedly as a Jedi requires, relinquishing the bulk of active retaliation to others. And when operating as Grandmaster in the following series, he leads by example and demonstrates a balanced and healthy sense of closure over his wife’s loss, where his son Ben is still emotionally unstable and obsessing over it. It’s a recurring element that being objective and coolheaded, and not being bogged down by interpersonal hangups, is the chief function of the Jedi Knights…that was true in Anakin’s time, as well as Luke’s.
So the question is: if the Jedi’s complacency or cloistered religious inclinations weren’t the cause of their undoing during the PT, then what was? The closest thing to an explicit statement on this that we have from George Lucas comes from
this Revenge of the Sith interview, regarding the Jedi’s downfall:
“The Jedi are always sort of fighting this reality—the fact that they’re, in essence, diplomats. They sort of persuade people to do the right thing. But their job really isn’t to go around fighting people, yet now, they’re being used as generals and fighting a war…they’re doing something they really weren’t meant to do. They’re being corrupted by this war…by being forced to be generals, instead of peacemakers.”
In essence, it wasn’t the Jedi’s philosophy or complacency that made them vulnerable. If anything, being guardians of the peace instead of the driving military force of the galaxy is them functioning as intended—and being guiding participants of full-scale war swayed them from their spiritual function. Now, I have to emphasize:
this does not mean the Jedi aren’t supposed to fight at all. Some autists will run with that idea and assume that a faction called the Jedi
Knights are supposed to be pacifist, when in fact, they fight all the time when driven to do so. A group of Jedi fighting as one in the Geonosis Arena, for instance, isn’t what corrupts them. Fighting, in and of itself, isn’t the problem—it’s partaking in the other necessary functions of war. Engaging in plots or secrecy, spreading the influence of war across the galaxy…making those callous but necessary decisions as a general, regardless of how seedy they might be. These are the kind of things that the Jedi would fall back on as a last resort, but the Clone Wars force them to employ as a constant part of their existence for three years of brutal conflict. This doesn’t turn them to the Dark Side, per se, but it’s so far out of their wheelhouse that it conditions them to make decisions they normally wouldn’t. Turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to matters they would normally resolve more rationally. (I should also note that some people mistakenly attribute this as to why the Jedi couldn’t sense Sidious in the Force, but it was established by Count Dooku that Sidious had succeeded in cloaking himself in the Force and hiding within the Jedi’s midst before the war had even started).
They are effectively people with good intentions, that fall into the trap of warfare set by Palpatine, and are eventually let down by their own willingness to become cogs of a greater war machine that’s secretly increasing the influence of their one true enemy. This is another crucial element that separates this Jedi Order’s participation in warfare different from others…because I’m sure a number of you are ready to point out: “What about the countless Jedi wars against the Sith in the past? What about the wars Luke spearheads after Endor against the Yuuzhan Vong or the Lost Tribe of the Sith?” And I think the major difference there is that the Jedi involved, Luke very much included, are not only able to pull themselves back and evaluate the trajectory of their actions and decisions where the PT Jedi didn’t—they also weren’t fighting a war that was secretly benefitting an enemy like Palpatine. Part of the tragedy of the Clone Wars is that every step they take to end the war just makes Palpatine more powerful—increases his reach across the galaxy, snatching up planets and resources in the name of ending the war, bloating his authority with endless emergency powers. They only realize the neverending nature of Palpatine’s power-grab at the last minute and, in Lucas’ attempts to mirror Nixon and Caesar, it’s already too late. That’s a unique circumstance that neither the Jedi of Old, nor Luke’s New Jedi Order have to contend with, hence why they weren’t corrupted in the same way and rendered helpless in the same way the PT Jedi were.
