Sun Tzu stated that the best way to win a war is to win without firing a shot. Which would make Jango look even more like a tool, since Sun Tzu would tell him that, when faced with a team of Jedi barking threats, he should surrender and ask for a lawyer instead, since the Jedi always spare their captives and the Mandalorians can have a better chance beating the Jedi in court.
LOL no. Surrendering to the Jedi merely because the latter were "barking threats" would the put
the Jedi in the position of "win[ning] without firing a shot," plain and simply.
Especially once they tell the judge that the same governor that accused them of killing dissidents to the Jedi, is the very same man who told them to kill those dissidents.
Wishful thinking. We know from dialogue in the PT that the Republic legal system is hopelessly corrupt, and tilted in favor of the unscrupulously wealthy like Nute Gunray. A small, down-on-their-luck mercenary company would be unlikely to plead their case successfully, and in the meantime, the Death Watch (who have managed to successfully remain off the Jedi's radar for
decades) are getting up to
Kad only knows what kind of mischief.
Really, did you even read Sun Tzu at all?
I have, actually, and therefore I can observe that you apparently haven't, since another of Sun Tzu's principles of warfare is that killing most or all of the enemy force is a very low and undesirable kind of victory. For Sun Tzu, the highest and best achievement of the wise General is to convince the enemy to surrender without engaging in hostilities, something that the Jedi obviously weren't capable of achieving at Galidraan.
Flawed characters are more interesting when done right.
Which is exactly what Blackman did. Vader is a whipped dog who can never bring himself to turn on the Emperor without love to motivate him, and Jango's entire life has been so dominated by revenge that it eventually consumes him entirely. Classic stuff, really.
The fact that Galen can pull down ISDs is something that's basically hammered into the canon. Like it or not, it's as canon as every book you adore from the EU. That, and Galen Marek wasn't even the first: Darth Nihilus did it before him in KOTOR 2, where he apparently wrenched the Ravager from the gravity well at Malachor V, so it's not even that unique in the first place.
You forgot Dorsk 81 Force-pushing an Imperial Navy Star Destroyer squadron out of the Yavin System in Anderson's Jedi Academy Trilogy.
Like it or not, though, all of those examples must be disregarded, because they conflict with the G-Canon status of Anakin Skywalker as the most powerful Jedi ever (who notably
cannot throw Star Destroyers at people, nor is ever suggested anywhere in the films that he or any Force-user could). This is the fundamental problem with taking vidya (and Anderson's stories, for that matter) as your measuring-stick: the events of Lucas's films are basically the culmination of all history as far as the Galaxy Far, Far Away is concerned, with the prophesied Chosen One rising to confront the physical embodiment of all evil in a clash that will restore Balance to the Force, but Palpatine ends up looking positively cuddly in comparison with ridiculously over-the-top monsters like Nihilus or Tenebrae, and Anakin and Luke will seem distinctly unimpressive in the eyes of the average viewer next to unbridled power fantasies like Revan and Starkiller.
Er, no. The Mandalorians were the ones who came off as colossal fools, as they suffered a 99% casualty rate. I'm pretty sure the side that walks away with a larger percentage of its men is the one that ended up the victors.
That's because you're insane.
Also, the Mandalorians are hardly the best warriors in the galaxy, blah-blah Sun Guard, blah-blah Echani, blah-blah Trandoshans
The Sun Guard and the Echani basically don't exist outside of some reference materials and the Darth Plageuis novel and the KOTOR II game, respectively. That's not to say that they're not interesting factions in their own right, but they're not at all prominent by comparison with the Mandalorians, who have been building a fandom since 1978.
As for the Wookiees' perpetual lizard-skinned punching bags, well, now you're just saying every random thing that falls out of your brain.
No shit, Vader doesn't strike down Luke. Vader wanted to RECRUIT LUKE TO THE DARK SIDE so he can use the boy's power to destroy the Emperor, so they can "rule the galaxy as father and son."
Yes, because Luke is his son. If Vader was actually thinking like a Sith, he would have been in an even greater hurry to kill him than the Jensaarai kid. Amusingly, this is like the
one place where you'd be justified in citing a video game, as TORtanic's Darth Malgus shows
exactly how a devout Sith would address this problem, by killing his lover so that she won't become a weakness for him that enemies can exploit, and then using the anger and self-loathing over the act to power himself (but that would be an intelligent observation so of course it never occurred to you).
Again, the side that lost practically all of its soldiers is the side that is considered the loser.
Do us all a favor and please don't go into politics.
Or rather, please do, but in the service of my political enemies.
Pickett's Charge was considered a disaster for Southern forces at the time because A) they didn't accomplish their goal and B) they lost most of the soldiers in that charge. In fact, it was more of a loss for the Mandalorians, since the Jedi got over those losses as if it was nothing, yet the Mandalorian forces were practically annihilated.
Pickett's Charge would have been considered disastrous even if the Confederates had achieved their objective, just like the infamous Charge of the Light Brigade, where the cavalry formation in question suffered lighter casualties (forty percent versus more than fifty percent) and was able to achieve their objectives (at least temporarily) but the whole thing is still remembered as a legendary military disaster, as would the Jedi involvement at Galidraan, with its staggering consequence of a fifty percent
killed in action ratio.
Also, not only did the GAR deploy Jedi on military affairs, but so did the New Republic, and that shit worked out for them just fine, just as it did FOR THE PAST 1000 GENERATIONS WHEN THE JEDI WERE PROTECTING THE REPUBLIC.
Never happened, according to George Lucas:
"Everybody said, 'Oh, well, there was a war between the Jedi and the Sith.' Well, that never happened. That’s just made up by fans or somebody."
Galidraan goes down in the books as another example of Mandos losing to the Jedi...
As mentioned previously, in-universe, Galidraan is remembered by both Mandalorians and Jedi/Republic types as a pointless debacle.
...just as they did in the Mandalorian Wars and the SWTOR era when Jedi like Kellian Jarro and Corin Tok were famous for killing Mandalorians, to the point where the former became known as the Mandalorian killer, and the latter became known as Verda'Jedii.
Which is balanced by lore like the TORtanic novel
Fatal Alliance, where Jedi Grand Master Satele Shan thinks it's absolutely miraculous that her former Padawan, Shigar Konshi, survived a simultaneous encounter with a Sith apprentice
and a Mandalorian (this despite the fact that Satele personally trained Shigar to fight Mandalorians). Shigar, however, knows that the Mandalorian could easily have killed both Shigar and his Sith counterpart if he wanted (in fact, one of the funnier parts in the book is the Sith's non-stop, impotent raging over the Mando repeatedly beating her).
It was in reference to how Jango was a better fighter in EPII than in Open Seasons. Jango couldn't figure out for shit that fighting the Jedi face-to-face was a bad idea in the latter. In the former, not only does he maintain distance and use explosives, but he also had starfighter backup against Kenobi.
Fighting Force-users face-to-face is actually the
best idea, since it removes most of the advantages that they have (as Jango demonstrates by killing upwards of a dozen Jedi Knights in melee at Galidraan). He fought well enough in AOTC (beating down one Jedi Council member and killing another) but he fought even better at Galidraan. To paraphrase Mike Tyson (again): "Everyone has a Force-power until they get punched in the head a couple of times."
It didn't work, but hey, points for trying, since it led to a draw.
Not so. Jango's objective was to get to his ship and take off. Obi-Wan's was to capture Jango and take him back to Coruscant for questioning (as per the orders he received from Yoda). Jango got away and Obi-Wan was never able to capture or interrogate him, so the win goes to Jango.
The Jedi worked with Padme to come up with a plan to take control of the palace. Padme led the attack, but the Jedi were with her both in the planning stage and in the commando raid until Darth Maul showed up.
"Worked with" to the extent that Qui-Gon pointed out a couple of potential problems when Padme unveiled her plan, which she then basically dismissed as irrelevant considering the circumstances that she was working under. They also played little overall part in the operation to capture Nute Gunray, getting distracted by Darth Maul immediately after the Naboo troops had secured the Theed starfighter hangar and thereafter having no further influence on the outcome of the operation.
Interestingly, the essentially superfluous nature of the final lightsaber battle basically bookends the Saga, as Luke's confrontation with Vader and the Emperor aboard the Death Star was likewise entirely irrelevant to the outcome of the Rebel assault. In both the numerically first and final entries in the saga, the Jedi helping to win the friendship of a reclusive native species ends up being far more important to the heroes' primary collective goal (free Naboo/destroy the Death Star).
Jango didn't win two out of three. He had a draw with Kenobi, he took Trebor by surprise, and got beheaded by Windu.
Oh, he very much did, young one. He fought Obi-Wan on roughly even terms* until he was able to get an opening to get on his ship and depart Kamino (which was his objective in the first place, so that's a win for him), and he killed Trebor with very precisely-placed blaster bolts
after the Jedi Master had become aware of his presence and had already batted away several previous shots. This, in and of itself is pretty interesting, since it makes Jango the only character in the entire cinematic Star Wars saga who is shown fighting and killing Jedi one-on-one, while being neither a precognitive space-wizard nor a giant combat cyborg who can dent starship armor with his fists.
*Boba's attempts to turn
Slave I's cannons on Obi-Wan ended up being a non-factor, as Jango courteously waited until Kenobi had got back to his feet to press the attack again.
Lucas' movies only had Boba Fett as the lone Mando, and there was no courage, honor, or heroism there.
Lucas has explicitly compared Boba Fett to Clint Eastwood's character, The Man With No Name, a similarly stoic, laconic bounty hunter (who famously survives a gunfight by wearing armor) primarily motivated by material gain, who also has an eccentric (and not always immediately evident) sense of honor. Concept art and several of the prototype versions of the Boba Fett costume emphasized this by giving the character a cape or serape worn across his torso Eastwood-style, though this apparently proved impractical for filming (but Jeremy Bulloch must have gotten the memo as well, since he likewise modeled his performance explicitly on Eastwood's according to his own accounts). The parallels were going to be explored further in an (as-of-yet) unfinished Season 7 episode of TCW,
which sees Boba Fett confronting Cad Bane (himself an homage to Lee Van Cleef's character "Angel Eyes," Eastwood's antagonist in
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly) with Bane mocking Boba's altruism, stating that the young Mandalorian's habit of "always fighting for those in need" is a "quick way to wind up poor, or dead, and probably both," while Boba angrily asserts that "no more innocent people are going to die, or be locked up, or live in fear!" (because of Bane, presumably).
And of course, the Tales of the Jedi comics came way before the Karen Traviss novels, so their interpretation is more than valid.
You're contradicting your previous claim that newer canon supersedes older canon.
Not to mention the fact that said interpretation fit more into Lucas' main ideas for the Mandos, that they were a people who glorified war.
It's weird that you think that this is inconsistent with Traviss's stories. As with Traviss, though, it seems that this isn't the whole story for Lucas's Mandalorians, either, since TCW's Mandalorians, with their perpetual conflicts over whom they should be fighting for, or against, or whether they should be fighting at all, supposedly either come from Lucas's own ideas or at least have Lucas's seal of approval.
Toriyama doesn't even give a shit about power levels...
Neither does Lucas. He goes back and forth on whether Luke or Vader is more potentially powerful, has Obi-Wan defeat both Darth Maul and Darth Vader (but forces him to kill General Grievous with a blaster) has Vader kill Palpatine, the SW version of the Devil
by picking him up and dropping him into a hole, the list is practically endless...
No, it's better to be good than flukey. Because you'll never know if the fluke works for you or the other guy.
Not according to Lucas's films. If you're good, you end up dead, or dismembered, or dead
and dismembered, whereas having the luck to consistently pull out fluke victories means you get the best Sith Lord kill-count in the PT and a long, quiet retirement with all of your limbs still intact.
The Jedi don't train with Dark Side techniques. They don't even bother knowing or using them. Even Yoda doesn't Force choke or use lightning bolts on people. Anakin was referring to Jedi training, not the Dark Side.
Wrong. As the
Attack of the Clones Visual Dictionary notes in the section on the Jedi Temple Archives (
complete with helpful photo of a Sith holocron prop) the Jedi do, in fact, maintain a repository of forbidden Sith knowledge and teachings, which only the most experienced and wise Jedi Masters (for obvious reasons) are allowed to access for reference. They may not actively
use these powers and techniques, but that's the wonderful thing about Palpatine as a villain: he's so very good at twisting the truth to serve his own ends.
Abstract concepts are sometimes more important.
And sometimes they aren't, as in the Prequels, where the Jedi basically shoot their entire Order in the head because they can't bring themselves to actually think of Anakin's struggles as a unique,
individual problem and will only offer him cookie-cutter Jedi boilerplate and bafflegab when he tries to go to them for help and advice.
Hell, the Mandalorians care more about abstract concepts than people too, otherwise they wouldn't be mercenaries, they'd be nationalistic and be more about building up their own society rather than playing mercenary...
This is, again,
prima facie evidence that you're not actually acquainted with Karen Traviss's books, a major plot-point of which is the idea that the Mandalorians should spend less time hiring themselves out as mercenaries to fight other peoples wars and more time building up Mandalore.
Sometimes the simpler route isn't better. Especially with how Lucas portrayed Anakin as such simple evil as killing children, when turning them over to Palpatine to be made into servants of darkness would have been far better in terms of showing how evil he's become. It's about as simple as portraying the lone Mandalorian character in the OT as a greedy scumbag who kills for money, and doing it again in the Prequels.
Which is to say, it's not simple at all, as neither Anakin nor Boba are simple "evil" cliches. They're both depicted as sympathetic figures, warped by the trauma of tragic, personal losses, with each being sort of a mirror-image of the other. Vader was originally conceived of as a relentless bounty hunter, and while Lucas eventually reimagined the character as a sort of dark knight, the bounty hunter concept would continue to haunt his imagination until it eventually took on a life of its own as the character of Boba Fett. Many years later, Lucas would strengthen the parallels between the two characters by making both of them "virgin births," raised by single parents to whom they are devoted and whose violent deaths early in their respective sons' lives have a heavy influence on the boys' development.
Er, no. Again, not wanting to kill is part of Jedi dogma. Luke had a personal attachment to Vader, yes. But compared to Yoda and Obi-Wan who just wanted Luke to be a hitman, Luke was more of a Jedi when he proposed SAVING Vader instead of gutting him.
Try harder. Luke insists on saving Vader specifically because Vader is his father. He makes no mention of any "Jedi teachings" in pressing this matter, particularly not "not wanting to kill" (which would be laughably inconsistent if he did, since neither Luke nor any of the Jedi in the films seem to have any scruples about killing large numbers of people if the situation appears to call for it). This is reinforced and paralleled by Vader's behavior to Luke, where he
should, as a sworn Sith Lord, be intent on killing Luke, since Palpatine wants to take on Luke as his new apprentice and dispense with Vader, but Vader, having accepted that Luke will never join him in deposing the Emperor, is resigned to dying so that at least his son, the legacy of his beloved and long-lost Padme, will live.
He didn't see greyness as positive, and he certainly isn't in favor of Sith or Mandalorian ways of thinking.
We don't know what "Mandalorian ways of thinking" are, in Lucas's view. All we have are Dave Filoni's second-hand statements about how the Fetts are different from Mandalorians, which doesn't really reveal much about Lucas's intentions for the latter beyond the fact that they exist and are apparently militarily formidable.
Again, here is his quote from his own words:
Again, he's telling the TCW writers how the Force works, how to write the Jedi and Sith, at a writers' meeting for the tv show. He's not laying out his personal belief system, anymore than J.R.R. Tolkien believed that religious ceremonies should be held only three times a year on top of a mountain and be presided over by the king, as Tolkien wrote of the Numenoreans in the days of their virtue (before they too were lead astray by an evil chancellor and destroyed save for a tiny remnant).
Lucas' personal philosophy is "Light Side/Jedi=good, Dark Side=bad." It's as basic as that.
Nothing in Star Wars is that basic or simple. One of the overriding themes of both trilogies is the great difficulty of making the right choices, and in both trilogies, the Jedi mentor characters prove entirely useless to this end.
Again, Lucas characterized the CIS as greedy, power-hungry types:
Again, Lucas unequivocally stated that there were "heroes on both sides" of the Clone Wars, and told SciFiNow that one of the purposes of
The Clone Wars was
"to see what that means and how it affects the characters." If you don't think that that aim was served particularly well by the series, blame Dave Filoni.
...it was far from an unjustifiable war, especially when the other side is so evil that A) they're planning to use a massive robot army to force the Senate and the galaxy to be their bitch, and B) they made the Death Star plans in the first place.
The objective of the Separatists is (big surprise) to
separate from the Republic, as stated by Lucas in the opening crawl for AOTC, where it's noted that "several thousand solar systems have declared their intentions to leave the Republic." Later, in one of the cut-scenes from ROTS that would have fleshed out the political situation (but caused the overall pace of the film to drag), the young Mon Mothma is at pains to convince Padme that she and her circle of disenchanted senators "are not
Separatists trying to
leave the Republic." Interestingly, Lucas also depicts the Republic forces in an aggressive posture more often than not. Episode II is sub-titled "
Attack of the Clones," the Republic is shown invading a Separatist homeworlds, and in
Revenge of the Sith, aside from the
Confederacy's desperate attempt to capture the Republic Head of State and thus end the war at a stroke, most of the battles shown involve Republic forces invading Separatist or neutral worlds like Mygeeto, Cato Neimodia or Utapau. There are undoubtedly parallels to be found with the real-life war between the American Republic and Confederacy (interestingly, there was a Union General and at least one Private named "George Lucas"), but that's a discussion to be had with someone intelligent, not with you.
Well, Lucas DID approve of a mountain of works that portrayed Jango Fett as a Mando, so it goes both ways. Maybe he changed his mind about Jango, maybe he didn't care and allowed Filoni to run his mouth on how Jango isn't a Mando. Who knows?
There's no end of statements from both Lucas himself and from LFL spokesmen stating that Lucas doesn't give a damn about the books/comics/games. The only things that matter to him, the only things that are really, officially part of the SW universe, are the movies (and apparently) the TV shows.
Every enemy of the Jedi were redeemed-but only because they became less anti-Jedi as the years went by.
Let's take a look at your evidence for this:
The CIS remnants worked with Jedi refugees and Loyalist to the Old Republic in forming the Rebel Alliance...
If by "Jedi refugees," you mean Luke. Also, I don't recall the CIS remnants being interested in restoring the Republic so much as simply overthrowing the Empire, either (which they would naturally see as the natural final evolution of Republic corruption).
...the Empire BECOMES A STATE OWNED EXCLUSIVELY BY A JEDI DYNASTY...
"Jedi" in the sense that the Fel family are Force-users by the Legacy era, but they hold themselves separate from the Jedi Order proper and are frequently in some level of (usually doctrinal) conflict with it.
...and the Mandos become servants of the same New Republic that the Jedi supported.
Good Lord, kid, you really just can't help yourself with these Force-user
Herrenvolk Freudian slips.
"Servants" is inaccurate. The Mandalorians as a whole may have be friendly towards the New Republic/Galactic Alliance/Galactic Federation of Free Alliances in the post-Imperial era, but they're hardly a satrapy of the latter, more like a nation-sized elite PMC (as seen in
Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor, where Lando is responsible for talking Fenn Shysa into committing his troops to a New Republic operation, and
Legacy, where the Galactic Alliance hires the Mandalorians to defend Botajef until the GA can reinforce it, and then the Mandos withdraw to Mandalore when it appears that the GA have violated the terms of contract).
Also, by your account, the Jedi are fully capable of being total bastards without actually falling to the Dark Side, so using "becoming less anti-Jedi" as interchangeable with "becoming more sympathetic" as a general rule doesn't really work.
So? Lucas wouldn't exactly be the first person to profit off a corporate franchise while whining about how evil corporations are.
Hypocrisy has this funny way of undermining the moral message that you're trying to convey.
But as his characterizations of the Trade Federation and Confederate leaders stand in the movies, he shows them as greedy assholes while his preferred heroes are self-sacrificing monks who don't hold onto personal wealth or power.
Lucas's characterization is never so uncomplicated (except for maybe Palpatine). At the beginning of the Clone Wars, the Separatist leaders are arrogant and callous, but by the end of the conflict they've been reduced to a pitiable bunch of refugees hiding out on Mustafar and begging for an end to the hostilities, while the Jedi grow increasingly secretive and ruthless, to the point where finally they attempt to assassinate the Republic Head of State in his own office.
Many Jedi figurines are also hard to find/expensive as fuck.
Many Mandalorians are harder.
Tellingly, the most valuable Star Wars toys in existence are the rocket-firing Boba Fett prototypes that so many kids were so desperate to acquire when Kenner first ran that famous mail-in promotion all those years ago (sadly, the rocket-shooting feature ended up being scrapped after a child choked to death on a spring-loaded missile from a Mattel
Battlestar Galactica toy).
And again, Darth Vader isn't just a class on his own, he's a Sith Lord.
But in a class of his own. No other Sith Lord, to my knowledge, has more action figures than Boba Fett.
And the fact that the franchise's most popular Sith far outsells the franchise's most popular Mandalorian speaks volumes.
Not at all. It's only natural that Vader, the central character and iconic face of the franchise, would be the most popular action figure (as Lucas said in a 1999 interview with Bill Moyers, some children "will be attracted to Luke Skywalker because he’s the good guy.
But ultimately, we all know that Darth Vader’s more powerful than he is").
However, it's a testament to Boba Fett's innate and enduring appeal that he himself has accrued more figures than almost anyone outside of Vader and the main cast from ANH, despite having a similar amount of screentime (possibly slightly less) as Wedge Antilles, who, to date, has managed to score a measly
eight action figures.
Well, what can you do? 1313 got canned because Disney. But still, even if it was made, that would be like what, TWO games when compared to all the Jedi games cluttering up the SW game market?
That's neither nor there. That there has only been one dedicated Mandalorian VG to date doesn't erase all of the Mandalorian content that's been produced in the movies/series/books/comics/toys over the years and is still on its way to consumers as we speak. You are, as ever, placing far too much emphasis on the vidya.
Not really. Most of the people who bought the Ahsoka toys were teens (or parents with kids tagging along with them) who saw her on the TCW cartoon. That's hardly equal to "pedophiles" when the brats are liking a character who's at their age range.
Not really. There's apparently a disturbingly large adult fan-base for the character, but I've never actually seen a child with an Ahsoka toy.
Clone Wars and Rebels were shows mainly about Jedi. The Mandalorian is the first show that's mainly about, well, A MANDALORIAN.
You're goal-post shifting again. Your initial claim was that
Ahsoka "had TWO SHOWS whereas the Mandos only have one," and now you're back-pedaling since I've pointed out that the Mandos have made major appearances in both of Filoni's shows in addition to being the core of Favreau's
The Mandalorian.
