[Grand Moff Lebowski]

The last 20 years REALLY takes a licking on our heroes and villains.

Yoda can jump around all limber and agile at 880 years old, but at 900, he's royally F-ed up.

The Emperor can spin in circles and saber fight but later on, he is chair ridden mostly and fires lighting solely.

Obi Wan seems fit enough to dispell Grevious (how f-ing funny is that one?) and do away with Anakin, but come EPIV he's hermit who can hardly run.

Point being-- the prequels once again f-ed the Original by making the characters all the wrong ages and showing them do things that are inconsistent. It's like in Godfather Part II in the flashback sequence to a young Vito Corleone if they showed him jumping from the tops of buildings and karate kicking the Spinoza's boys while backflipping down the street to battle young cop named McCkluskey.

[Storm]

I am willing to accept that Obi-Wan and Yoda became so weak with the force in the Original Trilogy (compared to the older Jedi in the Prequel Trilogy) because both were practically living in exile after the events of ROTS and had nobody to practice duel with or any real reason to exercise their force powers. I can imagine both spent a lot of time meditating and reflecting on their mistakes which cost the lives of nearly all Jedi.

Same deal with Vader and the Emperor. They had no more Jedi to kill.

This post has been edited by Storm: 09 May 2005 - 01:29 AM

[StarWarsIsUs]

Storm, this is a bad excuse. It is inconsistant, end of story.

[littlejerryseinfeld]

I can imagine both spent a lot of time meditating and reflecting on their mistakes which cost the lives of nearly all Jedi.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

maybe yoda... maybe. but obi-wan did nothing wrong! he was asked by the council to train annie... he did. a thankless job, but he did it without complaining. he fought bravely in the clone wars, he warned the council of dooku's claim of a plotting sith lord... he has nothing to regret. AND THAT'S THE PROBLEM!

in the OT, we see a tired, old man - with much regret. regret he 'took it upon himself to train' anakin... TOOK IT UPON HIMSELF! not asked to by qui-gon, and not blessed by the council.... hell, he even expressed his misgivings on training anakin as a jedi while qui-gon was still alive... so he has NOTHING to regret.

yoda and the council, on the other hand are potrayed as being completely incompetent... they ignored obi-wan's feelings on anakin, and the information he got from dooku.

[StarWarsIsUs]

Correct. Obi-Wan chose by himself to train Anakin, not have someone prompt him to do so.

[BinarySunset]

both were practically living in exile after the events of ROTS and had nobody to practice duel with or any real reason to exercise their force powers.

mmmm... I can't get my arms around that... I have to agree with SWIU, that it is inconsistent, and to explain my take on it I will turn to my "pet peeve" subject:

Anakin's age.

Look at what Lucas has given us:
- a 9 or 10-year-old Anakin,
- then advanced the story by 10 years (a 19 or 20-yr-old Anakin)
- for Ep III we've only advanced by 3, maybe 4, years
- young & fair Anakin is around 23 or 24

Based on what we're being shown, this means that in 20 to 24 (SW) years, Anakin goes from looking like a 24-year-old to looking like a 60+ year old!! Yeah, we KNOW he gets messed up, but c'mon!

Let's look at Obi-Wan: he goes from looking like a college-age guy in TPM, to looking like he's at least late-30s in AOTC. And now, he's supposed to look like he's in his 60s so it will "fit" with Sir Alec Guiness in ANH. Talk about inconsistent!

I daresay that since Obi-Wan was living a hermit's life, he should have aged more slowly. He should have experienced less stress. But... I'll concede that he may have been emotionally wrought for years and he also chose a planet with a binary star system and, as we know, UV rays "add age" to skin. But that's an aside. Yoda wasn't on a planet with twin suns, so we're back to the inconsistency.

I have to agree with you lebowski: The last 20 years REALLY [DO] take a licking on our heroes and villains... thanks to "uncle George" and his "everyone is young and spry in the prequels" mindset; totally ignoring the fact that he showed us characters who were much older and dying in the OT.

Just my $0.02