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Lucas probably wouldn't let them. Eventually Luke would have to learn the details of his Father's past, and Lucas probably kept a tight lid on it like he did the Clone Wars (even though the ROTJ novel states the Mandalorians were the enemy in the Clone Wars).Originally Posted by Shaolinlueb
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Hello, fellow martial artists. Please inform me if I am way off, but I believe Star Wars to use martial arts in lightsaber deuls. It appears to me that the Jedi use a two handed Japanese Kenjutsu style, and that Darth Sidious (Palpatine) uses something like a lion head tai chi sword style. Can anyone good at analyzing styles confirm this? Thanks,
Sacktavius
Sacktavius- AKA Snake Boy!
Starting the far queue
I think they are all using a movie-fu style
Didn't Lucas say that the original sword fighting style the Jedi movements were based on was Kendo/jutsu?
To be honest I think they just used whatever looked good.
cxxx[]:::::::::::>
Behold, I see my father and mother.
I see all my dead relatives seated.
I see my master seated in Paradise and Paradise is beautiful and green; with him are men and boy servants.
He calls me. Take me to him.
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No, the jedi sword style are based on the long lost flying dragon style of shaolin kung-fu. It is so well concealed few had ever seen it. I heard rumor that Lucas was an apprentice to a fly dragon style master, but Lucas couldn't cut it. The whole story of Anakin Skywalker turning into Darth vader was an allegory of his failure to learn the fly dragon style and becoming a movie director instead.
oh, did you know that the light sabre's color is controlled by the users' emotion.
jedi's are colored blue because they were taught to be courageous in battle.
sith's are red because they are mad all the time, that's problem working for the darkside, no happy time.
If they get really, really mad, the sabre color will turn "pink". honest.
Last edited by WanderingMonk; 06-14-2005 at 09:57 PM.
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Nick Gilliard, the fight choreographer, made up "Jedi Style" from his experiences in Kendo and fencing.
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MK,
Was Gillard the fight coordinator for all 6? I remember hearing that Episodes IV-VI were based of kendo/fencing and I-III were just more stunt coordinating.
Loud City
You're right. He did I, II, and III.
To do this, Gillard had to create a fictional martial art that has an authentic, time-honored feel. Rather than assembling a pastiche of various martial arts, Gillard worked to create a distinctive technique that is based on the fact that the Jedi have specifically "chosen the sword as their weapon." To be able to use such a "short range weapon," he says, against "people who are firing laser guns at you," one must use a fighting style based on speed and economy of movement.
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The lightsabers colour is affected by the type of crystal used to focus the arc-wave. Jedi have a ritual of finding these crystals in nature, but the sith do not. They use synthetic crystals, which give it the charactaristic red colour. Anakin's blade should have been red when fighting obi wan if your emotion theory was accurate.No, the jedi sword style are based on the long lost flying dragon style of shaolin kung-fu. It is so well concealed few had ever seen it. I heard rumor that Lucas was an apprentice to a fly dragon style master, but Lucas couldn't cut it. The whole story of Anakin Skywalker turning into Darth vader was an allegory of his failure to learn the fly dragon style and becoming a movie director instead.
oh, did you know that the light sabre's color is controlled by the users' emotion.
jedi's are colored blue because they were taught to be courageous in battle.
sith's are red because they are mad all the time, that's problem working for the darkside, no happy time.
If they get really, really mad, the sabre color will turn "pink". honest.
Sacktavius- AKA Snake Boy!
Loud City
It was, right up until the final cut of the film. Anakin hit a switch that turned it from blue to red...but they eventually (thankfully) changed their minds and switched it back to blue.
I think he was trying to pull your leg with the above post, though.
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it was supposed to be a ha ha post, never will I "pull someone's leg".
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Question for MK here:
I've seen several sites going into eastern philo as the source for the jedi philosophies, but after reading a bit of Marcus Aurelius' meditations, I noticed that, aside from surviving death, every element the movies suggest for jedi philosophy is encapsulated in stoicism, whereas taoism has nothing like "the force"(the stoics have "logos"), buddhists either, and neither has a tradition of seeking justice(which the stoics do).
Have you seen this relation made anywhere?
Sorry, I misstated that. A friend of mine noticed all that, I was too busy bedding supermodels.
I would use a blue eyed, blond haired Chechnyan to ruin you- Drake on weapons
Loud City
I dunno. I can tell you that the Force as we know it was not George's original intention. Lawrence Kasdan is the guy that brought the Zen aspects into Luke's training with Yoda (concentrate on the moment, your body is impermanent...).
Originally, The Force of the Whills was the narrator of the story, and was actually going to have voice-overs during the film. It later became an unseen almost-Jungian collective power called The Force of Others. The Force as seen in the movies still maintains some of this collective concept:
YODA: And well you should not. For my ally in the Force. And a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we...not this crude matter.You must feel the Force around you. Here, between you... me... the tree... the rock... everywhere! Yes, even between this land and that ship!
So, the Force is created by life. Without life, there is no Force. Yet, the Force is integral in sustaining Life. So, what you have is something you see repeated over-and-over again in the Star Wars universe: a symbiotic relationship.
QUI-GON : Midi-chlorians are a microscopic lifeform that reside within all living cells and communicates with the Force.
ANAKIN : They live inside of me?
QUI-GON : In your cells. We are symbionts with the midi-chlorians.
ANAKIN : Symbionts?
QUI-GON : Life forms living together for mutual advantage. Without the midi-chlorians, life could not exist, and we would have no knowledge of the Force. They continually speak to you, telling you the will of the Force.
At the same time, the Force is not passive. The Force can willfully cause things to happen:
QUI-GON : Finding him was the will of the Force...I have no doubt of that. There is too much happening here...
So you have a willfull intelligence governing the natural laws of the Universe, even going so far as to 'guide' to suit it's needs. But, it does not ultimately control your path. One of the best running threads throught the Star Wars movies is the concept of choice. Anakin chooses to become Vader; Luke chooses not to become like his Father.
Shmi Skywalker : This path has been placed for you, Annie; the choice to take it is yours alone.
LEIA: He's got to follow his own path. No one can choose it for him.
YODA: Decide you must how to serve them best. If you leave now, help them you could. But you would destroy all for which they have fought and suffered.
So, people obviously are responsible for the decisions they make. But the suggestion is that the Force nudges you where it wants you:
BEN: Remember, a Jedi can feel the Force flowing through him.
LUKE: You mean it controls your actions?
BEN: Partially. But it also obeys your commands.
Which sets up some interesting dicotomies. The Force is created by life; yet, it can also create Life when it needs to balance itself out (i.e. Anakin's virgin birth). It controls your actions; yet you can control it. You are responsible for your actions; yet Destiny may have pre-determined your path for you...
In regards to your question, the best answer I can give is that Force is probably more like Emerson's OverSoul than any purely Buddhist concept. I'm not familiar with the other stuff you talked about. It may or may not have influenced Lucas.
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Stoicism follows the logos, which is, in a loose sense, the force of nature. The stoic seeks to be at one with the logos, or, at least, not at odds with it.
To be at one with the logos, one must follow a natural path. One must be mindful of their feelings. Feelings often prompt value judgements that are not true. By this account, Yoda and Obi Wan's feelings toward Darth Vader prevent them from accurately perceiving the possibility of his redemption. By being aware of feelings, as opposed to subject to them, Luke senses Vader's good.
Further, the stoic sees humanity as intrinsically bound together, so that for the stoic, helping others is paramount, and of far greater meaning than judging them. For the stoic, their own virtue was not something to place them above others, because that would then make them anti-social, and thus, less human, and thus, less at one with the Logos. While the jedi sought to act in union with the senate for the common good, Vader and Palpatine sought to impose their own will for their own good. The result for Palpatine was to die unaided, because he had isolated himself, and moved away from the true role meant for humankind. Vader, whose emotional fall was always premised by the fear of loss(attachment), was only aided because he, in the end, saw his own life as something that he must give up if a greater good was to prevail. Conversely, when the jedi fall, the survivors survive because they are in tune with a larger "humanity", in the Wookies for Yoda, and then Bail Organna for Obi Wan and Yoda.
The idea is related to judgement: how we judge things to be good or bad, and how many of these things are not really good or bad, but are more truly preferrable or unpreferrable. To be rich may be prefferrable, but it is not, by default, good, as a rich man is not good or bad by his wealth, but by his efforts. So, to pursue wealth because you feel it will make you good blinds you from the realization that you have yet to pursue good at all. That is why you must be mindful of your feelings, because a calm mind perceives more truly the logos and is more fully a part of it.
Marcus Aurelius is probably the best known stoic. His Meditations were notes to himself from when he was an Emporor(ironically enough), though not organized at all times for ease of reading, they are a good read.
The reason I think it's pertinent to looking at the way jedi is presented(as opposed to intended, to look at the movies from "George meant this" perspective doesn't work very well, imo), all attempts I've seen to explain them as close to buddhist and taoist with chivalry thrown in seems somewhat limited for this reason:
1) Neither buddhism or taoism has something even close to synonomous with the force tying it together and placed centrally in one simple term.
2) Chivalry seems unrelated to the jedi's approach to helping the senate.
Whereas stoicism has these advantages:
1) To my knowledge, in the six movies, there is not one single statement on jedi philosophy that doesn't adhere to stoic principles.
2) Logos is closer to analogous to the force than any element of taoism and buddhism.
3) The stoic principle of helping humankind because we all need each other is a superior summary of the behavior of the jedi than chivalry.
Keep in mind, Christopher M could probably explain this much better than I, but hopefully my summary is sufficient to save him from the almost instant loss of a sex life that comes with taking Star Wars seriously.
I would use a blue eyed, blond haired Chechnyan to ruin you- Drake on weapons
Loud City
OK. I'll take your word for everything except this:
The Jedi are isolationist. They do not necessarily believe in 'helping humankind.' They do not journey throughout the galaxy performing good deeds, or feeding the poor. Qui-Gon could have easily killed or beaten Watto to have him release Shmi Skywalker from slavery, but he didn't. In fact, he told her point blank, "I didn't come here to free slaves."
What you have is a religious order predicated on understanding and using their religion for their own purposes. It just so happens that because of their abilities, sometimes they are asked to venture outside the temple and settle political disputes that would otherwise require large-scale military operations. Before the Clone Wars, the Republic has no standing army. The Republic uses the Jedi as enforcers for Republic policy, and in return they are allowed free reign to practice their religion without question: For example. The Jedi are allowed to take, against their parent's will, Force-Sensitive children from their homes as early as 2 months old to avoid familial bonding to interfere with the child's development. The Republic never even questions this practice. One of the cut lines from Revenge of the Sith has Obi-Wan lamenting this when he sees the dead children Anakin has slain, but he doesn't condemn the practice itself.
While they do believe in inter-connectness, and that all living creatures are acting symbiotically, they also essentially have license from the Republic to kill at will while conducting Jedi business and they liberally apply that license. It would very easy for a Jedi to Force-Choke people into unconsciouness instead of chopping them up with his lightsaber, but we rarely see such compassion from them in combat (only in the hallway of Jabbas palace, actually, when Luke chokes the Gamorrean Guards, and the accepted intepretation of this even is that they died.)
So, I don't know if Logos really applies here.
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Fortunately for my argument, only the lines that make it in the movie are canon.
Additionally, one could look at the prequel trilogy as an indictment of then current jedi practices. After all, the force is brought to balance by not one, but two children who were not trained in the limiting confines of the jedi temple from 2 years old, and Luke, who would generally looked at as far too old to train, is the only one who lacks the basic assumptions of the jedi about the sith that allow him to see that Vader is not beyond redemption.
Once to the EU side you go, forever will it consume your destiny.
Okay, I'm a nerd.
I would use a blue eyed, blond haired Chechnyan to ruin you- Drake on weapons
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