If Qui-Gon Jinn survived

What I noticed a couple weeks ago was Dave Filoni made a somewhat possibly questionable, or at least easy to misconstrue, statement about this.
(Is it what prompted the thread?)

comicbook.com/movies/news/star-wars-most-important-moment-phantom-menace-duel-of-the-fates-dave-filoni/?fbclid=IwAR3MH8DGb9sfEVzgzliiTZnMZDiv25SYdQy3oyYQ17Dkvmd1wilWjJM0x-g


"In Phantom Menace, you're watching these two Jedi in their prime fight this evil villain," Filoni explains. "Maul couldn't be more obviously the villain. He's designed to look evil, and he is evil, and he expresses that from his face, all the way out to the type of lightsaber he fights with. What's at stake is really how Anakin is going to turn out. Because Qui-Gon is different than the rest of the Jedi, and you get that in the movie. Qui-Gon is fighting because he knows he's the father that Anakin needs, because Qui-Gon hasn't given up on the fact that the Jedi are supposed to actually care, and love, and that that's not a bad thing. The rest of the Jedi are so detached, and they've become so political, that they've really lost their way. Yoda starts to see that in the second film, but Qui-Gon is ahead of them all and that's why he's not part of the council.

"So he's fighting for Anakin, and that's why it's the Duel of the Fates. It's the fate of this child. And depending on how this fight goes, his life is going to be dramatically different. So Qui-Gon loses, of course, so the father figure [is gone]. Because he knew what it meant to take this kid away from his mother when he had an attachment, and he's left with Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan trains Anakin, at first, out of a promise he makes to Qui-Gon, not because he cares about him. He's a brother to Anakin, eventually, but he's not a father figure. That's a failing for Anakin. He doesn't have the family that he needs. He loses his mother in the next film. He fails the promise to his mother, 'I will come back and save you.' So he's left completely vulnerable, and Star Wars is ultimately about family."

As Filoni continues, he breaks down why that fight isn't just the key cog in the Prequel Trilogy, but in the overall Star Wars franchise as well. The fate of Anakin comes full circle five films later, at the end of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.

"So that moment in that movie, that I think a lot of people diminish into just this cool lightsaber fight, is everything that the entire three films of the prequels hangs on," he says. "It's that one particular fight. And Maul serves his purpose, and at that point died — before George made me bring him back. But he died, and that's showing you, again, how the Emperor is completely self-serving. He's just a tool. He's using people and now he's going to use this child. That follows all the way through to the line, which terrified me as a kid, when the Emperor tells Luke, 'You, like your father, are now mine.'"

What ultimately saves Luke in Return of the Jedi, according to Filoni, is his connection to his father. He chooses not to kill the Emperor, and Anakin chooses to give up his power in order to be the father he never had.

"I believe Luke would turn to the Dark Side in Return of the Jedi," Filoni says. "I believe that was on the table, I believe he would kill the Emperor. The only thing that's going to save him is not his connection to the Force, it's not the powers he's learned, it's not all these things that are an advantage to him. That's gotten him to the table. But what saves Luke is his ability to look at all that, and look at his father, and say, 'No. I'm going to throw away this weapon. I'm not going to do that. I'm going to let that go and be selfless.' And he says, 'I am a Jedi like my father before me.' But what he's really saying, and why I connect so powerfully to him, is 'I love my father and there is nothing you can do that's going to change that. The Emperor can't understand that connection. 'Why wouldn't you take someone offering you the power of the galaxy? Why won't you take this?' And Anakin, then in that moment, has to decide to be the father that he's never had. He has to give up all of the power in the galaxy and save his son. That's the selfless act that he does in return for his son and that's what saves him. So the son saves the father and the father saves the son and it works out perfectly. And I draw that line all the way from Phantom Menace to Return of the Jedi. That's the story of Star Wars."

--

While most of Filoni's statement is rather harmless in itself, I would like to point out that that may be part of why it's Duel Of The Fates, but not the only reason.

But secondly, this statement has somehow led some fans to feel vindicated in thier theories that if Qui-Gon had lived; Anakin would never have fallen, Qui-Gon would have given Anakin everything he needed and indulged all his wishes, Anakin would never have gone to Palpatine or even been vulnerable to his manipulation, and basically none of the tragedies would have occurred.

I think the biggest factor in this is that Filoni is painting the Jedi in such a way as to say they should have been bending their codes to suit Anakin's desires; thus leading these fans to not only conclude that Qui-Gon would have done this, but that it also would've been the right thing. Or at minimum, that Qui-Gon would've been a panacea for all of Anakin's problems.


Instead of saying "Yoda starts to see this in the second film", I would've went in more of the direction of saying "Yoda saw Anakin's upbringing as a potential problem in the first film".

I disagree so strongly with Filoni's take on this. This idea has been fairly popular in fandom for a while now, that Qui-Gon was better than all the other Jedi and would've been able to make everything right had he lived, and it's always annoyed me, but now there's a quasi-Word-of-God (I say quasi because Filoni didn't actually work on TPM, so even though he's close with Lucas, he's still really coming at this from a fan perspective rather than WOG) validation of it. It's very frustrating. Fortunately, this post lays out better than I could all the reasons his take doesn't really line up with what we're shown.

But if the fight they're having isn't, in some sense, a battle for Anakin's soul and the fate of the galaxy, why is it so decoratively -- that is to say in this instance: religiously -- arranged? The music and the construction combined are a very big tell; anticipating "Battle Of The Heroes" in ROTS and echoing Luke's furious conflagration against Vader in the final moments of their duel in ROTJ. It feels like something monumental hangs in the balance. The sequence lends appropriate weight and gives an enlarged sense of what is at stake and the inevitability of what is to come: i.e., the death of Qui-Gon is meant to be an epochal event with major ramifications for all his "children". AOTC, you could say, follows through when Shmi dies. Now Anakin's story, the one concerning the youngest of Qui-Gon's children, begins to come into focus; his more innocent life essentially bracketed by the "seismic charge(s)" loss of ostensibly his his father, and now his mother, under tragic conditions. The die is cast. Anakin's path gets much darker from here on out.


Maybe. I feel you might be offering up a bit of a strawman here. I think the take-home message is that we need good guardians in life: people willing to see our potential, fight our corner, and set us on the road of becoming the best (or at least a better) version of ourselves. Anakin is basically deprived of this when he loses his mother, an early source of tough-but-fair wisdom, and subsequently Qui-Gon. In fact, the blow is doubly harsh, because Anakin essentially loses his mother twice over: once when he leaves her behind on Tatooine in the first film (consoling himself with the idea that he would one day return to free her), and a second time when he watches her die on the same planet, the end-point of an ill-fated rescue attempt, in the second. The "father" of Qui-Gon steps in to replace the mother, only to be rapidly erased from the picture; and Anakin (even while Qui-Gon still lives) is shamed by the high-minded Jedi about having thoughts that dwell on his mother and instructed to forget about her entirely (Qui-Gon lives but the mother might as well be dead according to Jedi dogma). The best guardian he gets after these, or the one he looks up to and respects a great deal, is obviously Palpatine. Palpatine steps in to fill the void. Convenient for the Sith; not so convenient for Anakin. And Palpatine conspicuously tells him things similar to Qui-Gon, such as encouraging him to trust in his feelings -- something the older Obi-Wan tells Luke, but never Anakin. One is left with the impression that Palpatine is continuing Qui-Gon's work, but in a darker vein, for fouler purposes.


Not a panacea. I think there's a koanistic quality to Qui-Gon finding Anakin and believing in him instead of Obi-Wan. We're meant to meditate on the differences that clearly exist between them -- in terms of age, outlook, and experience. But we aren't being pushed to come to any definitive conclusion. Instead, Lucas offers us something superior: a suspended space, a sacred place, which we can inhabit and fill with our own meaning.

You can see areas where Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan overlap, are almost the same person, and where they (again: clearly) differ. Yet, sometimes, yes: Qui-Gon seems as harsh and abrupt and as tough as Obi-Wan. He even tells Anakin that being a Jedi is a "hard life"; and promptly leaves him shivering in the corner on the queen's ship, for instance, as if conditioning him to accept the loneliness of the Jedi path right away. Yet he is very warm and fatherly in his dealings with Anakin, too; far more patient than he often appears toward Obi-Wan. The discovery of Anakin and his innate specialness also seems to humble Qui-Gon a lick: He tells Obi-Wan he's unsure of what the blood count means; and while he pushes Anakin's case in front of the Jedi, he exudes a fierce warmth for Anakin's case; as if he has been re-born to a higher purpose in life, a higher form of himself. So what other course could history have taken? There's a good deal of ambiguity, all in all, about the whole thing. Nevertheless, the wider PT construct does seem to lean in the direction of saying (or getting the viewer to say), "Qui-Gon might have averted this."

A little footnote on this pivotal story point is that we don't know quite what Qui-Gon was planning, or what he might have done, in light of those Jedi Council strictures, had he lived. On Coruscant, when Mace almost impetuously tells him that Anakin will not be trained, he immediately vows to train Anakin himself, despite already having an apprentice. Yoda and Mace reflexively remind him of this limiting factor (limiting in their eyes, at least); and Qui-Gon switches gears, suggesting that Obi-Wan is ready to face The Trials, while still trying to get his way with Anakin. On the landing platform, he ruefully tells him: "I'm not allowed to train you, so I want you to watch me and be mindful." At that specific point, it seems he is intending to train Anakin indirectly, while still having Obi-Wan as a padawan, as nothing has yet been decided by the Jedi Council on these matters. So we have another example of Qui-Gon obeying (or you might say bending) the letter of the Jedi Code, but interpreting the spirit of it in his own way, according to his own mores, principles, and philosophies. Had he lived, it's reasonable to assume he would have gone on doing this, even if the roadblocks changed (presumably, the Jedi weren't intending to leave the matter hanging; so this was just one workaround Qui-Gon had -- one of many -- for a specific problem). Indeed, on Tatooine, he calmly says that he's "sure" that "another solution will present itself"; even when the situation looks pretty hopeless. 

That's Qui-Gon. 

That's the spirit he would have guided Anakin with.

That's the spirit that could have made the crucial difference.

The basic idea behind Qui-Gon, in my opinion, is to find a system or a code of conduct to believe in; but don't be hidebound to it, and the important corollary: follow your own voice and allow yourself to be guided by the light of your own reasoning and intuition. Listen to others, respect them when you can, but cut your own path: take those tools you deem valuable and apply your own methods when using them. At the end of the day (and I've had some experience of it on this very site), people are often going to tell you you're wrong, that you can't or shouldn't be doing a particular thing, and that it goes against a shared ethic or norm; or that you are simply wasting your time. So you have to be willing to suffer a few slings and arrows, decide what you think the most suitable or agreeable course of action is, and commit to that -- give it your life breath instead of being breathed-on or choked-out by someone else. Understand there may or may not exist a world consciousness or a universal mind, but that you are an atomised consciousness, and you have the right to your own life rhythm. Build a life, in other words, that makes sense to you. And Lucas certainly holds that view:



Time Index: 07:12

"I think it's very important not to do what your peers think you should do, [nor to] do what your parents think you should do, [nor] your teachers -- or even [what] your culture thinks -- but do what's inside you."

I could probably stop my post here, but just to clear up a few other things:


It might be slightly straying off-point, but I think I agree that that remark by Filoni is a little odd -- oblique, at least. On face value, nothing Yoda says for the bulk of the second film, as far as I can see (maybe I can't see properly) really backs up his opinion that Yoda has started to see the Jedi as "detached" or "so political" that they have "lost their way"; yet I do believe there are small clues to this end. For instance, he remarks to Obi-Wan and Mace, in a moment in which he is expressing an unexpected Qui-Gon-like faith in Anakin, that the Jedi are afflicted with arrogance and have become "too sure of themselves"; adding "even the older, more experienced ones" (a blast at himself, first and foremost, surely). Then there is his recommendation to Mace that they keep their waning powers a secret from the Senate -- not only showing how Yoda isn't free from sinning and incapable of falling into deceptive patterns out of fear and hubris, but perhaps indicating how Yoda is keen, in maybe a misguided sense, to keep the Jedi free of overt political influence by erecting a wall of secrecy and separation at a difficult and darkening time. Finally, at the end of the film, we see him looking anguished that he wasn't able to stop Dooku (and maybe upset with himself that he brought the war to Geonosis in the first place), and in the Jedi Council chambers, he is shown as now physically distanced from Mace and Obi-Wan (who he earlier benignly floated nearby of), and corrects them both with his grim pronouncement that it wasn't a victory on Geonosis. Rather, it was the opposite (if unspoken): a crushing defeat; as punctuated with his dour declaration that the Clone Wars (or "this clone war" -- an internal Jedi war?) has begun. 



Neat little essay. Unfortunately, it's pretty partisan -- if articulating your position, I guess, reasonably well. Here's one thing I wish to revise/correct:


Lucas has also provably said that Duel Of The Fates -- that is: the musical composition -- had precisely the right feel to it in "The Beginning":



Time Index: 58:55

(Accepting the fact that the exchange between Lucas and John Williams has almost certainly been edited for the documentary)

WILLIAMS: The only concern that one might have is that you may want a version without the chorus, but I don't know if you even want to contemplate that.

LUCAS: No, I love the chorus.

WILLIAMS: It gives it that church-y... (inaudible) 

LUCAS: I think it's going to work... I mean, you didn't realise this, but it really goes into the third film very well, and I think it'll be an important thing to reprise. It definitely has the quality of the inevitable fate of doom, you know, with larger hands at work.    

There's also this superb essay on the entire lightsaber duel by Bob Clark, originally published in 2010:

wondersinthedark.wordpress.com/2012/02/11/notes-on-the-duel-of-the-fates/

Clark himself uses the word "religious" on two occasions, when talking about some especially potent and evocative imagery. Here are those excerpts:



It's a whopper of an essay -- though some of Clark's image comparisons are, unfortunately, now missing; slightly blunting the impact of his text. 

I bring these additional pieces in to illustrate how ignoring these critical components of the duel sequence is, at worst, intellectually dishonest, and at best, leads to an impaired understanding of what Lucas was going for, and an impoverished view of the role Qui-Gon was intended to play in the narrative (of both the first film and the wider saga). Before people bash Filoni, in other words, they might want to attempt a wider and more rigorous understanding of what Lucas set out to do with Qui-Gon (and, indeed, the whole PT) in the first place. 

Another example of Filoni's takes not being logical or consistent with Lucas' vision (and what he took the time to show in the movies) is the idea that Yoda saying "wars not make one great" is a sudden realization he has after having fought in the Clone Wars. I mean, Lucas took the time to show Yoda's sadness over the fact that a war had just started but here comes Filoni pretending that the Jedi never had a problem with the war and that after the events of ROTS they had a grand realization over war and greatness. As if the Jedi fought in the Clone Wars out of pride in order to be great, as if they wanted to excel as warriors, instead of being pushed into it due to the circumstances and necessity.

Allow me to chime in:


The Council is not disillusioned or indiffferent. They are simply aware of the problems of training someone that old. Problems that Qui-Gon is willing to overlook.


He had the choice of not giving into his fears. Time and time again, he had the choice of doing what he knew to be right as opposed to what he knew to be wrong. He chose to easy, more seductive path to deal with his fears.


Does he? Lucas shows the Jedi trying to arrest Sidious, Sidious murders the Jedi and even after that, Mace still tries to arrest him. Sidious uses his hidden powers to attack Mace once again, revealing the depth of his powers which makes Mace decide to strike him. That's hardly falling short of their ideals. Even more so when we are talking about an instance near the end of the PT.


Obi-Wan's arrogance is dealt with in the movies. He realizes his shortcomings and changes his ways. We don't see Obi-Wan being arrogant or dismissive of other life forms in the following movies.


He tells Anakin to basically not dwell on it. Which is exactly what Anakin should do. He shouldn't dwell on his fears (nightmares). He should get past that, overcome them and let go. He can't be a Jedi if he spends his time worring about is fears and attachments. Less so if he disregards his duty to act on them.


That does not happen at any moment. No Jedi says that him missing his mother and fearing losing her is a "character flaw" or "something to be ashamed of." The Jedi are asking him about feelings he's trying to hide, and he gets defensive when the Jedi point out the reality of the situation. He asks what's the relevancy of him missing his mother and they explain it. And they are right. His attachment and fear of loss is a problem for a potential Jedi, and Anakin is rightfully made aware of it.


The Jedi don't accuse him of anything. Anakin is being interviewed for a path he chose to take to become something he wants to be. There's no "inquisition". His well being is not in question nor is there any lack of concern for it. They are bothered with the task at hand, a task that ought to be made: to test him in order to learn if he can become a Jedi.

That seems more to me about showing Obi-Wan as young and still growing into his path as a Jedi (if he's not just teasing Qui-Gon with that comment) rather than showing the Jedi as a whole being dismissive towards everyone else - though you're correct that Qui-Gon is initially not very kind towards Jar-Jar, something that Filoni doesn't really take into account in his statements. Though I suppose compassion and being annoyed by someone isn't mutually exclusive - compassion is demonstrated more through actions than words, and that Qui-Gon does act to protect Jar-Jar despite being annoyed by him speaks more to his compassion than anything he said. But in that case, why would we hold Obi-Wan's words against him? It's not even that he called them "pathetic lifeform" to their faces. Perhaps it can be taken as evidence of him being dismissive or contemptuous, but we know he does grow from there. He's not unkind to Jar-Jar when they meet in AOTC, after all.


I don't read any disapproval in Obi-Wan's tone in that scene until after Anakin changes the subject to "I'd rather dream about Padmé" - that's when Obi-Wan turns disapproving. Before that, he comes off as sympathetic. I also don't read "let go" as "forget", I read it as "don't cling to people/the past/etc", which is good advice and narratively supported. At worst you could say that maybe they didn't explain it in a way Anakin could understand, but I'm not sure that there was a way to explain it so that he would accept that things change, people pass in and out of your life, and that you can't control that. Even his mother said something very similar ("you can't stop the change any more than you can stop the suns from setting") to Anakin before he left in TPM, so it's not just the Jedi who couldn't get Anakin to accept this.
I just don't see that. I don't see the Jedi as cold, and I don't see them telling Anakin that missing his mother is a character flaw - they simply point out his fear and when he asks why it matters, they tell him why. They don't tell him he's bad for being afraid; they just try to get him to acknowledge it and point out that letting it run unchecked will lead to, as Yoda says, suffering. Anakin being intimidated is understandable - but it doesn't make the Jedi bad for testing him. I also don't see them being bothered by him as much as recognizing that he's a poor fit for their culture. Someone not being suited to a particular way of life doesn't make that way of life wrong, nor does it mean that they're condemning those who aren't suited to their culture as bad people. Something can simply be inappropriate or unsafe for Jedi without being a moral issue. A comparison that I've used before is that just because I'm not allowed to wear jeans and a t-shirt to my job doesn't mean that my bosses think that wearing jeans and t-shirts is a personal flaw - it's just not appropriate for my role. And that restriction doesn’t make my current workplace a bad environment compared with previous jobs I’ve had with much more lax dress codes. An overly simple analogy, perhaps, but my point is that just because the Jedi point something out as a potential problem doesn't mean they think it's a sin.
Perhaps "good faith" wasn't the right wording, but there's a big difference between getting involved in a war and orchestrating it, the latter of which is what the Jedi didn't realize Palpatine had done until the very end. There can certainly be criticisms made about the Jedi's political situation, but there also aren't any easy answers to it - there are always trade-offs, which Palpatine would exploit no matter what they did.

A case can be made that they didn't do enough to keep the Republic's leaders accountable, but in that case, why single out the Jedi for that problem? Why does the burden fall more on them than the people who actually have representation in the government, and those representatives themselves? And doesn't the fact that Palpatine had to wipe them out before declaring his Empire demonstrate that the Jedi were doing more than the average person to stand against abuses of State? It wasn't enough, of course, especially after he kept them busy with a war to delay them taking action against his power gains, but it's more than we see from anyone except a handful of Senators. I suppose you could argue the Separatists were by breaking away, but they weren't able to keep their own government accountable, let alone the Republic's.
I'm...not seeing it, sorry. Codes of conduct, codes of honor, etc far predate computer code, so I don't think that can be definitively said that the Jedi Code was meant as a play on code as in programming when it's not an unusual term in context. You're welcome to that interpretation but unless there's Word of God on the matter I'm going to call Occam's Razor and say that's probably not the direct intention.
You have a point about Lucas himself being an envelope pusher (and I do think Qui-Gon was intended as a character to look up to, but not necessarily as one elevated above the rest of the Jedi), but I see the Jedi's rules as more about self-control rather than imposition over others.

I don't think we can definitively say that it's the source of the problems later on because of Qui-Gon's death, because that's not what's said there. Maybe that's what was meant; I don't know his thoughts. But it's not what was said - what was said was that Anakin skipping the Jedi's early training was the source of the problems. And similarly, I don't think it can be definitively said that Qui-Gon living would've saved the Jedi.

I also, again, don't see any condemnation from the Jedi testing him. Obi-Wan, yes, he's harsh and unfair to call Anakin dangerous - I suspect a lot of that was Obi-Wan lashing out from being hurt by Qui-Gon pushing him to the side (watch Obi-Wan's facial expressions in the Council chambers), but he works through it and apologizes, recognizing that he was wrong in his behavior there. I suppose I can see the argument that he should've apologized to Anakin as well as Qui-Gon, but regardless, it does show that it's something Obi-Wan gets over. I don't think there's any question at the end of the film that he's committed to Anakin, and definitely comes to care for him in time. How long that takes is I suppose up to personal interpretation, and I definitely do think that there would've been culture clash for Anakin after he joins the Jedi, but I don't think that's anyone's failing.

I'm going to DELIBERATELY bring the ST into this for just one moment here...

From The Last Jedi:

"Luke: Lesson two. Now that they're extinct, the Jedi are romanticized, deified. But if you strip away the myth and look at their deeds, the legacy of the Jedi is failure. Hypocrisy, hubris.
Rey: That's not true!
Luke: At the height of their powers, they allowed Darth Sidious to rise, create the Empire, and wipe them out. It was a Jedi Master who was responsible for the training and creation of Darth Vader."

Here's the thing...he's right, but it's nothing newly introduced by the ST. So don't worry that it's in the GL era of the forum.

Cryo, myself, and many others had been saying basically THAT as our interpretation of the Jedi in the PT for over a decade. They are depicted as seriously morally flawed, literally ruling themselves out of existence from an ivory tower. That's one of the main points to be coaxed out of these movies. Yes, they are the heroes, but they are also more than just partially responsible for their own downfall.

No, they aren't. They are mindful of the problems of training someone that old. If they were indifferent, they wouldn't care either way. But they do care. They indulge Qui-Gon's request, they test him, they acknowledge his potential and strength, they acknowledge that he might be the Chosen One, but the problem remains: he has great fear and attachment. And Lucas corroborates what the Jedi point out:

"So here we’re having Qui-Gon wanting to skip the early training and jump right to taking him on as his Padawan learner, which is controversial and ultimately the source of much of the problems that develop later on." - George Lucas

"The fact that everything must change and that things come and go through his life and that he can’t hold on to things, which is a basic Jedi philosophy that he’s unwilling to accept emotionally. And the reason that is, is because he was raised by his mother rather than by the Jedi.

If he’d have been taken in his first year and started to study to be a Jedi, he wouldn’t have this particular connection as strong as it is and he’d have been trained to love people but not to become attached to them. But he has become attached to his mother and he will become attached to Padmé, and these things are, for a Jedi, who needs to have a clear mind and not be influenced by threats to their attachments, a dangerous situation." - George Lucas


If they were so disillusioned, weary and encrusted in some "dogmatic cynicism", they wouldn't listen or indulge anyone. But that doesn't happen. The opposite does. And how do they show little charity or kindness? When is Anakin in need of charity and kindness?


What he intended to clarify is related to the Whills, the Force and living beings, not with Anakin's free will and acknowledgement throughout the movies that he knows he's doing wrong but chooses to do it anyway.


Mace tries to arrest Palpatine twice and decides to end him when he reveals the depth of his power. Yoda tells Obi-Wan that they must destroy the Sith, which having witnessed what happened is something that needs to be done. And it's something that eventually happens in ROTJ.


There's no problem with the delivery mechanism when the recipient listens, understands, but chooses not to do what he knows to be right. They don't spew nonsense. They spew wisdom.


What do you want the Council to care for? Anakin is not afraid of the Council. He knows what's going on. He knows why he's there, he knows why he's being tested.

His words to Qui-Gon show that he's aware that he's being the source of the argument between Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon, and having been refused he's now under Qui-Gon's care and doesn't want to be a burden to him. Qui-Gon eases his mind.


Why are you turning a very passive statement of fact as an accusation or creepy interrogation? Anakin answers calmly as well to Ki-Adi.


What hypocrisy? And the questions aren't though. Anakin doesn't have a problem with the questions until Yoda points out his true fear: his fear of loss. And Yoda explains why that's a problem for a Jedi in his typical fortune cookie wisdom that has been a staple of the character. Anakin seems to have understood the truth of what he said as well, given that he doesn't react back.


They are not criticising anything. They are pointing out the reality of the situation and why they hesitate to train someone that old.