What Han said in TFA doesn't quite match what he said in ANH or ROTJ. In ANH he said he didn't believe in the Force, but he clearly knew about the Jedi knights.
For a moment, forget about how easily information is accessed in the free world, and look at real-life examples of totalitarian regimes. They do a good job of purging political opponents, suppressing knowledge and facts, and promoting revisionist history among the populace. That's exactly what the GALACTIC EMPIRE was doing. Kor
Not only that, but they're not limited to a single planet. They're literally spread across the galaxy. We don't know what kind of media or internet capabilities exist so we don't know how information is spread in the first place, let alone heavily limited and/or doctored by the Empire. I find it believable that someone who didn't have direct experiences with certain elements of that culture could view it as a myth 20 years after the fact.
Besides, Palpatine's propaganda is that the Jedi were staging a coup against him, and it's because of this he became scarred and disfigured. That's not the kind of thing that's going to be forgotten, especially since it was his speech about this that he established the transformation of the Republic into the Empire. So while the general public might have been convinced the Jedi were evil, their existence was still a proven fact. The Emperor himself even said so in the public statement given when the Empire was founded.
That's true. Originally he had no clear idea how it all began, and yet he decided to title his first movie Episode IV. You know because he was sure whatever it was, it would take three full movies to explain.
Han's level of belief (or disbelief) in ANH aside (after all, the galaxy is a big place and the chances of experiencing first-hand the acts of Jedi would be small), Order 66 and the destruction of the Jedi were also roughly 50 years old by the time of TFA. So the JFK Camelot analogy actually works, especially if the last vestiges of that era are swept away 20 years prior to current events. Though, for me personally, referring to the Jedi as "legend" rather than "myth" would have been more plausible.
Well from a certain point of view the Jedi were staging a coup against him, but not the Republic. After all they tried to arrest him in the name of the Republic.
There were trillions of people in the galaxy and around 20,000 Jedi. Most people never met one and would've just heard stories about them and they could've just dismissed the magical powers as just propaganda or tricks and exaggeration.
Except as pointed out, the leader of the entire galaxy was mauled by one, and their "attempted coup" against the entire Republic set in motion everything in the main trilogy. General Order 66 likely went viral on every information network and system in the galaxy, to hunt them down. It's the equivalent of creationists in a museum full of fossils. Sure, they're all dead, but there's the proof.
I could see someone like Han not believing in the Force and the Jedi's abilities, but it does seem a little unrealistic for him to not believe in them at all. I think it's best to just ignore, or at least retcon that line away. Lucas clearly hadn't completely come up with the history of the Jedi and all of that when he wrote it.
Exactly. Solo regarded them as essentially a secular security elite, viewing their purported powers as being something of a self serving mythology rather than actual reality. As it turned out the latter was on the mark.
Han Solo was basically ten years old when the Clone Wars ended. We don't know what kind of life he had back then. We don't know what side of the war he was even living on. He could have grown up on a Separatist planet. He could have be in servitude. We don't know much about Han Solo before he was twenty and supposedly in Imperial service prior to freeing a Wookiee.
This. It's not necessarily the Jedi that Han doesn't believe in, but the Force, which he regards to be a load of simple tricks and nonsense.
What's the exact quote from TFA? I bet if we saw the whole thing this would be clearer, because he refers to the FORCE, the Jedi and the dark side in one fell swoop, right?
Sitting in the theater in 1977, I had the impression that the Empire had been around for a long time (perhaps centuries), and that the Clone Wars was the last gasp of the Old Republic before being subsumed.
It wasn't originally titled "Episode IV" at all, just Star Wars. That was added for the 1981 re-release.
Yoda was 900. Vader and Ben could both be older than they look. Did the original movie suggest when the empire first rose in relation to when the clone wars happened? Maybe the Clone Wars were originally thought to have happened during the Imperial Age?
"I've just received word that the Emperor has dissolved the council permanently. The last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept away." - Tarkin
"General Kenobi. Years ago, you served my father in the Clone Wars. Now he begs you to help him in his struggle against the Empire." ~Leia Organa.