The Jedi are a "myth?"

[Sci]

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.

Not just "from a certain point of view." They were objectively attempting to carry out a coup d'etat against Palpatine by removing him from office by force, and by suppressing the authority of the Senate and of the courts because of their (accurate) belief that both were under Palpatine's effective control. The Jedi determined that the organs of the democratic state were no longer capable of functioning, and so they sought, temporarily, to seize control of the state until such time as Palpatine's influence could be eliminated.

This is objectively a coup. Now, whether or not it is a justified coup is the relevant question. I of course think it is. But its nature as a coup remains.

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.

Totalitarian regimes often change their "origin stories" without acknowledging such changes. (E.G., Stalin writing Trotsky out of Soviet history, or Orwell's "Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.") Add to the that the simple fact that a galaxy with trillions upon trillions of people is necessarily going to be very diffuse and inefficient in how it distributes information, and it's not implausible that there would be a huge amount of disinformation out there.

It's the equivalent of creationists in a museum full of fossils.

You say that like such people do not exist in huge, huge numbers.

Anyway, the simplest explanation is that Han is speaking a bit inaccurately for the sake of brevity -- not that he thought the existence of the Jedi Order was a myth, but that he thought the Force and their alleged ability to wield it was a myth. People will sometimes simplify such things for the sake of brevity in conversation.

 

[Rincewiend]

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.

Basically North-Korea in space...
Whitewashing/rewriting/withholding history for the younger generations, spreading falsehoods about the Jedis and the Force etc...

 

[Set Harth]

I just don't see how young Han could have believed the Jedi weren't real during the Clone Wars, though. If he's around Harrison Ford's real age at the time of filming ANH then he should have been old enough to know about the Jedi leading the clone army into battle against the Separatists.

It's even worse: they were originally going to have Han turn up in ROTS before, I assume, cooler heads prevailed...

 

[drt]

The original intention was that Anakin and Vader were two different people and Leia wasn't Luke's sister. We reaqlly can judge by the end result.

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.

Even though Obi-Wan did say he and and Luke's father fought in the Clone Wars?

Sorry, I think the way I worded the above led to confusion. There was no indication in 1977 that the Clone Wars led to the establishment of the Empire. So it seemed the Clone Wars was an earlier struggle against the Empire, as the movie had just showed the Empire were the "bad guys" so the inference was that any previous war mentioned was probably against them, and that Kenobi and Luke's father were on the other ("good guys") side of those wars.

 

[arch101]

When I saw the film in the late '70's, I just assumed the Empire had been around for a long LONG time. It seemed to me that the Clone Wars were some kind of act of rebellion led by the few remaining Jedi. When Obi Wan describes them as the protectors of the old Republic, he sounds like he's talking about something from long ago, not his own youth. Tarkin's gloating about the dissolution of the Senate doesn't indicate that the Republic has been gone for very long, only that it's been gone for awhile. The puppet Imperial Senate could have been around for centuries before the Death Star gave Palpatine the feeling that he could now rule through his military alone with no more legislature. It made sense that Han, never meeting a Jedi or seeing them in action, might think of them in much the same way modern day Japanese think of Samurai. Sure, they existed but were they really all that?

 

[RoJoHen]

The Jedi were the generals and leaders of the army during the Clone Wars, but they weren't the leaders of the Republic. Our military has leaders now, but I certainly couldn't tell you their names because they're not put in the public's eye. The people of the galaxy probably new the names of their Senators and elected officials, and maybe they had heard the name Jedi before, but I have a feeling many people didn't know who they were or what that really meant.

I tend to think that the Jedi had an inflated sense of their own importance. Most of the galaxy probably didn't care about them.

You can say that you know who Bill Clinton is because you were alive in America 20 years ago, but would a child on the other side of the planet have any reason to know that name in 2015?

 

[Kor]

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?

Han (talking about Luke): "The people who knew him best think he went looking for the first Jedi temple."

Rey: "The Jedi were real?"

Han: "I used to wonder about that myself. Thought it was bunch of mumbo jumbo. A magical power holding together good and evil, the Dark Side and the Light. The crazy thing is... it’s true. The Force, the Jedi... all of it, it’s all true."

Kor

 

[Trekker4747]

The Jedi were the generals and leaders of the army during the Clone Wars, but they weren't the leaders of the Republic. Our military has leaders now, but I certainly couldn't tell you their names because they're not put in the public's eye. The people of the galaxy probably new the names of their Senators and elected officials, and maybe they had heard the name Jedi before, but I have a feeling many people didn't know who they were or what that really meant.

Yes, but if someone comes up to you and says, "I was a General in the Army!"

You don't look at him wide-eyed and say, "I thought Army Generals were a myth!"

 

[JarodRussell]

You would after 30 years of Sith regime trying to completely wipe out any evidence of the Jedi. In ANH, even the imperial officers questioned the existence of the Force, thinking it was just some weird cult or religion. And again 30 years later, I don't think that Luke did a lot public relations for the Force and the Jedi.

Just keep in mind that if Germany had won the war, they would have managed to make the world forget the Holocaust and the Jews entirely. The next generations wouldn't even have learned about it.

 

[Venardhi]

Where does the 30k number come from anyways? My impression from the films was more like 300.

 

[Ithekro]

A thousand generations. A generation for humans would be something between 25 and 35 years back in 1977. So multiply that by a thousand and you have 25,000 to 35,000 years for the Jedi to be the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic.

 

[TremblingBluStar]

IMO, this is something Lucas screwed up in the prequels, and probably cannot be retconned away or fixed. In the original films, the Jedi were either mythical or unknown. It doesn't fit in with their portrayal in the prequels as being well known throughout the galaxy. Instead, they should have been portrayed as a secretive organization that works in the background, maintaining peace through manipulation, occasionally busting out the light-sabers, but only when completely necessary. Of course, then we couldn't have huge light-saber battles with hundreds of Jedi.

 

[Ithekro]

Such a thing was probably rare. For most of the war it is the Clone Army winning or losing battles against droids and other separatist forces. Most battles there might be one or two Jedi. The really important places get upwards of six Jedi leading major offensives or holding critical planets of the Republic.

As the war continued, one would rather that the Armies would start to be run by non-Jedi as the Navy starts to be even earlier. Less Jedi seen. Also as the Clone Wars starts to show near the end, public opinion of the Jedi was turning hostile. It was there war as far as the public was concerned. They started it and lead it. What happened to all that talk of being "peacekeepers" and guardians of justice? The populace of the Republic turned on the Jedi near the end of the war.

 

[doylem1]

Maybe the Jedi acted more like Monks where they didn't get involved with politics, kept themselves to themselves and devoted themselves to the teachings of the force in the Temple and other secluded locations around the Galaxy. Therefore although around for thousands of years large portions of the Republic wouldn't come into contact with a Jedi and therefore they would be more thought of a myth by the population as a whole as contact was limited.

It was only during the clone wars when the danger was on a galactic scale that they took a active role and became generals in the clone army, as so much was at stake and if it weren't for the return of the Sith they may even have sat it out.

 

[Mage]

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?

Han (talking about Luke): "The people who knew him best think he went looking for the first Jedi temple."

Rey: "The Jedi were real?"

Han: "I used to wonder about that myself. Thought it was bunch of mumbo jumbo. A magical power holding together good and evil, the Dark Side and the Light. The crazy thing is... it’s true. The Force, the Jedi... all of it, it’s all true."

Kor

You know, TFA is basicly half a century after the Jedi Purge. And as noted, during ANH, people had already become a bit unaware of Jedi. And there was, appereantly, never a big revival of the Jedi, what with the Acadamy basicly being slaughtered again already.

 

[Mage]

IMO, this is something Lucas screwed up in the prequels, and probably cannot be retconned away or fixed. In the original films, the Jedi were either mythical or unknown. It doesn't fit in with their portrayal in the prequels as being well known throughout the galaxy. Instead, they should have been portrayed as a secretive organization that works in the background, maintaining peace through manipulation, occasionally busting out the light-sabers, but only when completely necessary. Of course, then we couldn't have huge light-saber battles with hundreds of Jedi.

This is why I appreciate that, in one of the Clone Wars comics, it was made clear that the majority of people had never actually encountered a Jedi, only ever heard of them in stories.

 

[DWF]

IMO, this is something Lucas screwed up in the prequels, and probably cannot be retconned away or fixed. In the original films, the Jedi were either mythical or unknown. It doesn't fit in with their portrayal in the prequels as being well known throughout the galaxy. Instead, they should have been portrayed as a secretive organization that works in the background, maintaining peace through manipulation, occasionally busting out the light-sabers, but only when completely necessary. Of course, then we couldn't have huge light-saber battles with hundreds of Jedi.

How did the prequels show that the Jedi were known thoughout the galaxy? Very few people we meet in the Prequels know about the Jedi and fewer are impressed by them.

 

[Trekker4747]

The Jedi really should have been much more of this "ultra secret police" type of service that people rarely heard of and, naturally, would think of as being myths and legends.

But the PT didn't really portray them this way. They have a huge temple on Courscant, the seat of the Republic, they're occasionally going out to solve problems -like trade disputes- and they're so known about that a slave kid on a back-waters, "outer rim" planet knows about them and their legends and not in a "legends" sort of way but in a manner that suggests he's heard of them as being actual people who're alive and around working today.

 

[DWF]

The Jedi really should have been much more of this "ultra secret police" type of service that people rarely heard of and, naturally, would think of as being myths and legends.

But the PT didn't really portray them this way. They have a huge temple on Courscant, the seat of the Republic, they're occasionally going out to solve problems -like trade disputes- and they're so known about that a slave kid on a back-waters, "outer rim" planet knows about them and their legends and not in a "legends" sort of way but in a manner that suggests he's heard of them as being actual people who're alive and around working today.

Anakin knew because he listened to pilots who came to Watto's junkshop, but Watto himself had no clue that Qui-Gon was a Jedi. The Jedi's numbers were dwindling in the Prequels as was their powers, they were also getting arrogant and prideful. And really there wre only a few thousand Jedi compared to the hundreds of billions of people in the old Republic.

 

[Skywalker]

Watto was aware of the Jedi and knew they existed, though. "What do you think you are, some kind of Jedi, waving your hand around like that?"