In that new Ternian spoiler report there is this quote from Yoda:

"Jedi training, the sole source of self-discipline is not. When right is the time for skills to be taught, to us the living Force will bring them. Until then, wait we will, and watch, and learn."

Huh? Yoda goes on and on in both TPM and in ESB that any kind of training of skills in the Force has to start as YOUNG as possible. He says it in TPM about Anakin and he says it in ESB to Obi-Wan, that Luke is "too old" to be trained in the Force. Here he is now saying that 'when the time is right' the Force will 'decide' they are ready for training, and that is okay? This just comes off as a total contradiction of what Yoda preaches in the other movies.

Suddenly, he's like "whatever, there's no rush, the Force will tell us when the time is right". So why does he bitch about Luke's age in ESB? This is poor writing if it's an actual quote, because it makes Yoda's character totally contradictory.

Different scenarios. Luke had already been started on his Jedi training to a point by Obi-Wan. Plus he was given the option by Obi-Wan in ANH. It would be safer for Yoda to train Luke rather than risk Vadar/Palps getting their hands on him first. Yoda didn't agree to Anakin's training, it was the Council's decision.

The time will tell us/will of the force thing makes sense from another standpoint, ie see what happens, don't train them if we don't have to, circumstances will bring it about (see events of ANH). Yoda has the benefit of hindsight with Luke too.

What you're saying is agreeing with me...

Yoda refused to train Anakin at the council, but if he's now spouting off this philosophy that the Force will decide when someone should be trained, he would have gladly trained Anakin when he was brought to him - especially when he had such high midichlorians!

As with Luke, Yoda would never have thought twice about training him when he turned up on Dagobah if this "new" philosophy is true.

Just to clarify the contradiction:

Yoda philosophy in TPM and ESB: "Training must start YOUNG. If you're past a certain age you have too much anger inside of you. You literally have to be a toddler to be the perfect age to start training - hence the bear clan."

Yoda philosophy in ROTS: "Age doesn't matter. The Force decides when someone is ready. We shouldn't argue with the Force."

Doesn't add up.

It does if you factor in Qui-Gon. I think Yoda learns something in ROTS that makes him see differently on the Force and how to let the children be trained. Qui-Gon talks about being mindful about the living Force, the here and now. Anakin´s mistake and the mistake of the entire order was trusting too much in the future and not paying attention to what was going on around them. My guess is Qui-Gon will somehow appear and factor in Yoda´s change in attitude.

In ESB, Yoda complains that Luke only "Looked to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was, what he was doing!"

Yoda goes to adopt a similar view to Qui-Gon and thinks more of what is happening in the now.

Notice how everytime someone foresees the future in the OT, it turns out badly (Luke seeing his friends and running off to rescue them, the Emperor´s overconfidence in his foresight etc...)

It has to do with a change in attitude, and this report seems to enforce what´s already been established.

Guys, you're all avoiding the fact that Yoda doesn't want to train Luke in ESB because he thinks, and says to Obi-Wan, that Luke is "TOO OLD TO BEGIN HIS TRAINING" which is nothing to do with this new philosophy!

Qui-Gonesque? He's the only person we've seen using science to quantify the Force. I don't think Yoda learned about the 'living Force' through his influence. If anything, it's the fact that Qui-Gon wasn't around that Ben trained Luke without first testing his midichlorian count (unless that's done in RotS of course).

Yoda trusts his feelings more than Qui-Gon did. He relies more on faith. If that were not true, Qui-Gon would have trusted his gut instinct on Anakin and never done the test.

Besides, and back on-topic, I think Yoda has always believed in the will of the Force. That does not mean he should train anybody who someone puts in front of him. Luke may well have been too old to train, just as Yoda believed Anakin was. But if the will of the Force was strong they would overcome this and this is why they were both trained. Still doesn't mean Yoda is going to start training 60 year olds just because they claim they are up for it.

Dogg.

Yoda fuck with Luke. Does he really not want to live in swamp and die and palps still alive? Survey says.....XXX

Yeah. Yoda's "He is too old" was simply a way of testing Luke's drive towards wanting to be a Jedi.

Oh right, then why did LUCAS make it a central part of the whole Jedi Philosophy and training regime in TPM - with all these kids running about. And why did Yoda in TPM say ANAKIN was too old? Was he testing him too? It's clear Lucas made it a central part of Yoda's philosophy of when you can and can't be trained - just look at TPM!

And Yoda seemed open to the possibility of training Leia when Luke left for Bespin. Like the others said, the whole "Too old" was just to check how eager Luke was to train.


In TPM he believed it, in ESB it´s a ruse. Yoda changes during the years, he takes to believing in Qui-Gon´s point of view and this leads to the rules of the old order being softened up. Maybe he understands that to know the living Force includes actually living like normal people, not locked with a stuffy, old order, secluded from the rest of the galaxy. The kids get to grow up reasonably well, until the Force starts to stir and they can begin to learn more about it, or maybe the Force would never do anything and they would be left alone.

The whole rule about "only training children from they´re small" seems to stem from some kind of fear of what can happen in the future, if they´re left alone for too long. Essentially brainwashing them from an early age seems to be a good way to keep them in check, at least that´s what the old order thought.

Then why was Anakin too old in TPM?

I think you are missing the point people have made about Yoda's difference in attitude between the films. In the PT it was the done thing to train Jedi while really young.

In ESB, Yoda was different. He was open to training Luke but he needed to be sure. The fact was, he didn't turn him down on the grounds of age. He was never going to turn him down on the grounds of age - if Luke was ready.

Dogg.

Why do you have trouble with accepting character development in Yoda?

Is it that hard to believe he changed the rules or did away with them between ROTS and ESB?

The age-thing was probably misguided saftey measures. The real test would be that of character and mindset. This wouldn´t be fully dictated by age, like it was believed.

It's not character development, it's character contradiction.

In TPM, he believes you can't be too old to start training. In ROTS he believes the Force decides when the time is right. In ESB, as far as the audience is aware (and obviously what Lucas intended) was Yoda to be worried that Luke was too old. He thinks one way, he changes his mind, he thinks another way. It's called weak storytelling and bad writing. Not character development. The average audience isn't hardcore enough to be expected to have to think up all these theories to explain these inconsistencies.

Thanks for not listening to the relevance of the different movies in regards to this spoiler.

Thanks for completely dismissing another point of view.

It's a wrong point of view - Yoda changed in the 36 years between The Phantom Menace and The Empire Strikes Back. In the prequels, it's the Jedi philosophy to train Padawans from birth. By the time of ESB, he's just testing Luke (you can hear it in his damn voice).

If you don't want to accept it, that's your decision. But you're struggling to find a plot hole.

I don't see this as a contradiction either. TPM is EPISODE 1, the beginning of the story, and we see then and in AOTC that Jedi are trained young. Thus, they think Anakin is too old.

Then all hell breaks lose, the galaxy changes, and Yoda realizes that certain philosophies must change too.
ESB is years later, when things start looking pretty grim once again. It's Luke, Leia or nobody who can save everything.

Yoda's comment that Luke is "too old to begin the training" is said with an attitude of "whatcha got, kid?"

Simple as that.

Oh, okay... I'll just go away then. And actually, I'm serious. I'm not here to fight with anyone.

I'm not sure that Yoda's "Too old to begin the training" is actually that much of a test, but more of a sign of a lack of confidence Yoda has. Look at the lineage of his Journeyman training:

Count Dooku - Becomes a Sith Lord
Qui-Gon Jinn - Dead
Obi-Wan Kenobi - Dead
Anakin Skywalker - Becomes a Sith Lord

Now here comes Obi-Wan's last padawan, a young man who has no idea what he's getting into. Yoda watches as the younglings were slaughtered, as his friends and allies on the council were betrayed and murdered, and the Empire rose. He's had 17 or so years to simmer in this sorrow, without student to train or even friends to talk to, which makes me wonder if his craziness when he first meets Luke isn't COMPLETELY an act.

Then we learn that, once Palpatine comes into power, the Jedi begin to lose their ability to see the future. When Luke is about to leave for Bespin, Yoda says that the future is "difficult to see".

Listen to Yoda's conversation with Obi-Wan's spirit, you'll see that Yoda isn't testing Luke so much as he's resistant to train any more Jedi, perhaps out of fear that Luke will go off and do something foolish, getting himself killed or, worse, turning to the Dark Side.

There may also be an element in Yoda's mind that the older you are the more attachments you have likely to have made.

Heck, he saw Anakins pre-Jedi attachments (mom, Padme, Palpatine) cause all manner of problems in the PT. He knows Luke is close to his friends and they are in trouble and distracting him....it shows the risk Yoda takes by aiding another unconvenional jedi training.

As FusionA says before me Yoda is taking a leap into the dark, he's still learning to accept Qui-Gons view...maybe

hi,
Of course Yoda has time to think during his days on Dagobah. The too old to begin the training is to test Lukes commitment. On the subject of what Yoda thinks about / how his attitude changes I do think it's to do with Qui-Gon. QG knew that training Anakin went against Jedi precedent and dogma and thought Ani should still be trained, even telling him he would still be trained after the council refused. I think the first proper lines of dialogue between Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon

Obi-Wan "..but Master Yoda told me to be mindfull of the future.."
Qui-Gon "...But not at the expense of the Living Force my young Padawan"

will have repercussions on how Yoda gets to have the Happy Blue Glow and his whola attitude to Anakins fulfilling the Prophecy and ending the Sith. In ROTJ Yoda knows Luke is not a fully fledged battle hardened Knight,he's had one lightsabre fight and lost. I think part of him senses that part of Ani must still be left in Vaders soul and Luke can remind Vader of his Destiny. If Luke had messed up big time they would have trained Leia and sent her off to Vader.

These are totally different scenarios that require different times for training. While most Jedi are trained at a young age, Luke was not, obviously. The reasons? Well, the two living Jedi, the only people that could train Luke, had to lay low, in fear the the Emperor would find about about his birth and train him as a Sith. Basically, the way that Luke was trained was the only way he could have been trained, under the circumstances, of course.

1. The theory of age has nothing to do with anything more than breaking the bond of attachment a child will feel with its parent.

2. It was the will of the force that Anakin be found, and trained, Lucas just wrote this poorly, the notion that Anakin was the "chosen one" pretty much predicates the idea that something bad would need to happen for the chose one to be necessary. Yoda did not like the idea of the potential darkness looming. I think perhaps Lucas might clear that up in ROTS, perhaps not.

3. His refusals to Obi-Wan or simple. He does not believe it was the will of the force that brought Luke to him...rather it was Obi-Wans prodding. Couple that with the fact that I think Yodas words and actions were more a test of Lukes commitment rather than his refusal to train him. He wanted to see if they would just be pushing a lost cause.

Very true. I believe that the catastrophic events of Revenge of the Sith will change Master Yoda's views on a lot of things, including the rules of a jedi being trained at a young age.

Lord Seafood are you Coo Coo For CO CO Puffs!?

Geeze dude relax, perhaps as others have already suggested he has a change of heart due to his discussions with Qui-Gon over the years and realizes that not only the young can be trained but instead those who show ability in the Force and if they are not in fact young have the MATURITY to withstand the traning. THAT is what Yoda was saying in ESB : Luke was not Mature enough.

So was I, if you remember.

It seems to me that this is the major problem with making 3 movies 20 years before writing prequels. In ESB there is no sense of a Plan or even agreement on which Skywalker to train. I think Yoda favors Leia (he doesnt actually say it, but she is much more Mature than Luke is). Obi Wan must know of Leia, but yet he says "That boy is our last hope"
Maybe lucas should have fixed that line instead of cgi'ing peoples faces in

Somehow I get the feeling that Mr. Seafood is not over the age of 13.
You didnt come here to argue? Did you read the posts you put up here?

No disrespect intended.

Anyway Yoda knew that Luke & Leia were the last chance that they had at changing the tide. Why would he stick to some small rule about age when this boy he had in front of him not only had the force potential but was also basically a virgin or untouched in the force? After training Jedi for over 800 yrs I think that Yoda would know when the times were changing & that he needed to change too.

I always thought that it was obvious that Yoda was merely testing Luke's patience with the whole "nutso" act. The second Luke tells Yoda he's ready, he gets real serious. The charade drops. "what know you ready?"

It's a sham.

I'm sure it's not going to be completely explained, but he may have even been testing Obi on whether he persuaded Luke, or if The Force brought him.

I've never seen it any other way without knowing this new information, and even after hearing it, it changes nothing imo. It may show that Yoda has matured more in the Force to know that it does its own bidding without outside influence. The Force knows what it needs, who am I to argue. If it wants an 18 year old trainee so be it. I just think that Yoda is digging on what kind of person that Luke has turned out to be and how to go about best training him.

I think that made sense.

And yet Qui-Gon was chasing a prophesy - a prediction of the future. In regards to the Anakin's training, it was Yoda who looked at the here and now - Anakin's fears. Qui-Gon looked to the future - his potential. He wasn't just 'mindful of the future', he 'looked away to the future' like Yoda accused Luke of doing, chasing a dream at the expense of confronting the realities of Anakin's psyche.

If Qui-Gon represented the best of what the Jedi should have been he might have listened to his own words.

Dogg.

im going with the notion that aftter practically all the jedi are wiped out yoda changes his attitude about jedi training and then in ESB he is simply sizing up luke from the very first instant they meet, lukes reactions would no doubt help yoda plan the training regime and the line about being to young would certainly encourage luke to prove yoda wrong by training just that little harder... understand that yoda had to rush lukes training and all the extra effort he could get from him was a bonus.

Thread summary:

This wasn't contradiction, it was provocation.

Vader keeps calling Luke his son, but Luke responds by basically saying that his real father wouldn't do this to him.

Luke is telling Vader that he has a choice coming up...he can be Anakin Skywalker, his father, or he can be Darth Vader, the murderer (from a certain point of view. If Vader turns Luke over to the Emperor, then Anakin can be considered dead as far as Luke is concerned.

It's guilt-tripping. Sort of like when one family member says another is "dead to me".

This is what I'm talking about... people like you are obviously trying to bait me into flaming back. i came here to argue a point, not to get personal. Maybe you should take a look at your own behaviour...

And anyway... it looks like everyone's assumptions about Yoda changing his mind are just fan speculation. This comes from the ROTS novelisation summary ending, which you can find in Darth Psychotic's thread...

"Yoda insists that they not be trained as Jedi in any way whatsoever, for obscure Yoda reasons."

uhhhhh so whats your point?

there seems to be a contridiction. but in this instance i do believe yoda senses danger in training the twins. vader might sense them. and they would be a target of the emperor and vader, for different reasons of course. palpatine wants to kill them. vader wants them to train and to overthrow palpatine. maybe they need to grow up not knowing of their connection to the force. and they would choose to follow that path if and when the force determines they are ready. remember, obiwan doesn't force or trick luke into training. luke made the decision. his original decision was to not train and to not follow obi wan. but made the decision to train after owen and beru were killed. yoda must have learned something. the jedi had to rethink and allow the force to decide when the time was ready to come back into balance.

"When right is the time for skills to be taught, to us the living Force will bring them."

doesn't jive with the novelisation summary which says that Yoda insists they not be trained "in any way whatsoever".

And a summary by its nature is someone's abbreviated interpretation of the words. This summary may or may not be reliable anyway. Don't lose sleep over it.

Dogg.

I don´t believe that "summary" is accurate or even real. If it is, then Yoda doesn´t want to train them at all, and Obi-Wan has to persuade him eventually, or it´s fake and Yoda wants to train them, but let them mature first.

Actually... to be fair... the "average" audience probably wouldn't even notice these (alleged) inconsistencies in the first place, don't you think?

I'm not sure I see the problems here. Let me ask you this: what if you SEE the character development in ROTS. What if there's a discussion about why Yoda changes his mind... or about what he learned that changed his mind?

As for why Yoda says Luke is too old to begin the training... do you really think that was anything more than testing Luke? Trying to get him riled up? He was one of two potential Jedi left in the galaxy... do you really think Yoda was just going to go back to his old views and not train Luke -one of their last hopes to defeat the Sith - because he was too old?

This isn't an attack, but it seems to me like you're the one reaching for the theories. I never even thought about this being a problem, and even after it was pointed out to me, it doesn't seem like a big deal to me.

Well that didnt work the way i wanted it to, but anyway as to my behavior ive only made like 8 posts so i dont see how ive been rude to anyone but if what i said riles you up -so sorry charlie- but constantly telling everyone they are wrong about this subject is a little pretentious dont you think? do you know for a fact what is going to happen in Ep 3?

Besides some small constuctive critisism might do some good

Your capitalization is incorrect, your spelling is horrible and you lack any rudimentary knowledge of the concept of punctuation.

How's that for "constuctive critisism"?

Thank you, I guess that is what I get for typing as fast as I can.

Need to figure out how to use the quote thing better. I thought that good grammar didnt apply here.

Anyway thanks again. Now that my fourth grade education has been made clear can we get back on topic?

They think Anakin is too old because hes the oldest to become a jedi in possibly forever. But he proved it didnt matter and he had lived a life of discipline as a slave. He made a powerful Jedi. His download was not that he was trained to late in his life, it was his violation of the Jedi Code, and his attatchment to Padme. Yoda was just testing Luke and later in the Hut with his 'He is too old, too old to begin the training.'

Mmmm...well I don't think that makes much sense.

Firstly -


How do you know this? Is it said in the film?

Secondly -


By turning to the Dark Side, slaughtering the Jedi and becoming Darth Vader? Anakin was not a model Jedi. Powerful, yes, but dangerous. If anything, had he been trained far younger he may not have turned to the Dark Side.

Dogg.

The "Summary", could have just as well been written by anyone that's been on this board, or even TF.N , or for that matter Stupidshadow.
I didn't find anything too revealing or NEW, that most spoiler junkies didn't already know...and the "NEW" stuff could have been easily made up...but, my point is MOO.

The attachment factor is why "I" believe Anakin was considered too old to be trained...and why most Jedi were taken at birth or close to it...to avoid personal feelings from interferring with their training.

Yoda's reply to Obi-wan's spirit was definately made in jest. You can hear it in his voice, almost as if it was an after thought, trying to give some bullshit excuse.

On a side note....I never thought about Yoda saying "This one a long time
have I watched. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was
doing."

Obviously, Yoda has been reaching out with the Force, checking up on Luke since he's been on Tatooine.

My apologies about the grammar, I meant to be sarcastic but I should have left that out.

Those posts were written with too much haste.

Being in mid 20's should equal good grammar & good discussion.

He said the same thing to anakin then trained him as well, or excuse ok'd his training. Remember how mad anakin got even as a little kid, you saw that first bit of disrespect when he says,"what does that have to do with anything".
Yoda does the same thing to luke then says much of his father i sense in him or something like that.

since no one here has either seen the movie OR read the book, all I can garner from this thread is hot air.