What If Vader Had Survived?

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

After watching the scene again (or, to be more precise, the Rifftraxed version of that scene) it certainly seems something is up. Palpatine yells, does his little spinning jump, and lands in front of him. He then pauses and raises his saber to attack. The other Jedi have sufficient time to react to this, and raise their own weapons in defence. There's about two seconds where Palpatine is just standing in front of them doing nothing, then suddenly lunges forwards, skewers one Jedi, spins around and slashes another Jedi and then goes on to fight Windu and Fisto, who put up some real resistance. The two Jedi killed initialy seem to put up damn all of a defence.

yeah. Just seems like bad choreography to me.

[Sionnach Glic]

Aye, that's almost certainly the real-life explaination. Presumably they intended it to look as though Palpatine just jumped in and stabbled before they could react, but that's not how it comes across.

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

That's mine, too. They messed it up and made everyone look half-asleep.

[Tyyr]

That's how I saw it as well, like the damn Jedi were totally asleep at the wheel. If they'd been standing there without their sabers in hand I could see him pulling that off but with four Jedi standing there they should have cut his old ass down.

[Mark]

Aye, the Force failed them spectacularly.

[Captain Seafort]

Aye, the Force failed them spectacularly.

Given that the increasing power of the Sith had been slowly clouding the Force for a millennia, and the Clone Wars and Palpatine greatly accelerated the process, that's not very surprising. By AotC the situation was so bad that Windu advocated alerting the Senate to it.

[Tyyr]

Ok, take the force out of it. Even an average human swordsman should have been able to get his saber up to guard. Palp landed, posed for two seconds, then gave this HUGE telegraphed lunge.

[Captain Seafort]

An average human swordsman wouldn't have spent his life depending on the Force to guide his actions. Luke described the effects of Ysalamiri as worse than losing a limb, and while the effects shroud of the dark side probably wasn't as bad, it indicates how much the Jedi rely on the Force. At ground zero, with Palptine making a concious effort to blind and disorientate his opponents, I can see it have the effect observed.

[Sionnach Glic]

Indeed. I can easily see the Jedi of that period having become so dependant on their Force powers that they're pretty much useless without them. It's possible that the two Jedi that were killed quickly were just relying on the Force to prompt them to do something, and so just stood there and got skewered. Fisto and Windu, two more experienced warriors, reacted properly to the attack even without the Force to guide them.

[Reliant121]

I can see the dependency being somewhat like going momentarily blind or deaf.

[Deepcrush]

Or both since its the Force...

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

Kinda good for Luke's Order that a lot of his students are adults and don't necessarily need the Force to be able to function.

[BigJKU316]

Aye, the Force failed them spectacularly.

Given that the increasing power of the Sith had been slowly clouding the Force for a millennia, and the Clone Wars and Palpatine greatly accelerated the process, that's not very surprising. By AotC the situation was so bad that Windu advocated alerting the Senate to it.

I never got this. One or two Sith were able to cloud the force? Yet it seemed to have no real effect on many of their other powers as we observe people doing all the other Jedi stuff pretty much without problems. Not to be difficult but if one can still leap from a speeder, fall several hundred stories, land on another speeder, lose their lightsaber and have another jedi in another speeder catch it everything seems to be working pretty well.

It did not impact their ability to fight other Sith. It did not seem to really impact anything but their ability to sit around and see the future. Everything else seemed to be working just fine.

I tend to agree with others, it was just bad film making. Lucas wanted to show how badass Palpatine was so he had him slaughter a few unimportant Jedi without really giving much thought to if it was a logical situation to have 4 high level Jedi be defeated by 1 guy.

[Captain Seafort]

Kinda good for Luke's Order that a lot of his students are adults and don't necessarily need the Force to be able to function.

They'd probably still need it in combat. Luke certainly does. People like Horn and Katarn probably less so given that they had combat training before they joined the order, but most of the others would probably have little or no idea how to react if they were cut off.

[Captain Seafort]

I never got this. One or two Sith were able to cloud the force?

One alone, evidently.

Yet it seemed to have no real effect on many of their other powers as we observe people doing all the other Jedi stuff pretty much without problems. Not to be difficult but if one can still leap from a speeder, fall several hundred stories, land on another speeder, lose their lightsaber and have another jedi in another speeder catch it everything seems to be working pretty well.

You're using the actions of Jedi acting under the shroud as evidence that the shroud isn't affecting them much - we see nothing of what the Jedi could accomplish if it weren't for that interference. The only way to establish a proper baseline would be to use the Old Republic comics, or the Darth Bane novels. Everything else is either under the shroud, or relating to Luke's order, which is only a fraction of the strength of the original given the institutional knowledge that was lost. A few months training under Yoda and the records of the Chu'unthor don't come close to replacing the temple archives.

It did not impact their ability to fight other Sith.

One Sith was killed when he got cocky and overconfident, another when he was up against the most powerful Force-using individual in the galaxy, who had been groomed for years as his replacement, and the third went through the entire temple like a hot knife through butter.

I tend to agree with others, it was just bad film making. Lucas wanted to show how badass Palpatine was so he had him slaughter a few unimportant Jedi without really giving much thought to if it was a logical situation to have 4 high level Jedi be defeated by 1 guy.

OOU, I agree - the problem is that McDiarmid is far better at channelling Ian Richardson than Errol Flynn. IU, however, the shroud is canon and provides a decent enough explanation for why a couple of Council Masters stood around gawping.