Could the Star Wars prequel movies have been saved?

Kobajagrande · Post by **Kobajagrande** » Sun Oct 04, 2009 11:58 am

FrankTrollman wrote: Completely disagree. First off, it's an action movie. We're supposed o empathize with Amadala and her people, but the only thing that is actually on camera to make me want her to succeed is the fact that she is pretty. At no time does anything ever come on screen to show her people being in worse hands under the droid army than under her own monarchy. And that makes all of the fights between droids and main characters meaningless, because like the Republic council itself you are given no real reason to care about the outcome.

Personally, I thought Naboo shit could have fulfilled its role more or less how it was. It was obvious a stronger guy was trying to force something out of a weaker one, and when the weaker guy refuses, he starts beating on him. That was pretty much about it.

The wasted stuff was actually in the Senate; it failed to portray the actual significance of the Naboo thingey on the Republic political system. The point should have been that peaceful methods of resolving conflict and the arbitration of whatever Republic body arbitrated failed, and that now you have a law of stronger. Which would have established the Republic as a desirable state to be in (which was kinda important), and also lead into some kind of armament craze from which the Clone Wars could have sprung.

Kobajagrande · Post by **Kobajagrande** » Sun Oct 04, 2009 12:10 pm

Neeeek wrote:You don't need a montage. You need an establishing image. Darth Maul doesn't do a single thing that is clearly wrong in the entire time he is on-screen. He's the bad guy because he's the one who looks like a demon. Contrast to Vader, who, in the first scene you see him, picks someone up and chokes him to death. Maul kills exactly one person, and that person attacked him the first time they met and was trying to kill Maul when he died. Not the most convincing villain.

That's kind of what I was saying with the whole "sith motives should have been explained" thing. I mean, the sith were the villains of the movies, that's clear. They were supposed to be the ones to be feared by the audience. People should have gasped when they learned the Sith were behind the separatists. And there should have been a shiver when they learned it was Palpatine behind all of it.

Notice how the trade feddy is no-where mentioned there.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Sun Oct 04, 2009 5:17 pm

A few lines of dialogue about how they are evil were given and were no more satisfying then how the plight of Naboo's people were given out through dialogue.

Even in your argument where you want the Sith to look like real badguys there would still need to be scenes depicting what they are doing that is so evil. As it is the Sith are just like senators trying to get ahead in the system. That shit happens all the time and the Jedi do nothing about it. Now if the Sith manipulate people into killing for them THAT would be evil. So the RESULTS of their manipulation should be showed. This would have the TFs killing people under their orders. Why can't the Sith be the ones depicted doing this? Because they are the manipulators and don't have any more than two guys pulling the strings.

I say they should've depicted the Jedi like they did on the cartoon network series between Episodes 2 and 3. I never thought the Jedi were really strong at all or could do anything that would win a war until I saw the shit they did in the miniseries. Hell those 5 minute shorts watched together back to back were more interesting to watch than the entire prequel trilogy. Hell Ryan vs Weiber fan videos were more satisfying to watch than the prequels. Give me good plot or give me action at least if you can give me a good combination of both.

Edit: Just in case people get confused I am talking about the 2d animated series that was split into small 5 minute episodes before the 3 prequel appeared. Not the "Clone Wars" pile of Lucas manure they have running as a series now.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun Oct 04, 2009 5:39 pm

Kobajagrande wrote: The Sith were the villains, retard. Not the separatists.

No, that's wrong. The separatists were also supposed to be the villains. You know, like the Stormtroopers are villains even though they're vehicles for whatever evil Tarkin and Vader needed doing.

The separatists might not have been the big bad but they were the face of the villains for the first and second movie. They need to be threatening and evil. Otherwise you get a situation like Return of the Jedi where you don't take the villains seriously because a main arm of the villains (the Stormtroopers) are jokes.

The separatists were there to show that the Republic was falling apart. You think that "invasion by some aliens from outer space" shows breaking apart of a republic as good as "civil war"? Stop trying to look stupid, please.

In an action movie a motif should never come at the expense of audience entertainment. Otherwise you're just wanking to your own script, one of the many problems which plagued Episode III. If George Lucas can not make a civil war as exciting or as menacing as foreign invaders then he should scrap the civil war idea. Now I'm not saying that he or anyone could have made a civil war exciting, it's just that if what we got is the best he could pull off then he shouldn't have had a civil war in the first place.

Never mind the fact that "some aliens from outer space" would mess up the point of "republic being the entire SW world and everything that matters".

Why the fuck should anyone care about that asinine plot point? What does preserving that possibly add to the movie? How does the theme of " Republic is the entire SW world and everything that matters" entertains the audience? I can see how that would entertain a narrow-minded fanboy, but fanboys love feeding their ego at the expense of entertaining others so we can just safely ignore it.

No, seriously; just stop.

Hey, look guys, some stupid chimp who earlier told people not to think about what they were watching is saying that I should stop talking! Isn't that just adorable?

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun Oct 04, 2009 5:48 pm

Kobajagrande wrote: That's kind of what I was saying with the whole "sith motives should have been explained" thing. I mean, the sith were the villains of the movies, that's clear. They were supposed to be the ones to be feared by the audience. People should have gasped when they learned the Sith were behind the separatists. And there should have been a shiver when they learned it was Palpatine behind all of it.

Notice how the trade feddy is no-where mentioned there.

See, this is what I don't understand about you.

You want the audience to go 'Gasp, the Sith are back!' when the reveal comes. But you're also mocking my point that more effort should have been made to make the villains and the Sith scarier.

If the Sith are not made sufficiently scary because the ones we see are chumps who don't have any interesting motives or threat factor, why is the audience supposed to care that the Sith are back? The answer: they're not.

This is exactly the reason why Darth Maul's character failed. The Phantom Menace wanted us to believe that the dark days are returning because the Sith are back. Okay, fair enough. So when the face of the Sith, Darth Maul, enters the picture, what happens?

Darth Maul doesn't kill anyone. He doesn't do anything blatantly evil onscreen. He doesn't prepare a cunning 'OMG you clever bastard!' trap. He doesn't say anything cool or threatening. He does have a 'holy shit that kicks ass' swordfight at the end but then it's all undone immediately by killing him off without doing any of the above things. In what way were we supposed to take him seriously as a villain?

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun Oct 04, 2009 5:57 pm

Kobajagrande wrote: Personally, I thought Naboo shit could have fulfilled its role more or less how it was. It was obvious a stronger guy was trying to force something out of a weaker one, and when the weaker guy refuses, he starts beating on him. That was pretty much about it.

You called that sufficient? A few shots of a destroyed city?

How is that supposed to bring sufficient amounts of pathos/sense of urgency? A big guy beats up on a little guy, we see some crumbled buildings, we hear an off-hand remark about how Naboo's people are suffering?

That is weaksauce. That's not even a sufficient level of villainy for a G.I. Joe cartoon. A modern audience has seen God knows how many 'this city is being oppressed by bad guys!' scenes. If you want your audience to feel for said victims at all you need to go the extra mile.

Yeah, a shot of a wrecked city and some tears from Amidala's eyes. That totally tugs at the old heartstrings.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Sun Oct 04, 2009 6:45 pm

Kobajagrande --

Your position is baffling.

If you don't think the Federation should be scary, they have no place in the movie. They just muddle it up and add boringness. They should be removed and replaced with some other threat, as LAGO proposes. Now, I don't agree with him about the idea of invaders from outside the galaxy, but the point is that he proposed removing the Feds and you flipped out.

You ALSO flipped out on Frank for proposing that the TFs actually be evil. I don't understand how you can hold both positions at once.

Faced with a boring and lifeless character or plot arc, you have two choices, and ONLY two choices. You can make it worth watching or, if it's supposed to be boring, drastically cut its screen time. You seem to be proposing neither, but instead deliberately inflicting mediocrity on the audience.

Parthenon · Post by **Parthenon** » Sun Oct 04, 2009 9:02 pm

When the hell did Anakin have a sibling? Why should Lukes "aunt and uncle" even be related to him at all? Yeah, from the summaries his mother got bought and married but with no mention of any later children before she got killed. And even if she had another child, why would they bother to take in Luke?

Seriously, Luke and Leia could have been adopted by pretty much anyone. So, if Vader has no links any more with Tattooine then its entirely reasonable for Luke to be hidden away somewhere Vader tries to forget about.

The other thing is, since Jedi are trained from a very young age and Yoda/Obi Wan can expect the twins to have Jedi potential they should have taught them about the force before they reached puberty. Why wouldn't they teach them so what happened to Anakin wouldn't happen again?

And thats ignoring the fact that it was a bastardy thing to do to split twins up.

EDIT:
Wouldn't it make more sense if Padme had tried to send her kids off as far away as possible without the help of the Jedi by getting them adopted by different random people. She could be trying to have them avoid the Jedi altogether.

So, Leia gets adopted by an upper class family. Obi Wan finds her and tries to teach them but gets run off by the foster parents.

Luke on the other hand gets adopted by random farmers. Obi Wan follows Luke to Tattooine to keep an eye on him, but has changed his mind: since Padme doesn't want her children Jedi taught Obi Wan accepts her wishes unless Luke asks to be taught. He then lets Leia's foster family know where he is in case Leia wants to learn about the Force.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Sun Oct 04, 2009 9:07 pm

Why wouldn't they teach them so what happened to Anakin wouldn't happen again?

Jedi were being hunted. If you train them to be Jedi someone as force sensitive as Vader and the Emperor would have picked up on their powers before they had attained enough mastery/maturity to hide their abilities. As to why they were split up I'd assume was to make sure that if one was found one of them would still be free (no reason for Vader to suspect he had twins).

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Sun Oct 04, 2009 9:23 pm

FrankTrollman wrote: Secondly, because the primary Naboo conflict is one that the audience (and apparently the senate) do not give a damn about, it leaves the entire segue into the second movie as peculiar in the extreme. No one cares, nothing bad happened, and the Jedi council solved everything behind the scenes anyway. What do we need a new Chancellor for?

If something actually bad had happened on screen and been openly talked about while the senate did nothing, it would provide an understandable excuse for an increase in Federal powers. As is, some characters walked from set piece to set piece and the only injustice that gets any screen time at all is on fucking Tatooine. Why is there suddenly support anywhere for an army of the republic?

Yeah, you know... that's a damn good point, and one I never really actively considered until you pointed it out.

Really what happened on Naboo isn't a failure of the current of system, it actually just shows the success of the current system. The jedi solved the problem without having any kind of army. Good prevailed in the end; Naboo was saved.

If the jedi didn't manage to fix it or some horrible catastrophe occured before they could, then we might understand it. But you're right Frank, it's basically totally pointless. The jedi probably responded to and fixed the problem faster than it would take an army.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun Oct 04, 2009 9:48 pm

Hey, if you guys can pull off the civil war angle more power to you. It's just that doing so has some problems. Minor problems but still problems.

The Republic has been around for quite some time. So in order to give a reason as to why there would be a civil war, you need either a standing grievance that got out of hand (like the United States and slavery) or there was a major political upheaval that would turn people who happily participated in this peaceful union to bloodthirsty bastards.

The former issue has a problem with either limiting the amount of evil that can be done by the separatists (which then creates the problem of us not getting engaged into the conflict) or that the Separatists, like the southern slaveholder gentry, were evil all along but things got out of hand. The problem with that is that it makes the Republic and especially the Jedi look bad by contrast.

Here's what I mean. The Jedi in the first movie went down to Tattoine and apparently didn't give two shits about slavery. They were totally fine with this, even purchasing a slave and not giving a rat's ass about the mother for the rest of the series. There was a clear evil going on in the Republic and the guardians of truth and justice did not give a shit about it. This pretty much wrecked the image of the Jedis' nobility for the rest of the series.

Or going back to the Civil War analogy again, the Southern states looked really bad for practicing slavery. But the Northern states ended up looking bad, too, turning a blind eye towards it. So if there's a clearly evil organization in the Republic and the other people don't do anything about it for so long, it makes them look bad. And while that may be the point of the prequel trilogy, it also makes the Jedi look bad, too, which I find much less acceptable if you're doing a movie with black and white morals.

That said, I'm not sure why everyone is so against the simpler 'Evil Foreign Invaders' theme. It's not even like it'll create continuity problems; all you have to do is end up with the Empire crushing the foreign invaders as well as subverting the Republic. You know, a 'He Who Fights Monsters' kind of deal.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun Oct 04, 2009 9:54 pm

RandomCasualty2 wrote:If the jedi didn't manage to fix it or some horrible catastrophe occured before they could, then we might understand it. But you're right Frank, it's basically totally pointless. The jedi probably responded to and fixed the problem faster than it would take an army.

Yup, the only thing that really changed was that Emperor Palpatine was elected chancellor, Anakin received Jedi training, and the Jedi are aware of the returning Sith menace.

The thing is, most of the continuity events the 1st movie set up are either meaningless in the long run (the return of the Sith) or could have been done off-camera. Did we really need to see Palpatine going from senator to chancellor? Why can't he just start the second movie as one? Why couldn't Anakin just have been introduced as an apprentice padawan for the first time? Why did Anakin have to meet Padme as a child before he romanced her?

Who knows. The only vital thing that happened in the first movie that couldn't really have been backstoried in the second one without losing drama was Anakin's mother being left behind on Tattooine and getting killed. And you know what? Considering how that action made the Jedi look like huge insensitive bastards that plot point shouldn't have existed in the first place.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Sun Oct 04, 2009 9:54 pm

LAGO, the entire point of the prequel trilogy, regardless of what Lucas says about it, seems to be that the Jedi were assholes who had it coming. That may not have been Lucas' intention, but if not it should have been.

I'm not sure it's eve possible to set a story in the mythical golden age unless you're going to reveal it wasn't so golden after all. There's a reason Golden Ages are supposed to be in the past

Same reason the Solar Deliberative gets sketchier with every Exalted release.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun Oct 04, 2009 9:59 pm

Boolean wrote: LAGO, the entire point of the prequel trilogy, regardless of what Lucas says about it, seems to be that the Jedi were assholes who had it coming. That may not have been Lucas' intention, but if not it should have been.

Did anyone really want to see a prequel trilogy where it was retroactively constructed that Obi-Wan Kenobi was a bastard (like the 2nd and 3rd movies made him out to be), that Yoda was a careless idiot (like the 2nd movie), and so on?

I'm not saying that you can't make an entertaining movie out of that, I'm just wondering how are you supposed to pitch this idea to the general audience. It would be like revealing in TKAM2 that Atticus Finch used to be a serial rapist who never got caught and is now lawyering to atone for his crimes.

You might in fact get a good movie out of that. But it's much more likely you'll just end up creating the next Chrono Cross and having everyone hate your movie regardless of any artistic merits.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Sun Oct 04, 2009 10:08 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Did anyone really want to see a prequel trilogy where it was retroactively constructed that Obi-Wan Kenobi was a bastard (like the 2nd and 3rd movies made him out to be), that Yoda was a careless idiot (like the 2nd movie), and so on?

I totally disliked both those guys to start with. And they totally get their comeuppance in the original films.

So I'd be cool with that. Everything else needs changing though.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Mon Oct 05, 2009 1:08 am

If you want to give the Jedi greater powers, and make them neither bastards nor idiots, I seriously don't understand how you're going to justify it when they lose. What could possibly take them down?

Plus, people like happy endings. The more you hate the Jedi Masters the more of a happy ending the prequels have.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Oct 05, 2009 1:26 am

Boolean wrote: If you want to give the Jedi greater powers, and make them neither bastards nor idiots, I seriously don't understand how you're going to justify it when they lose. What could possibly take them down?

A Pyrrhic battle to the death with the dark Jedi and then Darth Vader/Palpatine kill off the survivors of the conflict, cementing their rule.

Boolean wrote:Plus, people like happy endings. The more you hate the Jedi Masters the more of a happy ending the prequels have.

Why were the prequel movies supposed to have a happy ending? The prequels have to end with the bad guys wrecking people's faces because in the future (original trilogy) the good guys need to take down the bad guys.

Are you saying that as a consolation prize people should be seeing annoying characters get theirs? Like: 'man, watching the Republic fall was a downer but at least Jar-Jar died in a fiery explosion!'

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Mon Oct 05, 2009 1:59 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote: Are you saying that as a consolation prize people should be seeing annoying characters get theirs? Like: 'man, watching the Republic fall was a downer but at least Jar-Jar died in a fiery explosion!'

It's sad that didn't happen.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Oct 05, 2009 2:05 am

Hey, I'm all for annoying characters getting what-for, but you know what would be better than Scrappy being put into a meat grinder? Not having a Scrappy Doo in the first place.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Mon Oct 05, 2009 2:28 am

This is why prequels are very, very hard to do well. Frequently the established backstory doesn't make a very good story. Which is fine, it wasn't supposed to. All kinds of good stories assume things in the past which would be awful plots for a variety of reasons.

Even when the backstory is an acceptable story it's hampered by the fact that you've often already seen or heard about all the best parts. I personally don't want to go into the theater knowing exactly what to expect, so a prequel which only runs through established backplot is hardly satisfying.

Basically, I don't think prequels should be written unless you're willing for them to radically depart from the way those events were presented in the original, and radically change your perception of the events they lead up to. In any event, "a Sith did it" is hardly a satisfying explanation for the fall of the Jedi. You've explicitly claimed they should be portrayed as individually armyslaying badasses. Therefore the Sith would need to the same way. You run into several problems:

First, I really do believe that Good beats evil. If both sides have thousands of demigods, the side which is selfless and serene will always win against the side which is selfish and backstabbing.

Second, it's even more difficult to believe that the Empire was able to suppress the belief that the force ever existed

Third, though this comes down to personal taste and not objective merit, I think it makes the original trilogy too small. It's kinda hard to get too excited about the interplay between the various figures in the Empire if it's been explicitly defined as insignificant. I mean, I get that the Empire was always meant to be a fallen world that lacks its former glory but when your prequels feature thousands of people more powerful than Luke and Vader one wonders how any of this is a big deal. ESPECIALLY if you introduce extragalactic invaders who, no matter how badly they got beaten in the new prequels, should easily be able to open a can of whoopass on the Empire.

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Mon Oct 05, 2009 2:40 am

Boolean wrote: Basically, I don't think prequels should be written unless you're willing for them to radically depart from the way those events were presented in the original, and radically change your perception of the events they lead up to. In any event, "a Sith did it" is hardly a satisfying explanation for the fall of the Jedi. You've explicitly claimed they should be portrayed as individually armyslaying badasses. Therefore the Sith would need to the same way. You run into several problems:

Honestly I never saw the armyslaying aspects of the Jedi in the original trilogy at all.

I mean Luke takes on a bunch of guys at Jabba's place, but that's seriously about it. Obi Wan fights like a single battle and dies. Yoda never fights. Yeah they could block laser beams and stuff, but they still only have one light saber, and an army has many rifles.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Mon Oct 05, 2009 2:51 am

Sorry, I may not have been clear.

The original trilogy Jedi are not armyslayers, they're pretty lowkey. The prequels portrayed the Old Republic Jedi as substantially more powerful. Lago would apparently step them up even more.

Having more powerful Jedi in the prequels than the originals makes sense on a lot of levels. It brings the visual wow. It reflects the fantasy trope of a Golden Age when everything was bigger and better. It's even pretty logical, when you consider that the active Jedi of the original series are an old guy, a cripple, and a rookie.

But there are some problems this introduces as well. Usually there's more than one generation separating the Golden Age from the time of the story, but in Star Wars it seems many people from the Golden Age are STILL ALIVE, even "normals." If so they should be TALKING about the fallen grandeur of their world, and certainly shouldn't have forgotten that magic ever existed.

Further, if you call attention to the fact that the original cast are a geezer, a cripple, and a farmboy, it turns the original trilogy into, well, a cripple fight. Why should you care about the machinations of these Jedi rejects? Well, that works if they're the only game in town but remember, Lago insists that we need to portray the Republic as only one state in a larger world. Assuming anybody outside the republic had any kind of tech or magic on a comparable level to the Old Republic, the Empire should be child's play for the extragalactic invaders Lago wants to introduce.

IGTN · Post by **IGTN** » Mon Oct 05, 2009 3:05 am

They don't need to be extragalactic, there just need to be planets in the galaxy that aren't part of the Republic for whatever reason.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Oct 05, 2009 3:09 am

Boolean wrote:First, I really do believe that Good beats evil. If both sides have thousands of demigods, the side which is selfless and serene will always win against the side which is selfish and backstabbing.

Um, why?

Second, it's even more difficult to believe that the Empire was able to suppress the belief that the force ever existed

Yup. This is unfortunately an enormous plot hole with any kind of prequel trilogy. 18 years is just not enough time for people to forget about the 'glory days' of the Republic and certainly not enough time to forget when people had superpowers and an army of intergalactic assassins.

In this case it's best just to handwave it and move on with it as quickly as possible, like what the Matrix did with the 'using humans for energy'. The Matrix movies would have fallen apart without having a reason for machines to keep humans around and without a way to keep humans locked up in a 'dream world'.

The filmmakers apparently came up with a better idea than that--using human brainpower for a neural net--but they also felt that the intended audience wouldn't really get the gist of the machines' motivations. So they picked up something that 'sounded good' to the audience and moved on with it. I don't really begrudge them of it.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Oct 05, 2009 3:27 am

Boolean wrote: Further, if you call attention to the fact that the original cast are a geezer, a cripple, and a farmboy, it turns the original trilogy into, well, a cripple fight. Why should you care about the machinations of these Jedi rejects? Well, that works if they're the only game in town but remember, Lago insists that we need to portray the Republic as only one state in a larger world. Assuming anybody outside the republic had any kind of tech or magic on a comparable level to the Old Republic, the Empire should be child's play for the extragalactic invaders Lago wants to introduce.

Batman has fewer superpowers than Superman. Does that make his fights less entertaining to watch? When Justice League episodes switch from the antics of Green Lantern to Black Canary for awhile, do people immediately change the channel when her action scenes come up because her powers aren't as powerful as his?

The objective power of a hero rarely has much to do with how impressive their feats are. What impress us are fights where the hero overcomes great odds. Obi-Wan Kenobi isn't awesome because he had a sword and had Jedi mind-tricks. He's awesome because he infiltrated a moon base and helped pull off a nearly impossible rescue of a princess with stealth and courage.

...

Now, the ultimate reason why I want the Jedi to be more powerful is because the scope of the fights in the prequel trilogy are supposed to be greater. In the original trilogy, we never really got to see masses of Jedi fight enemies or fleets of spaceships duke it out against the other. All of the conflicts in those movies were seriously resolved by small groups of guys hitting at weak points.

In the prequel trilogy, where we have Jedis, they ARE competing for attention against a massive enemy army. I mean, let's do some quick math. Say there are a thousand Jedi available for ass-kicking. Each Jedi can kick as much ass as, say, 10 Storm Troopers clones. Now that's all well and good, but we're not talking about a battle with 10,000 or even a hundred thousand clones. This is motherfucking Star Wars, bitches, engagements of less than a hundred thousand are insulting.

But if you have conflicts that involve millions of soldiers and you only have 1000 Jedi, who the fuck cares about the Jedi? Why is it a big deal that they went down?

The way I see it, you have a few choices.

1) Keep the Jedi at the same power level, but have a lot more of them. Like so many that you have Jedi regiments assorted by sex, race, and planet origin with ten thousand each.

2) Boost the power of the Jedi so that in a war of this scale we actually do give a fuck what they're doing. Problem: Boolean and RC2 already talked about it.

3) Retool the Jedi so that they have a completely different role. I think it was RandomCasualty who suggested that rather than being valued for their ass-kicking they were valued for their ability to rally personality cults. They could kick ass but that's not what they were valued for. Problem: Like #1, it kind of deflates the Jedi's image as a badass. Furthermore, it kind of brings up very uneasy questions as to why you need to have a Jedi for these things.

The reason being is that rallying people and getting tiny men to follow you isn't exactly a trait of a Jedi. It's such a non-earthshaking ability that many people think that they can do it. In other words, if you have a job that calls for kicking ass with a laser sword and using telekinesis, it makes sense why someone would say that they need a Jedi. If you have a job that calls for rallying and inspiring people... it leads to questions like why you specifically needed a Jedi for this.

It's like the whole 'Palpatine is a Sith' issue. As far as the prequel trilogy is concerned, his Sith title is completely meaningless to all of the villainy he perpetrates. He could have just as easily done all of the important plot events as a regular Joe.