Yoda one that I want

Criticising the creators of a story for getting their own characterisation wrong is not a good idea. It makes you look like a complete idiot. All too often on Twitter we see men (for it is always men) explaining a character and their motivation to the creator of said character, seemingly without thinking, 'Maybe this person knows more about their own character than I do'. Normally the end of that exchange comes about when the critic asks the creator just who they think they are, and the creator points out the name on the cover.

With that now in place, I'm going to criticise George Lucas for the characterisation of one of his own characters and possibly look like a complete idiot.

Yoda has been one of the enduring characters of the Star Wars saga, and not just because when 900 years old you reach, look as good you will not. He's small. He's green. He's wise. He has expressive pointy ears that a Vulcan would look at with envious eyes, were it not completely illogical. He's also got a reputation as a benign, benevolent presence within the Jedi order.

I for one am mystified how this came to pass, because Yoda in the original triology was a very different character. He wasn't defined by his weird syntax in Empire; no, he was best summed up as being a Jedi master taking on Luke's training who carried a vaguely threatening aura. There was very little benevolence about him. In fact, I'd argue that the audience was encouraged to reserve judgement on him. Was he actually helping Luke, or was he a potential enemy? Once we see his motivations are pure, he's still not all benevolence and helpfulness.

Consider this: When Luke Skywalker first arrives on Dagobah, Yoda doesn't reveal who he is. Instead, he is this mischievous elf thing. We can work out from the context that Yoda is judging Luke, working out whether the son of Anakin Skywalker is worth training. He sees someone who is impulsive (not helped by having a blaster pulled on him within about half a nanosecond of unveiling his presence), who has too much in common with his father, and who he even says he feels cannot be taught. This is a long way from the Yoda we see in the prequels.

Also consider this: When Yoda agrees to train Luke - after intervention from Force ghost Obi-Wan Kenobi - there's a distinct sense of underlying threat. He asks Obi-Wan whether Luke will finish what he begins, at which point Luke says he won't fail. That he isn't afraid. Yoda's response? 'You will be. You will be.' The camera shifts back to Luke, who's sitting back, uncertain of Yoda. That's not the response of a benevolent teacher; it's the response of someone much darker. It's almost a threat against Luke. That threat is carried out. Luke is sent into the cave where he faces a dark side version of himself in Darth Vader's armour. Yoda gives him no warning what to expect; in fact, he tells Luke that he won't need his weapons when he sets off to the cave, leaving Luke potentially all the more vulnerable. That scene - for me, one of the best in the entire saga - is open to so much interpretation. Did Luke take the darkness with him by taking the weapons? What would have happened if he'd gone without? Was he really at risk? But in not telling Luke what he faced, Yoda was revealing himself as a potentially threatening figure.

Then there's the bit everyone remembers. You know the bit: sinking X-wing, Luke being a bit whiny and negative, failing to lift it out of the water, and then Yoda showing off. 'I don't believe it,' says Luke in an echo of every child I've ever taught. 'That,' says Yoda, 'is why you failed.' It's inspirational. If you believe, you can achieve. It's something I'm more than happy to put on my own classroom wall as an inspirational quote. The problem is that Yoda has once again shown his own power. That power is so much greater than Luke's, and yet he's sending Luke out to face Darth Vader. It should be said that Yoda is absolutely clear that Luke is nowhere near the end of his training at this point, which is why he says Luke shouldn't go to help at Cloud City - his one actually benevolent move - but it's still something that should make us question Yoda.

So in the original trilogy, Yoda sends us mixed messages. He's something of an enigma. Even if his goals match with the rebels, his methods and deeper motivations are open to debate. He's mischievous, slightly threatening and even slightly arrogant. So why does he become something a far cry from this in the prequels?

We never see that version of Yoda in the prequel trilogy. We see someone who is a patient teacher. We see someone who is child-like and yet wise and calm. There's no threat to him. There's little mischief. The character has gone out of him. There was no reason for him to turn into that character either.

It's been said by more commentators than I care to read that the prequel trilogy is a massive disappointment. People have consistently suggested improvements, but one of the obvious ones is staring us in the face. And if George Lucas had beeen sharp enough, I'm sure he'd have seen it: Yoda should have been different. We see Yoda's stubbornness in Episode I when he withholds his blessing from Obi-Wan's decision to train Anakin, but that's about it. We don't see that threatening side. We don't see a side of him where he would withhold training from someone.

That's another problem. The end of Episode III sees Yoda pretty much declaring Luke and Leia the new hope, so why would he refuse to train him? There are many legitimate reasons why he might have taken the action he did in Empire - testing Luke is the obvious one, with the intention always existing to train him when he showed himself worthy of passing on the torch of hope to a new generation of Jedi - and many of those points make some of my arguments moot points, but none addresses why Yoda was characterised as this incredibly patient teacher with time for all. The big problem is that George Lucas failed to realise what he had created in Yoda.

So how could Yoda have been improved? There are a number of suggestions I'd make. One would be to have made him more arrogant so the doom of the Jedi order was in part down to his hubris. That's implied at times in the novelisations and the expanded universe, but not explored at all in the films. Another could have been to make his teaching techniques closer to his methods in Empire, and they could have pushed Anakin closer to the dark. It makes more sense than the sudden shift that Anakin undergoes in Episode III.

One thing does have to be said, however. The Last Jedi gets an awful lot of unfair stick from certain quarters. I confess myself to be a fan, and my favourite part comes with Yoda. That's because the Yoda in The Last Jedi - Force ghost that he is - is the Yoda from Empire. You're left slightly uncertain about his motivations and his methods as he seems to burn down the first Jedi temple. He's got that mischievous threat back. Although you know he's on the light side, his methods are unorthodox. His wisdom doesn't manifest itself in benign little lessons; his guidance is far more about threat. It's a bit of a stretch to say that Yoda is dangerous, but you can't say that he's absolutely benign.

The Walking Dead?

In the years since graphic novels gained recognition as a serious form of storytelling, quite a few noted series have emerged. Some of those have been postapocalyptic thrillers with a range of voices to be heard. Y: The Last Man told the tale of a society bereft of all men except one (and Ampersand, his pet monkey) and was an original take on familiar tropes. But perhaps the best known - in no small part down to the TV series based on it - is The Walking Dead.

It's got a plot familiar to any who know genre fiction. Zombies rise. World ends. Humans in danger. Stuff happens. Like most of those tales, it's gritty and 'realistic'. Or at least as realistic as it's possible for a plot to be when it relies on the dead rising in an unspecified fashion.

For the past year I've been meandering my way through the compendium editions of The Walking Dead. The first compendium begins the tale of small-town cop Rick Grimes and his family as they attempt to piece lives back together and find something new in a world at once familiar as the one they occupied for their entire lives, but also new, bereft of the familiar comforts of electricity and society itself. The subsequent compendiums, you'll be unsurprised to hear, push on through the same story, weaving a world that is at once intensely personal but also massive.

The issue with graphic novels is always with depth. The aforementioned Y: The Last Man was a good story, but at times it felt like it lacked something. Perhaps my first experiences of adult graphic novels - Watchmen, V for Vendetta - set me up for something more, but the series as a whole, whilst being immensely enjoyable, seemed to lack something. It could, of course, be the writer. I've not really got into Brian K. Vaughan's Saga either, and that's extremely highly rated elsewhere. But my experiences with other graphic novels suggests otherwise. There are plenty I've enjoyed. There are few that have left me awed in the same way as phenomenal fantasy novel or the best science fiction short stories.

Thankfully, The Walking Dead is one of the few series to have maintained that awe with its depth. It's deceptively simple at times and you could be forgiven for thinking early on that it's going to be a straightforward - if dark - tale of man versus zombie. In fact, that's perhaps as far from the truth as its possible to be. The Walking Dead is a story about humanity and how humanity faces up to disaster when society collapses. From the prison in compendium one to Alexandria and the Commonwealth in compendium four, there's a constant sense of being on the very edge of violence - not from the unknowable towards the known, but from one human to another as people are pushed right to the edge of their limits. The characters are truly what drives The Walking Dead forward. They're layered, complex. Again, a problem of graphic novels can be that characters can be left two-dimensional. Not so here. Robert Kirkman takes the time to develop them, to test them, to make them seem more real.

But does that depth come in part from the length of the series? Consider for a moment: Y: The Last Man runs to around 1,400 pages over 10 volumes. The Walking Dead runs to near enough 4,500 pages over 32 volumes collected into 4 compendiums. It could be argued - albeit not by myself - that Kirkman had the room to be patient, and to build character rather than advance the action constantly. For me, it's not an argument that holds true, but it's certainly something for a new reader to consider as they embark on the first issue.

Something that certainly isn't in doubt is the constant sense of danger that underpins the narrative. This isn't Gene Roddenberry's vision of Star Trek, that much is for sure; conflict between characters is as much the source of that violence as any. Rick is never comfortable in his position. Threat is ever-present, and not just the threat of external violence. And on the odd occasion that it lulls you into a sense of security, of cosy catastrophe a la Wyndham, there's something just around the corner to shock you back into the reality of this new world.

The Walking Dead is highly recommended. I started the series wondering whether it would be something I spent any real time with. In the end, the answer was long evenings spent in a world without TV and electricity, without structure in society, and where might was, very often, right. It's not a comfortable read, but it is one that will make you think.