American Jedi

- Could you ever be a Jedi, do you think?

- I mean, I know what it is, Star Wars, the idea of it,

but what is it practically?

What do you actually do?

- I feel that it is a good belief system,

but I do not personally believe that it could be a religion.

Jedi is anti-Christ.

- Like, it's not just a fandom, it's this unique,

amazing pop culture thing that has been going since 1977.

Is it silly?

We're in the middle of Comic-Con with more people dressed up

in Star Wars outfits than I've ever seen in my life.

- Most of us have tried the Jedi mind trick at least once.

- If Jediism became a lot like Catholicism, Christianity,

or anything else, I think I'd be a little worried.

- I think the whole idea of a Jedi as religion

is rather weird.

- Jedi as a religion, I think is great.

If people wanna believe in that, go ahead.

- I can see where people get into it

as a much deeper sense of being.

Are you worshiping someone?

Are you following a Jedi master?

How do you become a Jedi master?

Is there a Yoda level person?

- There ain't no Darth Vader in the Bible.

- I think people turn away from organized religion

because it's too structured.

- With Star Wars, you have people that have

watched the movie 50, 60 times.

They haven't read the Bible twice and yet they'll tell me

I'm fanatical because I believe my Bible.

I say they're the real fanatics.

- I think that Jediism as a world

religion would be awesome.

- It could happen, I can see people becoming Jedis.

I mean, look at Harry Potter, and

people play Quidditch all the time like it's a real sport.

- Hey, it's for them, good cause to pursue.

- Questions, I have so many questions.

Maybe I might be a follower.

- I don't think any reasonable human being could be a Jedi.

I would love to be a Jedi.

- A 2001 census recognized Jediism

as an official religion.

620 Serbs identify as Jedi.

15,000 people from the Czech Republic,

21,000 Canadians, 70,000 Australians.

In the United Kingdom over 400,000 people

declare themselves Jedi,

making it the fourth largest religion in the country.

No such census has been taken in America,

but Jediism continues to grow.

- When people come to the Jedi community,

it's not about who they are when they join us.

It's about who they aspire to be.

- And we're gonna ask some very deep,

probing, internal questions.

And we wanna see what's their reaction.

- What do you have to give and what do you have to give up?

- This is the story of three Jedi

on their path to knighthood.

- I'm Opie Macleod and I'm a Jedi.

The dishes are still in the sink, huh?

Big surprise, good job.

Way to stay on top of it, Jedi.

That's a pretty good impression of my mom, too,

just so you know.

Opie is my son.

His real name is Kevin, I call him Kev,

but to everybody else he's Opie, always has been.

As a matter of fact, he used to ask me

to go pay to change his name to Kevin Macleod.

At church, he asked the minister, when he got up there,

"Don't call me by my name."

So when Larry read off his name, Kevin Trout, he's...

"I told you not to call me that!"

But he got teased so much about the Trout

that he wanted to change his name to Macleod,

because he liked the Highlander.

But now he's just Opie Macleod.

- You know, a Jedi eats with dishes,

they gotta clean the dishes.

Yeah, Luke Skywalker, I guess,

had C-3PO to handle his dishes.

I don't have C-3PO.

Han Solo was always cool

but I just wanted to be in that swamp with Yoda.

That was awesome.

I love the teaching.

I love...

I loved how Yoda's introduced as a crazy old hermit,

and I love the idea of that

someone can be so confident in themselves,

so assured of their abilities and their knowledge

that they can act the complete fool and not care.

That grabbed me when I was a kid and it's always stuck.

- He used to get in trouble quite often

because he would always go and help other kids,

even if a kid was on the bad side.

He thought by befriending him,

he could turn his life into the good side.

Except for a time when he was trying to

change the wrong people and those people changed him.

- I was thinking about getting a tattoo

to signify the first stages, because it...

One, it was signifying kinda how all Jedi start out,

with that fictional idea, that fictional inspiration,

the idea that you wanna be wielding the lightsaber

and you wanna be moving things with your mind,

you wanna be battling the dark forces of the galaxy

and saving the day.

- What's that say, Jedi?

Jedi Knight.

Jedi Knight?

Yes, Knight.

It goes all the way around.

- What do you think of the tattoo?

I'm not much on tattoos.

Firstly, I hate needles.

He basically dropped out of church,

'cause he used to go to church every Sunday.

- It did become kind of that negative view of God.

God, I believe in God.

I don't like him.

- What's your main reason for hating God?

- Seeing friends get hurt, seeing innocent people get hurt,

innocent animals, for no reason, like,

it didn't make sense to me why a good person

or someone who's doing good in their lives

would all of a sudden come across someone that was like me

and my friends at the time, who were doing bad things.

Why would a deity place someone in that path?

- They saw somebody and they went over and beat the kid up.

Apparently, he was supposed to beat him up too, you know,

to be part of the gang.

- So I got arrested and the judge sentenced me

to serve one year in Camp Louis Roth,

which is a correctional fire camp.

I had no idea what I was getting into.

- He didn't really wanna be there and he kept trying to say

get me out, get me out, I'd say I can't, you know,

you've really messed this time,

I can't do anything about this.

So, you're gonna have to change, it's you this time.

- We start off with confusion, mistakes, negative karma.

But all of that, there's not one single mistake

or delusion that cannot be removed through wisdom.

- Before I went in, I'd seen the re-release of the trilogies

in the theaters, and that was kind of sitting on me

that entire time.

And I kinda of felt like part of training,

you have a brick in your backpack

and you have to climb up this mountain,

and you have to do it in a certain amount of time.

And I just kept thinking like, it's Yoda on my back,

I'm in Dagobah, feel the Force, you know,

I was just using that to kind of push through.

You know what, if that worked for me,

there's gotta be a real Jedi out there.

There's gotta be a Jedi Master out there.

So I went online, I ran across this site

that presented it in a way that made it seem viable.

Here's stuff in the fiction,

but they're presenting it as if they're saying go live it.

And that's when it kinda first...

Why can't I be a Jedi?

- Jedi is a code, it's a system of honor,

it's protocols of behavior.

It's a way of viewing the self, and

the universe, and others.

In what, to me, looks like very beneficial ways.

- This is it, I found what I'm looking for.

- There is a moment when it occurs to Luke

that he might become a Jedi,

he might seek that role in life,

he might go into the training and it's very arduous

and would ask a lot, but he begins to see that

as a possible option for himself

and to have at least enough initial faith in himself

that he can see it could happen, and this is an aha moment,

this is a real turning point.

- Film can expose the values that we have as a culture.

And how we, as individuals, also carry forth

our world view all the time.

- Joseph Campbell worked with symbolism.

He was looking at the mythic imagination,

how a picture is worth 1,000 words

and movies are all pictures.

And so, we bring our interest, our attention,

and we meditate on a series of images

and walk away feeling like more has been communicated

than just the storyline of the film, and it has.

And so, the imagination is rich in this particular art form

and that is part of why Jediism is more powerful

and more compelling and ultimately perhaps

more rewarding than some other recent religious movements.

I think that when people do...

When they create these, you know, stories, movies,

whether it's a novel or a film,