BTS JW Rinzler's 'Making of Return of the Jedi'

By the way it was portrayed in the alternate Star Wars universes. In the original universe, The Force was an energy field that surrounds us, is waiting for a person with enough dedication regardless of their genetics, to tap into and use. In the alternate universe, the ability to use The Force was a symptom of a genetic anomaly.

 

The Force is still an energy field that surrounds in the PT, which is in the same universe as the OT.

...and that's not expressed in the OT. In fact, the OT does a decent job of creating quite a different impression. Luke and the Other are said to be the last hope out of an entire galaxy, as opposed to just the first two out of a literally unending list of possible candidates.

 

While I respect your opinion, I hope there is a retcon in the ST that restores The Force to its original nature in which it is present in all things and just waiting for someone with enough dedication to master it.

 

I dunno. In that same conversation from MoROTJ Lucas says some bloodlines are stronger in the Force, while maintaining that anyone could use it. ROTJ mentions the 'strength in Luke's family' thing. And while there is no mention of a biological component in the films prior to ROTJ, Lucas did mention midichlorians in 1977 in an interview. The difference I see (now) is not necessarily the way the Force works, but the way it's explained by the characters and especially the way it's understood in fandom. I don't think the 'anyone could use it' thing ever went away; as I said, Lucas maintains both notions (which is essentially a genetic talent concept, like tall people having an easier time becoming basketball players) in that interview. However, many fans, once the prequels came out, seem to have assumed from the way midichlorians are talked about that the biological aspect is the only determining/important factor. Some people liked that, others didn't but regardless, is it necessarily the case? I'm not sure.

Of course, Lucas could have changed his mind between that interview and the making of the PT, so that genetics is the only important thing.

 

Yoda tells us that the connection to the force has nothign to do with the body at all, and that Luke must unlearn the notion that strength comes from the physical. Yoda's lessons are the lessons of a man who has never heard of force bacteria. They are not compatible lessons.

Life and the force are the same thing. And neither is grounded in "crude matter". Certainly not bacteria living in your blood

 

The PT doesn't change the omnipresence of the Force, and doesn't even try to. In fact, it mostly avoids defining the Force as if complacent that its viewers have heard of the Force before. And it says that all living things have midichlorians and that without them life could not exist.

Not just anyone: someone who happened to be a Skywalker, who lived in a galaxy filled with quadrillions of sentients having the capacity for dedication.

(Mod edit)

 

I agree with you for the most part. I think it makes sense, if you want to look at it chronologically, that you could infer from Yoda's and Ben's words and attitude that they gained a greater understanding of the nature of the force during their decades in seclusion that made it clear to them that they originally misunderstood the nature of The Force, making the Midichlorians explanation from days past a shoehorned concept that could be true from a certain point of view. I'm hoping this is retconned in the third trilogy so that The Force can be restored.

 

Arawn_Fenn two of the quotes in your last post are from someone else, please fix it.

(Mod edit: fixed)

 

Midiclorians are of the physical world, which Yoda clearly tells Luke with disdain that he is not of the "crude matter". He is a spiritual being, as is all life. That is why the size and weight of the ship mean nothing, because those are physical concepts that must be unlearned.

The entire basis of the lesson is that you must learn that your true nature is not rooted in the physical realm, and certainly not midiclorians. Luke and his power is a function of mind and spirit, not what is in his blood.


This Yoda never heard of a midiclorian.

 

I know - I desperately want to find this stuff out, as I believe there's more there than what we know, but the brick walls that always seem to come up have turned me into a bit of a misery-guts.

Leia as the 'Other' seems to be the really controversial ROTJ issue, and it's one that GL has been less firm on than Father Vader (which wasn't definitively answered in the Making of ESB, despite all the other little bits & pieces that twisted our minds & rocked our worlds). He's also been far more frank & somewhat glib about the actual development of his space-opera in recent years, so I'm hoping we might find out some details about the Other, at least.

 

I am not sure how PT bashers think that midi's really change all that much if anything at all. In TPM, Qui-Gon even says "midiclorians are a microscopic life form that reside within all loving cells." Which means that everyone has midiclorians, not just the jedi.....even the Han Solo's of the galaxy. Some people just have a higher concentration which allows them a bit easier access to tap into the force.

With proof that Lucas had the term midiclorians back in 1977 according to that BTS book, and the fact that BOTH Yoda and Luke literally say in Return of the Jedi that the force runs strong the in the family, only proves that force potential is something that runs in the bloodlines has been there from the beginning. No one really said a peep about it back in 1983 even though the "bloodline" thing was brought up in ROTJ simply because words like cells and midiclorians were not not specifically mentioned. Once literal scientific explanation was used in TPM, people blew a gasket over it. The fact is that nothing has really changed about it, other than a black and white explanation of it in TPM to spell it out.

The Yoda speech in ESB had nothing to do with the fact whether midis existed or not anyways. The force itself is still the mystic energy field that binds us and surrounds us anyways. And he was trying to show Luke that the force is everywhere around you and that it doesn't matter how big or small something is if you believe enough.

 

Haven't you heard? One BTS book invalidates another.

Nope. He tells us that he shouldn't be judged by his size, and that Force lifting an object is not subject to the same considerations as lifting the same object with the strength of one's arm. This is not to say that anyone can do what he can do. If Force potential has nothing to do with the body, why is "last hope" Luke even there, as opposed to any other warm body? Does Palpatine believe that each and every being in the entire galaxy poses the same threat to his life?

Yoda's not giving a lecture on the nature or transmission of Jedi-caliber Force sensitivity. They are separate topics.

Is this part where you say you know they're not bacteria, but still insist on calling them bacteria?

Actually, according to Plagueis, they are intimately involved with the luminous being. Don't forget that these midichlorians you may see as "crude" have a direct mystical connection to the mystical Force.

Here are the PT additions to the Force itself: it has a will, and it has a "unifying Force" aspect ( though the films really only emphasize the first of these ). So "restoring" the Force to its pre-PT presentation really just means taking away its will ( or just not talking about it any more ) and taking away the living/unifying dichotomy ( or just not talking about it any more ).

I don't think we're likely to see characters say "you know, we were wrong when we thought the Force had a will".

 

Hell, we don't even know if it's that clear-cut. The only midichlorian count we ever hear of is Anakin's, and that it's insanely high-- Yoda's is the only one they can compare it to, and even it's more even than that. We know from Qui-Gon that all living beings have midichlorians, and that midichlorians serve as a conduit to the Force. But we're never told that "more midichlorians = more Force power". That might be a logical assumption considering Yoda and Anakin have higher midichlorian counts than anyone, but it's just speculation.

For all we know, most Jedi might have midichlorian counts that are right within the range of everyone else in the galaxy. Even Qui-Gon remarked that Anakin would've been recognized as having Jedi potential from his precognition abilities if he were born in the Republic, and that was before he did the midichlorian count, remember. For the most part, Anakin's high count is most important because it backs up his virgin birth, implying he was immaculately concieved by the midichlorians-- it's not used in and of itself to suggest he's "stronger in the Force" in a practical sense than anyone else.

 

It's also a logical assumption based on the practice of midichlorian testing for Jedi candidacy.

Qui-Gon didn't say he would have been identified due to his precognitive abilities. He merely said he would have been identified early. I took that to mean as a result of commonplace Republic midichlorian testing of infants. If born and raised in the Republic there would have been no guarantee that Anakin would have gotten involved in podracing and thus his precognitive abilities might not have had that avenue to be so clearly put on display.

 

We don't know that midichlorians are tested for Jedi candidacy, though. Again, Qui-Gon already thinks of him as a potential Jedi before the blood test due to his inherent abilities, which very likely would manifest themselves even at an early age. Remember, he tests for midichlorians after Shmi tells him that Anakin has no father-- he's doing this to determine if he was concieved by the midichlorians, in accordance to the Prophecy.

 

It is implied. Or are you telling me Qui-Gon's been carrying around midichlorian testing gear all this time solely for the purpose of finding a Chosen One? Is every person displaying apparent Force strength when encountered by the Jedi looked at as a potential Chosen One, or simply as a potential Jedi? ( There are also various places in the EU where it is said that so-and-so does not have a high enough midichlorian count to be a Force adept. )

 

Aaaaaaaaaand it's EU, so I don't give a poodoo.

If you want to get technical, that's not midichlorian testing gear he has with him. It's just a blood scanner. The midichlorian test is done onboard the Queen's ship.

At any rate, when Qui-Gon tests Anakin's blood, it's certainly not to see if he's Jedi potential. He already knows that he is. At that moment, he's testing to see if his midichlorian count is high enough to suggest his mother was telling the truth about his conception.

 

20 years before the events of ANH, there were many Jedi in the galaxy, and all of them came from families. So, if the force is genetic and based on family blood lines giving you force bacteria, you should not need Skywalkers. There should be countless people out there with the necessary genetic propensity for force bacteria.

All those Jedi had aunts and uncles and brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers and came from family lines that would branch out as all family genealogy does.

The "we need a Skywalker" story point does not go against my position, it bolsters it.


Yoda is telling us the nature of the force and life itself. Some got it, some didn't. To those that got it, these recent revelations were not a surprise. To those that didn't, they were.

 

I don't understand the resistance to it either. But 'resistance' is the wrong word, for I've yet to see anyone in this thread really address the 'talent'/genetic advantage model aspect. The other part of the 'absolutist' interpretation of the Skywalker blood-line aspect, though little talked about, is the percentage factor: does the fact that Luke and Leia's mother wasn't a Jedi mean that Luke and Leia are 'half-Jedi'??? And would any offspring of Han and Leia then be only 'quarter-Jedi'???

I'm not sure how this has anything to do with what "PT bashers" think.....

What Lucas had in terms of midichlorians back in 1977 was that certain ALIEN species had the highest concentration of midi's....this is hardly a reference to a Skywalker Chosen-One.

No one said a peep about it in in 1983, because one thing that had NOT changed up to that point since 1977, was Star Wars/The Saga focusing on the Skywalker family, and only one or two surviving Jedi (said to be the ONLY surviving Jedi)....other than Luke now having a sister, this was 'business-as-usual'.

Some in the past have tried to get around this by claiming that the Force randomly 'seeds' Jedi-level midichlorian counts among populations in the SW Galaxy/Universe. Anything to bolster a house-of-cards, I guess.

As for the "we need a Skywalker" aspect of the OT, there's another point. It was almost 'built-in' to Star Wars for the story to eventually focus-in on the Skywalker family (the changing composition of the family notwithstanding, of course) ever since late 1975. Back when Lucas made reference to the SW sequels narrowing down to ultimately being a space/galactic equivalent of a "Soap-Opera of the Skywalkers", Vader wasn't Luke's father and Luke didn't even have a sister (or brother) at that point in story canon. Yet the story was already set to focus in on the Skywalker family. This being construed to mean that Luke - or a Skywalker sibling - was "IT" in an 'absolute sense', is as logical as saying that Obi-Wan (Ben) - or Yoda - being the sole surviving Jedi means that they (Ben or Ben-and-Yoda) were the only Jedi that 'mattered'. *** It's an attempt to argue backwards, as though Lucas created the OT/SW out of a pre-existing back-story, instead of the other way around.

***If Lucas had wanted to, he could have had more Jedi in SW/the OT, or had NO surviving Jedi from the past. The SW that exists was irrevocably shaped by his decision back in the 70's to keep one or two Jedi surviving into the current story(OT). It is mistaken then, in my view, to argue as though this decision reflects a normative, deterministic pronouncement on any 'INTRINSIC importance' of some Jedi over other Jedi. So it also goes with the focus on the Skywalkers.

 

Going along with what TOSCHESTATION said (maybe just restating some of it), when ANH was made, Luke was simply following in his father's footsteps, and Jedi seem to have had more like "power of positive thinking" powers. In other words, Luke wanted to follow his father, and probably also wanted to avenge him. There was a popular movement against the Empire (Biggs and the rest of Luke's friends included), so his opposition to the Empire probably just fit in with that in a general sense. Did they need a Skywalker to destroy the Death Star? Maybe. Maybe they just needed a Force-sensitive, or maybe "luck" played a part. It seems to be later that the whole "the galaxy is threatened and a Skywalker - a Chosen One - is needed to reset the balance of nature" comes together.

 

So the second an EU author begins writing, their reasoning skills and their conclusions become summarily null and void? Smells like a cheap cop-out.

Even better! Now it's the Queen of Naboo who's got a device whose only function is to find the prophesied Chosen One?

Which is really irrelevant to the point about having midichlorian testing technology in the first place.

 

I have to agree with this.

In actuality, the problem with EU is precisely BECAUSE of their FUNCTIONING* reasoning skills, which are really more like after-the-fact-rationalizations due to Lucas' penchant for leaving huge holes in his plots. In other words, EU itself is a 'cop-out'.

* "null and void" only pertains to what is canon and what isn't.

They don't call these things 'Deus-ex-Machina' for nothing!


- COL. Basher

 

It still isn't canon. And as such, I still really don't care. EU is basically literary merchandising-- fun in a dumb disposable way, sure, but to take its word as equal to the movies themselves is like giving that kind of authorial credence to a goddamn action figure (though considering people still complain that Boba Fett's backstory isn't exactly the way it was outlined in a trading card, or whatever, one can't be surprised).

For Qui-Gon, yeah. If we take this seriously as anything other than a narrative streamlining effort, it implies that mdichlorian testing is something that's done by more than just the Jedi, which implies that there's more uses for midichlorian counts than simply determining someone's Jedi capability. Could just be part of a standard medical blood scanning, helpful in determining overall health. It might also suggest a wider effort by civilized worlds to screen for Jedi candidates, but if it's in non-Jedi hands it'd only be the first of many steps to actually be selected, and if it is that widespread the average counts would have to be sufficiently high enough for it to be worth the while.

In other words-- it'd only go mainstream if it had a high enough success rate, and if it had that high a success rate, it couldn't be the sole, or even most important determining factor. Plenty of kids can get high IQ scores, but not all of them turn out to be prodigies, and plenty of prodigies can slip through the cracks of testing. It's just one step in many.

Anyway, if it is just a narrative simplification, I don't see it as any worse than a movie where a woman uses an at-home pregnancy test rather than going to the doctor to see if she's preggers. And my point stands-- Qui-Gon is testing Anakin's blood to see if he's the chosen one, not to see if he's a Jedi. The whole "all Jedi have to have high midichlorian counts" thing is rubbish.

 

Some photos from the book:

 

Those are neat pictures, I like the one of Palpatine