Saga The prophecy of the Chosen One...

No, I pointed out that Lucas wasn't pulling this out of his ass through what he said. In 1999, he said that "At this point, we don't know what side needs balancing." This means that he was building up a minor mystery regarding what Anakin's destiny was about and how he was to accomplish this task. There is a hint in TPM, because Qui-gon connects the return of the Sith to Anakin being the Chosen One. Which ultimately results in his being officially trained by the Jedi Order and Obi-wan in particular. It isn't until ROTS that it is specifically stated how he is to do it and what it means. Which Lucas notes in his 2005 comments.

The audience could make assumptions, but they weren't correct ones. The film explains it. Really, this is a nothing argument because there is no contradiction other than you had one idea and it was shot down. You're not the first one to have that happen and will most certainly not be the last.

 

So no Sith alive=Force balanced, any Sith living=Force unbalanced.

However that logic brings with it the following;
1) The Force has been unbalanced for however long the Sith have existed, over 1000 years at least.

2) If another Jedi were to fall to the Dark Side, the Force would again be unbalanced.

3) Are the Jedi in TPM aware that the Force is unbalanced? If yes then that would be a clear signal to them that the Sith are still around as they are the only thing that can unbalance the Force.
Connected to this, if the jedi think, "Kill all Sith= Balance, any Sith alive=Force unbalanced." Then since they think that all the Sith were wiped out 1000 years ago, they would have thought that the prophecy was fullfilled then.

4) Added to no 3. If the prophecy was made over 1000 years ago then, since the Jedi thought that the sith were all killed they would have needed another chosen one around back then. If they didn't, then they would have thought that the stih were all killed.
If they didn't have a chosen one and think the sith were all killed then you don't need a chosen one to kill the sith.
If the prophecy is younger than 1000 years then that would have been a signal to the Jedi that the Sith are still around.
Otherwise the prophecy is kind of redundant.

5) The Force has a light side and a dark side and that doesn't change if all jedi or all sith are killed.
But it is kind of odd, any number of Force users can use the light side but if any of them use the dark side then that throws the force out of balance. So the dark side can exist but it can't ever be used. Even odder, the Jedi use only one side of the Force but the Sith use all of it.
One of these unbalance the Force but not the other.

And before someone brings up EU and what Plaegiuos or whoever did, that isn't in the films. The films do present a fairly simple logic, there can't be any Sith alive or else the Force becomes unbalanced and Anakins job is to kill them all. A kind of Force Terminator.
To me, if the Force want the Sith dead then why doesn't it do it itself? It also makes Anakins fate kind of simple, he exists to kill people, nothing more.

Personally I think that a concept like Balance could have been made more interesting if it had meant a change in how the Force is viewed.
That the old Jedi and Sith are both too dogmatic in their viewpoints, one is blinded by their own brilliance, the other drowned in their own darkness. That a new approach was needed. And ironically, that new approach came from Luke.
Or they could have used the old unused prophecy from the OT, "In the time of the greatest Darkness, there shall come a Savior and he shall be the Son of the Suns."

Bye for now.
The Guarding Dark

 

Not just any Sith, but "the Sith" of the film era specifically, represented by Palpatine. Not every Sith is equally powerful. The Sith were around before the Force went out of balance. You can say "not in the films" but that goes both ways. The films don't contradict this scenario either.

In certain sources it is said that the Jedi are using the dark side when fighting ( but this would be different from the focused and intentional use of the dark side that we see in the case of true darksiders or Sith ).

 

Think about it. Is balance really having one power be in more control of the other? With the Jedi having complete control of the galaxy, that isn't balance, that's them having control and power. Same goes for the Sith. So, really, balance is not having the "good" of the two being in control because they want the better for everyone, which they don't; balance is having both forces, Sith and Jedi, controlling their equal and fair share of the galaxy with no conflict between them. But both are greedy and that would never happen.

So Anakin didn't bring balance to the force in either way, he just swayed who had power and control at certain times.

 

It's the balance of the Force, not the balance of the Force-users. A Jedi-Sith stalemate is unlikely to be something that Jedi would look forward to as the outcome of a prophecy. In fact, neither faction would prefer such an outcome and as such it's unlikely that it would ever be discussed. "No conflict" isn't really the Sith way.

The Jedi have never had complete control of the galaxy ( the whole galaxy wasn't in the Republic, for one thing ), and they wouldn't have complete control even after the destruction of Palpatine and the presumed downfall of the Empire. There would still be an entire galaxy's worth of run-of-the-mill criminals, slavers, terrorists, belligerent factions and other problems to take into account.

 

It's very simple, the Force exists because of all living things. In TPM, Obi-wan states that the Naboo and the Gungans form a symbiant circle (balance to the Force) which means that what affects one will affect the other. They're both in this together and it is only through their joint cooperation that they're able to expunge the cancer that is the Trade Federation. Darth Sidious and the Sith before him have spent years creating a cancer (the dark side growing stronger) that affects the Republic, the Senate and the Jedi Order, thus weakening the symbiant circle and thus the balance of the Force. Anakin Skywalker is the surgical tool that will remove that cancer, thus restoring everything back to a healthy and balanced stated of being.

The Jedi aren't the Force, but they are connected to the Republic and the Senate. What affects one will affect the other. Fear, anger, greed, hatred and selfishness brought down an entire government and the Jedi. Compassion, selflessness, unconditional love and valor was needed to undo the damage caused by the Sith.

 

darth-sinister: I really like your way of thinking. Listen to him guys.

 

Again, this can all be very simply understood in terms of using the cancer model for the Sith. A non-metastisizing tumor, sitting in one spot benignly, can often be largely innocuous. It may grow slowly, but it will remain largely undetected and the organism remains in generally good health. By the time of the PT, this "tumor" had metastasized -- spread and invaded into the organism and beginning to be a true threat to its survival. This is equatable to the falling of the shroud of the Dark Side.

The Dark Side is similar to cancer in that it involves hijacking systems that are normally meant for maintenance of health and proper physiological functioning for selfish reasons. The tumor will grow and expand at the expense of the rest of the body. In a similar manner, the Sith exploit the Force and other beings of the galaxy for their own gain. A properly functioning immune system (like the Jedi) will do no such thing. Instead, their job is to destroy threats to the body and keep it healthy. And even sacrifice their own lives for the good of the many. Now, autoimmune disorder exist as well which shows the immune system isn't perfect, but you don't want to wipe out your immune system either.

I think a lot of people are confused by the idea of the Force because they see it as a balance between good and evil when I don't think that's what Lucas is getting at. It's much more of a balance of health and well-being or of stability and peace. Sometimes a cancer will exist that is relatively benign and, as long as it is monitored, doesn't threaten an organism. But if it were possible to completely remove cancer from one's body without any ill-side effects, you would do it. Whereas you need a functional immune system to survive.

Also, I think your understanding of the Anakin's role is rather simplistic. It was said that he would destroy the Sith -- that doesn't necessarily mean to kill them. It was Abraham Lincoln, after all, who said, "Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?" That's essentially what Luke does with Anakin. Also, it's quite possible that the Sith themselves created Anakin rather than the Force, which gives us an interesting twist on the prophecy in the sense that the Sith create the very person who destroys them.

 

But if we use the "Cancer" analogy, since the Sith have existed for over 1000 years and have ruled the galaxy at least once. This means the Force has had this "Cancer" for a very long time and it has been really big at least once before. So for the Force now, after all this time to decide, "Hmmm, this cancer is bad, perhaps I should get rid of it." is a bit odd.

As for the Jedi being needed, if all Force users were to vanish, both Jedi and Sith, life would go on the galaxy. Regular people would try and maintain peace and order. Perhaps not as well as the Jedi but if there are no Sith to contend with, they could do the job.
There might be wars but there were wars even with the Jedi around.

So the jedi can't really be compared with the immune system of a body. For that to be the case, the jedi must have always existed. But there must have been a time where the sentient beings in the galaxy had no knowledge or understanding of the Force and no one could use it. And that didn't kill the Force or all life in the galaxy. Life creates it and makes it grow, that people can tap in and use it's powers aren't a necessary component of that.
I recall Lucas saying that the first Sith were fallen Jedi.

As for what Lucas intended, what he intended doesn't matter as much as what he put in the films.
People are allowed to make their own conclusions based on what is said. And if that isn't what Lucas intended then that isn't the audience's fault. Lucas choose to use the word "Balance", and that can mean a number of different things. If Lucas wanted the audience to make a very specific conclusion then perhaps he should have been more precise. If a doctor says "I must restore balance to this patient." how many would think that means "I must cure this cancer."?

Lastly about "destroy", since the conclusion of many here and it seems Lucas as well, Anakin restored balance when he killed Palpatine. Some argue that it was finally achieved when he himself died, the last of the sith. So it certainly seems that "Destroy" in this context means "Kill."
So Anakin's destiny was to kill Palpatine, nothing more.

Could Anakin have made Palpatine see the error of his ways? Again most here view Palpatine as totally evil, and irredeemable. If we go back to the cancer analogy, we can cut out a tumor or kill it with radiation or chemo therapy but we can't make it friendly. So if the Sith is a Cancer then it must be killed or cut out from the body.

Luke brings his father back to the light but he isn't the chosen one.
Anakin is and what does he do? Kill Palpatine.
I have said before that Luke might have been a more interesting chosen one as he has faith in his evil father when all other jedi tells him no. He believes, against all hope, that he can bring his father back and he does. He also is a bit different Jedi compared with the rigid and dogmatic PT Jedi.

As for the Sith creating Anakin, there really isn't much that suggests this. The most likely possibility is that the Force created Anakin and his goal was to kill the Sith. He was the surgeon that had to cut out the Sith "tumor" by killing them. Lucas did have more of this idea but cut it from the film.

Bye for now.
Blackboard Monitor

 

Palpatine's remark about Plagueis being "so powerful he could influence the midi-chlorians to create life" was the main trigger for the speculation, I think.

 

The Sith were always beaten back by the Jedi, which would be like the cancer going into remission, but winds up coming back. But the problem was that this time was different. This time, the Sith were going to infect the galaxy and there was going to be nothing that the Jedi could do to stop it. That's why the Chosen One exists. In the analogy, the cancer was more aggressive and managed to spread out further than before. Hence it needed a special cocktail mix to clean and purge the system.

 

I think you're anthropomorphizing the Force a tad too much here. So what if the Sith have existed for over 1000 years? We're not talking about life on the timescale of human experience. Moreover, cancer recurrence does occur -- even after treatment, when a patient no longer has symptoms, the cancer can persist undetected.

The Jedi can live in balance with the Force because they don't abuse it. All living organisms make use of the Force it's just that the Jedi, being more sensitive too it, utilize it for defense -- to protect, cure, and nurture.

I'm not saying you can't interpret it the way you want. But I am arguing that if your explanation doesn't make sense, that doesn't mean that the concept itself doesn't. It's your interpretation that is at fault, in that case.

For example, you are insisting that "destroy" means kill. Personally, I don't think that's true at all. I think that, yes, Anakin killed Palpatine, but when he turned back, he "destroyed" the Sith as well. Rejecting the mantle of Darth Vader destroyed the Sith as much as killing Palpatine did. Anakin probably couldn't have turned him back, but that doesn't mean he's irredeemable. Also, I think the scene of Palpatine on Mustafar with Anakin shows at least a spark of humanity. There was no real reason for Palpatine to do what he did in that instance.

I'm not saying you're wrong. Just that your issues with the Saga seem to stem from your own interpretation of it since you seem to define things rather narrowly. For example, by saying that the Sith creating Anakin doesn't have much to suggest it.

 

I'm confused as to why Qui-Gon believed Anakin was the Chosen One if he thought that the Sith were already destroyed.

 

Garret cut it out, naturally if the Chosen One was going to destroy the sith, he wouldn't be a Sith. That is a logical point of view. Nobody thought he would join them and then destroy them.

 

But the Jedi believe the Sith to be extinct, so who exactly is the Chosen One supposed to destroy? At least I think that's GA's question...

 

Yep, that's my question.

 

Unless he was actually using his power to help keep Anakin alive, which is how the equivalent scene plays in the novelization.

Although he did at one point use those exact words.

 

Who are the Jedi in that case?
First of all, the films never suggest that the prophecy named a time span in which the Chosen One was supposed to appear and destroy the Sith. So the Sith could have already returned while the Chosen One was still unfound. It's equally possible that the Chosen One's already there but the Sith have not returned yet (but soon will, which would be the logical conclusion).

What's more important, though: In TPM, the only one who believes in Anakin as the Chosen One at first is Qui-Gon. Qui-Gon is also the only Jedi who's convinced that the Sith have returned. It makes sense in retrospect: Qui-Gon already suspected that Anakin was the Chosen One and when he encountered a Sith Lord shortly after, he must have been convinced that Anakin's the Chosen One. I mean, despite other possiblities (see above), it makes sense for the Chosen One to appear close to the Sith's resurgence.
The Council, on the other hand, refused to believe that the Sith might be back. But they didn't want Anakin to be trained in the first place and only allowed Anakin's training when they had final proof on the Sith's return.

 

The Jedi thought that all of the Sith were wiped out. But the appearance of Darth Maul changed that. As he noted, Maul was trained in the Jedi Arts. Meaning that he had the Force with him and could fight Qui-gon to a standstill, something your average joe cannot do. Not with a Lightsaber. Since a Jedi would never dare attack another and based on his appearance, Qui-gon concluded that he had to be a Sith Lord. And given what he's been suspecting of Anakin, he realizes that the two are connected together. The Jedi Council doesn't want to believe it because the Sith wouldn't have waited so long to return and if they had, they would know of it. They're fighting a war that ended a thousand years ago, while the Sith are fighting a new war now. The Sith have changed and adapted, while the Jedi haven't. When the Council learns of what happened during the Battle of Naboo, they agree with Qui-gon's assessment and vote eleven to one to train Anakin. They're willing to take a leap of faith that Anakin might be the only one who can stop the Sith, this time.

 

He's not convinced the Sith have returned until after the battle with Maul, which occurs after he suspects Anakin is the Chosen One. I sense plot hole.

 

No. As I said: He suspected that Anakin's the Chosen One. He says things like "There is something about this boy". There is no sign of certainty. He refers to Anakin as the Chosen One only after his encounter with Maul.
Anyway, there is the other alternative: It's perfectly possible that the Chosen One's already there but the Sith have not returned yet (but soon will, which would be the logical conclusion then).

It's common for parents to buy furniture for their child's room before the child's born. States also keep military even if there is no war.

 

Fair enough, but it's still a plot hole IMO.

 

Let's break it down.

1. Anakin tells Qui-gon stories about his life, which to him sounds like he's someone who is strong with the Force. He even can tell that Qui-gon isn't being truthful about his Lightsaber.

2. Qui-gon asks about his father, because he suspects that it was a Jedi, which would be why he was so strong in the Force. Shmi tells him that there was no father and that she cannot explain how she became pregnant.

3. The Midichlorian test confirms that Anakin is very unusual for a potential Jedi, especially when compared to Yoda.

4. Qui-gon decides to try and free the boy, because he wants him trained and talk to the Council about him. At this point, he doesn't know that Maul is looking for him.

5. Maul launches his attack which Qui-gon notes is something that only someone trained in the Jedi Arts could pull off.

6. En route back to Coruscant, Qui-gon postulates a theory based on the evidence at hand and presents his findings before the Council. He believes that Maul was a Sith, but the Council does not.

7. Obi-wan's report details their fight with Maul and his ability to handle the both of them, to kill Qui-gon and his usage of the Force that they were dealing with a Sith Lord. The Council also learns that Anakin destroyed the Federation ship and this is what makes them change their minds about the situation and agree with Qui-gon's earlier assessment.

 

In my very humble opinion, this type of discussion well illustrates the fact that this is not a particularly good story line. Should it be this hard to decipher?

 

And people get all pissy if you have different opinions than them (not to mention any names).