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Saga The Sith and Balancing of the Force

Discussion in 'Star Wars Saga In-Depth' started by Anakin's Daddy, Jan 3, 2016.

  1. Anakin's Daddy

    Anakin's Daddy Force Ghost star 4

    Registered:
    Aug 13, 2002
    I'd like to have an in-depth discussion about what the Sith really are and how they relate to the saga as a whole regarding the "balance" of the force. At the beginning of TFA, Lor San Tekka says, "Without the Jedi, there can be no balance in the Force." Does this mean the force is unbalanced at the beginning of the film? And if so, doesn't that mean that Anakin fulfilling the prophecy of balancing it, has already been undone? And if so, where do the Sith fit in? Sith, other dark force users, or does it even make a difference?

    Here is the way I see the Sith, based on the canon material:

    The Sith were merely a line of Dark Force users, passed on from apprentice to apprentice until finally the line was broken when Luke and Anakin overthrew them at the end of Return of the Jedi. There is still a bit of a grey area among fans around the whole Sith thing though. It seems to me that if a new dark force user such as Snoke wanted to study the Sith and declare himself as one of them, he could if he wanted to. Who would stop him?

    Imagine if Luke was the last of the Jedi, and then was killed before he passed anything on. Could some new person then eventually call themselves a Jedi? I think the answer is yes. What if an entire religious community was killed on earth? Would it still be possible for someone to call themselves a member of that religion afterwards? Of course. This is why I don't' buy into the fact that there will never be more Sith. If a so-called Dark lord wants to be, then he could.

    New Sith would NOT make the OT meaningless. I've heard many people say it would, but there was nothing in Anakin's prophecy that said the "balance" to the force would be permanent, and on top of that, I think that TFA has already established at the very beginning of the film that the force is already unbalanced again so it really makes no difference if the bad guys call themselves Sith or not. The prophecy is already undone. Does this even matter? How do you feel about it?

    I'd like to hear people's opinions on all the questions that I'm bringing up but here are a few main ones:

    1. What are your thoughts on the prophecy of Anakin bringing balance to the force? What does "balance" mean? No Sith, no dark force users? The same amount of dark and light force users?

    2. What did Lor San Tekka mean when he said, "Without the Jedi, there can be no balance in the Force?" Did he mean that the force was unbalanced because Luke wasn't around?

    3. Does it matter if it is the Sith or other dark force users that unbalance the force?

    4. If Snoke is a Sith, does it matter to you? What's the difference? How would this change the prophecy, since the prophecy says nothing about Sith in the first place?
     
  2. PCCViking

    PCCViking Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Jun 12, 2014
    I think Lor San Tekka's line all but proves that Snoke is a Sith. While it's true that the new canon has had other dark side groups besides the Sith (even more so in Legends), I don't think the Nightsisters were powerful enough to cause the Force to be out of balance. The Sith, on the other hand, are.

    Now, if Snoke is a Sith, then the only logical Sith he could be, if the Force is still out of balance, is a certain former teacher of Palpatine's. Even more ancient Sith would be hard to explain (like how did they survive all this time without Palpatine and co. knowing)? Plagueis, on the other hand, would be a credible candidate given what we know of him.

    That raises another question: If Snoke is a Sith and he's Plagueis, that means Anakin didn't bring balance to the Force by eliminating the Sith on the 2nd Death Star. That could support another theory about another character I've seen going around, but that's for another discussion. :)
     
  3. darth-sinister

    darth-sinister Manager Emeritus star 10 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Jun 28, 2001
    Anakin brought balance to the Force by destroying the Sith. Darth Sidious was causing the Force to become unbalanced by doing the things that he did in the PT and that carried over into the OT. It was, as Lucas said, blurring the lines between good and evil and creating the Clone Wars. Anakin fulfilled his destiny by destroying Palpatine and himself, and Luke was trying to rebuild the Jedi Order. Snoke wanted to eliminate the Jedi because they're all that stands in the way of what he is attempting to do. That doesn't make Snoke a Sith, since there is more than just the Jedi and Sith in the universe. His point of view of what the balance is, is probably different from not only the Jedi, but the Sith as well. What Lor San Tekka is probably referring to is that the Jedi help to keep the balance in the Force. But by eliminating them, Snoke and the Ren can disrupt the balance. Luke is still alive and has knowledge of the Force and how the Jedi operate. He can restore the Jedi Order again by training Rey and they in turn can eliminate the Ren.
     
  4. Anakin's Daddy

    Anakin's Daddy Force Ghost star 4

    Registered:
    Aug 13, 2002
    How so? Could other Dark force users not could disrupt the balance? I think that the force being out of balance simply means that there are dark side users in power, no matter if they are called Sith or not.

    I don't know about this. Even if Snoke is a completely new character who has lived for 1000's of years, he doesn't have to be a Sith. Why does he have to be? And if he IS a Sith, maybe he just started calling himself a Sith after Palpatine died.

    This is why I don't believe that Snoke Is Plagueis. I believe Anakin brought balance, but it became unbalanced again.


    Agreed. ...but he still might be a Sith. Either way I don't think it matters if Snoke and Ren are Sith or not.
     
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  5. darth-sinister

    darth-sinister Manager Emeritus star 10 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Jun 28, 2001
    It does, because the Sith were destroyed. That's why it's Kylo Ren and not Darth insert name. The Sith lineage is that they're masters of the dark side of the Force, and all aspects of the Force in general. Snoke might not be as powerful as Darth Sidious was. And if his views on the Force are different, then this places him as a similar, but different foe to the Jedi.
     
  6. The_Phantom_Calamari

    The_Phantom_Calamari Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Nov 10, 2011
    Anakin restored balance to the Force with his sacrifice. That doesn't mean everyone else can just sit on their laurels and coast from now on. The balance has to be preserved, and as always, it's the responsibility of the Jedi to see that it is.

    It would be kind of depressing if Luke allowed the Force to fall back out of balance a mere 30 years after his father fixed it all, but it wouldn't contradict anything per se. Hopefully that's not actually the case, though.
     
  7. KitFisto21

    KitFisto21 Jedi Youngling

    Registered:
    Dec 30, 2015
    I believe that Palpatine manipulating everybody, including the Senate, Anakin, the Jedi Council, conceiving the Clone Wars to then destroy the Republic, Order 66, the Empire... that all I believe was more than enough to unbalance the Force hahaha

    so yeah, the only way to bring balance again was to destroy Darth Sidious himself, and that's what Vader does and from my point of view, that restored the balance in the Force FOR THAT MOMENT. As already said, the balance is not eternal, and it should be preserved. A prophecy made for Anakin would exist due to the magnitude of Sidious' actions on the galaxy - look at all that guy did, like, it's a lot, it's worthy a prophecy for the guy who would defeat the Emperor

    now, for TFA, I believe that Kylo Ren and Snoke together, by killing the new Jedi trained by Luke, added Luke's hiding and the First Order destroying the New Republic (I was like: already? we didn't even see anything about the political situation of the galaxy 30 years after ROTJ and the new government is already destroyed... ok) are all together strong enough to unbalance the Force again. Or maybe since Kylo Ren killed all those Jedi the Force already got unbalanced... we can't know for sure when it started, but anyway

    Snoke being a Sith or not matters little to me to be honest. But still, he's the master and Kylo the apprentice, so I think we could assume them as being Sith for all relevant matters, so they don't need to have "Darth" in their names for the audience to perceive how evil is the way they use the Force and stuff...
     
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  8. Tanjint

    Tanjint Jedi Knight star 2

    Registered:
    Dec 21, 2015
    I have wrapped my brain in knots trying to pin down the meaning of the prophecy.

    Ultimately, whether it's the new canon or legends, stuff gets seriously messed up again after Episode 6 regardless so only Lucas' explanation holds: Anakin destroyed the Sith (himself and Palpatine) thus bringing balance.

    Our only salvation from this acceptable but ultimately unsatisfactory (in that it doesn't consider how subsequent stories can proceed without diminishing how important the story of Anakin/Vader's life was) is if the new trilogy's "First Jedi Temple" stuff leads to more context for the prophecy or more prophecies.

    As far as the Skywalkers and their significance, that depends on the timeline.

    When I look at the old expanded universe, the only conclusion that I can draw is the Skywalkers since the life of Anakin, are instrumental to the events of existence and ultimately "correct" the stream of events when it gets out of hand.

    If we're following a 40,000 year history then Cade Skywalker vanquishing the Sith 140 years after Battle of Yavin is still pretty recently after Anakin's birth. The idea that he'll bring balance through his not-that-far-removed descendants is acceptable to me.

    In the new expanded universe I feel similarly - if Luke or Rey (assuming Rey is a Solo or Skywalker) are the ones who ultimately bring balance, Qui-Gonn was still insightful to see the seeds of that in Anakin and depending on what happens in the ST, it's still possible that Anakin was the one who brought/will bring balance after all.
     
  9. KitFisto21

    KitFisto21 Jedi Youngling

    Registered:
    Dec 30, 2015
    well, I have not read any EU books so I cannot really comment on your thoughts about it... but for me the prophecy is all about killing Darth Sidious in the end, because let's think: Anakin was responsible for the killing of Jedi younglings. He was an accomplice of Sidious and his Order 66, the slautgher of the Jedi then. Then we can only imagine the horrors that the he himself performed during the gap between Episodes III and IV which built his dark fame.

    So all of this for the Chosen One? For me it's not like he was meant to be a messiah of anything, since he's done a lot of horrible stuff... for me all this prophecy is more about he being the only one able to defeat Darth Sidious and not he being a hero for his life story. So for the great Sith who was capable of replacing an ancient democracy by a terrible dictatorship and almost destroying all the Jedi on the galaxy, a prophecy was not made about him, but about his lethal enemy who he thought was his loyal weapon.

    the rest of the Skywalker family would naturally have important roles in the history of the galaxy so it's plausible that we are still learning about the fate of this family
     
  10. darth-sinister

    darth-sinister Manager Emeritus star 10 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Jun 28, 2001
    The dark side is always a constant threat when it comes to Force users. Be they a Jedi Knight or a Dagoyan Master, they will always be tempted by the dark side of the Force. With the Force in balance, there are still threats from dark side users. We don't know if all of the Inquisitors were killed off, or not. We don't know if there are any surviving Nightsisters and Nightbrothers out there. Their mere presence alone isn't enough to cause an imbalance. It is actions taken that cause the shroud of the dark side to fall, which Yoda notes happens when the Clone Wars began.

    In the old EU, there were still Sith Lords around as shown in "The Jedi Academy Trilogy", "Legacy Of The Force", "Fate Of The Jedi", "Legacy". But the Force was still in balance, per Lucas's own mandate. So what we have in TFA is something that doesn't violate what Lucas wrote, but we're seeing how it can if there are no Jedi to keep the peace.
     
  11. solrdzm

    solrdzm Jedi Youngling star 1

    Registered:
    Dec 28, 2015
    From my point of view, Anakin brought balance to the force because Darth Sidious was using the dark side of the force to control the power of the galaxy for his own good because in ep3 with this he named by himself emperor of the galaxy (with this message if you don't like it I will kill you) and in the end of ep6 Anakin made a love sacrifice to save his son, he had compassion, he redeemed himself, he remembered the reasons why he was a Jedi and why the Jedi were there to keep the justice and the peace in the galaxy,actually there some comments that the title of ep6 refers to Anakin returning as a jedi too and destroying himself Darth Vader and Darth Sidious Anakin balanced the force and let the way free to luke to restored the Jedi order with new lessons with new rules because I remember that ep3 the Jedi Council was wrong and Anakin could see that, and because Anakin left new knowledge to his son.
    And I think that in ep7 San tekka refers that someone wants to use the dark side of the force to have the control in the galaxy again, and may be that's the reason why could've been destroyed luke's new jedi order and academy and why luke is hidden.
    And I agree with the idea that the force balance isn't eternal it has its own cicles one began with anakin and ended with anakin and in each cicles there new knowledge for the new jedi order generation. And my be another force cicle began with Luke and will end with Luke.


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  12. xezene

    xezene Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jan 6, 2016
    Here's my take on this stuff. The following is my interpretation but since the films are open to interpretation I feel like mine is as good an explanation as any, so I'm sticking with it.

    1. Lucas is quoted as saying:
    The balance of the Force isn't the numerical balance between Sith and Jedi. It's internal balance. The Jedi in the prequels have lost their way -- they are purposefully shown to be too detached, too uncompassionate. The Sith are too far in the passion side. While Anakin is not the first who makes the balance (that would be Luke), he is the fulcrum upon which the choice of the galaxy depends. And in the end, Anakin chooses compassion and wisdom in selfless sacrifice. He combines passion with wisdom. He becomes the Chosen One and fulfills the prophecy.

    [And in his own way, he redeems himself. All his life Anakin has been a slave to someone or some code. The only time Anakin tried to break away and forge his own path, in ROTS, he couldn't resist his tendency to follow someone else, and so he submitted to Palpatine. The choice between choosing Mace or Palpatine is each one of submission. Luke is the first person since Padme to offer Anakin a choice of his own that does not require submission. And this time, Luke himself provides the example to Anakin. In the final act of ROTJ, Anakin becomes an agent unto himself, and helps Luke. He realizes he has a choice. And he chooses the right path. In this way, as I said, in his last moments he redeems himself -- not necessarily in the eyes of the galaxy, but in the eyes of Luke, in the eyes of Padme's memory, and in the eyes of his own soul.]

    Anakin is the Chosen One because he does what both the Jedi and Sith would deem impossible [they both misinterpret it because they themselves are causing the imbalance] -- he bridges the gap from dark to light by making the journey from light to dark and from dark to light. Luke is the catalyst because he is the first to bridge the gap internally, but the galaxy's balance rests on Anakin's decision. He is the fulcrum of it all. And he throws away a lifetime of darkness to embrace the light. He is the Chosen One because he came back and righted the galaxy inside and outside.

    [As a side-note, it makes perfect sense that Qui-Gon would be the one to discover Anakin and associate him with this obscure prophecy of the Chosen One. Qui-Gon is the one who seems to disagree most with the Jedi Council, and he is the most likely man to perceive their dogmatic ways. It makes sense that he would be the one to believe in a prophecy to make things balanced again.]

    2. To balance the Force takes a balance of both discipline and passion, wisdom and compassion. Without the Jedi -- especially a new kind of Jedi, like Luke who bridges both sides symbolically and philosophically -- a person is liable to fall too hard on one side and create the same issues and dogmatic ideologies the Jedi and Sith did.

    3. To unbalance the Force is to be unbalanced generally, whether that makes you Sith or Jedi or dark force or light force user. The Force itself has no stake in the outcome, it seems to be simply an energy field that occasionally produces someone special [like Anakin]. It has eddies and flows in its current, and sometimes the Force can lead people to something if they listen to it. It's like intuition. The Force itself cannot be unbalanced, but a person's connection to it can be, and as a result they can unbalance the galaxy. Who this comes from doesn't seem to matter, though in Anakin's case since he was the fulcrum of it all it did have bigger consequences.

    4. It doesn't matter to me either way and it has no impact on the prophecy.
     
  13. john vogel

    john vogel Jedi Youngling

    Registered:
    Jan 5, 2016
    I think the balance to the force means there were too many Jedi. There needed to be an equal number on either side. There were only Palpatine, Dooku, and Maul on the dark side (that I know of), yet there were TONS of Jedi. Those Jedi got wiped out... Balance was restored. Very few Jedi, very few sith.
     
  14. Alexrd

    Alexrd Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Jul 7, 2009
    ?! They are detached, but not uncompassionate. That's the Jedi way. They haven't lost it, they are staying true to it.

    That's objectively false. The Jedi don't cause imbalance. And balance is not about the number of Jedi and Sith. The Force is in every life form, not just them. And they aren't the Force for their numbers to be relevant to its balance. The Sith cause imbalance, therefore their destruction is essential for it to be achieved.
     
  15. quinlan solo

    quinlan solo Jedi Knight

    Registered:
    Nov 28, 2012
    1. I think for Lucas, Anakin destroying the Sith is intrinsically connected with his bringing balance to the Force, because the Sith by their use of the dark side bring about the imbalance in the first place. We know from Yoda in TESB that Life generates the Force, makes it grow, but drawing the dark side (relying on your own selfish passions rather than selflessly submitting to the will of the Force) inevitably leads to the decay of life. So "balance" seems to be the flourishing of Life - mutualism, symbiosis, cooperation, selflessness, "the Light;" while imbalance is the corruption of Life - parasitism, cancer, competition, selfishness, "the dark side."

    From Bill Moyers' interview with Lucas, "Of Myth and Men" (http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,23298-4,00.html):

    Also of interest:

    So I agree, Alexrd, that

    But I also think xezene and solrdzm are onto something. While I don't think the PT Jedi were causing or contributing to the imbalance, I do think their Jedi Order had some significant flaws which needed to be overcome for the Force to be put back in balance. Luke, as the catalyst of Anakin's choice to cast off Vader and to return to the Light and his true self, had to come to the point where he recognized that not all attachment was to be avoided, that his love for his father was not a selfish passion or a path to the dark side. This is how he avoided Obi-Wan's mistake in ROTS of trying to kill Vader outright. At the same time. Luke chose not to let his love for his friends and fear for their safety turn into rage against the Emperor and Vader, avoiding Anakin's mistake in ROTS. While the PT Jedi were Kierkegaardian Knights of Infinite Resignation, Luke became by a conscious decision (or "leap") a Knight of Faith, and in doing so was able to bring Anakin back from the dark side, who in turn destroyed the Sith and brought balance to the Force. So in sense, Luke - by achieving a kind of internal balance within himself which the PT Jedi lacked - facilitated Anakin's bringing balance to the Force itself.

    According to Dave Filoni, if I understand him correctly, Yoda already understood this, but couldn't tell Luke directly because it was something he had to learn for himself (http://www.starwars.com/news/dave-filoni-on-the-lost-missions-yoda-arc):

    This at least seems to be some of the thinking underlying the Mortis Trilogy and the Yoda Arc in the Clone Wars TV series, though they line up remarkably well with the ideas we got in the old EU NJO novels like Traitor, Destiny's Way, and The Unifying Force, so maybe some of this stuff was latent in the OT, if Stover, Williams, and Luceno were able to see it.

    2. While Lor San Tekka's line "Without the Jedi, there can be no balance," can be interpreted to mean that the Force is currently out of balance, I don't think it has to be. It could as easily be interpreted as meaning that without the Jedi, balance will not last, or that without the Jedi, imbalance is inevitable at some point, maybe coming about gradually. Back in the years when Lucas kept saying "There is no more story" after ROTJ, I suspect he thought of Anakin's bringing balance to the Force as permanent, but once he decided to sell to Disney and took up his pen to write story treatments for VII-IX (regardless of however much or little they survived into TFA or the next two films), that entailed at least the possibility that the balance would not last, that the galaxy could be tipping toward darkness once again. Which means that the ST Jedi are to fulfill the role they arrived at in NJO: guardians of the balance - maintaining, preserving, and protecting the Light.

    3. In theory, any dark side group should be able to imbalance the Force, but I don't think we are meant to come away with the impression that unbalancing the Force is easy. It is not the mere existence of the dark side that imbalances things, because the dark side (death, decay, selfishness) is always part of nature. It is the embrace of the dark side by sentient beings which causes imbalance, at least internally. Causing external imbalance in the Force itself seems much more difficult. The Sith are exceptionally strong in the dark side, and it took them generations upon generations to tip the scales in their favor (granted, I'm assuming a lot of the Darth Plagueis novel still holds). The Sith aren't just a group with a dark side system of belief, like a religious faith which could be adopted by just anyone who agrees with them; they are also a dark side system of practice which requires a certain force-potential and skill-set. While I guess that after centuries dark side techniques could be rediscovered (by holocron) or redeveloped, I think it would be very hard to topple the Force without having been initiated into Sith training and their intensive disciplines.

    4. So as far as whether Snoke is a Sith, I don't have a firm opinion. I think to be a genuine threat to balance, it would make more sense for him to be a Sith, but without the Jedi actively present to guard or maintain the balance, as in the PT, maybe the balance is more precarious and more susceptible to upset by non-Sith darksiders. If Snoke is a Sith, then in order for that to be consistent with Anakin's role as the Chosen One, I think the prophecy would have to be reinterpreted to mean that Anakin, both by means of his killing Palpatine and by means of fathering Luke who will train the next generation of Jedi (specifically Rey, possibly Kylo Ren when or if he's redeemed), brought about the destruction of the Sith, albeit more indirectly than the movies might have led us to think previously. If he's not a Sith, but an Inquisitor, Prophet of the Dark Side, Cronal, etc., then the Chosen One prophecy holds unchanged. I think Snoke could still be Plagueis but not a Sith, but maybe in surviving Palpatine's attack on him somehow, he considers himself as having moved beyond the Sith, a Sith no more. Alternatively, maybe he's like the Ones on Mortis - a Force-wielder or a Celestial - neither Sith nor Jedi, but definitely dark side. Who knows? At the end of the day, I suspect Snoke is not a Sith, because Maz's comments about "the only fight - against the dark side" taking many forms seem to me to be the filmmakers' way of telling us that the fight against the Sith is past, and in the ST the shadow is taking a new shape.
     
  16. darth-sinister

    darth-sinister Manager Emeritus star 10 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jun 28, 2001

    Right. In TFA,
    Lor San Tekka says that without the Jedi there cannot be balance. He doesn't talk about the Sith, nor the Ren being needed.

    "This is obviously a very pivotal scene for Anakin because this is reuniting with his mother and his youth and at the same time dealing with his inability to let go of his emotions and allow himself to accept the inevitable. The fact that everything must change and that things come and go through his life and that he can't hold onto things which is a basic Jedi philosophy that he isn't willing to accept emotionally and the reason that is because he was raised by his mother rather than the Jedi. If he'd have been taken in his first year and started to study to be a Jedi, he wouldn't have this particular connection as strong as it is and he'd have been trained to love people but not to become attached to them."

    --George Lucas, AOTC DVD Commentary.


    "The Jedi are trained to let go. They're trained from birth," he continues, "They're not supposed to form attachments. They can love people- in fact, they should love everybody. They should love their enemies; they should love the Sith. But they can't form attachments. So what all these movies are about is: greed. Greed is a source of pain and suffering for everybody. And the ultimate state of greed is the desire to cheat death."

    --George Lucas, The Making Of Revenge Of The Sith; page 213

    "It's about a good boy who was loving and had exceptional powers, but how that eventually corrupted him and how he confused possessive love with compassionate love. That happens in Episode II: Regardless of how his mother died, Jedis are not supposed to take vengeance. And that's why they say he was too old to be a Jedi, because he made his emotional connections. His undoing is that he loveth too much."

    --George Lucas, Rolling Stone Magazine Interview; June 2005.


    The Jedi don't discourage love, but they discourage attachments. Which Lucas defines as holding onto past emotional states, instead of letting them go. Obsessing about things that were out of your reach. Learning to accept the natural course of life, which is that people that you love will die. A Jedi must hold compassion, which is unconditional love for all people, in their hearts at all times. To not think about themselves. The internal balance is right, which Obi-wan says eluded Anakin prior to his fall. That he needed to balance himself before he could bring balance to the Force.
     
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  17. solrdzm

    solrdzm Jedi Youngling star 1

    Registered:
    Dec 28, 2015
    Actually I think that's the reason why Yoda is crying after fighting against the Emperor and why he failed in the duel and in the childbirth of luke and leia (I was like in shock) because may be in a good way they (Yoda and Obi-Wan) could've helped Anakin and prevent all of the chaos, but at the end everything happened by the force will may be because on this way Anakin reached this wise moment of all his life and brought balance to the force with luke's help and Yoda and Obi-Wan could finished their Jedi training with this new force lesson and with all this new knowledge as I said before, Anakin left the way free to Luke for the new Jedi Order.

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  18. darth-sinister

    darth-sinister Manager Emeritus star 10 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Jun 28, 2001
    Yoda isn't crying. He's sad and mournful, but that's not the same as crying.
     
  19. Qui-Riv-Brid

    Qui-Riv-Brid Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Apr 18, 2013
    Exactly.

    Anakin brought the Force back into balance from the unbalanced point that the Sith unnaturally tipped the scales to the Dark Side. What he didn't do was simply unbalance it the other way for the Light.

    That would hardly be balance. Now it can go either way.

    Obviously with no Jedi around then the Dark siders can have an easier time doing exactly that whereas before even with an entire Jedi Order of thousands the shroud of the Dark Side still covered everything and their was nothing they could do about it.

    Hence the importance of the Chosen One to bring balance where the Jedi Order could not. Obviously the Jedi would slant the prophecy towards their own ideas that the Chosen One has to be a Jedi.

    That he became a Sith wasn't something they could ever have imagined nor that once there that anything could turn the Sith from the Dark Side back to the Light.
     
  20. solrdzm

    solrdzm Jedi Youngling star 1

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    Dec 28, 2015
    Sorry I really didn't remember exactly the scenes but I wanted to say that he looks very sad .

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  21. solrdzm

    solrdzm Jedi Youngling star 1

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    Dec 28, 2015
    Sorry I really didn't remember exactly the scenes but I wanted to say that he looks very sad.

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  22. quinlan solo

    quinlan solo Jedi Knight

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    Nov 28, 2012

    That is an impressive selection of Lucas quotes! I think we are largely in agreement: the philosophy of the PT Jedi is basically correct, but do you think it is entirely correct, or that they were always consistent in practicing it? I thought that Lucas meant to show that their approach to attachment was at least somewhat flawed, or incomplete. As a means of forbidding attachment, the PT Jedi also forbid marriage, which doesn't necessarily fit with their commitment to love and provided yet another aspect to Anakin's fall - that he had to keep his marriage secret from the Jedi and Obi-Wan in particular, leading him to trust Palpatine for help rather than his Master. Likewise, the PT Jedi believed that death was the end of consciousness, and first the ROTS novel and then the Yoda Arc spelled out how they had been mistaken about that, which in turns challenges the basis of their commitment to nonattachment - that nothing lasts forever. Further, doesn't the fact that Yoda decided to have Luke and Leia raised in families rather than as traditional younglings suggest that his understanding of the distinction between attachments and love had changed, or at least clarified? Solrdzm's reference to Yoda's regret seems to me in keeping with Lucas' intentions. "Into exile I must go. Failed I have." - at least in the ROTS novel, this isn't just about the duel with Sidious, but Yoda recognizing that he had been too dogmatic and not adaptable enough. This of course doesn't mean that Anakin's fall is the Jedi's fault, or they deserved Order 66, or some of the inflammatory nonsense that gets thrown around sometimes; just that the PT Jedi fell short in some significant respects, that Qui Gon was meant to show the way forward, a different way, that Yoda in the PT was not meant to be as wise or enlightened as he was in the OT, and that Luke transcended the old order when he rejected Obi-Wan's claim that there was no good left in Vader in ROTJ (which was the same claim Yoda had made to Obi-Wan in ROTS).


    In Lucas' galaxy, is it really possible for the Force to be unbalanced by too much Light? I know that in the Mortis arc, the Father says that too much of the light or dark would be the end of life as we know it, but subsequently he clarifies that he is talking about the balance of nature. Did Lucas intend to suggest that a sentient beings' internal balance should be equal parts selfishness (the dark side) and selflessness (the Light)? All the way back to the 1976 novelization of ANH, there seems to be an asymmetry between the the two, when Obi-Wan taunts Vader that he knows as little of the full power of the Force as a spoon knows of the taste of food.
     
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  23. Alexrd

    Alexrd Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Jul 7, 2009
    When weren't they consistent?

    Marriage is a commitment and the Jedi already have their own. Marriage and family is not the Jedi way of life. They are selfless and compassionate. Marriage and family is the opposite of that. It's to be attached and tied to a select group of people in particular. People whose lives and actions can affect your own. You can't be a Jedi and be married or have a family.
     
  24. darth-sinister

    darth-sinister Manager Emeritus star 10 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jun 28, 2001
    Right. As Lucas also said, a Jedi cannot let themselves be defined by their attachments.

    "But he has become attached to his mother and he will become attached to Padme and these things are, for a Jedi, who needs to have a clear mind and not be influenced by threats to their attachments, a dangerous situation. And it feeds into fear of losing things, which feeds into greed, wanting to keep things, wanting to keep his possessions and things that he should be letting go of. His fear of losing her turns to anger at losing her, which ultimately turns to revenge in wiping out the village. The scene with the Tusken Raiders is the first scene that ultimately takes him on the road to the dark side. I mean he's been prepping for this, but that's the one where he's sort of doing something that is completely inappropriate."

    --George Lucas, AOTC DVD Commentary.


    "When you get down to where we are right now in the story, you basically get somebody who’s going to make a pact with the Devil, and it’s going to be a pact with the Devil that says, 'I want the power to save somebody from death. I want to be able to stop them from going to the river Styx, and I need to go to a god for that, but the gods won’t do it, so I’m going to go down to Hades and get the Dark Lord to allow me to have this power that will allow me to save the very person I want to hang on to.' You know, it’s Faust. So Anakin wants that power, and that is basically a bad thing. If you’re going to sell your soul to save somebody you love, that’s not a good thing. That’s as we say in the film, unnatural. You have to accept that natural course of life. Of all things. Death is obviously the biggest of them all. Not only death for yourself but death for the things you care about."

    --George Lucas, “Star Wars: The Last Battle,” Vanity Fair, 2005


    So where forbidding marriage comes in is that it is the ultimate state of attachment. A Jedi who has fallen in love and committed themselves to a person. The trouble is that said Jedi can easily be influenced by their attachment to their loved ones to tread the dark side. Yoda's feelings of failure is that he believes that there is an alternative to training a Jedi to be compassionate. Hence letting the Skywalkers live with families, before being trained. But as we've seen in TFA, that doesn't work out so well either. And in "Rebels", Ezra has to struggle with the dark side because he was raised by his parents before their deaths and he has to learn to let go of his attachment to them and to the past.
     
  25. quinlan solo

    quinlan solo Jedi Knight

    Registered:
    Nov 28, 2012

    Consistent was probably a poor choice of word, but I do think that how the PT Jedi understood attachment cannot be entirely correct in-universe, for the reasons I outlined. If it were entirely correct, then Yoda's advice to Obi-Wan in ROTS to let go of his love for Anakin and regard him as already dead would have been right, but we already know from ROTJ that this was not the way, because Luke was right to reject that same advice when Obi-Wan passed it on to him. Likewise, the PT Jedi belief that nothing survives death (and thus we should not become attached to it) would have had to be right, but instead we see shimmering blue Force-ghosts in the OT. Finally, Luke and Leia shouldn't have been raised by families, but by Yoda and Obi-Wan to be trained from birth. The OT shows that the PT Jedi understanding underwent a change. Not a total rejection, but a change.