Saga The Hidden Genius Behind the Prophecy of "The Chosen One"

I have seen you making this and similar assertions throughout the board and it sincerely intrigues me. I take it you have recently discovered Star Wars and watched the films for the first time starting with Episode I, and finishing with Episode VI. Because of this unique way of being introduced to the Saga you approach it without the preconceptions that many of us have from watching it starting 35 years ago in the theater.

In the first seconds of Episode IV (which for many of us was the first film we watched) we are told in the opening crawl that the Galactic Empire is evil. It says it right there, "The evil GALACTIC EMPIRE" this is even before we see a single spaceship or the person of Darth Vader. But we go in knowing the Empire are the bad guys because that is what we were told.

Now watching starting from Episodes I-III in complete ignorance of the original trilogy we are not given any broad clues by the omniscient narrator (or omniscient crawl writer) just what side to believe in. From your fresh perspective you find yourself identifying with who we have all been conditioned to know as the bad guy, but lacking this cultural indoctrination that the rest of us have or have picked up from the culture of people who have watched Star Wars you find the plight of Darth Sidious something to be sympathetic towards.

To my fellows on these forums, as wrong as Lord Tyrannus is, I think of instead of shouting him down for being wrong we have a unique anthropological opportunity of a Star Wars fan exposed to the source material in such a way to have this unique viewpoint. Now if he can just articulate why he believes as he believes we can come to a deeper understanding of the saga and the dark side's motivations.

This reminds me of an hypothesis that if someone could read the bible having been totally ignorant of Judeo-Christian culture if the God of the Old Testament would be seen as a good guy or a bad guy based on the material alone absent of explanations that have grown up and around the actions of Jehova. Here we have an individual completely ignorant of "Jedi Apologetics" we should tease out his opinions and try to get him to articulate clearly the opinions he holds with an open mind and see if there is not some truth to be discovered.

 

An interview quote attributed to 2002, possibly Time magazine.

It was called the "good side". The term "light side" is just later nomenclature for the same thing. It's exceedingly misguided to try to somehow interpret this change as an indication that the Force has no sides. The issue only came up in the first place because of the films talking about sides of the Force. Everything Lucas has said about the Force indicates that the Force has two sides, just as it has two halves in the early scripts. The Force is balanced when these sides are in balance. "All of one thing and none of the other" would be a strange definition of balance. In fact, it's the exact opposite of the meaning of the word balance.

I agree with this. But that doesn't make the Father's statement about light and dark wrong.

 

Please feel free to attempt to get, in one place, one articulated opinion because I agree with you - it's fascinating (like a trainwreck because it's so spread out and disjointed, but fascinating) to see these views and supporting (where given) evidence.

 

Why do you think the empire is evil? What's your opinion on this? Were the sith evil just because they were sith?

 

I have said why I think the Empire is evil, I was told in the opening crawl on a Wednesday Afternoon in 1977 that they were. That has prejudiced me against the Galactic Empire from Day one. Now there were many events presented in the six films and other media that support that conclusion. But I am not interested at all in convincing you of these facts. I am MORE interested in your reasons for taking the contrary view.

If you could, please tell me why you think the Sith are misunderstood and are the altruistic organization fit to lead a Galactic Government.

Now the Jedi were not perfect by any means, but if you could tell me what evidence has convinced you that the Jedi are evil then we can begin a dialog.

I am not looking for bald assertions, but for the reasoning behind your opinions.

 

Most of the hints that the average Imperial "wasn't that bad" come from the EU. The game TIE Fighter portrays the protagonists heroically fighting against slavers, renegade Imperials, and "terrorists"- trying to stress that most TIE pilots were good people attempting to defend the citizens of the Empire.

 

Great question. The empire and the Sith (bad guys in SW) was considered evil by most SW fans because they destroyed alderaan, had the death star, were responsible for owen and beru lar's deaths, order 66 and what they did with the Jedi in ROTS, got rid of the galactic republic, they were ruled by a sith, their leaders (palps and Vader) used the darkside of the Force, they had different philosophies than the Jedi, etc. I am not denying that the empire and the sith did many evil things. Or more specifically, the villians, the Sith, including the galactic empire. They were evil and twisted, no question about it.

However, the main idea I have is not that the empire wasn't evil, but that the supposed good guys of the saga (jedi and rebels), their goal of defeating the bad guys, their main goal to overthrow the sith empire in the original trilogy, and trying to stop the sith from taking over the galaxy, was misguided and not heroic or good.

For instance, in episode 3 the jedi wanted to arrest Palpatine and stop him from taking over the Republic. Now, Palpatine was evil at that point, he started the clone wars for his own personal goals, no doubt about that. I'm not saying he wasn't evil. However, the jedi and their goal of stopping Palpatine was not good, and was kind of evil too. They have different philosophical views on the Force-the light side and the darkside. They partially wanted to get rid of Palps because a sith, who controlled dark powers, like some kind of dark superpower/magic or something like that. Which did not make him evil, in and of itself. What matters is the good of the galaxy, not whether or not it's leader has mysterious powers or not. So, the fact that the sith and the imperial rulers use the darkside, in and of itself, is irrelevant to them being good or bad. Now, in my opinion, the jedi philosophy is more moral than the sith, and the sith have a wierd belief system going on there, but that's not relevant to them being good or evil in the long run, affecting the trillions/quadrillions of galactic citizens.

As for the galactic empire itself, it depends on wheter or not you're talking about the original or the prequels movies, because the jedi and the supposed good guys of the saga have different motives in different movies. Their motives in ROTS were different than their motives of defeating the empire than in, episodes 4-6.

 

Are you saying that although Palpatine was evil and orchestrated a war against his own government, it was misguided to oppose that - that folks should simply accept evil because to counter it is to only invite more suffering and war?

The Jedi did not oppose Palps because he held a different philosophy. They opposed him because he was evil and overthrew the government.

Let my try a real world analogy: Obama declares Congress illegal and declares himself Emperor. He decides the US would be stronger if it annexed Canada, so he sends troops to take control. The Canadians resist, and the US Army attempt to arrest Obama because he is subverting the law of the land.

In your scenario, the Canadians should welcome Obama and the US citizens/army shrug their shoulders with a "what can you do about it?"

 

I think this is the nugget I was looking for. You believe that the philosophy of pacifism is the proper response to conflict.

Being passive in the face of evil is in itself an immoral act. Evil will triumph if good people do nothing. Now this does not have to be violent, but the acts of historical figures such as Ghandi and Dr. King show how non-violent resistance can be a vehicle of change, but that only works if your opponent has a moral core to which you can appeal to. In the case of the Emperor and his Empire, this did not exist, and so taking to arms to liberate the Galaxy and restore the Republic was the correct, moral act.

Yes war causes suffering. But doing nothing would cause greater suffering in the long run. Sometimes violence is justified. Sometimes violence is necessary.

I no longer think your viewpoint is an interesting alternative, I can now see the flaw in your reasoning, its not a unique view of seeing the source material free of external influence but the coloring of a misguided philosophy you held from before watching the films.

 

I'm saying that war has a cost. If a war isn't worth fighting for, then the cost of it, mainly lives, is not worth it. Many historical wars, saved many lives in the long run. The edmund burke quote is totally true. Many wars, which sadly lost many lives, saved many more lives in the long run.

The war to defeat the empire in star wars did not help/save more lives than the lives that died during the war. Therefore it was an unjust war.

 

You try to form a moral framework here, but you boil it down to a mathematical formula. Absent of all other considerations you would allow evil to triumph if the cost to stop it is too high.

You have said in this thread and others that stopping the sith was not heroic or good. I do not think you even know the true meaning of those words and you do not know the full price of tyranny. Its not measured in the number of lives, but in the quality of those lives. Being a free being is better than being a slave, and no one was free under the Tyranny of the Empire. All suffered. It is better to relieve this suffering by defeating the Sith even at the cost of lives, than for all to suffer in perpetuity.

But say, just for the sake of argument your metric is the one we use to measure the justness of a conflict. The Empire built a planet killing weapon. When it was blown up, they built ANOTHER one. With Alderaan and Yavin they showed that they were willing to use it, even against unarmed planets and hostile environments both. No matter how you sliced it, the Empire was capable of killing anyone and everyone if stood unopposed. In their defeat. COUNTLESS lives were saved. With the potential to exterminate all life in the Galaxy, no sacrifice fighting that evil can be too great to justify the war.

 

Anakin was destined to fulfill the prophecy, the path to fulfilling it was his choice. That's pretty much what Lucas gets at. There is a destiny, but the choices you make to get there are your own.

 

Lucas said you can choose not to fulfill your destiny; in other words your "destiny" is not predestined.

 

I disagree, I can't remember where I heard it but I know I heard Lucas say that there is a destiny. I believe that it was in one of the DVD commentaries. I know he says something very similar about the scene where Luke discovers Owen and Beru burned. In that scene Lucas says that Luke can't escape his destiny to go on the hero's journey, that because he was rejecting it, it was forced on him to pursue it. That was in the ANH DVD Commentary.

I do know I have heard Lucas say that the path to your destiny is your choice but there is a destiny.

 

So what does "destiny" - quotes are yours - actually mean , then?

 

It's not a guarantee. If Vader flies his ship into a black hole, or hides in an asteroid somewhere until his death, his "destiny" is not fulfilled. It will not magically happen by some other path. It is not predetermined ( which would tend to undermine dramatic tension from a certain point of view ). Besides, a character's "destiny" can mean different things to different individuals. When Vader and Palpatine talk about Luke's destiny, they mean something completely different from the heroic path alluded to by Lucas.

 

I agree with many ideas on this topic.

 

I find the prophecy of the chosen one facinating because it allows room for interpretation for all these different viewpoints. One of the things Star Wars gets right by accident or design is this room for debate where the force and morality are concerned.

While I agree with many points to the contrary, If I had to get off the fence I'd find myself agreeing with the sentiment of the op. The way I see it, the Mortis trilogy is almost a metaphore for the events that leads to the eventual balance brought to the force.

First we see the Daughter or light side destroyed by the Son (which could be anaolgous of the sith destroying the jedi in Ep3), then a long period of time elapses before the next fatality while the dark side is dominent (like the reign of Palpatine before the OT). When the Son is finally destroyed, it coincides with the death of the Father which I see as relating to the death of Palpatine (the Son/dark side) and also the death of Anakin (the Father) who represents the old ways, the last of both the jedi and sith.

I suppose what Luke inherits is a legacy of the force, purged and purified. A blank page.

The problems about the prophecy only arise when one takes GL's comments into consideration because they are often over simplified, as if he's afraid of revealing too much about himself. I think that to say that balance is restored when Anakin defeats the sith is an example of this.

 

I didn't word my opinion the right way. I never meant the Empire wasnt evil, I meant, the rebel alliance/the Jedi and their goal in defeating Palpatine/sith/Galactic Empire/Vader, wasn't justified. It wasn't a just war.

Because, in war, people die. How many innocent women and children died on the 2 death stars? Many. What about civilians? Nice going there, Luke Skywalker.

In war, both sides can do evil things, even the good guys. Just look at ww2. The allies committed some war crimes, but in the long run, they were needed to defeat the Nazis, and WW2 saved countless more millions because of that. Even though many soldiers on both sides died in war, innocent lives were saved. If the allies never took any action to defeat Germany, horrible things would have happened afterward. The Allied Powers saved countless innocent lives in both Europe and Asia. WW2 was a just war, because the Axis powers were defeated.

With the rebels, they provoked the war. Things can be gray areas, especially in war. I'm not trying to say that Palpatine or the Galactic Empire were good guys. There is no doubt they comitted atrocities.

My point is not that the Empire is good or isn't evil, but rather, my point is that the good guy's goal to defeat them is not a just war or a heroic goal. It wasn't worth it.

The rebel alliance was created to restore the Old Republic (ARR) because Palpatine came to power through starting the Clone Wars, where many people died. He got a lot of political power, too much power, and the democratic republic was changed into absolute power under his rule. So, no question, he was evil. He caused suffering just to get power for himself. He came to power through unjust means, starting wars. There is no question, that is evil and just plain wrong. Palpatine was a selfish, power hungry, morally bankrupt man.

However, many nations that exist today came to power through unjust means. That doesn't mean people start wars over what happened in the past. What's done is done.

After Palpatine rose to power, the Senate lost their power and he had absolute power. Maybe he could've been an enlightened despot. Lets see what happens later on. Is this a just war? Maybe, maybe not. So, the rebels trying to overthrow him because he came to power through unjust means is not a just war. The fact that he has a lot of power doesn't justify the war. Him becoming a tyrant later on would make it a just war.

The empire was responsible for the deaths of owen and beru Lars and the jawas. That was wrong. They were innocent farmers who had no idea what they were doing. They were not involved in the conflict. They were innocent, unarmed civilians with bad luck. Anakin ordered their deaths. He was evil.

But that was because the rebels stole droids with imperial info. Doesn't make defeating the Empire a just war, because the bad guy did evil things in retaliation, because if the rebels never started the war, owen and beru would've lived.

Yavin IV. It wasnt destroyed, and even if it was, the rebels, armed enemies in war had a base there. There were innocent civilians there. If the Empire destroyed Yavin IV it would have been a war crime. However, does an enemy doing evil things in retaliation make your war a just war? No. Person A starts a war. Person B does evil things in retaliation. Doesn't make Person A's war a just war.

Think about it. In Episode 3, when Padme was shocked that anakin joined the Empire, and obi wan and bail organa and mace windu and yoda were against the Emperor coming to power and fought the Sith, they never mentioned the Death Star and had no idea about it, which is the main reason people assume the rebel alliance had a just war.

If you were an average Joe living in the Galactic empire, the rise and fall of the empire wouldnt affect you in the least. Making all the deaths of rebels and imperials of the galactic civil war practically pointless. The main reason people assume the rebels were good guys was because the empire had the death star.

Also, my last point. The galaxy had many quadrillions, or at the very least, trillions, of sentinent beings living there, humans and aliens, both groups. The Empire destroyed planet-Aldearan, and a second planet- Despayre, if you count the EU. We never saw them destroying another planet. Empire strikes back or Return of the Jedi never mentioned imperial plans to destroy planet x or planet y or planet a or planet b. They had no plans on destroying other planets, especially on a large scale. It was just a symbol against the rebels. So, the empire only needed to use it on Aldearan once. Would they have destroyed multiple, dozens, or hundreds of planets? No. Watch Jedi and Empire. Never mentioned that.

Also, Alderaan was destroyed because it was home to Leia, a rebel princess. The death star was built to keep people in line, ie, from rebelling, ie, the rebel alliance. Leia rebelled, so they destroyed her planet. Again, it was evil, but, had the rebels never existed, the empire would never have destroyed alderaan. So, the rebels starting the war was the cause of the evil things the empire did, ie, a self fullfilling prophecy. They believe the quest to defeat the Empire is a just war, but the atrocities are done in retaliation to the rebels, which doesn't make their war a just war, since they started it.

So, my conclusion. Palpatine, vader, and empire=evil people. Rebels=political revolutinaries who started an unjust, live costing war, a lesser evil.

 

Exactly. The Civil War was really bad considering what was lost, but was worth it because the slaves were freed. And the Civil War is nothing compared to the Galactic Empire conflict stuff.

 

The war was SOOOOO justified.
When a people are seriously oppressed, they will do anything to defeat the evil. They will lay down their lives and perhaps those that they love. You are fortunate to have never had to be in a situation like this. You are very unfortunate in that you are extremely ignorant.

 

Who mentioned the civil war first? I don't get what youre trying to say with mentioning the civil war. Hundreds of thousands died.

I disagree with what u said. The civil war was nothing compared to galactic empire vs rebel war death tolls? No.

Most of the deaths were skirmishes, and some battles. I'm just doing rough estimates here.

The people who died in the Tantine IV in the battle at the beggining of A New hope, ya know, where Vader chokes the guy and said, "commander tear this ship apart", that battle, ya know? Well, probably a few dozen died there. Not even a hundred. At most.

All the deaths that happened in A new hope, when they shot the pilots in space and their ships exploded, and when Luke, han, leia, obi wan, were on the death star and trying to escape, such as the ones that got shot down in the scene where Luke did the tarzan thing and leia held onto him, and when han solo ran across the hallway and shot the stormtroopers and all the fights that happened there, maybe like 10 or 20 at the very most.

The battle of Yavin IV, maybe a few dozen pilots died on both sides.

A thousand or so died on the death star, maybe a few thousand. The 1st death star.

In empire, probably a hundred or so died in the Hoth battle, possibly a few hunderd.

There was a lot of fightning, 3 years, between ANH and ESB.

On the battle of endor, hundreds died at most, not including the death star. The 2nd death star, probably thousands died on it, like tens of thousands or something. However, remember when Luke dragged anakin onto the shuttle, and they were evacuating? Most of them escaped. Millions lived there, but most escaped. The rebels didnt stop them from escaping.

Tens of thousands died, most on the death star. Far less than the american civil war.

Type in google galactic civil war death tolls.

George Lucas never confirmed anything on this. just speculation.

 

That is just a claim. We all agree that the Emperor and the Empire is evil. No question. The arguement is, is the Galactic Civil War in the Originals, a just war. You just make generic statements without backing it up with lots of details and rebuttals, like I did.

 

So, there was this planet called Alderaan. Millions and millions died when some mean guys BLEW IT UP.
Wouldn't you be pissed if Earth blew up?

 

I don't need to make twisted details and rebuttals when everybody else on these boards knows what I'm saying.
The Galactic Civil was was "just a war" same as WWII was "just a war". Sure, technically it's another war, but what is at stake is so important here - the freedom of the galaxy, or tyranny?