Saga Did Anakin truly bring Balance to the Force?

It would be nice if people who keep talking about balance as though it were the balance between the Light Side and the Dark Side would read a interview on Lucas's thoughts on the subject every once in a while.


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It would be nice if people who keep talking about balance as though it were the balance between the Light Side and the Dark Side would read an interview with Lucas about his thoughts on the subject every once in a while.

 

Apologies. It wasn't a matter of disagreement, but an expression of frustration on my part, which was lacking in manners. It wasn't aimed at any specific post or poster, but more at an idea, and it was the wrong venue to express that frustration. I hope no one took any personal offense, or if they did, that they understand it wasn't about them or their comments.

As for the double post, that was an error with my phone, not intentional.

 

That's what I thought it meant too, but then came stuff like the Mortis Arc in TCW.
I prefer to go with the older view than the newer one.

SW isn't always consistent and GL/writers/Disney etc take it in different directions.

Too me it appears Disney is taking the literal Darkside Lightside balance view and I don't like that.

But I didn't like Anakin being a "prophecy child" anyway.
Plus there is still darksiders after ROTJ in "old canon" and "new canon" so I don't believe Anakin brought balance either way.

 

Out of curiosity, does it appear that way because of the TLJ trailer? The thing that makes me think it won't be that way in the ST is because Lucas has actually been consistent and specific in the meaning of balance and it's hard to believe that Kathleen Kennedy would just ignore that basic set up in favor of a revision.

 

Nothing's changed because of Mortis.

That's always been the case with Lucas, since the second draft of ANH. That there was a light and dark and both sides can influence people in emotional ways. He just took it further by requiring a push pull tension.

Evil can never be destroyed, because mankind still exists and we all have the capacity for good and evil. The existence of the dark side will never go away and the temptations of the dark side will still exist, which is why Ben Solo became Kylo Ren and Snoke was able to manipulate him.

 

Your last point touches on why I don't like the prophecy.

The PT shouldn't have made Anakin a "chosen one". Killing Palpatine didn't bring an end to the struggle between the light side and the dark side.
I do believe in a final defeat of evil in the end, but Anakin defeating Palpatine isn't an end, the universe goes on.

Anakin killing one evil old man does what exactly? There are other dark side users and plenty of evil people in the galaxy.
What makes killing Palpatine different than all the other darksiders/evil people that died before him?

And what about all the darksiders after him?
What was the point of making Anakin a "chosen one"?

There wasn't even a brief era of peace.

I think the PT trying to make Anakin a "chosen one" hurts the story.

And TFA hurts it even more. I don't think GL should have made "Anakin" a chosen one, but Disney could have had at least had an era of peace with Luke having a new Jedi order superior to the old.
Instead we get "ANH 2.0". I hope we don't get "chosen one" 2.0 either.

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As to the other question:​

TLJ trailer isn't the only thing that makes me think SW is taking the literal balance of the force view.​

Other stuff I've read previously too, that make it sound like the "dark side" is needed.​

I don't feel like looking it up, but this topic has been talked about before.​

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Plus hearing/reading about the "Bendu".​

Are they going further into "Father Mortis"'s literal balance view?​

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I wish those episodes didn't exist and that stuff wouldn't be brought up in SW canon again.​

Or if it is brought up, have something showing that the "So-called Father" in TCW was wrong instead having stuff that make it appear his view is​

"what is right and what the chosen one is about".​

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Killing Palpatine wasn't supposed to bring an end to the struggle between light and dark, merely to even it out. That's the balance; the push and pull tension between equal and opposite forces. The universe depends on it to function. The dark side can't be vanquished, but it can and must be countered with light for the sake of balance. That's why "Without the Jedi, there can be no balance in the Force".

 

Because he unbalanced the Force through his actions that lead to the Clone Wars and the Jedi Purge.

They will have to be dealt with by Luke and his Jedi Order. As long as people have the ability to use the Force and even some modicum of training, the threat of the dark side will always be there.

Because he is the one who brings balance to the Force. It was Lucas's way of giving Anakin a great destiny and tying his six films together.

Sure there is. A year after ROTJ, the Empire surrenders and there's a cold war truce. And before the ST, Lucas intended for the story to end there, but that didn't mean that conflicts wouldn't ever emerge again. Crime isn't eradicated because Jabba's dead. Smaller scale wars won't ever happen again because the Sith are gone. The dark side is an internal struggle that the Jedi have to deal with all the time.

Lucas is the one who said that the dark side has to be there.


"I wanted to have this mythological footing because I was basing the films on the idea that the Force has two sides, the good side, the evil side, and they both need to be there. Most religions are built on that, whether it's called yin and yang, God and the devil—everything is built on the push-pull tension created by two sides of the equation. Right from the very beginning, that was the key issue in Star Wars."

--George Lucas, Time Magazine Article 2002.

 

Ha, I know what you mean.

 

Yes, per Lucas, Anakin brought balance to the Force by the end of ROTJ. But because he passed, he's no longer an active participant in the galaxy, thus meaning that the possibility exists for the Force to be thrown out of balance again.

 

I think Anakin fulfilled the prophecy by bringing balance to the Force. I think Rey's task will be to establish a new order of Force sensitives which can maintain that balance and then this saga will be over.

 

It's difficult to say.

It is much easier to see how the whole Skywalker "legacy" ensured the force was brought into, and kept in balance, this is open ended enough to allow for the ST to maintain the continuity.
However, the idea of the "Chosen One" is quite explicit to Anakin so this is where that assumption can fall down.

The view of the force as a dichotomy is the prevailing one, and, as has been said, is often quoted as Lucas' own interpretation.

Every so often, however, a SW character comes along and says, "Wait a second, that can't be right, it's more complex than that..." just like how philosophers in reality have been criticizing religion and theological ideas for centuries. And that is not to say either is in any way better or weaker than the other. I find it an intriguing aspect of the mythos.

I have often interpreted balance in the Force as a far more intimate experience - it is the equilibrium ('balance') between the Force and its agent/user, total openness in the Force. The EU expressed this idea several times and I hope the ST hints at the same, or even better, comes up with a new spin on the concept.

If we see an absence of the this notion of 'balance' or of the nature of the Force in general - let's hope it is not merely a case of removing the underlying aspects of a story for the sake of simplifying it to an audience. You can make these sort of philosophical ideas engaging and fun without making it overly-complex, dense etc. The fact they even exist in SW in the first place is evidence of that.

 

Anakin fulfilled his destiny. It doesn't require him to continue to be around to keep it in balance. That's the job of Luke and his new Jedi Order.

 

Darth Vader destroyed the Sith, because there was only one Sith in the end and that was the Emperor . He showed that you can come back from evil, so that balance made the force go back together for a while. But even if the Force goes out of balance again, Anakin is still there to fix it! He didn't die, he went into the force with Obi Wan and is more powerful than even the Star Wars imaginations can imagine! He still can come back and save the day again, bringing the force back into balance. And Luke and Leia are his kids, they can keep the legacy going!

 

There's been no balance since Dark Empire. And that was Lucas' idea. If balance means everything is good and no evil, than it was never accomplished.

 

That's not what balance means...

 

"Dark Empire" was not his idea, since Tom Vietch has given conflicting statements. Ultimately, it is no longer part of the current canon.

 

But Palpatine's resurrection came from George Lucas. The original idea was an imposter Vader being the villain.

 

I think the balance side is the medium between the dark side and light sides! That happened at the end when Vader was both! I didn't know the Emperor Palpatine came back, but Vader did come back as Anakin too, and the Emperor wasnt there then . I don't know about any imposter Vader's but they wouldn't be sith, just people wearing the costume, right?

 

Hmm. If you start trying to reconcile the 'balance to the Force' idea with the whole EU canon, you will get lost in a maze of retconned, abandoned and discontinuous plot holes. Remember the old tiered canon system - Lucas wrote the PT with the intent to wipe out/disregard any continuity that didn't fit with his intentions for those films.

A positive with the new canon is that we don't need to worry about any of that - it's more a question of what the new role of the Jedi will be in continuing Anakin's legacy.. And that's quite fun, I think.

 

Tom Vietch has also said that it was his idea and that Lucas just signed off on it. That's what I mean by conflicting accounts. And as it is, Lucas had long said he was never bound by the books and comics.

No, he didn't intend to do that. He stated that he wasn't bound to the EU and if something interfered, then it would be disregarded by him. The EU was always a separate world from his.

 

I think it's more dramatically satisfying if restoring balance to the Force meant more than killing the Sith and Luke (the Son of the Suns ) was actually the Chosen One/the one who does bring balance.