Saga The Chosen Post: The Prophecy's Importance, Palpatine's Plan To Escape It, & Why Mace Lost the Duel

<<<<<<<As I sit in my big leather highchair calmly smoking a pipe.........




Well put. Well done. But........ was it not Yoda himself who stated that it was "misread"????

 

Yoda said it COULD have been misread. But because of Anakins actions in Rotj that is not the case.

 

Lucas said that he is the Chosen One and he fulfilled his destiny by destroying the Sith in ROTJ. Hence we have Kylo Ren and the Knights Of The Ren. Yoda thinks that they misread it because Anakin started to go bad and so they think that his children might be it, but it wasn't them. It was Anakin.

 

In response to:
"As evil begins to take over, it pushes the Force out of balance"(Lucas, AOTC DVD Commentary). So, balance in the Force doesn’t mean equal parts good and equal parts evil.



How do we know it’s not equal parts good and equal parts evil? If evil is beginning to take over, it pushes the Force out of balance in the sense that there’s more evil than good. The balance refers to bringing it down so that it is equal parts good and equal parts evil.

In the Mortis trilogy arc in TCW, Anakin steps up to the Father's position and controls both the light AND the dark to bring balance to the Force.

Because killing children and destroying planets of innocent people is just as bad as the PT Jedi Order apparently.

 

''Obi-Wan is a great mentor, as wise as Master Yoda and as powerful as Master Windu.''

- Supposedly Chosen One.

Mace was somewhat a special fighter in the Jedi Order, just as we see how quickly he can kill Jango Fett, who was also the best bounty hunter in the galaxy and stalemated with Obi-Wan and killed a Jedi Master Coleman Trebor in the same Episode II.

That's also true.

 

This is what balance means:

It's obviously not as simple as having a perfect balance between light and dark. This is an intuition born from not having thought very deeply about the issue.

The Force is an energy that exists in all living things. Life creates it and makes it grow. The Force is something living and breathing. Imagine the Force as a perfect garden. The Jedi are its guardians and they make sure to protect it from corruption. The Jedi cultivates this garden with great respect, while they weed out any corruption that might manifest itself in the garden (Sith). They are tending this garden with great care, so that it can grow and flourish. The Jedi listens to the Force in order to understand its will. They live in harmony with the Force. They strive to become one with the Force. The Sith on the other hand listens only to their own hearts and intends to impose their own will upon the Force. This act will inevitably upset the natural order of things and thereby throw the Force out of balance.

Balance entails removing this corruption from the garden. The Sith is the corrupting element and only when they're destroyed can balance be restored. The Jedi have to return in order to facilitate the restoration process, hence why Lor San Tekka (The Force Awakens) stresses the importance of the return of Luke Skywalker and the Jedi Order, since the Force is still struggling with the aftermath of long term Sith corruption. He also knows that without its protectors the garden is vulnerable to corruption and inevitable decay.

We know that this is the true meaning of balance. It's also consistent with what George Lucas himself has said. This isn't really up for debate, although people are of course free to interpret this matter in any way they want.

 

Eternity85

Interesting analogy. But I still think it's a bit more "complicated".

BEN Well, the Force is what gives a Jedi
his power. It's an energy field
created by all living things.

Now, living things will also die, it's a natural way as emphasized by Yoda, and things have to die to make room for new things.

However, living things kill other living things which therefore can no longer contribute to the Force. Technically that can't be in the interests of the "living" Force and probably belongs to the dark side. Yet, when we think of carnivorous animals it's also natural and a part of life.

IMHO, there must be an equilibrium, a balance between both dark and light side.

What the Sith essentially represent is the "survival of the fittest" at the expense of everything else. It's a "dog eats dog" philosophy that will ultimately cause an imbalance unless enlighted beings (e.g. Jedi) interfere to restore balance.

Darth Nerdling

I read the beginning of the thread and your reasoning is impeccable, yet - IMHO - it's based to a large part on the lack of vital Information.

First and foremost: Who actually created / delivered the prophecy? Because it is quoted by Yoda we all tend to assume it's a Jedi prophecy, but unless I'm overlooking something there is no solid evidence for that.
It gets even more complicated considering that Darth Plagueis perhaps created Anakin. It's almost like there is a prophecy and a Sith lord sees to it that it gets a chance of becoming true which hardly makes sense if it ultimately results in the Sith's destruction.

The Jedi interpret it on their behalf (as does George Lucas) but can we really rule out the possibility that Darth Sidious interpreted it differently?

I don't want to invoke Occam's Razor, but at the end of RotS (Rebels disregarding) we do have sort of a balance: Two Jedi (Kenobi and Yoda) and two Sith (Vader and Palpatine).

Therefore, from Palpatine's point of view the prophecy has been fulfilled and frankly, I can't bring myself to believe that an antagonist as clever and cunning as him would have all forgotten about it by the time of ROJ, turning a blind eye / his back to Vader who already and earlier had shown most disturbing emotions (which Palpatine noticed immediately) when he referred to Luke not as "young Skywalker" but actually "my son".

Alternately, we are looking at a prophecy that's deliberately and deliciously ambigious as it fits three events

1. It brought a balance between the Jedi and the Sith in RotS (two remaining Jedi and two remaining Sith)
2. It brought a balance between the Jedi and the Sith in ROJ (the two remaining Jedi and the two remaining Sith had died)
3. It will bring again a balance in the ST (although that would somewhat defy the idea that Anakin was the Chosen One)

 

It's seems, 2 me any who, dat there is 2 definitions of "balance"

1. The light side is the only way.

2. Light and Dark in harmony 50/50. (Grey)

Both can't be. Or can it?

 

Or we are thinking too much in two dimensions, e.g. a painting with equal or unequal distribution of black and white.

As a matter of fact there is absolutely no reference in the OT to a "light side". The only time it seemed we got close to that was a statement by Luke:

LUKE But how am I to know the good side
from the bad?

YODA You will know. When you are calm,
at peace. Passive. A Jedi uses
the Force for knowledge and
defense, never for attack.

Yoda's reply is anything but clear. "You will know". Luke will know what? To tell the difference between both sides or understand that he shouldn't be thinking like that?

I know, George Lucas provided a simple, two-dimensional explanation which might have been sufficient for the masses, but does it really fully explain the difference between the dark side and a "light side"?

For all we know "dark" alludes to hidden and unseen, so we might also be looking at some aspect of the Force that's closer to the unconscious, which eludes rational control and therefore appears to be rather related to the dark side.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subconscious

"In Freud's opinion the unconscious mind has a will and purpose of its own that cannot be known to the conscious mind (hence the term "unconscious") and is a repository for socially unacceptable ideas, wishes or desires, traumatic memories, and painful emotions put out of mind by the mechanism of psychological Repression."

 

Sorry to jump into the middle of a conversation, but I have a few thoughts on this topic.

I was always under the impression that Palpatine assumed Anakin would innately have the potential to discover the power of immortality, which he was expecting Anakin to bestow upon him once he becomes his apprentice. But once he became more machine than man, he lost that potential.

And, did Luke f up the balance when he started up a new Jedi order? Undoing what he and Anakin accomplished?

Also, there are two aspects to the Force. Perhaps Anakin with Luke brought balance to one, but it will take another to bring balance to the other. Enter Rey.

And, could it be said that Qui-Gon played an important part in bringing balance to the Force? While the Sith were manipulating Midichlorians and playing with life and death, Qui-Gon learned to preserve his consciousness after death.

 

No. This relates to Lor San Tekka's dialogue in TFA. Jedi orders don't tend to unbalance the Force. Becoming a Jedi ( which ultimately will lead to starting a new Jedi order ) is part of Luke's accomplishment in the OT.

Do you suggest that Rey must bring balance to the Cosmic Force? An interesting notion, but I doubt it.

The prophecy is not about a balance between Jedi and Sith. It refers to the balance of the Force, not the balance of the Force-users. In ROTS the fulfillment of the prophecy is linked to destruction of the Sith.

That's not from the AOTC commentary. It's from the article "Flaws in a Good Heart" by Hugh Hart in the 1/20/2002 edition of the Los Angeles Times.

 

Funny how a random YouTube comment led me to this most excellent read nine years later.

 

@Lordban, I've always appreciated your many insightful posts in the politics thread, so I'm really glad you appreciated this long-winded exegesis. Back then it seems I didn't fully know the difference between a blog and a forum!

That is so crazy that you stumbled onto a YouTube post that referenced this old thing. I'm curious. Do you happen to remember the YouTube comment that led you to this thread? I'd like to check it out.

 

It's a comment nested somewhere about this video.

 

I've always seen the prophecy as that it was the Skywalker line rather than just Anakin alone that brought balance back to the Force. Yes, Anakin was the chosen one-in that the Force chose him to bring about the events that would lead to the prophecy's fulfillment. But the way I see it, Luke is instrumental in Anakin's ability of fulfilling the prophecy in ROTJ. The argument could even be made that Luke is actually the chosen one, and Yoda is indeed correct about the prophecy being misread. If one even goes further (although IMO this is stretching things abit), it could also be said that in the ST the Skywalker line returns the force to balance by doing away with Palpatine and the Sith Eternal. In that case it wasn't due to the single actions of any "chosen one," but rather the idea that the Skywalker line-originally brought about by the Force's chosen one, Anakin-returned the Force to balance, when there was a final attempt to revive the Sith again.

Like I said, when trying to add the ST into it, it begins stretching belivability, like forcing a square cube to fit into a triangle-shaped hole. But again, I always felt that although the actual chosen one is indeed Anakin, the actual WAY the force was brought back into balance was open to interpretation. And Yoda's line in ROTS opens the door for this idea to be a possibility IMO.

 

Your post is really good by the way. But I disagree with the statement that it doesn't matter how Anakin was created. It matters a great deal. It especially matters with how view the Phantom Menace.
It is understandable why they cut the scene on the 1st draft, it is almost exactly the same as Vader's reveal to Luke. But they didn't cut out the premise they just changed it to the knowing look Palpatine gives Anakin at Opera. It means exactly what we thought it means, that Palpatine helped create Anakin.
This is really huge, because it means when you go back and watch the Phantom Mence, Palpatine set up the entire thing. Palpatine knew Anakin was on Tatooine the entire time. He lead the Jedi to Anakin the same way he lead the Jedi to the Clone army.
Palpatine didn't train Maul to be his replacement, he trained Maul to kill Quigon, to get Dooku, who he really needs for setting up the Galactic Civil, to be his apprentice and also to reveal the Sith to the Jedi, to get the Jedi to train Anakin.
If Palpatine helped create Anakin then he is not too concerned about the Jedi Prophesy for himself, he had Dooku teach it to Quigon so that Quigon would bring Anakin to the Jedi for training.
Palpatine really created Anakin to be able to transfer his essence into Anakin and become powerful enough to beat Yoda. As long as Vader is a Sith Palpatine can't lose. And when he transfers his essence into Vader's body, with potential in the force Palpatine would be unstoppable.

 

The Phantom Menace was Palpatine, Maul and Dooku. Palpatine because this is his plan and Dooku and Maul were just helping him. Anakin was not it. How he was created doesn't matter, because his actions were his own doing.

Plus, there is doubt that Palpatine created him. It could have been Plagueis, it could have been the Whills.

 

It makes zero sense that it's the Skywalker line that is the "Chosen One". Nothing supports that. It's the Chosen ONE, not the Chosen Bloodline. not the Chosen Found Family. One. Singular, a single person. Anakin was the Chosen One. He destroyed the Sith. No need to try to make sense of Disney's mess regarding this. They simply effed up.

Regarding Anakin's creation, I agree it doesn't matter much. I'd prefer it stay a mystery, but my belief is that Qui-Gon was right and he was created by the midi-chlorians (ie the Force).

 

I DID actually say in my post (almost a year ago now) that I acknowledge Anakin to BE the 'chosen one.' I agree he is, I'm not arguing that.

But the 'who' and the 'how' are two separate points IMO. The prophecy never specifies HOW specifically the fulfillment of said prophecy comes about (it also never said anything about the chosen one being a Sith himself for 20 some odd years before destroying them either)! The how is the part that could involve the Skywalker line, or at least be open to interpretation. The book Master and Apprentice also alludes to this. Fulfillment being the events and actions of individuals who were brought about by the chosen one (chosen one here meaning "the one the Force chose" to bring all this about). Even Yoda and Mace Windu doubted the accuracy of their interpretation of the prophecy.

Regarding The ST: to be fair, I DID also say in my post that trying to make sense of the prophecy in that trilogy is like "trying to fit a square cube into a triangle hole...."

 

Having Luke influence Vader into turning on Palpatine, doesn't mean that it that necessary for balance to return. Anakin could have nose dived the Invisible Hand, killing all four passengers and that would bring balance. It's a moment in time where Anakin eliminates the Sith. It just so happens that the Rule of Two becomes the cause of the destruction of the Sith. Where Luke becomes important is in convincing him to betray Palpatine as a selfless act.