Saga The Prophecy of a Chosen One ... do you like it ? ( with a Poll )

Eeermm....just to highlight the inconsistency and outright contradiction in your argument, I'll come back to this at the end of the post....

There could be, I suppose deities or a deity behind those perfectly explicable forces and events...but that kind of thinking is so divorced from the thinking we partake of in any other aspect of our lives that it is, frankly, a non-argument. Let me give you some examples;

You're trying to cross a road but there is a lot of traffic. Now..it's possible that you are only imagining the traffic so...why not try?

Or, alternatively, you are trying to cross the road but you see no traffic...however, it's possible that there is traffic that you can't see, so you might never cross the road.

We base our decisions on the evidence that is available to us, not on some distant, obscure and ultimately meaningless notion of 'possibility'.

So, given that we base our decisions on the evidence then..one is left with the question; if there are these deities why do they go to so much effort to give the impression that they don't exist....that things seem to be perfectly explicable without their intervention? Especially when we are, supposedly, to have faith in and praise them. This all seems very....counter-intuitive, don't you think?

So.....when I was a kid I used to watch a TV programme called the Herb Garden. There was a lion on this programme called Parsley. He was a very friendly lion. Do you think that, based upon this story, it would be wise for me to approach a lion because it could be a very friendly lion? Or would my best approach, do you think, be to accept what I know about...let's call them 'real lions'....and avoid them?

So...I see you've tried to sidestep the issue by pretending that it really is still about 'choices'....except, you started your post with this response

"Right, but as Lucas also said, he couldn't beat Palpatine. He can only compete with him. Same with Yoda."

...back to "can't" again...No matter what they chose to do they can't beat Palpatine....so they are without choice. Why? Because, as you said "It was never their destiny to..." - so destiny is here absolutely juxtaposed against choice. Destiny is here in opposition to choice. They are opposite, conflicting, non-commutative concepts.

 

Actually, Anakin couldn't compete with Palpatine by ROTJ, at least on his own. Lucas says Anakin needs Luke's help, and Anakin does die as a result of taking on Palpatine. Anakin's only real advantage was that he was able to get close enough to Palpatine to pick him up. In a straight-up fight, Palps would likely have beat Anakin and survived. Just a little Force lightning into Vader's chest controls, and zaaaaaaap!

 

the prophecy was fulfilled by anakin in rotj. gl said it. everybody knows it. the entire purpose of the prophecy being written by gl was the pay off that happened beforehand in 1983 in rotj.

 

Who knows? Maybe we've reached a point where we can no longer see them in a corporeal form. Whether from a lack of belief, or from a point of evolution. Maybe said deity or deities can only be seen in the afterlife. And who is to say that their intervention doesn't happen? Something that helps to guide our actions without our being aware of it. That's part of why Lucas created the Force and came up with the idea that it can guide one's actions. The idea that there was a Living Force and a Cosmic Force from which the well spring of life was generated. And for a moment, here is something Lucas said in 1977 about religion and science fiction.

"Also, just on a theoretical/philosophical level the ultimate search is still the most fascinating search, what is it all about – why are we here and how big is it and where does it go, what is the system, what is the answer, what is God and all that. Most civilizations, whole cultures and religions were built on the "science fiction" of their day. It is just that. Now we call it science fiction. Before they called it religion or myths or whatever they wanted to call it."

--George Lucas, Rolling Stone interview, 1977.

There's a difference between approaching a lion and having a spiritual belief. Having and using common sense doesn't preclude one from having faith. Just look at how people respond to the Pope. A lot of people want to believe.

Way back in 81, Lucas said to Kasdan that Palpatine was so powerful in the Force that even if Yoda were to fight him, he'd be unable to defeat him in battle. This was demonstrated in the rough draft where Yoda attempts to protect Luke from Palpatine and is overwhelmed by the lightning. Same with Obi-wan. So it is with Mace in the final film and why Yoda tells Obi-wan that he's no match for Palpatine. They can make a choice to do something, but other circumstances will interfere such as Anakin's choice to stop Mace from killing him. It was not Mace's place to kill Palpatine, otherwise, there wouldn't be a Chosen One but rather that a Jedi would defeat Palpatine one day. Luke makes a choice to not finish his training on Dagobah and thus it becomes that it was not his destiny to do it. And so on.

Right, in ROTJ. In ROTS, Anakin had the potential to fight and beat Palpatine. That's what I'm talking about.

 

Yes...yes. Listen to George you should. These stories (religions/myths) are the science fiction of their day. When the earliest such stories (that we know of) are analysed...they appear to be a form of mnemonic guides to the movement of bodies in the skies - a way of passing knowledge from teacher to learner in a non-literate environment (the passage of the sun over the year, for example, and it's relationship to the constellations upon rising and setting). So, yes, they are fictions based around the' heavenly bodies'. Science fiction is very apt.

If you have even the merest understanding of physics then.....the idea of any corporeality of any deity is absolutely known not to exist. We cannot see their corporeal form because they could not have a corporeal form. Something that guides our actions without our being aware of it...who knows? For real? But....you seem to have missed the point.....who knows? What makes you think there is? should surely be the more obvious question, as it is in every other aspect of our lives. So, as I said, who knows if there actually is a car coming that I can't see? I see the question being asked in the same ludicrous terms...it's not a question that has any meaning in any other part of anybody's life. But for some reason there's this blind spot....

Errrmmm..yeah. That's exactly what I said. But why is there that difference? Why does the word 'faith' or ...whatever other term you wish to apply in this context, make people discard the basic rational principles they naturally use in any other situation. If you see the edge of a cliff you don't wonder.......maybe there is some more to walk on but I can't see it?

So...you argue that having common sense doesn't preclude one from having faith..and to exemplify that you use a bunch of people who get excited about seeing an elderly gentleman in a robe, with a funny hat, who has had a number of other men in robes and funny hats check out his genitals hanging through a hole in a chair so that he can be acclaimed the voice of god on Earth.......

Yup....which doesn't tie in with common sense or rationality. Wanting something to be is not the same as that thing being, or having any basis at all in reality. Let me, in fact, put a little slant on this for you.

I might want Natalie Portman to notice me and fall madly in love with me. Now, not only does my wanting that not make it likely to happen or in any way true, but....if I decided I wanted that so much that I would believe it...well, where might that lead? If I believed that so much that it, in some way, became true for me...

Do you see where this kind of thinking leads?

 

And Lucas is also the same man who also has a spiritual belief as well, and wanted to touch upon that in his films.

MOYERS: What do you make of the fact that so many people have interpreted your work as being profoundly religious?

LUCAS: I don't see Star Wars as profoundly religious. I see Star Wars as taking all the issues that religion represents and trying to distill them down into a more modern and easily accessible construct--that there is a greater mystery out there. I remember when I was 10 years old, I asked my mother, "If there's only one God, why are there so many religions?" I've been pondering that question ever since, and the conclusion I've come to is that all the religions are true.

MOYERS: Is one religion as good as another?

LUCAS: I would say so. Religion is basically a container for faith. And faith in our culture, our world and on a larger issue, the mystical level--which is God, what one might describe as a supernatural, or the things that we can't explain--is a very important part of what allows us to remain stable, remain balanced.

MOYERS: One explanation for the popularity of Star Wars when it appeared is that by the end of the 1970s, the hunger for spiritual experience was no longer being satisfied sufficiently by the traditional vessels of faith.

LUCAS: I put the Force into the movie in order to try to awaken a certain kind of spirituality in young people--more a belief in God than a belief in any particular religious system. I wanted to make it so that young people would begin to ask questions about the mystery. Not having enough interest in the mysteries of life to ask the question, "Is there a God or is there not a God?"--that is for me the worst thing that can happen. I think you should have an opinion about that. Or you should be saying, "I'm looking. I'm very curious about this, and I am going to continue to look until I can find an answer, and if I can't find an answer, then I'll die trying." I think it's important to have a belief system and to have faith.

MOYERS: Do you have an opinion, or are you looking?

LUCAS: I think there is a God. No question. What that God is or what we know about that God, I'm not sure. The one thing I know about life and about the human race is that we've always tried to construct some kind of context for the unknown. Even the cavemen thought they had it figured out. I would say that cavemen understood on a scale of about 1. Now we've made it up to about 5. The only thing that most people don't realize is the scale goes to 1 million.

MOYERS: The central ethic of our culture has been the Bible. Like your stories, it's about the fall, wandering, redemption, return. But the Bible no longer occupies that central place in our culture today. Young people in particular are turning to movies for their inspiration, not to organized religion.

LUCAS: Well, I hope that doesn't end up being the course this whole thing takes, because I think there's definitely a place for organized religion. I would hate to find ourselves in a completely secular world where entertainment was passing for some kind of religious experience.

MOYERS: You said you put the Force into Star Wars because you wanted us to think on these things. Some people have traced the notion of the Force to Eastern views of God--particularly Buddhist--as a vast reservoir of energy that is the ground of all of our being. Was that conscious?

LUCAS: I guess it's more specific in Buddhism, but it is a notion that's been around before that. When I wrote the first Star Wars, I had to come up with a whole cosmology: What do people believe in? I had to do something that was relevant, something that imitated a belief system that has been around for thousands of years, and that most people on the planet, one way or another, have some kind of connection to.I didn't want to invent a religion. I wanted to try to explain in a different way the religions that have already existed. I wanted to express it all.

--"Of Myth And Men", Time Magazine interview, 1999.

Or they can take a corporeal form and one would not even know of it, if they haven't identified themselves. Physicists can only go by what evidence is presented to them. But absence of proof is not proof. God could easily show up tomorrow and throw out every notion that modern science has about creation.

Again, there's a distinct difference between seeing the car and having faith in something greater than ourselves. I'll elaborate in a moment.

Because human beings are not as rational as you'd like to think they should be. Some people in this world want to believe that there is more to life than what we see, hear, touch, smell and taste. That's part of the reason why religion has lasted as long as it has. In "The Matrix", people like Neo wanted to know if there was more to life. He, like the other free minds of Zion, believed that there was more to existence and so he sought out the answers. The answers lead all of them to the free minds of Zion, because they kept looking up and not down at the world around them. Lucas says as much of Luke.

"What Luke is doing in the beginning of Star Wars is finding his own responsibility for his place in the world. He thinks that his responsibility is with his aunt and uncle, and to do his chores. His ultimate responsibility is much larger than that because it deals with a much larger base of humanity—larger more cosmic issues. He is unwilling to look up and see those as something that relate to him. He’s much more looking at the ground and plodding along in his everyday life. So it’s that awakening, first of all, that is the performed by the insider, the magic of Obi-Wan that sends him on the path to self-discovery."

--George Lucas, Laserdisc Commentary, Star Wars Trilogy Definitive Collection, 1993

This takes me back to the elaboration, which is something I discussed in the TMIS thread.

In ANH, General Dodonna states that the Death Star can only be destroyed by firing a proton torpedo over a ray shielded exhaust port, that is two meters wide. Only a precise hit will destroy it. Wedge says that it is an impossible shot, even with a targeting computer. But Luke says that it could be done since he had done the same thing back home. Then we get to the moment of truth. Pops, aka Red Leader, takes the shot and misses. Luke, on the other hand, takes the shot and hits it. But only because he hears Obi-wan tell him to use the Force.

OBI-WAN: "Use the Force, Luke. Let go, Luke."

VADER: "The Force is strong with this one."

OBI-WAN: "Luke, trust me."

Earlier, Obi-wan says to Luke, "...let go of your conscious self and act on instinct."

Now think about this for a minute; Obi-wan is essentially telling Luke to ignore science and technology and to trust in an ancient, hokey religion that he barely knows anything about. To trust in something that he cannot see, implicitly and without wavering. And this is the correct thing to do, because otherwise he would have used the computer and missed and Yavin 4 would be destroyed. Luke has to put his faith in an invisible man that he's not even sure he's actually hearing, as we saw him tap his helmet before taking off. He has to put his faith in something like this and it is the right thing to do. But according to you, Luke would be wrong to do so.

One more, it was Luke's destiny to do this. Not Wedge, nor Biggs, nor Pops, nor Dutch. Not even Han. It has to be Luke that destroys the Death Star because he has the Force with him. He has the potential to become a Jedi and only a Jedi could make the shot. Obi-wan is dead and Ahsoka, Kanan and Ezra are not there. Possibly not even alive. Leia does not know she can use the Force either. So it comes down to Luke, who must make a choice.

 

As did Mace and Yoda...also remember that Kenobi did fight and beat Anakin in ROTS as well.

 

Just saw this...

That'll never happen, because the Dark Side is a metaphor for people's feelings: hate, fear, jealousy. As Lucas said, the Dark Side is always a danger, because people are people.

 

Only because Anakin made a foolish mistake that got him injured. If Anakin hadn't let his anger get the best of him, Obi-wan would have died. Obi-wan also only managed to survive because Anakin didn't train as diligently as Palpatine had. This is why Anakin couldn't beat Dooku without using the dark side. Obi-wan, because of his past encounters with the Sith and Ventress, along with knowing Anakin's fighting style and skills, could last as long as he did.

 

Kinda like Mace's lucky kick, right?

Obi-wan was holding his own in ANH as well, when Vader was "supposedly" the master. Ben /let/ Vader beat him.

 

Yoda isn't being stopped by "destiny", he's being stopped by the need to maintain continuity with ROTJ.

In other words, the real problem is that Yoda is in a prequel. And the message becomes "Don't make prequels, or else." Or else a narrative akin to political scandalmongering comes into play.

The rest is just prophecy, not fundamentally different from the Force visions experienced in the holy unimpeachable OT, visions which also came true.

 

Truth! It's that Yoda can't or won't do it...it's that he didn't do it.

 

Note that Obi-wan cited that he was getting too old for this sort of thing and Vader says that his powers are weak now. Obi-wan didn't deny it.

No, it's that he cannot do it. That's why he's lying down on the floor of the Senate, before hightailing it. He knows that he cannot beat him. That's why Lucas said that Yoda couldn't beat Palpatine if they had ever fought. And this was before the prophecy of the Chosen One had come about.

 

You kind of just proved MeBeJedi's point there, basically saying that Vader only 'won' because Obi-Wan was old and weak (though Ben did let him win, after all)..

Like someone said, "it happened that way on-screen" doesn't mean "that's the ONLY way it could have happened"....otherwise Leia was the 'only' one who 'could' kill Jabba.

Wait...did he say this during the 1981 script meetings for ROTJ?

 

That's not what my point was. If Obi-wan hadn't stopped fighting, Vader would have beaten him this time. Vader is stronger than he was before and Obi-wan is weaker. Vader lost on Mustafar because he made a foolish mistake. One he did not repeat again.

Anakin killing Palpatine like he does in ROTJ, fits this criteria. The one constant was that he would kill Palpatine, but the how and why was uncertain and ever shifting. That's why the prophecy exists as it does. Whoever saw it, understood that all paths lead to this moment, but not the precise chain of events leading to that moment.

Wait...did he say this during the 1981 script meetings for ROTJ?[/quote]


Yes. I asked Darth_Nub to help me out with the quote, but Lucas said all the way in 81, that if Yoda had fought Palpatine, he couldn't win.

 

A 'criteria' that lowers the bar in such a way to make things fit, isn't much of a criteria. To me, it seems analogous to the Leia killing Jabba situation.

In other words, it suspiciously works out exactly the same as if there were no prophecy at all.

Did Lucas elaborate as to why Yoda 'couldn't' win, I wonder? It's moot anyhow, given that in those scenarios from the meeting(s), Yoda and Palpatine never fought each other to begin with.

 

There wasn't much of a bar to begin with. Lucas had already decided that he wanted Vader to be the one who kills Palpatine by the time work on TESB had began. And within the rough draft of ROTJ, Obi-wan had foreseen Anakin destroying Palpatine and not Luke. So those ideas were already floating around in his head and when he came up with the PT story, he opted to create a destiny for Anakin that ties into his actions and thus have the fairy tale ending.

Not quite. Like the comparison with "The Matrix", the choices of the characters helped shape the outcome of the prophecy there. The end result was already foreseen, but not the path traveled to it. That is why the future is in motion.

It formed the basis of the duel between them in ROTS and why Lucas amended his initial stance to include Mace Windu. Lucas had already decided how powerful Palpatine was and kept to that twenty one years later, when he started to write ROTS. The same way that Lucas kept most everything that he said during the meetings consistent when he started mapping out the PT.

 

Hang on...during the 1981 script meeting Lucas didn't say that Yoda wouldn't beat Palpatine...he said that Yoda wasn't a warrior....that he'd be useless in a fight full stop. Now...clearly he had changed his mind on that because I've seen that horrible sequence where he's jumping around Dooku like a gremlin on steroids....so the notion that you can use what Lucas said in '81 to 'evidence' the idea that Yoda could never beat Palpatine (in ROTS) is ....hogwash, frankly.

 

I believe what Lucas actually said was that, "Yoda would be basically useless in a fight with Darth Vader" ....not that he "couldn't" beat Palpatine had they fought.

 

Not that quote. There's a different one about how strong Palpatine and Yoda were.

 

Vader's baiting him...you're seriously going to take that as proof? LOL!

Let's see what the Annotated Screenplays say....
"The idea of Vader using telekinetic powers during his fight with Luke was created during story meetings. There was concern, however, that the audience might think back to the first film and wonder why Vader didn't use all his powers on Ben; this was easily explained by the fact that Ben was possibly stronger than Vader. George Lucas and Leigh Brackett also discussed the different levels of the Force; maybe Ben was a six, Vader was a four and Luke is now at level two." - Annotated Screenplays

You mean this one?

"Gilliard explains how he's rated the various Star Wars swordsmem: "On Attack of the Clones, I had to give them levels," he says. "Sidious is a level nine [out of ten]. On this film, Obi is an eight - he's moved up - Anakin is a nine; Mace is a nine, Yoda is a nine. They're up with Sidious. Once you get to eight, you have a Pandora's Box. You could go either way with it. The way not to go is to the Dark Side. But it would tempt you, because that would jump you right past the others. So you need to arrive at level eight at the right age - not as young as Anakin. That young, the Dark Side is just too tempting.

 

lol

 

Tell me about it....

"The first Trilogy will not be as much of an action adventure kind of thing. Maybe we'll make it have some humor, but right now it's much more humorless than this one...a little more Machiavellian - it's all plotting - more of a mystery." -STARLOG Magazine #48, July 1982 http://www.starwarz.com/tbone/features/lucasquote.htm

 

No, Obi-wan saying, "I need your help Luke. She needs your help. I'm too old for this sort of thing." Which went back to what Lucas had wrote in the third draft where Ben was no longer as strong in the Force as he used to be. It wasn't so much goading as Vader realizing that Obi-wan's power had diminished and Obi-wan telling him that only in death will he become more powerful.

No. It was in the ROTJ meetings. I don't know the exact wording, but if I recall, Lucas said that even in terms of how strong Yoda and Palpatine were, Palpatine was still ahead of Yoda. That Yoda was quite strong in the Force, but not many Jedi were on their level.

 

Well, I'll take the ESB quote over your ANH quote, and the ROTS quote over your ROTJ quote.

And remember, both Kenobi and Vader were weaker in ANH.... But Kenobi was still stronger than Vader.