PT The history of midi-chlorians and The Force in the Star Wars universe

Attunement with one another. That's all it would have taken for a "family" to be observed as running "strong"... it was literal about luke/leah/Vader at that point, but was suggestive as to how Han was coming around since star wars. And that same attunement was easy to understand with the ghost of ben.

If it's going to be mystical, keep it that way. If it must be pseudo-science.... let's get down to science, and prove things out.

It's a fiction, but the very moment a unit of measure is introduced, it can be quantified in reverse, and applied in a scalar fashion using known attributes as markers.

I chose to accept that the iron lung suit for Vader no longer symbolically represented trapping mystique with fixed hardware / cold science. I chose to accept that it suddenly represented a juxtaposition of the fixed measures of the force that the Jedi applied....

Either way, it wasn't effing necessary.

It created a complication that would have been well spent on rendering a less shallow main cast.

 

Yeah...no, that would not explain all the other Jedis and would make the Skywalkers even more of a special snowflake. Leia had no spiritual conection or any spiritual depth...but she suddenly has because family? BS.

And Attunement to what exactly? The force? That's exactly what midichlorians are.

I fail to see any complication it's literally "Something in our bodies allow us to feel the force, and it´s passed to our offspring"...How is it complicated?, it's far more solid than "Magical powers of magic think our family is the coolest!!"

1,2,3,6 and even 7 support the genetics angle. If kid you thought otherwise that's another story. An author doesn't have to catter to what his young fans want. Entire series have been truly ruined for putting fan theories above actual story.

 

That's born out of revenge on Anakin's part. The Jedi of the present day are paying for the sins of their predecessors.

And more and more, he is convincing himself that he's doing the right thing for the right reasons. Following the moment of reflection, Anakin says that he is in the right and that Padme and Obi-wan are his enemy if they do not believe as he does. It's called ignoring his conscience.

 

The subject of midi-chlorians doesn't really bug me, but it seamed a little award and badly placed in The Phantom Menace.

 

This is true. The protagonist is a Jedi, but the main conflict isn't Jedi vs. Sith. The Sith are simply the SS to Palpatine's Hitler (the third draft describes the Sith as "the sinister agents of the Emperor") and Luke's only reason for becoming a Jedi is to fight the Empire. There's nothing suggesting that any of these "sinister agents" other than Vader are Force-users.

 

Doesn't the Skywalkers being "a special case, being stronger in the Force than other humans" itself imply "a general concept of different potentials between humans"? That this ability follows the family bloodline seems pretty indicative of it being hereditary.

What about Leia? Leia had no training from anyone, yet begins to use the force to communicate with / sense the presence of Luke in ESB/ROTJ.

 

This was said by a Jedi novice, in the context of broaching the subject of Leia being his sister. So, no, it does not automatically mean that Force sensitivity is bound by genetic (or, actually, microbial) inheritance. (In fact, as the midiclorian notion is microbial in nature, then even that makes no sense of an inheritance through Anakin, the father.)

Luke makes a conscious effort to communicate with Leia. Leia 'hears' the voice and accepts it as Luke.....showing only a willingness to believe, not a genetic (or microbial) pre-determined 'ability'. The use of the Force here is by Luke.

 

I can't imaging anyone watching the OT and thinking Leia is able to communicate with Luke not because she ends up being a Skywalker with an innate force talent, but rather due to a "willingness to believe". If she wasn't Luke's twin (and a Skywalker) that might hold work. But she was a Skywalker. The implication is the lineage is significant.

And that doesn't account for ROTJ. There's no indication Luke's reaching out to communicate with Leia, yet she can feel that he's alive. She's doing the sensing, and has still had no training to this point. How would she do so?

Before there was a PT, my read of the OT is that Luke and Leia, the kids of Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker, have inherited force talent that others do not. None of this precludes others from attaining the force ability, but Luke and Leia have some sort of jumpstart on everyone else.

The only thing that changed after the PT is, if you tested their blood, it'd be confirmed that the Skywalker twins have high midichlorian counts.

 

You can't imagine anyone watching the OT would think that? Perhaps your imagination is not all that well informed then.

Let's put some perspective on this. Luke reaches out to Leia in TESB. It is quite clear that Luke is communicating with Leia...that this is about Luke's ability..through the Force having trained some with Yoda. See, at this time ROTJ was not yet made and...Leia was not yet Luke's sister.

So...sticking that rather vital information into the imagination machine might help. If it doesn't then I'd suggest the imagination machinery may be faulty.

(and...as I said, midiclorians being microbial in nature....how would they have had this count transmitted through their father? How does that make any sense?)

 

Two answers.

1. Midichlorians are part of Anakin's DNA, as they are for all people. What gets passed on from him to his children and any future descendant of those children will get that part of his DNA. Lucas based the Midis off of Mitochondria DNA and that is passed on from parent to child. So it goes with this.

2. Midichlorians aren't real. They're subject to the romantic aspect of science fiction that Lucas has been going with since day one. Sound in space, faster than light travel, the Force itself, Lightsabers, blasters, etc.

 

Well, than it's time to catch up on your Star Wars history, because the idea that Leia is Luke's sister was only seriously considered during the development of ROTJ. Luke was supposed to have an unknown sister, that would be a major player in episodes VII - IX, but Lucas decided to wrap things up with episode VI, so Leia became a convenient choice. However, this makes one thing very clear: at the time of the release of TESB, Leia was a person unrelated to Luke. She was literally just anybody willing to believe.

It's just unbelievable how many Star Wars fans have become indoctrinated by Lucas's revisionism.

 

I said watching "the OT". All 3 movies. Not just ANH or ESB. The OP seemed to be discussing the nature of the force at various points but seemed to round up where it stood at the end of the OT, saying that everyone starts at the same force baseline. I'm arguing that point.

It's not revealed that Luke and Leia were twins in ESB but the inclusion of "No, there is another" hints there's someone else force-capable out there that Yoda and ObiWan could train should Luke fail.

On that point, the reason there would be interest in said 'other' is that they have some higher level of force ability than everyone else. If Obi-wan and Yoda could train anyone, why just Luke and possibly the "other"? Why no one else? That they only train (or consider training) Skywalkers points to Luke and Leia being different than everyone else.

What is your take on how Leia senses Luke being alive in ROTJ? I still think that matters.

I didn't say there was a specific biological way Anakin passes on midichlorians. I don't really care exactly how it happens. Just that the OT points to passing on force ability from father to kids.


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While I agree with you that Leia being the sister was only seriously considered during ROTJ's development, I am not so sure any more about the "Gary Kurtz" version of the saga, as being a serious consideration for where the story was going, other than as a temporary 'detour' that Lucas and co. were taking at one time. It looks like the sequel trilogy was added by Lucas after the success of the original Star Wars film, whereas his initial sequel plans circa the making of the first film (December of 1975) were that the story would effectively end after the third film/book.


edit to add:

Glad you included the romantic aspect "disclaimer" in the second paragraph, since if this were real, we'd have the issue of how Anakin would get all this super dna....from his mother, who, by all accounts was not a Jedi or herself Force-sensitive

But even speaking in-universe, going by the logic of "What gets passed on from him to his children and any future descendant of those children will get that part of his DNA." , Luke and Leia are only "half-Jedi", and any children of Han and Leia would only be a "quarter-Jedi".

At any rate, there's "romantic aspects" of science fiction, and then there's a point where an author/filmmaker is going too far with it to a point beyond what it possible for a coherent story.

 

No, but you were referring to the scene in TESB, where Leia is able to communicate with Luke not because she ends up being a Skywalker with an innate force talent, but rather due to a "willingness to believe". This thread is about the evolution of the Force and midichlorians in the saga, without retcons or revisionism. So, although it is reasonable to debate the implications in terms of lineage of the dialogue in ROTJ, using that dialogue to explain what was intended during the development of TESB is by definition a retcon, and revisionist.

 

You seem to forget that, for some of us we watched the movies with about 3 years between them...and we were growing up as we watched them. So...a throaway line from Luke, or Leia suddenly being revealed as Luke's sister isn't going to have me dropping everything I had taken on board up to that point....that meant something to me within the story as I understood it.

I was addressing that you couldn't imagine how anybody who saw the OT would think it was anything other than 'genetic', and trying to give you some idea of how we would...and did.

 

I saw all the originals in the theater too. But that's not the point.

I quoted the original poster's line where he summed up after ROTJ. The context was "after viewing the whole OT". That is what I was referring to.


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I will simply refer to the second paragraph of my second post. If you still can't imagine how someone would then...perhaps there is something wrong with machinery of imagining....

 

Well being the OP, I stated at the start of this thread, that the Skywalker line being stronger in the Force had been established by ROTJ. So, we already agreed on that point. What the implications of this revelation is for other Force users was not established until TPM.

 

TPM really says nothing more about it. "What the implications of this revelation is for other Force users" is contained within the phrase "the Skywalker line being stronger in the Force" itself. It's right there. To act as if this has no implications for other Force users negates the concept. You're trying to have it both ways.

 

No, I'm not. All that implies, is that the Skywalkers for whatever reason are stronger in the Force than others. There's nothing to indicate that this implies some system, where you can quantify someone's Force potential at birth or that each individual has a a different Force potential. The Skywalkers could be unique for some reason. So, like I said, these implications are only established in TPM.

 

Lucas has said that Luke would be as strong as he was and that Leia would be as well, since they were twins.

"And when he finds out Luke is his son, his first impulse is to figure out a way of getting him to join him to kill the Emperor. That's what Siths do! He tries it with anybody he thinks might be more powerful, which is what the Emperor was looking for in the first place: somebody who would be more powerful than he was and could help him rule the universe. But Obi-Wan screwed that up by cutting off his arms and legs and burning him up. From then on, he wasn't as strong as the Emperor -- he was like Darth Maul or Count Dooku. He wasn't what he was supposed to become. But the son could become that."

--George Lucas, Rolling Stones Interview, 2005.

"The Emperor wants Luke to kill Vader so that he will have a new young Jedi. Lets face it Vader is half mechanical and he is not half as good as he could be. He is not nearly as good as he was hoping Anakin would become because Anakin ends up in the suit. He is hoping he gets a new better apprentice in Luke. If he kills his father then he would take his place as an apprentice; which actually there is something that in the next film is how Anakin becomes his apprentice."

--George Lucas, ROTJ DVD Commentary.

"At the center of the movie is a lot of exposition, it's a lot of explaining what has happened, and why things are the way they are. In this particular case, there is a whole issue of Luke's sister, and you know, the fact that they were twins. Which is an element that has to be revealed, which comes in later, in terms of who is the 'other' that was talked about in Empire Strikes Back. And how could that person become as powerful as Luke? Well obviously if they were twins, then if she were trained, then, she has the same abilities as Luke has. That becomes an important issue, especially in terms of resolving all the love triangles."

--George Lucas, ROTJ DVD Commentary.

What we see in the OT is Luke on the path towards becoming quite powerful. It is part of the reason he can do so well in ROTJ. And when we come to TFA,

Spoiler

we've got a Luke who has had thirty more years with the Force so he should be quite powerful in Episode VIII. Kasdan and Abrams both said that before they had Luke in exile, the story was that as soon as he made his appearance, it would be evident that Luke was going to be pretty powerful as a Jedi. This made it difficult to keep the focus on Rey and Finn. And we have Kylo who wants to be as powerful as Vader, but worries that he can never be on his level.

As to the rest, it is no different from the types of things used in comics and those things have translated into films quite nicely.

The mere fact that Lucas and Kasdan decided that there was something unique about the Skywalker bloodline in the first place, is what set the stage for the Midichlorians. It just helped Lucas to quantify it.

 

If "the Skywalkers being stronger in the Force than others" doesn't involve Force potential, what does it mean? You don't seem to have any idea. Given that the Emperor literally feared death at the hands of Luke, how does one not get an implication of differing Force potential out of that? The alternative is a scenario where everyone in the galaxy has the same potential and ultimately poses the same threat to Palpatine. Don't you see any problems with that?

Some people having a higher midichlorian count than others is not fundamentally different from some people being naturally stronger in the Force than others. They are isomorphic.

 

A higher Force potential for the Skywalkers yes. This is what I've stated numerous times already. However, this only means that for some reason the Skywalkers are more aware of the Force than everybody else. This does not automatically imply that any random family has a higher or lower Force potential than any other random family.

Again, it's not some being naturally stronger in the Force than others, it's the Skywalkers specifically. This is all we knew by the end of ROTJ. Anything beyond this observation was speculation. At that point in time, it was also possible that the Skywalkers were some anomaly or singled out by the Force.

 

Except when they're not aware of it at all.

Yes. The Skywalkers being the "some".

Actually, the phrase "Force potential" isn't used in any SW film, in either trilogy. So technically it's just an interpretation.

 

They are movies. "Technically" it is all just interpretation. Here's how I interpreted it; Luke learned to use the Force from Obi-Wan - he even acknowledges that he felt something, implying he had a sense he had not had before. He was a very good pilot because he had some training and flew quite regularly in a T-16 at least. For the shot he let off at the Death Star he let the Force flow through him and trusted it over the computerised aiming systems that had already failed.

In TESB he reaches out to Leia, who accepts it is Luke reaching out to her. Really, at the time, there was no sense in which this implied Leia had some trait of being 'Force sensitive' (another term which isn't used in the movies, btw) - any more than that Luke sensed Leia and Han were in some sort of trouble implied that they had this imagined trait.

"He is our last hope" referred to the Jedi...he was their last hope of continuing the Jedi going forward (and Leia being sister does not preclude that there is an "other" still out there).

"The Force runs strongly in my family" is Luke broaching the subject of her being his sister.

In short, the Force was something anybody could tap into if they were of the right mindset. It took training and belief to understand what could be done through the Force...and that had to be balanced against the responsibility that power brought, the temptations of power (so...exactly as Lucas described it twice during the making of the OT)

Of course some may have taken something very different from that line in ROTJ....and that's fine, but that isn't what it said to me. It's only natural that I would take it that way because...I don't go much on the whole 'blood of kings', 'bloodline' trope. I dislike it both from the perspective of narrative aesthetic, and for deeper philosophical reasons (which quite possibly drives what I find narratively aesthetic)

So, for me the whole 'bloodlines' re-interpretation (which is what it must be, whether you believe that was introduced in ROTJ or TPM) would deeply amend (scar) the story I originally watched.

Also...what point is there in making an argument that midiclorians give a 'scientific' explanation of this newly invented function of 'Force sensitivity'...and then arguing that any such 'scientific' explanation is a 'magical/fantasy' explanation? It is one or the other...it cannot be both.