Saga Did TFA make the OT pointless?

Everyone has different thresholds which I understand, but I agree that the return of Sidious was the personal point of no return for me as well, though I was also willing to give it the benefit of the doubt before TROS came out. Even after the first two sequels, the OT still at least culminated with the Emperor himself defeated. That was something. By resurrecting him in TROS and making him the mastermind behind everything, that robs the original heroes of their sole remaining unambiguous and definitive achievement from their time.

 

Luke Skywalker should always have Restored the Jedi Order and yes for me the Disney ST made the OT Pointless

 

No,
it’s just that TFA is pointless !

 

If Luke's trilogy is now pointless, I guess we should go straight from ROTS to TFA.
Actually, that would be an interesting viewing experiment. Just watch episodes I, II, III, VII, VIII & IX and see how that feels!

 

No, thank you.

 

Come on! For me?

 

god seeing the new republic in filoni's SW fills me with so much joy because it feels like the battles of the OT heroes were not in vain. does anyone else feel the same? i love seeing new republic ships and officers in Mando and Ahsoka because it's like seeing the natural progression of the struggles of the rebels.

 

It's just you.

 

oh well such a shame

 

I'm just joking. I don't like the treatment of the OT 3 in the ST but I haven't seen those shows. I have heard they are good.

 

i recently saw a youtube video about how the return of palpatine didnt actually ruin anakin's redemption and dude's got a good point though

anakin did have a good ending. he did save his son and, for a while, defeated the emperor. the whole issue arise with the concept of the chosen one, which i find extremely boring and lazy. besides being an ugly cliche (found also on the matrix, harry potter and many other franchises), it just kind of traps star wars in situation where there can no more interesting stories post rotj, because that would ruin the chosen one prophecy yada yada

 

Of course it doesn't ruin Anakin's redemption. Palpatine's return has nothing to do with him.

 

The problem with prophecy is it typically comes down to the same thing: misreading the prophecy. At least with the Matrix films the Wachowski's had the guts to say the prophecy was a lie and the people were too dumb to realize it despite being smart enough to escape the matrix. I can't really remember what the prophecy was in the Harry Potter films but I do remember it didn't come up until later in the series. Prophecy means destiny. Therefore no matter what either side does or chooses means the prophecy will come true. No escaping your fate. That was the whole point of oracles in Greek mythology. People would go out of their way to escape their fate only to have those actions lead to the prophecy.

Adding a prophecy to TPM gave an inevitably in-story that it didn't need. As viewers we knew that certain things had to happen since these were prequels.

 

Nope, a prophecy is not an inescapable reality. Nor is destiny.
Ask GL. According to him/Star Wars, destiny is what is supposed to happen - but we can choose not to follow it.

 

Yes, and I felt this way immediately after watching the film back in 2015.

There's nothing that was achieved from the victory in ROTJ that didn't get discarded in order for TFA to have its rehashed plot. Luke's attempt to rebuild the Jedi got shot down. The New Republic got wiped out by Death Star Mk III. Han and Leia's kid went off to be diet Vader for the diet Empire. The Resistance; the protagonist faction that's somehow worse off than the Rebel Alliance is pathetic. The problem comes down to TFA choosing regression over progression.

 

The prophecy in HP did a bit of what you mention in the old Greek tales. Voldemort heard a bit of a prophecy about someone vanquishing him and he went to try and kill Harry. So trying to prevent fate. But in so doing, he gave Harry a power that Voldemort did not know and set in motion his own destruction.
Also Harry was not defined by the prophecy, he would have fought against Voldemort anyway, because that is who he was as a person.

So both Matrix and HP, to me, did more with the prophecy and thus made it interesting. The PT had a prophecy added to it for little gain. That time could have been better spent elsewhere.

Bye for now.
The Guarding Dark

 

yeah but according to Lucas Balance doesn't mean what it really means either
so I guess he just likes to take words and change the meaning I guess

 

Okay, that's incorrect, but whatever.

 

Can you both explain more?

 

GL's definition of balance is very straightforward. Dark and light need to coexist. Too much of either one causes imbalance, like when the Sith allow the dark side to dominate themselves and then share that imbalance with the rest of the galaxy. Since the dark side is passionate and aggressive, it needs to be kept in check. It can't be destroyed, nor should it. Life needs passion to function. It needs all of its survival instincts. But again, those instincts need to be kept in check so that they don't take over completely and become destructive. There's a push-pull tension there between light and dark and that's the balance that GL talks about.

Now, if you look at the Jedi, you'll see that they are not completely serene and passive in their behavior. They are meant to maintain a serene and passive mindset, but they also take action when it's needed. They do sometimes fight, which is aggressive - but that aggression doesn't enter their minds (provided that they behave as they've been trained to). They take aggressive action, then they move on.
In other words, the dark side is inherent in some of the things the Jedi do, but they control it, never the other way around. It only surfaces when it's needed, under the control of the serene mind. They keep it in check. They are balanced.

 

Cool. Is there an interview or, commentary, or book where he states this? I'd be interested.

 

yeah i've always felt the story group's concept of balance makes no sense because it even defies the word balance itself. it isnt about purity of light over darkness, but a equal "healthy" amount of each part - light and dark - that's a much more interesting idea to be explored, instead of the manichaesm we have as canon (proof that something being originally conceived by Lucas doesnt mean its automatically perfect)

also something leading to tlj that i was hoping back in 2017 was to have new ideas on the balance to be explored -maybe a new order of force users would rise with new definitions of whats good or bad?

 

Proof that being originally conceived by Lucas doesn’t mean it’s perfect?

Aren’t you agreeing with Lucas that balance is a healthy amount of light and dark?

 

As far as I can see, Lucasfilm's current view of balance is the same as George's.

 

It is destiny. Someone's destiny that has been foretold, assuming that such foretelling is true. In the case of Star Wars, it was.

I don't think there's such a thing as a healthy amount of dark. Balance is to strive to resist and not give into the dark side/evil, that's the healthy path. That's the discipline and mindset that the Jedi teach and follow.

At the end of the day, it's good vs evil. Both need to exist in the sense that both are a thing that one needs to acknowledge and distinguish. You don't need to do evil to acknowledge it. In fact, those that do evil are those that don't acknowledge good and evil anymore. It's also one of Palpatine's seductions tactics on Anakin: to pretend that there's no such distinction.