Saga Does the prophecy actually make sense, or is Anakin just the worst chosen one ever?

Anakin Skywalker was famously the "chosen one" who would bring balance to the force, a somewhat nebulous idea about which there's been a lot of debate. But the more I think about it, the less sense the prophecy actually makes to me.

As I understand it, the most common interpretation of "bring balance to the force" is not referring to the purging of the Jedi and return of Sith dominance (because if it did refer to that, why would the Jedi see the prophecy as a good thing rather than something to be feared), but rather to the defeat of the sith/dark side, which comes to pass when Anakin/Vader is redeemed by Luke and kills the Emperor...

Except, the only reason Palpatine even becomes Emperor in the first place is because Anakin helps him. If Anakin doesn't have his back, Mace Windu just kills Palpatine, the Sith are defeated, and there's never any Emperor in the first place, hence no need for Anakin to kill him. Isn't killing the Emperor really just Anakin finally fixing a problem that was his fault in the first place? I'm all for cleaning up your own messes, but does killing the evil guy that you yourself helped put in charge really qualify as "chosen one" material?

This issue is further exacerbated by the fact that in both the EU and, apparently, the ST, the dark side doesn't disappear following the Emperor's death. The EU has had plenty of dark jedi and those who follow Sith ways, along with still-dangerous Imperial remnants. And as we know from the Force Awakens trailer, the binary between "the dark side...and the light" is still very much in play, and there's some kind of dark side force user walking around who, if not actually sith, certainly seems to be trying to keep their ways alive.

I've also seen some arguments that the Jedi circa the PT had become too hidebound and shackled by tradition, and that as horrible as the purge was it created a blank slate from which a new and improved order could rise...except again, when you look at the actual EU, the new Jedi Order doesn't seem any less fallible or prone to making mistakes then the old one was. I suppose the ST could feature a new and improved Jedi order, but everything I've heard makes that sound unlikely...

So if post-ROTJ, the same basic light side/dark side binary that previously existed simply continues to persist and the Sith haven't really been defeated forever...then what "balance" did Anakin/Vader actually bring? All he did was kill one guy, who Mace would have killed decades prior if Anakin had simply let him.

Am I missing anything, or does the much-vaunted prophecy really amount to "this kid will one day fix a problem that he himself causes with his own dickery, whereupon the force won't actually change much at all"

 

The prophecy is very vague where you can say that it does make sense because at the end Vader kills his Master and Vader himself dies, which fulfills the prophecy.

 

But again, the only reason the Emperor is alive is because Anakin saved him from Mace, and the only reason there even is a "Darth Vader" is because Anakin fell. The problem that Anakin "fixes", i.e. the existence of the Emperor and Vader, is one he himself created.

And the fact that in both the EU and the ST it is clear that the dark side and the ways of the sith have not been vanquished forever. As long as that's the case, then the idea that Vader somehow "balanced" the force by killing the emperor seems pretty bogus--he didn't vanquish the dark side or even stamp out the ways of the sith forever, he killed one guy. A very evil, very powerful guy. But still just one guy. The force was not fundamentally transformed.

 

We don't even know what the prophecy says!

 

To me the OP is making a lot of assumptions. It's all down to how one interprets 'balance'. Personally, Cushy doesn't think 'Just because Anakin' is why Sids was Emperor. He could've done that without him. Anakin was merely a puppet he played that had raw potential while lacking finesse and wisdom. I doubt very much Mace would be able to kill Sids. I think that over assumes Windu's power and under assumes Sids' intellect.

The prophecy never said 'balance will be permanent' this seems the fundamental assumption of many that are miffed by what happens outside the films. I can understand it but it's not the only possible way to read things. Anakin defeated the Sith for the time being as both current ones die. Sith don't equal entirety of Dark Side, though so it still persisting makes sense.

 

Mace Windu is very clearly about to kill Sidious in their fight, and definitively gains the upper hand. The only reason he doesn't is due to Anakin's intervention. The only reason that Vader was needed to kill the Emperor is that he himself stopped Windu from finishing the job decades prior.

 

That is how many choose to read it, I understand that. Not me. To me it's clear Sids is simply playing Anakin were he not there I think he simply would've killed Mace sooner and not even bothered with the blade at all.

 

Technically, the prophecy was correct... Vader died in the process of killing Sidious = no more Sith. Obi Wan and Yoda already dead = the Jedi Order is finished. This only applies if like me you see the Jedi as separate to the Light Side in the same way the Sith are separate to the Dark, and that Luke is not actually a Jedi in the same sense we saw those in the PT but something new, and hopefully better (what with rejecting the manipulation to actually kill his own father.) The Jedi never realised that they had become just as much an unbalance as the Sith were, for more benevolent reasons and in a less openly destructive way... but they were holding on to traditions lasting millennia and not adapting and evolving, as the Force does (in my opinion, that is.) They forbade attachment because... attachment was forbidden. They became hidebound and dogmatic and bound up in tradition and ritual.

From this perspective, the 'real' Jedi way would have been more like Qui-Gonn's, living in the moment entirely. Not trying to 'interpret' the will of the force or read the implications and potential outcomes, simply trusting the force breath by breath. There is a reason he was the first for a long time to truly become one with the force instead of it being a (unintentional?) euphemism for dead.

 

As I said before prophecy are very vague, which means one can interpret them anyway they want too. Prophecies have always hurt the characters in their stories. I personally ignore them whenever I am reading something. I just see them as a lazy plot device.

 

Pretty much every Star Wars prophecy gets misinterpreted or ends badly. Luke's visions lead him to get his hand chopped off for little gain, Anakin's visions of padme make him susceptible to Palpatine's manipulations, and the chosen one prophecy causes everyone to look past their misgivings about Anakin until its too late.

 

the prophecy makes perfect sense. he was conceived by the force (not plagueis) and he brought balance to the force. just not the way people expected.

 

in what way did he bring balance? The only "balancing" he did was killing a guy who was only alive because he stopped Mace from killing him in the first place.

 

bringing balance to the force means destroying the sith. he killed the sith master and redeemed himself by sacrificing himself for his son. this destroyed the last two sith, palps and vader himself who ceased to be vader and became anakin again. destroying the sith brought balance to the force and fulfilled the prophecy.

don't try to out star wars me boy.

 

I don't think there was any need for a prophecy for what Anakin/Vader did and I don't like the whole "balance" thing (ying yang thing), I prefer to view the force different then what is presented in the movies/books.

I rather see it as a power people some are born with that can choose to do good or evil with it. I don't like the idea of the Force controlling things and I don't want good and evil to be balanced out like a teeter totter.

I rather view Anakin/Vader as a powerful Jedi who made bad choice and became a Sith all on his own free will.

“It is not our abilities that show what we truly are. It is our choices.”- Dumbledore CoS

I think the chosen one was an unnecessary addition to the PT. If you took out all the chosen-one lines it wouldn't affect the overall story much. Throwing an old man down a shaft doesn't require a midichlorians count. Anakin didn't need it. I haven't seen him do anything that required to be super powerful.

He gets beaten by Obi-wan and loses what he once had. He didn't need power. In the end love helped defeat the Empire. It was protecting his son, not his super powers.

 

Except from both the EU and now the ST, we've gotten every indication that the Sith are not gone for good and that post-ROTJ there will be other dark side users who follow their path and seek to preserve their legacy (which shouldn't actually be that hard, given the likelihood that some sith spirits ala Plageuis or Bane and/or holocrons persist somewhere). Anakin/Vader didn't destroy the Sith forever, he destroyed two specific Sith--one of whom was himself, and the other was his boss who he himself saved from summary execution decades prior. If Anakin never fell to the dark side, there would have never been a Vader or Emperor to need destroying in the first place.

Giving Anakin credit for "balancing" the force is like calling someone a hero because they gave back the money they stole from you. Yeah, its cool they decided to make up for their mistake, but the reality is if they hadn't been dicks in the first place there would have been nothing that needed fixing.

 

it's a prophecy. obviously you don't get that. eu doesn't count and we don't know who the evil guys in ep 7 are yet. even if they are sith or sith wannabes it's also obvious that in ep 7 "THE FORCE AWAKENS".

ignored.

 

I'm not sure what you mean by "it's a prophecy", unless you mean "its so hopelessly vague that it can be applied post-hoc to mean whatever we want it to mean." And if a mere couple decades after ROTJ, the force "awakens" into the same jedi vs sith binary that has existed for thousands of years, in what way did Anakin actually change the force at all? After all, its not like there haven't been Sith Emperors before, and some of them ruled longer and more successfully than Palpatine. Why is killing Palpatine the most special thing ever if it doesn't actually mean the permanent end of the sith? How is it any different from every previous time someone toppled a Sith Empire? And, again, why is Anakin getting so much credit for doing the toppling when he's the only reason the Emperor wasn't already dead?

 

Prophecies aren't about making sense (they're just about what's going to happen, nothing more, nothing less), but yes Anakin is the worst Chosen One ever, and that was intentional.

It's supposed to be a tragedy involving a tragic self-fulfilling prophecy; yes, Anakin does fulfill the prophecy, but does so in a rather unexpected way, he goes off the path (to say the least), does all kinds of awful things along the way, and then makes his way back in the end. That was the intention, the unexpected detour is a twist.

I don't know anything about TFA and I don't want to know, so I won't be discussing how that plays into it.

I hate the involvement of the prophecy and the whole Chosen One business in the saga, but it pretty much is what you think it is.

 

We don't really know exactly what the prophecy says, and even if we did, it could always be misread as Yoda points out.

Part of me believes it is destroying the Sith, and Anakin does that by killing both Vader and the Emporer. You can say that Anakin created the threat by killing Mace and putting Palps in control, but the threat was already there, and if he didn't kill Mace Palps would've got to him another way and kept working on him until a confrontation would have to take place.

Then part of me believes Anakin has cleansed the force and put it into it's next stage of evolution. The old Jedi are long gone, The Sith now defeated, and the legacy of the force is left up to the Son of Suns, Luke. He now has a blank canvas to paint the new picture of the force.

 

Palpatine was holding back against Windu when he sensed Anakin going to save him, there is strong evidence that Palpatine (50%) > Mace Windu (100%).

 

I'm not sure if that's true, Mace already had Palpatine on the ground before Anakin even entered the room. I think Mace would have won it, if not for Anakins intervention.

And on the original point, Of course the darkside wouldn't just vanish with Vader and the Emperor dead. But Palpatine was a very powerful Sith and it would take someone a long time to become that powerful with the darkside. So, at least for the moment, the Sith are not a threat.

 

The prophecy is deliberately vague; even the Mortis arc in TCW did not clearly explain, yet the entire three part was a metaphor for the prophecy. All we know is Anakin is the Chosen One, but the actual wording of the prophecy remains a secret.

Which is even more confusing because the ST will have an ancient Sith Lord, who survived the PT & OT

 

I completely disagree. For one thing, we know that Mace is supposed to be one of the strongest Jedi in the Galaxy--if not Yoda's equal, than somewhere around that ballpark, and with a much heavier focus on combat than Yoda. We also know that Yoda was near-match for Sidious, with Sidious being perhaps slightly more powerful, but not overwhelmingly so.

Then consider that Obi-Wan "having the high ground" over Anakin, despite Anakin being much stronger in the force, was such an overwhelming advantage in a fight that it lead to Anakin's destruction.

Well, Mace didn't just "have the high ground", he literally had Sidious lying on his back, unarmed, with a lightsaber against his neck (a position that Sidious was in, btw, because Mace had just completely kicked his butt in a duel). For Sidious to go from lying on his back, unarmed, with Mace's lightsaber against his neck, to somehow turning the entire fight around and winning on his own, would require him not to be just somewhat stronger than Mace, but overwhelmingly, ridiculously more powerful than Mace...and there's no evidence whatsoever this is the case, aside from blind Sith fanboyism.

I believe that scene should be taken at face value. Sidious is extremely powerful, but also very arrogant. He effortlessly takes out the other Jedi who come for him, and assumes he can do the same to Mace...and then Mace turns out to be more than match for him in a direct fight, nearly causing Sidious to die from his own hubris, until he is able to seize the moment and turn Anakin. In the end it works out for him, but I don't believe for a second that his plan all along was "intentionally get my butt kicked, such that I end up completely at Mace's mercy, unarmed and on my back and about to be decapitated, just so I can then manipulate Anakin." Because honestly, if that was his plan, that would be dumb. If Anakin was even a moment late or had any hesitation when it came time to save him, Sidious would be down a head.

 

I suggest you watch the scene a bit closer:

1. Palpatine "loses" at the exact moment that Anakin walks in the room.

2. "He must stand trial!" Anakin protests against Mace. We see a brief shot of Palpatine looking over from Mace to Anakin. "Please... help mee.... so weak" Plapatine cries in a strained voice. Its not in Palpatines character, from what we know of him through the saga, to do that if he was genuinely in mortal peril. He's playing to Anakin's sympathies. "Please don't!" He screams in a pathetic voice that quite resembles mockingly sympathetic voice he used towards Luke when discussing his "Rebel friends".

3. Anakin cuts off Maces hand, and what does Palpatine do? He smiles. Not a weak smile of relief, but the smile of predator who's caught his prey. His straightens his posture, blasts Mace with a storm of lightning, and he yells it out loud: "POWER! UNLIMITED POWER!".

If, in a matter of seconds, someone goes from "Help me, I'm so weak" to "UNLIMITED POWAH!", you can probably assume that they were lying about the first part. And Ian McDiarmids performance totally gives it away.

 

I do believe that when Anakin enters, Palpatine decides to feign weakness in order to manipulate him, but that in no way means he intentionally put himself in a position to be decapitated by Mace in the first place. Palpatine's true demeanor is and will always be that of a power-mad supervillain, so the whole "I'm a weak old man" stuff is clearly an act, but there's no evidence that he intentionally sets himself up to be decapitated, rather than deciding to improvise to save himself once he found himself in that position.