PT Have your feelings on midi-chlorians have changed?

Not really. The Force was going out of balance for a while before Palpatine became Emperor. That’s why Anakin was born. A confluence of events manipulated by the Sith resulted in the imbalance. This time, Palpatine couldn't quite disrupt the balance yet. But given time, he would. Had he succeeded in turning or killing Rey, and then won the battle, the Force would become unbalanced.

That's why he created them.

"We also get into this thing of what are Midichlorians, how they work which advances a little bit of the story of the Force, and how does the Force work, how we come to know the Force which is part of Anakin’s training in learning to become a Jedi. And take the idea of the Force one step further. The Midchlorians are kind of a side issue. Not in a sort of spiritual, metaphysical part of the Force, but the more practical, biological, physical part of the Force, or how we come to know the Force, which has to do really with the genetics of why some people have more in tune to the Force than others."

--George Lucas, TPM DVD Commentary.

And going back to the second draft of ANH, Lucas had come up with the idea of the Jedi being created by a man who discovered the Force and taught it to his children and they taught their children and so on. Now, Vader’s diminished connection to the Force was not stated in the OT, but it was evident that something was wrong with him. That if he was as powerful as Yoda and Obi-Wan said that he was, why serve Palpatine? Why not betray him sooner? Why did he need Luke to help him? In the rough draft for ROTJ, we see Vader being dominated by Palpatine. Lucas had something in mind and it took the PT to get there.

Also note that Kevin J. Anderson had introduced a couple of different ways to determine Force sensitivity in people before Lucas finished writing TPM. An interesting coincidence, perhaps.

 

Uh, yes really. It's stated in the film and by Lucas. Anakin was the Chosen One, he did/ was supposed to bring balance by destroying the Sith (ie, destroying Palpatine). You even had Anakin's voice saying "Bring balance like I did", which is a weird contradiction in of itself seeing as Palpatine/ the Sith wasn't really destroyed, so that would mean he didn't bring balance. TROS absolutely messed things up regarding the prophecy.

All the other stuff you're saying about what balance really means and why Anakin was created just sounds like speculation.

And I think it's left vague why Vader didn't overthrow Palpatine. It could be that his power doesn't match his (which again, I don't like the idea of lost limbs making someone less strong in the Force), but I think it's just as likely that there was a mental or emotional hurdle, or that Vader was just content being Number Two and didn't have the ambition to rule the galaxy before Luke came along. I think the fact that he simply picks Palpatine up and throws him away shows that it was more complex than a struggle of Force power levels.

 

I always think back the Force Unleashed game where its clear Vader was training Starkiller behind Palpatines back to probably potentially one day over throw him. But then that how it is with the rule of 2. One to have the power and the other to desire it.

And i know Force Unleashed isn't canon. But the concept that Vader would do stuff behind Palptines back, always made sense to me.

 

^I never liked the Starkiller stuff. I see Vader as too solitary and untrusting of anyone to be training a random person as an apprentice. Much like with Padmé, I think Vader/Anakin is only interested in ruling the galaxy if he has someone he cares about at his side.

 

But isn't that sorta similar to what Vader does with the inquisitors? They are all force users that work for Vader. Which admittedly the inquisitors are new canon right? And they didn't exist in the Lucas era? But Starkiller was technically the victim. Vader treated him like crap. I still remember the part where Vader was willing to backstab Starkiller to keep Palpatine from finding out. Throwing him around and then out of the window into space before picking him up again.

 

Wasn't something about the Emperor being disappointed in Vader's loss of force power mentioned in one of the novelizations of the OT or something? At the least I know it was mentioned somehow, somewhere back then, maybe in some interviews with Lucas or something (maybe in one of those Time magazine articles???).

 

Or he did. Palpatine is messed up and weakened. The New Republic re-took most of the galaxy from the Empire. The Sith were destroyed. The balance was restored. It's starting to weaken in the ST, but it was restored. Palpatine even says that he was dead for a while and Luke said that there was balance for a while.

Based on what Lucas said.

"If good and evil are mixed things become blurred - there is nothing between good and evil, everything is gray. In each of us we to have balance these emotions, and in the Star Wars saga the most important point is balance, balance between everything. It is dangerous to lose this. In "The Phantom Menace" one of the Jedi Council already knows the balance of the Force is starting to slip, and will slip further. It is obvious to this person that the Sith are going to destroy this balance. On the other hand a prediction which is referred to states someone will replace the balance in the future. At the right time a balance may again be created, but presently it is being eroded by dark forces."

--George Lucas, Cut Magazine Interview, 1999.

"There is a hint in the movie that there was a Sith lord who had the power to create life. But it's left unsaid: Is Anakin a product of a super-Sith who influenced the Midichlorians to create him, or is he simply created by the Midichlorians to bring forth a prophecy, or was he created by the Force through the Midichlorians? It's left up to the audience to decide. How he was born ultimately has no relationship to how he dies, because in the end, the prophecy is true: Balance comes back to the Force."

--George Lucas, Rolling Stone Magazine, 2005.

All Sith have ambition to rule. We see that in ROTS. In the OT, Vader is alone. He has no one to help him. The moment he finds out about Luke, he plots to usurp Palpatine. There was obviously a reason he didn't find someone five, ten, fifteen years before then.

The OT books didn't say. The ROTS novelization did, which was based on Lucas's notes and the commentaries from the five DVD's.

 

Specifically, the junior novelization.

As quickly as he could, Darth Sidious followed the troopers outside, onto the black sand banks of a lava river. A charred heap lay on one side. No; it can’t be!
But it was. His promising new apprentice, who was to be the greatest Sith who’d ever lived—maimed and burned, perhaps dead. Darth Sidious ground his teeth in frustrated anger. Part of him wanted to turn on his heel and leave what was left of Darth Vader to burn to ashes in the rising lava. Even if he was alive, even if he could be saved, Vader would be crippled.
And not just with his mechanical limbs. The Force—dark side as well as light—was generated by living beings, and it took living flesh to manipulate it. Darth Vader would never be able to cast blue Force lightning; that required living hands, not metal ones. And with so much of his body replaced by machinery, he would never come close to the potential he’d had.
It was a great pity, Darth Sidious thought, controlling his anger, but perhaps not irreparable. Even diminished, Darth Vader would still be very strong, and there were no Jedi left to challenge him. Darth Sidious had seen to that himself. So he kept walking until he could bend over the body. And to his surprise, his apprentice was still alive.
Relief swept his doubts away. “Get a medical capsule immediately,” Darth Sidious commanded, and clones ran off to do his bidding. Leaning down, he placed a hand on Darth Vader’s forehead, using the dark side to keep him alive.

 

Vader did instruct them, at least in lightsaber combat, but they all already had some training beforehand, and he didn't take any of them as an apprentice. They aren't Sith, they were just recruited to help him hunt down Jedi.

Honestly I think the idea of the Inquisitors was always kinda odd. Taking in former-Jedi to help eradicate the Jedi... doesn't seem the smartest move. Then again, I guess it's pretty much the same idea with Vader.

Palpatine being weakened isn't Palpatine being destroyed. There's no wiggle room here: "destroy the Sith", that's the description for what the Chosen One does. Palpatine returning/surviving goes in the face of that. So does Rey doing the same thing. It's the Chosen One, not the Chosen Two. And calling a decade or so of ''balance'' as something worthy of making an ancient prophecy is incredibly lame and it downgrades Anakin's role just to upgrade Rey's, much like Luke restarting the Jedi Order for a brief period just for it to be destroyed again.

Not really seeing anything here that really tells me anything new?... Basically Lucas said the Sith create imbalance, there was imbalance in TPM, and that it's left vague how and why Anakin was created, and that he brings balance. I'm not really disagreeing with any of that. (Or at least, Anakin should've brought balance. Like I said, Palpatine surviving and Rey doing it "for real" messes that up.)

But that's the time of TPM, not the ST. We don't know what's going on with the Force and balance in the ST era, there's barely any mention of it at all, and the ST seems way more interested in making up its own powers and prophecy-like things like the Dyad, and insisting that a strong darksider means a strong lightsider must rise. Which is why I think claiming what's balance or imbalance in the ST is just speculation.

Pretty much what I've said, though I don't know if ALL Sith have to have the exact same rule-the-galaxy ambitions as Palpatine.


Anyway... yeah... midi-chlorians. They're OK.

 

Vader couldn't be everywhere, hunting Jedi while attending to his duties. That's why they were recruited. But while they had skills, none of them could reach the level of power to take on Palpatine. Not even the Grand Inquisitor himself. As to using them, it was no different from using Ventress and Savage.

Palpatine dying, even if for ten minutes is enough. His physical power is drained and the Empire itself is barely a fraction of what it was. All actions made by the New Republic was of their own doing. As to the Jedi, there is no guarantee that they could ever survive just because Palpatine was or wasn't gone. Evil still exists and all it takes is someone to choose to go the dark side to take out the Jedi. That was true in Legends and it's true here. The Jedi aren't magical immune from turning to the dark side of the Force.

Rey didn't "do it for real". Anakin did that. Rey just made sure that it couldn't happen again. Which is the job of all Jedi.

Which is what happened in the Lucas stories. Palpatine was the most powerful dark side master and Anakin was to be his opposite. What happened in the ST is that the Dyad was created as a way of representing the Force needing balance physically. They were literally Yin and Yang. In the end, the final confrontation between her and Palpatine was what Anakin should have done in the first place. But instead, he utilized the Sith method of betrayal.

They do.

"One of the themes throughout the films is that the Sith Lords, when they started out thousands of years ago, embraced the dark side. They were greedy and self-centered and they all wanted to take over, so they killed each other. Eventually there was only one left, and that one took on an apprentice. And for thousands of years, become the master would teach the apprentice, the master would die, the apprentice would then teach another apprentice, the master, and so on. But there could never be any more than two of them, because if there were, they would try to get rid of the leader, which is exactly what Vader was trying to do, and that's exactly what the Emperor was trying to do. The Emperor was trying to get rid of Vader, and Vader was trying to get rid of the Emperor. And that is the antithesis of a symbiotic relationship, in which if you do that, you become cancer, and you eventually kill the host, and everything dies."

--George Lucas, Bill Moyers Time Magazine Interview; 1999.

"Vader’s plot is to convert Luke to the dark side, make him an ally, and then topple the Emperor. At this point he and the Emperor want to turn Luke to the dark side. I don’t think Vader would care whether he turned Luke to the dark side or if the Emperor turned him, because he feels that once Luke is turned, he can use him for his ally. The Emperor and Vader are in total agreement about what’s going to happen. They both want to get a hold of Luke. They both want him converted to the dark side: the Emperor to replace Vader, and Vader to replace the Emperor. They are perfect bad guys."

--George Lucas, ROTJ story meeting conference, 1981.

"At this point, Vader’s plan really, now that he knows he’s his son, is to convince him to come with him. Join the dark side and together they’re going to overthrow the Emperor, which is the thematic devices used through the whole movies in terms of the Sith, which is Sith Lords are usually no more than two because if there are three, then two of them will gang up on one to try to become the dominate Sith. Anakin would have been able to do it if he hadn’t been debilitated and now he’s half machine and half man, so he’s lost a lot of the power of the Force, and he’s lost a lot of his ability to be more powerful then the Emperor. But Luke hasn’t. Luke is Vader’s hope. His motives at this point are purely evil. He simply wants to continue on what he was doing before which is get rid of the Emperor and make himself Emperor. He only sees his son as a mechanism for the ambition. His mad lust of power."

--George Lucas, TESB DVD Commentary.

"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.

 

A thousand year prophecy for 10 minutes of No Sith is a scam. lol. One would think these things last a little longer. Just like how the End Times prophecies in the Bible, where Jesus comes back to bound Satan in the abyss after Armageddon. It's not for 10 minutes. It's for a millennia, and during that time there is finally peace on Earth. Only after that is Satan then set free again for a short time.

Prophecies should be epic. 10 minutes is not epic.

The force sending a chosen one so that the Sith are gone for ten whole minutes and balance was that one weekend seems a lot of wasted effort. If only the Force knew that Palpatine was growing clones and had a back up back up back up plan, or that the writers of the ST weren't creative enough to actually continue the story during this period of balance and not Sith.

 

The thing is that regardless of it being Palpatine or Maul as Lucas had intended, the Force is balanced at Endor. So Vader and Palpatine dying, only for Maul to restart everything with Talon, would not negate the prophecy. The same with Palpatine waking up in agony on Exegol aftrr beingslam dunked downa shaft. It only states that the Chosen One destroys the Sith and brings balance. Nothing is seen afterwards. The Sith cult saw the coming of a Dyad, not that the would the descendants of the Chosen One and the one who brought about the imbalance.

 

If only the Sith Cult was properly introduced in the movies.

 

That's not remotely in the movies.

 

Palpatine didn't see the dyad until after he sucked their force energy. The Sith Cult was obviously too busy building Star Destroyers for 30 years to worry about dyads.

When someone says destroys the Sith, I would hope it means for more than 10 minutes. Destroy, as in ... forever. So that they aren't a problem anymore. Not...they come back 10 minutes later did you enjoy your balance break.

This whole ... Rey gets to balance the Force too ... is just lazy writing at its most extreme.

 

1. You know it's not literally 10 minutes, right? That was a hypothetical. In TLJ, Luke clearly states that "for many years there was balance." The movie confirms what ROTJ actually does not. Balance was restored/reached when Anakin killed Palpatine.

2. I've said this before: As a narrative device, The Chosen One prophecy is a flimsy retcon and (as such) fairly flexible/confusing in it's interpretation. It leads to fans making all sorts of assumptions/presumptions that aren't solidly canon.

The fact that (since 1999) fans have had to go to Lucas quotes/explanations, rather than what the films tell/show us is evidence of this.

 

Wait, what? ROTJ doesn't confirm balance?! Do people really need it spelled out in the dialogue that balance was restored? Maybe a narrator at the end?

ROTJ shows us, and thus confirms, that balance was achieved, as prophecied in the prequels. Anakin destroyed the Sith > The Empire fell > The galaxy celebrated.

 

Yep, Anakin destroyed the Sith > The Empire fell > The galaxy celebrated. It's been that way since '83.

Prior to 1999, did you know that this sequence of events was bringing balance to the force and confirming the prophecy?

No. You absolutely did not. No one did. Why? Because this is not actually in the movie Return of the Jedi. Balance of the Force being achieved is not shown. How could it be? It's a concept that came along later.

The Prophecy was a retcon that we were served up with the creation of the prequels. It's a bit of a narrative cheat... same as Palpatine's return. Neither of these retcons actually changes what we are shown, or what actually happens in ROTJ. It just adds a new narrative wrinkle to the overall story. Whether you accept/like these retcons, or not, is up to you.

 

No. That's something that was only revealed in 1999.

Wrong. Nobody knew because it's information that nobody had at the time. But that information was revealed in the prequels, so that we know that the events in ROTJ establish the fulfillment of a prophecy.

So what if it came along later? How does that exclude anything? And it is shown, because the prequels establish that there is a prophecy, and that the events that ended up happening in ROTJ are the fulfillment of that prophecy.

What exactly is being cheated? Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It's not at all comparable with Palpatine, which we did see being vaporized thus making his return impossible. There's no impossibility, or cheat, in saying that the actions of a given character or the events of a given movie happened to have been prophecied. Specially in a prequel.

 

Right, but not so much revealed as newly created. It wasn't like Lucas and Kasdan were talking of a prophecy back in the days when the OT was being dreamed up/created. It's a retcon.

Incorrect. ROTJ doesn't establish (nor mention/show/whisper/hint at) the fulfillment of a prophecy....at all. Unlike Han shooting first, or Hayden as The Force ghost, Lucas didn't retroactively put anything in ROTJ about the prophecy.

The prequels are the first SW films that establish the prophecy, talk about it, make it part of the narrative. They came out AFTER ROTJ. Thus, this excludes ROTJ from actually being able to deal with the concept of the chosen one at all. That's how time works.

Again, you claim that ROTJ shows/establishes a prophecy being fulfilled. It doesn't. That's not the story that ROTJ (or the OT) is telling.

Consider, if ROTJ truly and authentically is showing the Force being brought into balance, why did we not know about it until we watched TPM?

What is being cheated? It's simply story telling shortcuts. I don't mean that in a bad way. Star Wars is our most beloved, modern day, space opera/serial.... and the genre is full of them. These kind of narrative cheats (retcons) are kind of a cherished convention of the genre, are they not?

As I said, people are free to pick and choose the retcons they like, or don't.

Clearly, you are cool with the chosen one prophecy being tacked onto the story being told with ROTJ's long existing/established ending. Clearly, you aren't cool with Palpatine being able to cheat death through Sith alchemy and all the unnatural abilities afforded to him by the dark side (as established in Episode 3).

Personally, I'm fine with both. They are both retcons and narrative shortcuts and Star Wars has long been full of them.

 

So what? That's completely beside the point. Wether Lucas had thought it up back in the 80s or the 90s is irrelevant. The fact remains that for the purposes of the saga, his story, there is a prophecy. And as made evident by the story, it was fulfilled in ROTJ.

Yes it does. By showing what was foretold it would happen. Anakin getting rid of the Sith and thus bringing balance to the Force, as shown in the galaxy-wide celebration.

Prequels are, by definition, set in the past. And it's precisely because time works chronologically that the events of ROTJ are able to confirm the prophecy established in the prequels.

Yes it is. A story that starts with TPM. ROTJ doesn't exist in isolation, nor does the OT.

That's a false dichotomy. We didn't know because we were not aware of that information. But once we were made aware of it, through the prophecy established in TPM, you can't deny that the events of ROTJ are the fulfillment of the prophecy. That's the entire point.

Palpatine dying is also the point, at many levels.

 

It's not irrelevant. Because ROTJ was made long before TPM, ROTJ couldn't actually show prophecy being fulfilled with any real fidelity. I mean, it happens....but only in retrospect. It's only because Episode 1 "revealed" this fact to us years after we saw ROTJ.

Again, ROTJ is a story told with absolutely zero focus on this the prophecy. It's just not part of the OT...at all.

Had George Lucas made the saga in Episodic order, perhaps ROTJ would have actually addressed this. As it stands the pay off to the prophecy just drifts by without any type of acknowledgment. Why? Because of the order the films were made ergo ROTJ doesn't actually address this at all. Ergo, the payoff set up in Episode 1 is muted at best.

The narrative focus/drama/emotion of Vader tossing Palpatine down the shaft is that he is turning good, and saving his son, our hero, Luke. The focus/drama/emotion is not, "Oh great The Force is brought into balance." Nobody* in ROTJ even mentions, nor cares, about the prophecy.

*We don't even know if Luke knows about it.

The Galaxy wide celebration is evidence of The Force being brought into balance? The citizens of the galaxy are celebrating the fall of The Empire. None of these party people are even aware of an ancient Jedi prophecy.

The only people that know about the prophecy are Yoda, Obi-Wan, and Anakin. Perhaps their ghosts are celebrating? I think you'd have a stronger argument with that one.

Right. The prophecy is established in The Prequels. Not in Return of the Jedi. Again, ROTJ does not address the prophecy. None of the OT films do. This is a fact. The OT films simply aren't concerned about it.

I am not denying that the prophecy is fulfilled in ROTJ. I am denying your claim that ROTJ addresses this prophecy. It doesn't. The chosen one prophecy simply is not a part of the ROTJ (or OT) narrative. It's a product of the Prequel narrative.

It was added to bring some mythological gravitas to Anakin's character. You have to watch Episode 1-3 to even know about it. Again, the OT simply never addresses this. Not once. The prequels and the sequels do.

The point of what?

 

It's not just the mere presence of the Sith that causes the imbalance, but actions they cause that works towards it. As to the prophecy itself, yes it was added later though it isn't a retcon like Vader is Luke's father and Leia is related to them. No more than Anakin contributing to Padme's death is a retcon. Lucas had ideas on paper, but he didn't put it on screen. So it cannot be a retcon.

 

Yes, it is irrelevant. And yes, it can show the prophecy being fulfilled.

It doesn't matter if ROTJ was made before TPM. TPM (and the prophecy) was made with the events of ROTJ in mind. That's how we know it was fulfilled.

Yes, nobody is arguing that. The fact remains that it happens.

It doesn't need to be. None of the six movies exist in isolation.

If you acknowledge that the prophecy is fulfilled in ROTJ, then how can you claim that ROTJ doesn't confirm that the prophecy was fulfilled?

ROTJ shows the events that were prophecied, as established in the PT, thus it confirms its fulfillment.

The story.