Lit Is Canon changing the rules of using the Force?

So 1999’s Phantom Menace established you needed to have a certain amount of midi-chlorians in order to connect to the Force. Basically it was like you need a high IQ to be a physicist.

Now, we have Sabine who clearly can use the Force as she called a lightsaber to her hand telekinetically. There is no denying it. She can use the Force. However, is using the Force now what Lucas envisioned in the 80’s when he compared it to yoga. Anyone can learn to use it if they are determined enough. The average student can become a physicist if he studies hard enough? Or is Sabine just incredibly weak in the Force like Zayne Carrick or Scout was in Legends?

 

Since we don’t know sabines midi-chlorian count. I’ll assume she’s weakly force-sensitive

it’s always been a grey area where exactly on the scale one can use force powers and to what extant.

 

That was never actually stated, though. TPM tells us Anakin's count is abnormally high, but midi-chlorians exist in everyone and "when you learn to quiet your mind, you'll hear them speaking to you". It's not the exclusive "you must be this tall to ride" club it's sometimes made out to be.

 

We have rules now?

 

Eh, if that's the case, why bother testing for midichlorians at all? Sure you need training, but it seems like midichlorians determine the person's potential to begin with.

 

Sure, a higher count seems to suggest greater affinity (maybe there's more of them for the individual to "hear"), but nothing said there's a bar set for entry. That seems like a fan misconception that sprang from the "Lucas ruined the Force!" crowd.

 

I think they are trying to strike a balance between Lucas's earlier statements that the ability to sense and use the Force is a skill akin to yoga, that anyone can do it but very few devote the time, and the midi-chlorian count. I recall a few years back Pablo saying something about even the midi-chlorian measuring was part of the institutional excess of the PT Jedi.

 

During the making of the OT:

Kasdan: The Force was available to anyone who could hook into it?
Lucas: Yes, everybody can do it.
Kasdan: Not just the Jedi?
Lucas: It’s just the Jedi who take the time to do it.
Marquand: They use it as a technique.
Lucas: Like yoga. If you want to take the time to do it, you can do it; but the ones that really want to do it are the ones who are into that kind of thing. Also like karate.​

 

Legends also had a Force group called the Matukai(they have also appeared in The High Republic, and thus are canon). They used martial arts and physical discipline to increase Force awareness. They were able to boost a marginal sensitivity to something greater.

 

This. So much this.

 

So we know the midi-chlorians "speak" to those who can hear them, but what are they saying? The previous line of the movie answers that - "They continually speak to us, telling us the will of the Force." Here's the result I get when I put those two lines together: midi-chlorians are less about "power level" or ability to use the Force, and more about one's potential to "hear" the Force communicating its will to them. Or to put it another way, a person with a high midi-chlorian count isn't just able to use the Force, they're more able to be used by the Force for its own ends - which is possibly why Qui-Gon immediately connected Anakin's midi-chlorian count with the Chosen One prophecy.

 

It's Legends now, but Wolverton seemed to think anyone could learn to use the Force, when Luke talks about teaching Isolder in The Courtship Of Princess Leia. But that's the only example I can think of from that era.

 

If everyone is force sensitive to an extent, can everyone (trained or not) fall to the dark side?

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Well, in the KOTOR games non-Force-users can have a dark side or light side alignment. Canderous Ordo/Mandalore is consistently dark aligned despite working with light aligned players.

I dont know how we could read the worst Imperials but dark side aligned.

 

But what we ended up getting on-screen seems to heavily imply that it's a select few that can wield the Force. You know, like Yoda saying "no, there is another" and Luke telling Leia about their shared parentage and how they can use the Force.

 

Even without a hard cut off, I could see there being a serious case of diminishing returns - an average person might have to spend most of their lives to master force basics that most jedi do as younglings.

This goes double for Yoda and Obi-Wan: They didn't have years to train up an average jedi like the countless others Vader has slaughtered. They needed people strong enough to take on Vader and Palpatine with rather minimal training.

Sabine might have been below the jedi's usual cutoff, but she would hardly be the only character the jedi deemed too weak to train who became a force user.

Spoiler

Notably, we have the Mother who was thought too weak but was actually scarily good at mass mind influence with the force, despite being self taught.

 

Which is mostly just a side-effect of a wonky retcon, and doesn't really hold up when you look at...basically any other Force-user who's not a Skywalker or Palpatine. Not to mention Luke and Leia's role in things is specifically to do with their connection to Vader, not just the fact that they have the Force. Like, Obi-Wan and Yoda have the Force, so that's clearly not the only prerequisite for confronting Vader and Palpatine.

 

I think midichlorians usually show how EASY it is to be trained, and the Jedi were good sticking to that in the PT since they wanted to raise from birth.

But that anyone can be trained, it can just be very hard, but it's possible. And now more likely to happen with people being trained as Jedi as young adults.

 

Don't forget OWK's line in TPM, something to the effect of "Not even Master Yoda has a midichlorian count that high!" That makes it pretty clear that a high count is directly related to being a powerful Force user.

 

That could just be because Yoda had a higher count, it was easier for him to be trained, and it was easier for hm to keep training himself to get stronger and more attuned.

Midichlorians being like the maximum speed of your vehicle. If you drive from New York to DC on a vehicle that can go up to 120mph versus a vehicle that can only go up to 20mph, then the 120 will get to DC first and might make it all the way to Florida before the 20mph makes it to DC. But it will still get there, just needing more time, it's just a rockier and slower road.

 

In The Rise of Kylo Ren, when one of his students is frustrated at having difficulty using the Force while everything seems easy for Ben, Luke says that for some people to door to the Force is wide open and for others it's not as open... But through training and determination it can be widened.

I don't think midi counts are supposed to indicate an upper limit of strength in the Force, but just how naturally open to it one is. That doesn't mean someone of a much lower count can't match or surpass them, just that they need to be more dedicated to their training.

Obi-Wan, being of a lower count than Anakin, probably shouldn't have been able to win 2 duels with Vader but he did. Reaoundingly. Vader's success rate against Obi-Wan is entirely predicated on beating him with his connection to the Force being disrupted and him sacrificing himself to buy time for his charges. Midi-chlorian counts didn't effect the outcome there.

We don't know if Sabine's midi count is far below the PT Jedi threshold, just below or right at. As far as we know, that test never happened with her. What we do know is that Absoka saw something in her that made her feel like she could be trained, but Sabine had a block. Her door was closed, right up until she kicked it wide open.

 

I think the exact mechanics of how the Force works and how it manifests in people is purposely kept vague, and for good reason.

 

The Force isn't a hard magic system by any means.

 

I mean...

 

And yet Anakin never reached, much less surpassed, the force mastery of either Yoda or Palpatine despite having more midis than them.

(And as an aside, him having a super high midichlorian count is one of the things that marks him as the chosen one to defeat the Sith...but then like he doesn't actually beat Palpatine with a display of force mastery or power. Just picks him with his robo arms and yeets him down a pit.)