Saga OT Force vs. PT Prophecy

In the beginning, the Force was more of a spiritual concept. "May The Force Be With You" derived from "May The Force Of Others Be With You" which was a blessing and implied that the spirits of the dead would guide the living. Or at the very least, something else. Starting with the second draft, it became an energy field that could be manipulated but the spiritual aspect remained though was a bit more subtle. With the Netherrealm of the Force being introduced in the writings of TESB, Lucas had created a spiritual Valhalla for the Jedi. He even likened to Obi-wan's ghost as being like "Tales Of Power" by Carlos Castaneda in 1977.

"Both Alec Guinness and I came up with the thing of having Ben go on afterward as part of The Force. There was a thematic idea that was even stronger about The Force in the earliest scripts. It was really about The Force, a Castaneda Tales of Power thing."

--George Lucas, Rolling Stone interview; 1977.

The book promoted Shamanism, which gave the Force and Obi-wan a bit of mysticism and starts heading towards the religious aspect.

 

That George Lucas spoke about Star Wars in terms of wanting people to think about God/spirituality is one thing; but in terms of the Force being a deity (as in having a will/overseeing and in some way dictating events) that is something that just isn't addressed within the OT. In fact Star Wars is about the choices that characters make. I see a huge difference between that (and the faith that we are shown is, in fact, faith in others - in their ability to achieve; in other words to reject the notion of being all-powerful and, ultimately, all-important. Luke's choice at the end of ROTJ is to reject his seeming status as 'uber-mensch', as the be all and end all of the success of the rebellion - which is why I've always enjoyed it for it's rejection of the typical 'heroic' storyline.)

The PT introduces the 'will of the Force' as an entity which actually administers (ministers?) to the beings of the universe; that things happen because of this quasi-deistic form, which becomes in some way a defining character of the saga - having, as it were, a plan to combat the evil Sidious - in which the characters are morphed from fully formed characters with agency, into simply cyphers of this grand schema.

That is what I think, in the final analysis, I can live with least about the PT - because that differentiation in the telling of the story is back-projected onto the OT, nullifying, imo, some of the much more powerful elements of the original trilogy.

 

It's clearly stated in the OT that the Force controls your actions. It's always had a will. Whether that "will" is a deistic sentience or something else entirely is never made clear, either in the PT or the OT.

If you don't like the Force being a deity, you don't have to view it that way. I don't. Nothing in the PT forces you to. You're creating your own problems.

 

No, they still have agency. That and the Force having a will are not mutually exclusive propositions. Though it partially controls things as explained by ANH Obi-Wan, it also obeys the commands of Force users.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that the existence of the prophecy means that a certain outcome was guaranteed. If anything, Lucas' comments on the matter seem to imply otherwise.

 

Yeah, I've heard that said before and I agree that Lucas probably views it that way. I just struggle with it from a storytelling point of view. If a story introduces a prophecy at the beginning and the prophecy is fulfilled at the end, I find it difficult to get my head around the idea that that particular story isn't about predetermination. And if something is predetermined, then free will is not at work with regard to that outcome. It may be with regard to the means of getting there, but not to the outcome itself.

Having said all of that, I may need to live a few more lifetimes before I become enlightened enough to see how destiny and free will can co-exist!

 

I think the notion of a prophecy is less problematic to 'free will'* and the story in general than the interventionist Force, or the Anakin-as-Kirk's-glasses** issue (among others). From ESB, we know that the Force can be used to see the future... vaguely. I just imagine that all of time operates like in Slaughterhouse-5 (as a kind of 'block' of everything at once, when looked at from 'outside'), and some old-timey Jedi caught a shadowy glimpse of some of the events of Anakin's and Luke's stories.If we accept that Luke and Yoda can use the Force to see the future in ESB, then this is pretty much the same as that, isn't it?

*Really, no will is truly free because that would be nonsensical, but rather I think we mean 'uncoerced will' or 'agency' or something like that.

**The Force senses darkness, so it creates a response. Does it know what Anakin will do in ROTJ before it creates him? If so, it essentially sensed that he did something, 'then' created him 50 years before... so that he could do the thing. Anakin is the glasses that McCoy gets for Kirk for his birthday, which Kirk then sells after traveling back in time, knowing that future-McCoy will/has 'already' bought them. This is actually consistent in a way, it's just a temporal loop,...which is not touched on at all in SW.

 

Qui-gon speaking of the will of the Force follows with the tenants established in the OT about destiny. Yoda, Obi-wan, Vader and Sidious talk about how Luke has a destiny and that he must follow through on it. Obi-wan tells Luke that they have separate destinies, while Han doubts that the Force controls his destiny. Which their suggests that it was in the back of Lucas mind. Or at least was a starting point when he began the PT. But going on, each Jedi and Sith in the OT tell Luke that he has a destiny, but as we see, Luke is the one who takes charge of what his destiny is. He chooses to follow the Jedi Code and stop fighting, whereas if he didn't, he'd fulfill his destiny as a Sith by becoming after killing Vader.

In ROTJ, we see this in the form of Luke deciding to confront Vader because they're both at Endor and he believes that he can save him. He doesn't want to face his father, because he doesn't want to kill him, but he is told that he cannot escape his destiny and he realizes it is his destiny to try and save him. But there was one consistent thing and that is what Vader says to Luke in TESB...

VADER: "Your destiny lies with me, Skywalker. Obi-wan knew this to be true."

And he was right, but not how it would go down. They both knew that Luke was the key, but they had differing viewpoints on it.

 

But it's not about people speaking of destiny. If the only aspect of the PT's handling of destiny was a line by Qui-Gon mentioning some vague notion of a 'will of the Force' this discussion wouldn't be taking place, certainly not with me. It is the miraculous birth of a child, linked with a prophecy. A child who may have been conceived by the midiclorians themselves.... That the midiclorians are not directly the Force is, in context, simply a reductio ad absurdum, a semantic argument of little value. That a prophecy is ultimately fulfilled, by means of a child born of immaculate conception - where it is stated as possible (which it seems to me is what we are to take as the truth of the matter) he is conceived by the midiclorians; whose discovery (by such unlikely confluence of events as we witness in TPM to get Qui-Gon to Tatooine, and to Anakin) a main protagonist has no doubt is the will of the Force; whose identity as the 'Chosen One' of said prophecy is accepted is(or should I say, are) the issue(s).

Doubtless one could dissect each item and dismiss their voracity or import in isolation, but it is the context within which each of them occurs and which each in turn contribute to, a change in the overall tone.

 

What is the will of the Force?
To answer that question, I believe we need to go back to what the Force itself is.
The Force is an energyfield created by all living things. In other words, it is the life energy of everything that lives.
How does an energyfield have a will, then? Well, living things possess will. If an energyfield created by all living things has a will, that will must be the collective will of all living things.

In short, the will of the Force is the will of life!

That's why I believe that the Force is not a self-conscious entity. It's just an energyfield whose actions are dictated/affected by the actions and wants of life.
Most living things want harmony/balance, so the Force automatically strives for that.
The collective subconscious of life detects that darkness approaches. Since that will cause imbalance, life subconsciously wants to take precautions against it. As a consequence of that, the collective energy of life - the Force - somehow influences the midi-chlorians to create the Chosen One. Through the Sith, perhaps? I like to believe that they created their own nemesis by trying to create the ultimate Sith Lord.

 

The thing that we're supposed to derive from Anakin's origins is that he was created by the Midichlorians, but the real question was who or what prompted it? Did they act on their own, or did Darth Plagueis cause it?

"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.

If it was Plagueis, then the Force didn't create Anakin on its own, but in the end, he still winds up destroying the Sith. If it was the Force reacting in response to Plagueis, then it only makes sense since as we see, the Jedi cannot beat Palpatine.

Mind you, Luke doesn't want to face his father, which means not going out in search of him. But then he finds him and so he realizes that he has no choice now.

"It's about a young boy leaving his world and going off into the unknown, to a great adventure. [...] Star Wars, carries that story on to what happens after you leave and in this particular case, there's a slightly more classic edge to it, in that the fates are there to kind of help Luke realize that, in certain cases you don't have choices. You know, if you choose not to fight evil, eventually it'll just push you up into the wall and you just don't have a choice. It's an inevitability that you can't escape from. And in this particular case, he's torn between what he really wants to do; which is go off and join the academy and fight for the Rebellion and have excitement; but then he's also committed to helping his uncle, and to help his uncle build his farm, and his uncle's raised him, he's like his father, and he has his obligations to help put the homestead together.

It's very clear from the beginning here, that Luke's fate, even when the aunt and uncle are talking, is not to stay on the farm. A future that's just not in him, his destiny lies in a grander scheme of things. Even they know that. I mean they know it for other reasons, that we don't know about yet."

--George Lucas, ANH DVD Commentary.

"What Luke is doing in the beginning of Star Wars is finding his own responsibility for his place in the world. He thinks that his responsibility is with his aunt and uncle, and to do his chores. His ultimate responsibility is much larger than that because it deals with a much larger base of humanity—larger more cosmic issues. He is unwilling to look up and see those as something that relate to him. He’s much more looking at the ground and plodding along in his everyday life. So it’s that awakening, first of all, that is the performed by the insider, the magic of Obi-Wan that sends him on the path to self-discovery."

--George Lucas, Laserdisc Commentary, Star Wars Trilogy Definitive Collection, 1993.

Not quite. Luke has to accept that he must face his father and he wants to avoid that confrontation, because it means killing his father. Something he doesn't want to do. He has to understand that this confrontation needs to happen, because events are moving towards a conclusion. He has to surrender himself to the Force, but he also has to take charge of his own destiny. His failure in the cave showed him what his destiny is if he follows that path. Yoda has been training him to not follow that path, but Luke doesn't quite know how to do it. He is really fighting himself. His fears, his anger and his hatred. The personification of those emotions is his father. If Luke wants to become a Jedi, he must confront himself.

When Luke first arrives, he wants to leave. He regrets his decision to come to Endor. But he finds that he is being pushed into a situation that he needs to take control of. And he starts by taking the initiative.

 

Just because something happens doesn't mean it was the only possible outcome. Why does ROTJ have a happy ending? Because for most filmgoers happy endings are traditionally more satisfying than "the bad guys win".

Nowhere in the PT is it said that the prophecy guarantees an outcome. In fact, in the novelization for ROTS Anakin appears to understand that Force prophecy is not absolute, and the author of that text has claimed that Lucas line-edited the manuscript.

 

So, the events predicted by the prophecy needn't have happened? The fact that they did exactly as prophesised was just a coincidence?

 

I think it has to do with trust and faith not a lack of choice. Submission isn't horrible.

 

I don't think a prophecy necessarily means there's a divine being who "chose the outcome." I always assumed it was more like...someone getting to see through a window into the future and writing down what they saw. It would have happened anyway, prophecy or no, but it happened because of the choices made by the characters. So Anakin's decisions were his and his alone, but it just so happened some ancient Jedi had a glimpse of the outcome before the decisions were made. Not so much the will of the Force telling them what the outcome is "supposed" to be, but giving a heads up of what it "could" be.

Also, Yoda's "always in motion is the future" thing makes me assume that prophecies/visions foretell one possible future. Things could have gone another way; it's just that this one specific possible path out of a number of potential paths had been foreseen in detail.

 

I could probably roll with that too, but for the fact that the Force bypassed the usual reproductive process to create it's CHOSEN one, created for the express purpose of fulfilling said prophecy.

 

Well, created for the express purpose of being able to bring balance to the Force. The prophecy itself was incidental to that. And I still do think Anakin could have made different decisions and not 'fulfilled his destiny', so to speak - the Force may have lined up the dominoes, but he still got to choose to knock them over.

But from movie canon, it's definitely interpretable either way.

 

Anakin was the chosen one, but he did not have a chosen path in which to follow. He was chosen to fulfill a prophecy. But many things could have interfered with him fulfilling that prophecy. I mean Luke could have never wanted to be a Jedi? Would the prophecy have been fulfilled if Luke never crossed paths with Vader? Who knows? There are a lot of scenarios that could have happened. But in a world of hypotheticals, it could have gone either way.

 

So help me out here guys. From what you're saying here the answers to these questions are: No, Yes?

 

Yeah I would just say coincidence myself. Because that prophecy could have went the opposite of the way it originally did. Like when Vader told Luke in ESB that it was his destiny to join him, Luke could have done that but chose not to join him. Destiny can change.

 

Thanks. Interesting.