Saga The Prophecy of a Chosen One ... do you like it ? ( with a Poll )

And not a Lucas quote in sight....but then, what Lucas says about this doesn't really add up with how you describe it here; because Lucas says that Anakin's tear represents that he knows he is doing evil, wrong - not that he is simply having to give up a part of his life. He is pretty explicit about that. That he knows he is doing evil runs counter to the suggestion that he agrees with what he is doing, and as the pay-off for a 'Faustian pact', a 'deal with the devil' requires that he does something that he doesn't want to do as the price for the thing he does want (saving Padmé); because the pay-off of a 'Faustian pact' is that he does the thing he does not want to do and this actually brings about the loss of the thing he wants to keep. If, actually, he sort of wants to do what he is obliged to by the pact then....there can be no pay-off.

 

I didn't post it because you know the quote. But what I said is still true. He doesn't want to kill the Jedi, which is the part of him that knows it is wrong. That's why he says, "What have I done?" after betraying Mace which lead to his death. Why falls to the ground before finally kneeling before Palpatine. He wants to bring peace, which he has long agreed with, but he also didn't want to have to kill the Jedi to do it. Yet he knows that he has to, if he is to bring peace because the Jedi will continue to fight against Palpatine. The pay off is the assault on the Temple and what he did to the Younglings, following his betrayal.

 

What a fascinating thread. It shows that things can be interpreted in different ways. Really enjoyed points made by posters on all sides.

I like the idea of the subverted prophecy myself.... it doesn't impact the agency of the characters and makes the films more interesting IMO.

 

It's an excuse to make things happen initially but if you were not paying attention you'd miss it's supposed importance. I think the Jedi's preoccupation with it should have been played up, or tensions among the Jedi, and between them and the senate would have added more to the story. It relies too much on the emotions of Anakin, which is thematically fine but dramatically quite thin.

 

I don't like a chosen one prophecy. I feel that people have to use their own brains to save themselves. No person could show up and save everyone no matter how powerful they are.

 

That's not the point here. Luke cannot save himself because he has chosen to stop fighting and he has not finished his training, so he is unable to do anything. The other Jedi were dead and gone. Luke's friends are busy with their own problems. This left Anakin as the one one who could save his son and he does so, which as a result allows him to fulfill his destiny.

 

I didn't like it, because I don't like Destiny being controlling the future and foreshadowing it on multiple occasions. I didn't have a major problem with it, but I didn't like it.

 

Hate it! It is so unoriginal...

 

I'm having several issues with the concept of prophecy as depicted in SW:

1. In ESB Yoda said "Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future". I never thought that there'd be any reason in the future to challenge his statement. On the contrary I liked the idea that it's your actions that will decide the future and not some kind of esoteric destiny (for the record, I don't believe that Obi-Wan really meant it when he told Luke about his destiny in ANH. I rather believe he used "destiny" to encourage Luke to follow the path Obi-Wan probably was able to foresee for Luke or in particular the immediate next actions aboard the Death Star)
2. Although the future is supposed to be "always in motion" TPM introduced the ancient prophecy of the Chosen One. Of course, it could have been designed and engineered from the start as a self-fulfilling prophecy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-fulfilling_prophecy and/or as prediction due to psychohistory, a concept promoted Asimov's Foundation Trilogy - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_(Asimov_novel) - George Lucas was familiar with and something that inspired his works (e.g. city planet Trantor, the Mule as a blueprint for the Emperor, and the story twist of something "hiding in plain sight").
3. However, in the PT it becomes rather obvious that both the Jedi and the "Chosen One" take the prophecy so literal (are they all that naive?) that it ultimately becomes the very reason for their downfall.

The particular part of the PT I'm still uncomfortable with, is that the wisest of them all - Yoda - doesn't even stand up for a second suggesting that it's the prophecy that could be clouding and misleading them. Stating that it could have been "misread" simply implies that they have arrived at the wrong conclusions, but apparently he still believes that it should be taken serious - and we never learn of one good reason why these educated people take it so seriously.

Admittedly, even educated people aren't immune to dogma in a broader sense. I think that's the message Lucas wanted to convey, but I don't think his 'illustration' was as good as it could be, I would have expected the Jedi to be a lot smarter than what he depicted in the PT.

 

When it dealt with Anakin Skywalker, I accepted it as part and parcel of the 'lore" and how things eventually unfolded with Luke etc. and things coming back into balance, but if Rey is supposed to be a "Chosen One" also, that is a bit much.

 

^ Indeed, it starts to sound like "the choice of a new generation"



I mean of course "the chosen one" of a new generation.

 

Luke's destiny was not to go with Obi-wan, but to become a Jedi and face the Sith. Lucas himself also states that you have a destiny and you can decide which way you go.


"What these films deal with is that we all have good and evil inside of us, and that we can choose which way we want the balance to go. Star Wars is made up of many themes, it's not just a single theme. One is our relationship to machines, which is fearful, but also benign, they are an extension of the human, not mean in themselves. The issue of friendship, your obligation to your fellow man, to other people who are around you. That you have control over your destiny, that you have a destiny, that you have many paths to walk down, and you may have a great destiny if you decide not to walk down that path. Your life might be satisfying, if you wake up and listen to your inner feelings and realize what it is you have a particular talent for and what contributions you can make to society."

--George Lucas, Bill Moyer interview, 1999.

Luke has to decide what his destiny is, become a Jedi or become a Sith. Or stay behind and be a farmer.

"There's always a teacher, someone who mentors the young hero in what his destiny is. And in this case it's an old Jedi who's been sitting out in the desert, primarily waiting for this moment to happen."

--George Lucas, ANH DVD Commentary.

"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 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.

What the Jedi aren't sure of is how or when the Chosen One will bring balance to the Force. When Yoda says that the future is in motion, he's referring to the fact that things can change. We see this in Anakin's vision of Padme's death as Obi-wan is wearing his brown cloak, but in reality, he's not wearing it while aboard the yacht and on Mustafar. We see that her fate is certain. She dies in childbirth, though a result of Anakin's actions. Rey sees her confrontation with Kylo on the Starkiller Base, but in the vision she is alone and Ben has his helmet on. When the actual confrontation happens, he's missing his helmet and Finn is there with her.

The prophecy indicates that the Chosen One will bring balance. It is presumed that the Chosen One will do so in a duel with the Sith. What really happens is far different as Anakin becomes a Sith and dies as a result of injuries inflicted while saving his son from Palpatine, who dies as well.

 

I wish they had said, "Restore light to The Force", instead of, "Bring balance to The Force."

 

I get what Lucas is saying, but that doesn't make it...correct. Or change my personal interpretation.

You can't have both. You can't have free will and a predetermined destiny. Lucas can say that all he wants (and I would appreciate at the very least a link to his saying that so I can hear/see what he said).

If you have free will, you do whatever you want.

If you have destiny, you do whatever the universe or Force wants.

You can say that someone has free will except for a prophecy, but then they don't have free will. They are still on the path. Anakin was still on the path. Just because he didn't fulfill it at the end of ROTS mobdro kodi doesn't mean he escaped his destiny. He didn't, since he walked the path to his destiny at the end of ROTJ. There was no going against his destiny. If the end of ROTJ was it, he still did what he was supposed to do.

And what sense does it make to have Anakin "try to escape his destiny" when destiny is a product of your decisions - and either it is due to free will or a predetermined plan. He can't escape his destiny because either he is creating it...or it is silently guiding his actions.

--

As for the Jedi needing to get killed, that's also a product of interpretation. You can see it as balance the Force by having both light and dark, which is how I read it. I don't think anywhere anyone said they had to die. But from one perspective, it sounds like that.

It doesn't remove anything from the films either. It's not like everyone is getting bossed around, without free will. They don't know that it's their destiny - unless they truly sit down and get philosophical.

 

I chose "I like it", but I'm more in-between of "I like it" and "it's great". I chose the former only because the Chosen One / prophecy really doesn't have much focus, it gets mentioned a few times by other Jedi, but Anakin himself never mentions it or claims that it applies to him, and it takes six films to be fulfilled without being even acknowledged (until TROS utterly craps on it, that is).

But yeah, I like it. It adds mystery and uniqueness to Anakin and the Skywalker line. I don't care about debating over the "but it's not free will'' / "destiny is bad" stuff. In terms of the GFFA and the Force, I think choice and destiny are things that can and do coincide, and it did for Anakin.

 

I think the problem with the Chosen One prophecy is that Lucas clearly had not plans for a Sequel or continuation to ROTJ Palpatine was supposed to be the last Sith that is how he envisioned the saga when more Sith or Dark Side users exist after ROTJ clearly there is a contradiction with the prophecy

 

The Chosen One prophecy never made much sense to me. What it means to "bring balance to Force" is never really explained and this has led to competing schools of thought: one believing that it means the defeat of the dark side and another believing that it means a balance between light and dark. It makes for interesting fan discussion, but it does make me wonder if it's made ambiguous to give the world a sense of reality (there are, of course, many interpretations of real world religions and philosophies) or if it's just unclear.

There's also the fact that the Jedi had a prophecy of someone who would destroy the Sith while, as Ki-Adi-Mundi reminds us, the Sith have been extinct for a millennia.

It makes even less sense now that Palpatine survived his apparent death in RotJ and whatever balance Anakin brought was quickly undone in the next few decades.