PT What’s wrong with Lucas changing his mind from 1983 to 1999?

If Lucas had to clarify how the midichlorians work, it means that we can not deduce it from the movie.
The movie doesn't say "per cell". It just says "over 20,000 midichlorians".
And they specifically say "count" , not density, not concentration, not per cell.

 

Over 20,000 per what? I always took it to be a blood cell

 

Why would it have to be "per"?

 

Because he’d need to examine Anakin’s whole body to have a total count

 

I don't begrudge Lucas his creator right in altering/expanding his own saga in whatever way he deems necessary. However, unlike with novels, comics, and such, in his case, he was and is dependent on what level of technology is available to use in making films in determining what changes could be made and when to possibly make such changes.

For the most part, I'm fine with what all he has revised or expanded upon (Han still shot first though) but with the intro of midis, I do think Lucas changed the fundamental aspect of the Jedi, from a type of religion/art form to straight up science.

For me, the underlying implication throughout ANH is that anyone could possibly be a Jedi, given the time, training, and more importantly, the dedication to do so. It makes simple sense, you have an innate ability or talent and depending on your own determination and level of training is how well you develop that innate talent or ability.

But with the PT, it felt like Lucas needed some form of justification for Anakin to be The Chosen One. Hence the intro of midis, his level is off the scale thus he is special, unique even among the Jedi. I wouldn't have minded that per se but it's the comparison with Yoda that sends this off-kilter to me: throughout the OT, we are given the impression that Yoda is a strong, mighty teacher and wielder of the Force as a Jedi. Segments of the PT re-enforce this position with his powerful actions and deference paid to him by his Jedi peers. Of course, to be the Chosen One, Anakin must in some fashion be more powerful than even Yoda.

Therein lies the rub. While it's never given to my knowledge, the underlying implication is that there is an X amount limit in question here; a person needs a baseline X amount of midis or else they will never be a Jedi. The innate talent may be there (we all have midis) but if I don't possess the requisite amount necessary, I will never become a Jedi regardless of how hard I train or learn. In fact, the more midis I have, the more powerful I could become. Otherwise, what's to prevent Qui-Gon from being the Chosen One? Mace? Or even Obi-Wan? Surely they can study and train and learn more diligently to reach such a plateau? No they can't because they simply don't have 20,000 midis like Anakin.

Midis are a new limiting factor, one which changed the Jedi dynamic from being one of possible spiritualism to one chained to mere biology. In a way, I view it as a loss for I'd be interested in seeing how many or what kind of religions, belief systems exist aside from Jedi/Sith that involve the Force among beings not fortunate to be born with the right amount of midis. I'm also glad that, for the most part, midis are hardly referenced outside the PT (AFAIK).

 

Everyone having a different limitation on their Force powers was always the case.

 

Why? How do you know how the technology Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan used in an imaginary universe, in a highly advanced technological society, works?

The same way we can estimate how many bacteria or liters of water a human body has, they might have been able to extrapolate a total number of midichlorians. Apparently they didn't, they did indeed calculate a concentration of midichlorians per cell. But the movie doesn't clarify that, it only mentions "midichlorian count".

That's not how the logic of the Chosen One works. Even after they have a number for Anakin's midichlorians, they still don't know if he is the Chosen One. Qui Gon strongly believes it, but the rest of the Council is not convinced, and they certainly haven't shown that the only thing that matters in the Prophecy is the midichlorian count.

I on the other hand, could not care less about a new age hippie spirituality in Star Wars, since the Jedi are vastly different from a religion. With a main difference being that their higher power actually exists, and they can channel it at will. And I will take the biological and scientific exploration of the Force any day over the quasi-spiritual one that is vague and undefined. The midichlorian count is also mentioned in The Mandalorian and in The Clone Wars, and hopefully we will see a lot more of it in the future honestly.

I am baffled by the term "mere biology". Biology is a beautiful science with a lot of mysteries and the more we learn about how the human body (and all other species work), the more magical it becomes.

 

The thing is though, the Force has always had a genetic component. In the OT, the entire reason Luke and Leia are considered special by Obi-Wan, Yoda, and the Empire, is because of who there father was. It's an inescapable factor of the series, baked into the first movie (though it comes out more when it was codified in ESB).

Remember, Luke himself says to Leia "You have this power too," and she denies it, because she doesn't think she has any innate connection to the Force. While the Force flows through all people, not everyone can harness it, whether they're aware about its power or not.

Even in the PT, Anakin is never presented as more powerful than any other Jedi, despite his inherent starting advantage. There's still a spiritual dimension to the Force that require training and understanding.

 

"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.

"The Midichlorians have brought Anakin into being as “the chosen one” who will balance the universe. The mystery around that theory is that we don’t know yet whether the chosen one is a good or a bad person. He is to bring balance to the Force; but at this point, we don’t know what side of the Force needs to be balanced out."

--George Lucas, Star Wars: The Making of Episode I, 1999.

"It was a virgin birth in an ecosystem of symbiotic relationships. It means that between the Force, which is sort of a life force, and reality, the connectors between these two things are what we call Midichlorians. They're kind of based on mitochondria, which are a completely different animal, that live inside every single cell and allow it to live, allow it to reproduce, allow life to exist. They also, in their own way, communicate with the Force itself. The more you have, the more your cells are able to speak intuitively to the Force itself and use the powers of the Force. Ultimately, I would say the Force itself created Anakin. I don't want to get into specific terms of labeling things to make it one religion or another, but basically that's one of the foundations of the hero's journey."

--George Lucas, Feburary 2005 issue of Vanity Fair, page 117.

"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.

 

The film doesn’t specify what the measure of that 20,000 is; could be per cell, per cubic inch, per liter, per whatever. And it doesn’t matter for the narrative.

 

The verdict still isn't out on that one. Those two interpretations of Palpatine's transformation are still equally valid.

Personally, I subscribe to the belief that Palpatine's face is his true visage, that was revealed under the stress of the moment. For multiple reasons:

• This is the explanation since Empire Strikes Back (the reasoning behind why his forehead is ridged and splitting)
• No other victim of force lightning gets deformed like that
• The rotten teeth, yellow eyes, and long fingernails are completely independent of being electrocuted

 

star wars is the super-future.

a civilization that can do live mobile inter-planetary 3d hologram communication, is mostly likely able to do a complete cell count of the entire body from one blood test.

 

i think you got it all wrong.
the deformation scene is symbolic to his corruption politics and the fact that he finally "removed the mask" of the politician and shown his true form. an ugly person.
in a way, its a statement on modern politicians and bad leaders. windu even said "he controls the senate and the courts" to make it clearer.

at the same time, i read it is a reference to an old movie, but i dont remember which.

story-wise, its pretty simple. he used a corruptive power excessively, and that damaged his appearance.
and anakin saw what happens to those who do that and we saw that this is his future if he chooses this path. (another reason to watch episode 1-3 first)

also it was a battle of good vs evil, mace windu won. (until anakin betrayed him for his own selfish reasons)

 

It's definitely per cell or ppm or something to that effect. He takes a tiny blood sample from Anakin. It wouldn't make sense to either be reading a total count from the whole sample or stating the total number in his whole body. If they had the technology to count the total number in his body, it wouldn't be found through a blood test.
And that would also mean that only some of Anakin's cells have midichlorians, but Qui Gon says the midichlorians are in all living cells. How many blood cells are in the human body? Trillions! So it has to be 10,000 per cell.

If Anakin loses a limb, he still has the same midichlorian count in each cell communicating with the force, but his injuries were very extensive so who knows. How much of his body is still living tissue? How many of his organs are still organic, etc?

As for the novelizations, it's okay if there are occasional minor contradictions in them. They're likely accidents if anything, but this isn't one of them. They were considered "George canon" under Lucas, and we can still treat them as such. I believe it was Matthew Stover who said that Lucas went through his draft of RotS and edited every page, inserting additions and deletions.

 

The point is that Vader is about as strong as Dooku, which is still formidable.

Spoiler

He just cannot take four Masters. It was difficult going through Ahsoka and Obi-Wan by themselves.

 

Yeah, but they have protagonist powers. Otherwise, Vader kills Jedi as like a hobby. If he goes a whole day without killing a Jedi, he considers it a day wasted.
If he hunts down a master, he rewards himself with a swim in the bacta tank and meditates on being evil

 

Why not? Simple extrapolation. It could be as simple as multiplying two numbers, which I am sure that a calculator in the GFFA can easily do.

You have a point there for sure. I didn't think of that parameter, and honestly it would have been the most convincing argument if we didn't already have George Lucas quote in the previous page to prove what you are saying. Certainly far more convincing than the novelization of the movie, which I don't really take into account for any of the SW movies.

Outside of what exactly the midichlorian count means, the strength in the Force that Anakin has, still seems to depend on how many midichlorians in total he has. And if 20,000 per cell is hundreds or even thousands of times the amount that other Force sensitive people have in the galaxy (making his reading be off the charts), then even with the loss of his limbs he should be extremely powerful and far more powerful than any other Force user in the Galaxy, but with severe limitations because of his physical form, and certainly not as powerful as he was prior to Mustafar. So he could never reach his full potential after losing his limbs.

 

The midi count given in the films has to be per cell for the reasons people have given.
Midis are needed for all life so must be in every cell.
So the lowest midi count/cell would be 1.

So the easy way to measure midi count would be just this, per cell.

But is it the number per cell or total number that matters?
If per cell then why?
If all the midis in one cell can work together, why can't all the midis in the body do that?
So total number then?

With beings of humanoid configuration and about equal size, conc/cell would say about the same as total number and would be more manageable.

But what happens if there is a big difference in size?
If being A has twice the conc. than being B but being B is five times as big. Then being B would have a higher Force potential.

Take the space slug and compare with Yoda. How many times bigger is that compared with Yoda?
Maybe a million times?
So even with the lowest mid count possible, it would still have a higher total number than Yoda.
Now the slug is likely not that sentient/sapient and likely can't use the Force. If it could, how powerful could it be?

Bye for now.
Old Stoneface

 

why ?

 

so

"it's per cell, not total number"

but

"Anakin lost some of his potential when he became Vader"

surely it would not matter then if it's per cell

Alright the less I think about the workings of the GFFA universe the better, very little of anything makes logistical sense.

Also...this thread is way off topic

 

Because midis reside IN cells and they are necessary for there to be life.

So any cell that has zero midis in it would not be alive. So the lowest possible number of midis/cell would be one because there has to be at least one. There could be more and as Anakin showed, many more.
But one is minimum.

Bye.
The Guarding Dark

 

im pretty sure literally everyone who ever searched stumbled upon this website know this...
its very likely most of the WORLD know this.

but one is not the lowest number. so how can you declare with such certainty that the absolute minimum is 1 without a reason ?

 

I gave you the reason.
TPM states that life would not be possible without midis. So each living cell needs to have at least one midi-chlorian in it, else it could not live.
Or do you think that cells could have 0,1304 midis in it?

Midis are a life form and when counting life forms, the lowest number for there to be any of that life-form, is one. You can't have 0,3 dog, 0,67 cat.

Bye.
Old Stoneface

 

i dont see why lower than one negate the existence of a life form. the way i see it, the only reason for there to be a minimum is if its too low for the body to survive or just cut the person completely from the force.

 

The cells of the space slug could be much larger in size than Yoda's cells.
Problem solved. They could even have an equal amount of cells.