ST What Do You Think Of The Dyad?

The Dyad idea sucked.

 

But as already mentioned, you're assuming that Anakin doesn't have any free will... and that he/'The Chosen One' was pre-programmed to kill Palpatine without any of the moral dilemmas that bind us mere mortals. That is not the proposition being presented by Lucas at all. The GFFA is one where its inhabitants have the free will to choose sides, do good things or bad things. The choices made, and the choices to make, has been a key theme of the Lucas era films. That 'the force' intervenes when and where it feels is necessary, but otherwise influences and not mandates, is directly in keeping with our 'real world' belief systems... one that billions have believed for thousands of years. Trying to critique Lucas' interpretation/reflection of how we (generally speaking) perceive 'God' (or higher beings/force) doesn't really hold up in my opinion, because what you're actually criticising is the view that there can be an omnipotent being that allows bad things to happen. Questioning why the force allows Anakin to save Palpatine is akin to asking why the Christian God allows Jesus to be cruxified or why God tolerated the persecution of Christians by Nero? Pertinant and reasonable questions, but has absolutely no bearing on the internal logic Lucas creates within Star Wars, because your points are primarily philosophical ones, rather than the technical application of concepts within a fictional story.

 

I am not in any way assuming Anakin doesn't have any free will. Clearly the point I'm making is being lost somewhere. There seems to be a lot conflation happening. My questions about why the Force didn't do X, Y, or Z are rhetorical. This rhetoric was brought about by the initial begging of the question of why The Force had to have a Chosen One and a Dyad. I'm not suggesting that The Force should have just given Palpatine a brain aneurysm.

I am not making a judgement of Lucas, or Anakin, or religion, or anything out-of-world. This is a judgement of The Force from an in-world perspective. This is a qualitative assessment of The Force's strategy for bringing balance.

The AI example I provided really is a good analogue for what I'm getting at. The Force, like humans, has an ability to create that extends well beyond its ability to control.

The Force intervened with a desired outcome, yes? We agree on this, I think. The outcome was technically achieved (per episode VI), but the path for getting there was not great and in most ways counterproductive. So what judgement can we make of The Force from these facts? I think an obvious one is that The Force is bad at using its power to create for problem solving. Just as the humans that create the super AI are bad at using their power for problem solving. This feels entirely self-evident based on what we know about how The Force intervened and how things played out from that point.

Let me just ask point blank: Was The Force's intervention a success (as of episode VI)?

 

Lucas:

If, 'in a general sense', the Whills are the force, let's say that's the 'intervention' you talk about.

The Whills 'intervened'. Qui-Gon was taught how to retain his identity after death, and that happening (and happening when it did) was not random.

Being able to cheat death gave the sith advantage in the long run. Their failure could be temporary in this way; the jedi could be encircled again, and destroyed. That was Luke after ROTJ. It was him against Palpatine, just like the PT jedi; but, just like the PT jedi, Luke did not know it.

Palpatine gambled and won (PT), and then gambled and lost (OT), but he also had a plan B, cheating death, so he could make one more gamble. And so he did. But those FGs intervened at some point, just like the whills during the PT. I think that's what the dyad is about.

So 'was The Force's intervention a success (as of episode VI)?' makes no sense from the Whills' POV (the force's, 'in a general sense'). There was no such intervention beyond establishing a fair fight early on: a fight with 'cheating' as a part of the rules. But it was a 'crude matter' fight, and that's the plane where it had to be fought.

 

The Dyad just seemed like a last second effort to explain how someone would be interested in someone who murdered/maimed those closest to Rey and how she would give a you know what about him.

 

I think the idead works and just need to be explained better in future works, but i agree that it just there in TROS. I hope we get more oof it tough with jedi and sith in older times.

 

I think the force did succeed in what it wanted to happen. It's just that it works on a larger timescale than regular beings living in the universe do. It feels disturbed by the rising darkside, creates something to counter that, and achieves just that. If it can wait 20 years for Anakin to grow up, than it can also wait another 20 years for him to get the job done. 40 years might be a long time for a human, or many of the other species, but it may not be all that long for what is basically a cosmic entity. Imagine our universe being like the force, 40 years would be a blink of the eye, if even that, for such an entity.

As for the dyad: the idea itself works just fine. It fits perfectly well with what came before. It would have worked better though if TROS had dared to go all-in with it. Instead it's just one of quite a few ideas in the movie that I think could have been really interesting but ended up being somewhat half-baked.

It makes little sense to claim that this is some sort of explanation for why character A would care about character B. This matter was already made clear in the prior movie. You might as well ask for why Luke or Padme care about Anakin. It simply rings hollow, "I didn't care about him, therefore no other character could possibly have cared for him", that's just not how people work. The world has seen plenty of evil people, people who still were loved by others. It has seen and continues to see many vile morons who treat other people like garbage, yet there are still people who love them, even some of those who get treated like garbage. There are also quite a few people who showed compassion and love to those who hated them or who were hateful to others in general, and managed to get those people to mend their ways. People who went with political extremism, conspiracy theories or cults, who were brought back into society by those who cared. None of that would ever have happened if the people who showed compassion listened to those who said that these people were irredeemable.

 

Yeah, but she made out with him after he cut her best friend's spine into two.

 

Padme fell in love with Anakin before he went down the path to become Darth Vader and became a child-killing mass murderer with ambitions of becoming a galaxy-wide dictator.

Rey fell in love with Ben Solo after he had already become Kylo Ren and turned into a child-killing mass murderer with ambitions of becoming a galaxy-wide dictator, that had also cut her friend's spine, murdered his own father and tortured her.

 

I loved the idea of the Dyad, but they didn't do enough with it. It ended up amounting to not very much, another throw away blink-and-you-miss-it concept. I wish JJ had settled on a few ideas and executed them to the fullest, instead of a dozen half-realized, truncated ideas. Go big or go home.

 

To be honest I have given little thought to the Dyad since the last time I saw TROS. I can't really hate a idea that the film barely even cares about itself. Doesn't help that said concept has been done much better IMO in KOTOR with Revan and Bastila.

 

KOTOR is a great game.

 

Given what we know (as of the OT/PT) the GFFA has been inhabited by technologically advanced sentient beings for millennia. That the force was able to sense ‘imbalance’, and restore it, within circa 40 years, seems impressive to me. And (assuming we agree) that the force can’t just give Palpatine an aneurysm, but must influence and restore that balance through the actions of the living, or a Chosen One, 40 years seems entirely reasonable... it certainly reflects the time period of Jesus Christ’s story in the New Testament (for a comparison).

Yes... up until the sequels undermine it.

 

In retrospect, we could have saved ourselves a lot of time if we'd gotten here to begin with. We just fundamentally disagree about efficacy of The Force's intervention. I see it as an abject failure, so it makes sense that we're not able to find any common ground on this subject.

 

Efficacy is only an issue once the sequels tell us that Anakin/the force didn’t actually defeat Palpatine and the Sith. As far as the Lucas era films were concerned, I thought they were pretty clear in showing that Anakin killed Palpatine, the Sith were defeated and balance was restored. I didn’t even know it was a ‘thing’ that some fans believed balance had not been restored by the end of ROTJ...

 

Balance was restored. And the Super AI eliminated poverty. Yet, I would say both were failures due to the means by which those things were achieved. I honestly don't know how much clearer I can continue to state this. I can't figure out why my position here keeps getting turned into something other than what I'm saying.

 

Let's be clear... it was you who responded to my initial post... And with all due respect, I have little interest in arguing why you find fault in the concepts the OT/PT puts forward, given this is a thread specifically pertaining to the ST and the Dyad. You don't have to be any clearer. I understand your position completely, and I did from your first post. No further explanation is required on your part.

I think I've made myself clear in terms of my views of the Dyad concept. So I think we can leave it at that.

"Absolutely awful. It was, seemingly, just a plot device to enable Palpatine to rejuvinate without rhyme or reason... Abrams is really bad at the quasi-religious/philosophical stuff (primarily because I imagine he has little knowledge of it), which is why the concept is so weak". "
"If the force needed to 'bring two together to finish the job', then it by default undermines Anakin's/Luke's part in that overarching story, because they didn't have the capability to finish the job themselves. And if indeed the 'Dyad' is more powerful than the 'Chosen One', it begs the question as to why the force would't have just created the dyad instead of the chosen one in the first instance?".

 

I’m sorry, but you can’t attribute a position to me that I don’t hold and then one post later say you understand my position completely. That’s not a healthy mode of discussion. If someone misrepresents my position I’m going to take the time to correct them every single time. I would hope that we all have enough respect for one another that we’d be open and understanding when someone lets us know that we’ve misrepresented their position.

But, I was done with this conversation several posts ago when I noted how fundamentally we disagree on a core element of this. So I’ll be on my way now.

 

Love the idea of force bond that crosses space (and time) continuum. Looking forward to learn more about it in the future.

 

What exactly have I ‘attributed’ to you that’s a ‘misrepresentation’? Your defence of the Dyad seems to be a critique of the OT/PT, one which I believe to be entirely inaccurate, Trying to make this personal seems somewhat inappropriate.

 

As a person with actual beliefs, it is always personal when someone attributes beliefs to me that I do not hold.

 

You stated that the force had “failed” by which it brought balance. So I’m not sure what you’re contesting...

 

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.
Are you familiar with the AI problem that I've been referencing throughout this discussion?

 

I refer you to what I stated earlier. My observation is that your criticism seems to centre around how we, in the ‘real’ world, rationalise a God that would allow bad things to happen, and you’re simply applying that to a fictional universe, rather than how Lucas reflects that external/real world rationalisation in his concepts vis a vis the force/the Chosen One/Anakin turning to the darkside etc. etc. As such, I don’t think either your critique of Lucas, or your defence of the dyad stands up.