CT Why didn't Obi-Wan or Yoda tell Luke about the Midi-chlorians?

You just said what I did.

And as far as the mystique of the Force, Yoda's comments to Luke make it feel, to me, like only a special few have this innate ability to harness the abilities the Force provides. Midi-chlorian counts make it feel like there is a requirement. Much like a high SAT score. Just scoring high on a test does not mean someone is inherently going to be intelligent. That side note on why Anakin was special could have been accomplished in a better way. Much like how Biggs raves about Luke being the best bush pilot in the outer rim. We didn't need to see how many womprats Luke had bulls-eyed to verify.

 

Kinda makes you wonder why the Jedi banned themselves from getting married etc and therefore denying them more powerful Jedi don't it?
makes zero sense

Come to think of it, how did thy work out the Force is passed down in families to begin with as they don't have any

 

A ban on marriage and on being attached to children parentally, isn't the same as a ban on having children.

Presumably, the Jedi have had "one-night stands" in the past - and from past experience, they know that an unusually high proportion of offspring of Jedi are force-sensitive. Hence "The Force runs strong in my family" isn't unique to Luke.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/1989505.stm

Jackson said the example of Shaolin monks from Hong Kong kung fu movies had informed his take on a Jedi knight, with characters meditating "like most men are supposed to do in monk-like situations".

But Lucas revealed that despite their monastic regime, Jedi were permitted to have sex.
"Jedi Knights aren't celibate - the thing that is forbidden is attachments - and possessive relationships."

 

Banning marriage is essentially a ban on attachment, because as Yoda states to Anakin, fear of loss leads to the dark side, and attachment leads to jealousy. But as @Iron_lord stated, a ban on marriage, and therefore on attachment, does not mean Jedi or Sith never had offspring, illegitimate or otherwise.

As far as working out that the Force is passed on through lineage, I haven't figured that part out yet. But, we do have the advantage of seeing this from the outside looking in, and have seen this in Luke, Leia, and Rey. Although making Rey a Palpatine ruined her story arc, IMO

 

Midichlorians kind of changed how we view the Force, which is why a lot of people did not care for the idea in 99. It took away some of the mystery and beauty.

 

Force sensitive individuals would have existed long before the foundation of the Jedi Order and even afterwards Force sensitives who simply choose not to be a part of the Jedi for whatever reason would continue to exist. Not to mention that for all we know Jedi were originally allowed to have families but it caused problems with people pulling an Anakin and turning to the Dark Side to try and save their loved ones so they just banned those kinds of relationships in response.

 

It actually added to the mystery and beauty.

 

Before Episode I came out someone told me the Force would be "explained." I didn't like that, but when it turned out midichlorians were the so-called explanation it didn't bother me at all. They weren't an explanation as much as further exposition. There are multiple ways of reading the importance of midichlorians too. I'm fine with midichlorians.

 

"Of course, I'm coming from the point of view that it was the bacteria that helped create the mitochondria and then the mitochondria that helped create multicelled animals."

"And then the mitochondria, if they got enough energy, they could make two cells, and then once you make two cells, then you can make this whole world."

"But it's...about symbiotic relationships. I think, personally, one of the core values we should have in the world, and kids should be taught, is ecology, to understand that we all are connected. Forget the mystical whatever. It's all just very plain. We're all connected. What you do to somebody here, it affects somebody there, there, there, there. It comes back to you. You have understand that you're part of a very big picture. You're just one little part. You're a gear. You're just a little gear in this big picture."

"The thing that I liked about the whole idea was that, yes, we are ruled, and the conquerors of the universe are these little one-celled animals. But they depend on us, we depend on them. And the idea was, the Force--we say it surrounds you, it control us, we control it--it's a two-way street."

-- George Lucas, James Cameron's Story of Science Fiction

I find that all pretty beautiful and mysterious. What Lucas is doing is describing life. He's taking science and biology and he's infusing it with spiritual significance. He's giving it a meaning that can guide us in our daily lives. He's trying to make us think about how we're connected to everything, how intelligent life wouldn't even exist without the trillions of tiny little bacteria inside and outside our bodies which we take for granted. Even the smallest disruption in the microbiotic realm will throw our entire world out of balance.

Isn't that what the Force is? Why can't the Force be scientific? Why can't it have to do with bacteria? The Force is life, and bacteria are life in its most primal form.

This kid gets it:

“I felt it all come together: a crystallization of my worldview, my love for science, the metaphor from Star Wars,” he said. He thought of Islam, his religion, which literally means “submission.”

“Though religion seems to be at odds with science, surrender, to me, preaches the practice of science: the shocking science of these mind-altering microbes was the latest in a longstanding lineage of discoveries that have forced us to rethink our seat in the universe,” he said. “The microbiota were real-life midichlorians, a reminder of our hubris, a rebut of the dichotomy between mind and body, individual and community.”

For both Minhal and for Lucas, there is no conflict between science and religion. The Force can and must encompass both, because they're both just part of one much larger picture.

 

Completely the opposite for me. It added mystery and beauty because it made it more real as. The Force was never "magic" which is the point in ANH. It was an energy field that surrounds and penetrates all living beings.

 

I think the clumsy way in which the midichlorians were introduced in dialogue in TPM, and the overall negative reaction to that film in many quarters at the time of its release, led to more hatred for the concept than it probably deserves. Theoretically speaking, rooting the Force in an actual element of biology might be a sound idea, but it takes good execution to make people accept it.

 

Since Yoda taught Luke that life creates the Force and makes it grow (and Obi-Wan himself said it is an energy field generated by all living things) it is only natural that some observable connection between Force-sensitivity and biology would be known to experts in the Force.

 

George Lucas had yet to create, let alone introduce the idea of midi-chlorians during the late 1970s and early 1980s.

 

Midichlorians did appear in some of Lucas' notes going back to his development of the original film, but yes they had not been introduced in any of the films yet. But I think this is meant to be an in-universe discussion. Like if the topic were "Why doesn't Leia know her real father was Anakin Skywalker" it isn't germane to the point to say "Well Lucas hadn't yet decided to merge her character with the long-lost sister he wanted to introduce."

It is worth noting, however, that there is a real-wrold reason for the lack of such exposition. George hadn't decided to introduce this feature of the galaxy to the actual films yet and may not have yet fully developed the concept. Even as things are there is room for new questions to be asked about the midicholorians. Do they populate in response to the host's connection to the Force, or is the strength of an individual wholly a response to their population level that person's cells? This is one of many questions I feel may be open to fans.

In-universe though I don't think we can unequivocally assert that Luke was never told about them, or if not why not. My best guess assuming he wasn't is that Obi-Wan and Yoda wanted to keep it simple for someone starting off so late and they just wanted to focus on how he could personally connect, feel, and use the Force. Between that and warning him that the Dark Side could be seductive and twist his noble impulses to harmful results, it doesn't seem like exposition he would really need, at least until he was in a position to begin training students of his own.

 

Actually, they don't - at least not by that name.

JW Rinzler has admitted the that bit of George Lucas' vintage (oral-transcript) notes seen in The Making of SW which supposedly mentions midichlorians was tacked on from something Lucas said to him while the book was being written. The master of Special Editions up to his old tricks, it would seem.

 

Well then, you might as well ban friendships, too.

 

If they are strong attachments, then they are forbidden too. The point is that a Jedi has to be able to let anyone or anything go. The Jedi mission of service overshawdows everything else in its importance to a Jedi Knight. Or it will if he is truly following the code.

 

Thankfully, because they are the worst story point ever introduced into SW. They completely ruined the whole idea of the force to me, its a mystical force, a power you tap into if you have the skill and patience to do so, something that Obi Wan Kenobi had ingrained on us so mystically on us in the original story.

Symbiotic life forms, immaculate conceptions - please. Even now when I watch the films, I blank out all that rubbish.

 

An unnecessary addition to the films that the cynical would say was never told to Luke because it didn't exist until George thought that prequel means you have to link everything and explain everything that either contradicted the originals or demystified them in some way.

 

I think the focus was on the spiritual aspects of the Force, rather than its microbiological components. The midi-chlorians were more or less dumped as a concept after Ep. I anyway. I'm glad Lucas did not get his way in focusing on the microbiological aspects during the prequel trilogy. But I do find intriguing the idea that the Force has both physical and spiritual features, rather than merely one or the other.

 

Yeah - but that wasn't in the movie- at least it didn't come across to most people. What we got instead was some clumsy exposition about Anakin having a force rating of 'over 20,000!', like something out of Dragonball Z. Maybe we would have got this beautiful meditation on symbiotic relationships had Lucas brought Terence Malick in to direct - but TPM is not such a film, more's the pity.

 

I don't think they're as important as everyone thinks tbh. For example, Anakin had a higher midi-chlorian count than Yoda, but Yoda far outweighed him in force powers and lightsaber ability. I think a lot of Jedi actually benefitted more from training hard than anything innate talent.