How do you interpret the prophecy of the chosen one

I know what you're saying.

I never saw a disconnect. The Sith became too powerful during their millennia long exile: just Sidious alone was more powerful than almost all of the Jedi order, including members of the Council. All Anakin had to do was eliminate the Sith to balance the sides, and he achieved it casting the Emperor into the Death Star II's reactor and dying in the process.

That's one of my minor problems with the TFA. I feel like they should have kept the Jedi in power the whole trilogy, because Anakin's destiny only ended up lasting less than thirty years.

 

George related the Sith to a kind of cancer of the Force. If you have cancer, your body is out of balance. Eliminating the cancer restores balance. Again, I'm not sure how this matches up with George's work on the Mortis arc, but these are more or less his words about it. So the elimination of the Sith, not equal numbers, brought balance.

Really, it's further backed up by dialogue from Ep. III, when Palpatine says that the Sith do things that some view as "unnatural." I think that's an important line, because it shows how out of balance the Sith are tipping things.

 

Not at once, no. But if we were to look at his strength in the force, he was capable of besting almost every Jedi in the order. If Masters such as Kenobi struggled with Dooku and Qui-Gon with Maul, then very few can stand up to the master of those two and tip the fight in their favour. We see Maul and Savage Opress get treated like flies when they're swatted aside by Sidious in TCW. Windu barely held his own due to Vapaad and Sidious was said to be of equal strength to Master Yoda in the ROTS novelisation.

He also increased his strength and diminished that of the Jedi in the force due to the Sith shrine underneath the Jedi Temple. Sheev Palpatine was almost unstoppable when he took ultimate power.

 

The thing that's interesting about this is that the Jedi weren't "all that," either. George spent the entirety of the prequels highlighting the weaknesses of the Jedi and their political adherence to dogma over acceptance of the living Force. Their flaws were on full display, so the Chosen One eliminated them too. I guess that's the blurring of the lines, and why it's so easy to think of things in terms of equal numbers. Both sides needed to go.

 

Palpatine had supreme command over the Republic army - including the Jedi. Technically, the Jedi were working for the Sith that whole time and were effectively agents of the Dark Side (in a way). That’s pretty lopsided as far as balance is concerned right there, yeah?

 

I wonder if any one has every really decided wether the chosen one refers to the Sith chosen one or not?
I no georeg has said Anakin was the chosen one, but as Anakin was a Sith until his dying breath, after his turn, and as Anakin was beaten by obi-wan and doku, it seems he was only ever all powerful as a Sith?

Was Anakin the first Sith Chosen One?

 

Anakin George told us, was the Chosen One, but the more I though about this, the more I questioned, what does he mean by the Chosen One?

These video's explore what a chosen one is in modern cinema.
It establish's commonalities used in other movies, mainly, The Matrix and Harry Potter, concluding that there are 7 shared tropes.

1. The mundane existence.
2. The world offers more.
3. They are special to the world.
4. Facing a counter part.
5. Dying to kill the enemy.
6. Rebirth - The choice -cyclic or hereditary.
7. kill the enemy, save the world.

This is ultimately then used to look at the lineage of the chosen one in parts 3 and 4, and how the chosen one's hereditary line may be important to the on going saga movies, mainly through Rey, omitting trope 6. Rebirth, as it conforms to the cyclic lineage instead of the hereditary one found in Star Wars.

Finally, one interesting question that arose for me personally was when George said Anakin was the chosen one, he never said for which side.
Does the chosen one imply inherent goodness, what is the title for a dark side chosen one, and why did George use a traditional (good) chosen one theme to describe Anakin?

 

Well, on this point I think George was clear. After all, at the end of Ep. III Obi-Wan says something like "it said you were going to destroy the Sith, not join them." You might say that Obi-Wan and the rest of the Jedi are mistaken, but I think the end of ROTJ shows that they were correct. The Sith were destroyed.

 

@Rieekan and @jmjawors
You have got to respect the intent of George, your right.

I just don't see that the chosen one has to be concluded with Anakin.
It was a nice idea introduced by the prequels that Anakin is the chosen one, like wise though the O.T were obviously about Luke, who actually follows all the same tropes of a chosen one story line to, why not integrate the story to fit the family as a whole.

George is fond of adapting ideas himself so that approach would lend its self nicely to the new sequels and in carrying on the idea?

 

I'm not sure what that would look like. Anakin was the Chosen One, and he fulfilled the prophecy. It's a bit of a question about how to look at Luke. He was the one who made the Chosen One fulfill the prophecy, and, according to George, was just as powerful as his father. But he has a different role, and any offspring of his will have a different role in galactic events as well.

Personally, I think the whole "Chosen One" thing is put to bed. It's over. Prophecy fulfilled. The Skywalker lineage seems to definitely have its own significance, though, and that's probably what you're referring to. Where we go from here is important, and I have no doubt that the Skywalkers aren't finished shaping history.

 

Except that was George's intention. The Jedi were in decline and they were absolutely waiting on someone to solve all their problems. Turns out they were wrong to do so. I find that much more compelling than if they were a group of supreme, all-knowing beings who were right all the time. Turns out their Chosen One was literally their end, and that the prophecy was fulfilled in ways they couldn't anticipate.

This also makes Luke's role more interesting because we don't know what the future holds. We only know that rebuilding the Jedi Order as it was would be a mistake.

 

“a prophesy misinterpreted could have been”, These are Yoda words on the prophecy.

In real terms George has said it, so the chosen one is Anakin, and the O.T was the story of Luke Skywalker.

The twist in the prequels was Anakin was though to be the chosen one and by the end of the movies, obi-wan came to realise that was not true. (That is the story actually contained in the movie they put to screen)

I postulate that a hereditary lineage of the chosen one means when Luke defeated Vader it is because Luke is the new chosen one.

This encompasses balance as Anakin represented the dark side and Luke the light.

--- Double Post Merged, Sep 26, 2016, Original Post Date: Sep 26, 2016 ---

Yes I agree the Jedi were in decline, thats actually quite a interesting perspective, as they had masters acting out of accordance with the Jedi code like Mace Windu when he tryed to kill the Emperor who was disarmed and Anakin wanted to make stand trial.

The lower ranks of the Jedi order also believed the chosen one to be about the Sith, as the Sith reemerged but the older Jedi like Yoda realised the prophecy to be about balance of the force.

I personally believe that that is why yoda stayed out of the fight in isolation after the fall, because he realised that the force had brought about Anakin, a chosen one for the dark side, to bring back balance.
The implication being the Jedi themselves had unbalanced the force.

 

Or Luke, himself, IS the balance Anakin was prophesized to bring.

 

Thats interesting, in what way do you mean?

 

Well, we never get a verbatim account of what the prophecy actually says. We just know that the chosen one is meant to destroy the Sith AND restore balance (or something thereabouts). But maybe those two elements aren’t interdependent. Anakin does destroy the Sith, sure, but perhaps that act isn’t necessarily what brings balance.

The sequel trilogy may have dashed this perspective at this point. But my take was that what Lucas was showing us with the PT was that neither the Jedi or the Sith had the right idea. That light can’t exist without dark and vice versa. What the Force needed was someone who could exist in both worlds. If Luke is the personification of that balance and Anakin made him possible (so to speak), then that would also satisfy the condition of the prophecy . . . from a certain point of view.

 

Yeh I think this is pretty important part of the failing of each order, its also the backbone of the saga movies to I guess.
Each side believes they have the answer to the problem each other pose, but in dealing with each other they them selfs become corrupted to a degree the force then needs to counterbalance.