Midichlorians

Show, don't tell...

What George did was what he almost always does, he went for the tell. He created a story device that allowed him to have characters stand around and talk about how amazing Anakin is; in other words, a device he could use to tell the audience that Anakin is strong in the Force.

What a proper writer might do -- (and this is not an attempt at slighting George, who has reiterated time and again that he's not a proper writer) -- is to find ways of showing how strong Anakin is in the Force. Some choice examples of how writers/filmmakers/storytellers have shown exceptional qualities in a character, includes:
--Young Arthur drawing the sword from the stone;
--Baby Ahsoka taming the sabertooth/raxshir (Tales of the Jedi);
--Grogu levitating the mudhorn (first display of Force talent in Cp.2 The Child);
--Hagrid scrambling to secret baby Harry Potter away in the prologue to the Philosopher's Stone (here the character importance is shown through the panicking actions of others);
--The birth of Jesus being foretold by angels, being signaled by a star in the sky, being preemtively sought out for adoration by the magi, spuring a threatened Herod to massacre babes, and hailed by singing angels and frightened shepherds, etc. etc. Not once does Luke or Matthew resort to having characters tell us about how awesomely strong Baby Jesus' God-power metric is. We sort of get the idea from what happens around the boy.

 

I'm going to counter this.

George full well knew how to write properly, and COULD.
He did THX and American Graffiti, AND was in the middle of writing Apocalypse Now! when he bounced to do Star Wars because they couldn't get anyone to let them do a Vietnam movie and he needed to get money incoming sooner than later.

It's not like the only thing he wrote was Star Wars.
Star Wars is inside out. And it's inside out on purpose.

Consider that Carrie Fisher was the script doctor on the Prequels. Carrie Fisher is a renowned writer. She knows how to write. And she knows how to write really good dialogue.

Consider that Lawrence Kasdan is a world class writer. He wrote all of the Indiana Jones movies, specifically their dialogue. And he wrote Empire's dialogue.

Yet, consider that this "wrong" dialogue is present anyway in the first six Star Wars movies.

In spite of George clearly showing that he can write good dialogue in American Graffiti - which it was NOMINATED for and Oscar for it's writing.
Yes, George Lucas has an Oscar Nomination for WRITING.

So, if all of this is true above, and it is, and yet the dialogue in Star Wars is at it is, you have to stop and ask, "Why?"
It's clearly not an accident.
You don't have two Oscar nominated writers and a BAFTA nominated writer ACCIDENTALLY writing bad dialogue across SIX movies when they don't do it anywhere else.

And there is a reason. Lucas has talked about it.
Firstly, when he says, "King of wooden dialogue", you should hear that differently. Realize that he's smiling. Flip it around. He IS the KING of it.
No one else can actually write it as well as he can.

He's purposefully ensuring that wooden dialogue in Star Wars.
He's not saying he's the king of "Bad Writing", or anything of the sort. He doesn't hire writers because he can't write.
He hires other writers because he hates writing. Not because he's bad at it.

(and lord, I am with him on that one... I would love to be able to just dictate!)

And I'll go one step further and note that it take a considerable master to accomplish what he's doing with dialogue.
I actually gave an essay lecture on dialogue in the past couple years and used Star Wars as one of the case examples.
At the end I had to note that none of these new writers should attempt Star Wars dialogue because they aren't to that level yet. It takes serious skill to pull it off.

To get that vibe, and to get the art to flow and communication using that style is very hard.

See, normal dialogue works by everyone saying what they don't actually mean and what they emote and aren't saying is what they actually mean.
That is, the real meaning of the movie is in what's not being said and not what's being said.

This is the classic, "show, don't tell".

But the point to take away from that rule is that you show what is the real meaning of the movie and you tell what is the surface meaning of the movie.
For most movies what characters feel and think existentially IS the real meaning of the movie.

But that's not the real meaning of the six Star Wars movies. Their real meanings aren't what the characters feel and think. What the characters feel and think are devices.
They are Aristotelian tragedies. In Aristotle's formula, what the character feels and thinks are devices to motivate ACTION and character action is where the REAL meaning of the stories actually lies. Not in their feelings and true subtext thoughts.

What George Lucas wanted to convey was a commentary on our inner struggles of right and wrong. Every character and the situations they go through are moral metaphors for what's inside of us - the epics we go through internally with our own existential journeys.

What we feel and think are surface layers over what we more deeply intuit and experience.

It's inside out. Flipped. Backwards. The subtext becomes the text and the text becomes the subtext.

Here, listen to the scene of Palpatine revealing that he is the Dark Lord.

Now, watch the scene without hearing it (I've removed the audio)

Note every visual element. Everything. Nothing is an accident. If there's a window behind someone, it's symbolically meaningful. It's placed there on purpose.
If a color exists, it's pedantically meaningful. Lucas was very specific about colors. He would drive people nuts dialing just the right color of red, or what have you.
Look at the decorations. Look at the lights. Look at movement. There's no accidental movement. There's literally no reason they have to get up and walk around anywhere. There's nothing in the other room they interact with. It's purely for communicating meaning.

I won't walk you all through everything, but for example - did you ever bother to notice that everything in this scene's decoration is in pairs?
Did you ever notice that in one room everything is sharply defined edges of blacks and greys, but in the other one where the temptation begins everything's curves without defined edges, and reds?

That's not accidental.

Look at who has the window with the city outside of it behind them. Look who has the red doorway with the alter behind them.
When one represents "regular life" the city is behind them. When one represents "spirituality" the alter is behind them.
This is why they circle. Well, part of it. They are circling each other. These are both sides of ourselves. A temptation and conscience.

You're watching a version of the temptation of Christ, which is also a metaphor for that challenge inside of any of us between the temptation and conscience, which is a challenge between "regular life" and "spiritual life". That is, we are tempted by our situations of regular life, but it is our spirituality (this meaning, ineffable sense of moral bearing we intuit and feel more than think - I don't mean, "religiously ordered" or anything, nor magical or divine)... anyway, it is our spirituality which pushes back because our temptation is not in line with our normal intuitive feel of going about life.

Did you happen to notice that Palpatine's clothes are made to resemble scales and the tableau in the background during the temptation is one of men fighting powerful lizards? A symbolism hearkening back to the allegory of the garden of Eden story whereby the serpent temps humans with the power of knowledge so that they may do as they like?


This scene goes all the way back to 21-87. It's the same conversation yet again.
Watch this (even if you've seen it before, give it another glance over now that you've considered the previous scene).

That is, ALL of the actual meaning is in the non-dialogue. The dialogue is simply the logistics to tell us their subtext (that is, how they feel and what they think) and it HAS to tell us their subtext out loud because you CAN'T put the subtext in the background when you ALREADY have all of this other stuff going on!
If you did, you'd never make heads or tails as to what the meaning was of anything!

So, you take what would normally be up to the actors to just emote and imply (i.e. subtext) and you make that the dialogue. Then you take all of the stuff that you want to convey, which would normally be subtext of just character examinations, and you put that in the non-dialogue and explore our existential dramas allegorically there instead of simply our petty emotional psychologies (which are what's normally explored in the non-dialogue).

Now that you've considered all of this...
Put the two together.

THAT is not bad dialogue. That is insanely masterful artistic inversion.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

One: I was talking about George's insistent (sometimes) preference of telling rather than showing, specifically concerning the use of midichlorians as a device to convey Anakin's Force levels; I was not making any comment about George's use of wooden dialogue in Star Wars.

Two: I believe you are vastly exaggerating George's writing here, my friend. You admittedly love the man and his artistic output and process, and quite understandably so (you have made me an admirer of GL's documentary style capturing of scenes in SW, for example), but I honestly do think you're viewing this through extremely rose-tinted and accommodating glasses right now -- you want GL to be brilliant so you see him as brilliant, and to be honest, there is nothing at all wrong with that.

Apart from the above, you do have some excellent points, @Jayson. Thank you.
(By the way, if the above should come off as insulting and mean in any way, know that it only represents a failure in writing on my part, and not my intensions)

 

I don't think I'm reading into it here.
Oh, don't get me wrong... even though I get what he's going for there... um... well...
It doesn't work very well, if by that we're talking about the general audience getting it without Lucas having to sit them down and explain how dialogue is like a drum beat and that what's being said isn't very important - instead that it's all of the stuff in the non-dialogue that is. That's untenable, really.

It is brilliant, but it's also way left field into experimental land (which...well...that's his home turf).

I do love it for the idea he's exploring as a filmmaker in terms of craft because it's extremely unique (like David Lynch), but it's more worth studying and then seeing how it can be better put to use in a way that doesn't require a lecture by Lucas for the audience to get it.

As to the midi's... That was supposed to keep going on into something else entirely. You know, the Furnguly type stuff he was always trying to work Star Wars into becoming where he brings in the Whills and starts hitting us about cosmic symbiosis etc...

It's one of those, yeah, I get it, but I don't know... doesn't really work. And the midis is what I was talking about by example of the dialogue.
He's not going to show that bit because that's not the meaningful heart point. It's a logistical function for the meaningful heart point. The whole moral struggle within.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

I would agree, he should have sat down with someone and tried harder to work up a better throughline for that part of the story. I think with some help - and he's always received plenty of help with SW - I think he would've gotten there, no problem.

 

Well, if you go read his plans for the sequel trilogy which was to become focused on the Whills...

If we had gotten that version, then we wouldn't be wondering what the point was and instead would have learned that the Whills, more or less, cause those people with higher counts to exist so that they can employ them "like cars" (his own term for it) to "ride around the universe" as they control the fate of the cosmos.

So, in the words of Monk.


Cheers,
Jayson

 

But he didn't, so it's no defense for what George ended up giving us. To many of us OT fans, the beauty of the mysterious Force of the OTs with its cool, spiritual subtext. I'm of the opinion that The Force, like Yoda's origin and species, was better left unspoken.

I believe GL could have pushed his 'Anakin is powerful with the Force' theme without reducing it to an alien bug count.

 

I don't think he needs a defense.
It's art.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

Yet you've decided to be his personal Defender/Explainer-in-Chief here. Being art, fans of Star Wars can like it -- or not.

Exactly, everybody can have an opinion. It allows me to appreciate the brilliance of George's OT films while shaking my head at his cringe-worthy TPM "Midichlorians" explanation.

 

No I haven't. I don't defend anything.
Defending is not exposition.

Didn't say you can't. I cringe right with you.

I can understand the art and the beauty in it while simultaneously not enjoying the experience of it.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

Eloquence. This is why I like you, even when you get a little windy.

EDIT:

Midichlorians are dumb. But not as dumb as muh fuel problems in space.

Dumbest thing ever is finding out your favorite farmboy was Frenching his sister 3 years ago.

 

I think people preferred a mystery over some pseudo science in the case of the Force. I liked the thought that the Force itself decided who would be powerful. It does make more sense now with the advent of trying to make Force sensitive clones.

I guess it made Vader weaker losing legs and arms as I assume they contaminated so e mediclorians in them. Makes you wonder if wearing Kyber crystals could help give a Force user more connection?

 

Watch out. Here comes the kyber crystal bone lacing Star Wars Wolverine.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

YES!

"As u wish...."
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Jokes aside: everyone loves mystic metal and Star Wars is no different!!
Phrik, Electrum and Beskar are all worthy of the being of mentioned with the 'ol Canucklehead.

 

I see we're several pages into here now, so I want to avoid rehashing too much here, but...

Is it not clear that Midichlorians were a product of the time that the film was released?

The 90s and early 2000s were all about that sort of thing. Comic books leaned into edgy characters getting more buff and edgier with spikier costumes so they could slap around their enemies harder. Dragon Ball Z introduced the idea literally putting a concrete number to one's power level, while RPGs and video games would feed into this (including, eventually Star Wars video games).

Was it a misstep? Sure, I personally think so... and given how the storyline was basically abandoned, it seems at least some of the creatives in Star Wars agree. But it was a product of its time, much like how a lot of people in the OT had 70s hair and moustaches, bad CGI was prevalent in the prequels, and people clutch their pearls about the OT being "woke" simply because it is more inclusive than some past entries.

Was it part of Lucas's art? Sure. The guy's certainly not infallible, though. He definitely made more than his fair share of mistakes, even though he was brilliant enough to create the thing that brings us all here.

Personally, I prefer the more mystical version of the Force. I like Luke appearing as a projection on Crait to win a victory through non-violence, rather than a super buff Luke fighting Palpatine throwing Force Tornados at him. And I'm glad that it seems that current Star Wars seems to be embracing that more spiritual aspect of the Jedi, though I admit that the new Jedi Survivor game seems to have reignited a lot of "Power Level" discussion (including one particularly silly video I saw trying to decide whether Cal or Starkiller would win in a fight).

 

That's the main thing I love about the six Star Wars movies. It is rare that you get to see the same artist do the same topic in the same art repeatedly in movies.
While most auteurs maintain their same aesthetic style, it is rare to see them carry the same topic through one story from movie to movie.

We usually only see this in paintings where the artist explores a tangent of a given topic in a set of paintings.
It's why we get to see the mistakes. And that's when art is fascinating!

I hate seeing a perfect musician. Well, no I don't. I don't hate it. But, rather, am bored by it to the point of finding it annoying if it keeps popping up everywhere.
I like it when I see mistakes in there somewhere. That's when I see the art pop out and become more interesting. Conversations strike up. I'm more engaged.

I'm not saying I want sloppy messes. I just like the rough edges. When I make music, for example (which is on the computer a lot), I generally try to leave a small mistake somewhere in it on purpose rather than going back and fixing it.

And now that I'm working in movies, I do the same there. When I write a screenplay, I purposefully let something slide here and there rather than fixing it. I've been in a meeting where someone points out that people could have a problem with something because it's not really clear why it works that way, or what the point of something is beyond the thematic function, and I've said that I'm okay with that. If it causes eyebrows to squish a bit and folks have to debate intention and validity, I'm good with that not being refined out. I will if my bosses want it cleaned up, but if it's up to me I'll often choose to leave that "mistake" in.

The only thing I adamantly disagree with Lucas on artistically is regarding authorship retroactive control. I fundamentally disagree with changing the movies later.
Though I think the Midi's were a graceless slip that would have been better to not have been added, I would be fundamentally opposed to a remaster which removes them just as much as I am fundamentally against removing janky blue screens, composites, and animations from the originals.

You made that art like that. Done. That was the right expression. You may disagree with yourself later about it, hell everyone in the world may disagree with it as well. But you leave that glaring smudge, bad grammar, or graceless idea in there. That's what makes it art.

And for the record, I fully agree with you! Midi's were a bad move, and mystical is far better.
There's a Hitchcock quote somewhere (and it doesn't even take Hitchcock for this to be rather obvious) about how the audience's imagination can create better realities than you can ever put on the screen.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

A little more context to that conversation with James Cameron.
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GL : 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 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 [to] 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.

JC : But there’s beauty in that connection. And there’s empowerment in that connection.

GL : 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 controls us, we control it - it’s a two-way street.
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The midi-chlorians were an attempt to manifest the immaterial concept that stitches his fairytale together. That pervading interconnectivity of all things. Our actions, positive or negative, have a resulting consequence on the world around us - whether we know it or not - shaping our reality for good or ill.

Where the Force is energy that “binds the galaxy to together”, the MCs are matter that bind the galaxy together - tangible and ethereal expressions of the same idea.

Like just about everything in the prequels though, I LOVE the notion of this. But I’m left totally cold by the execution of it.

But I do have to push back on the ‘demystifying’ criticism of the MCs. Yes, there’s a technical aspect to their biological incorporation, but ultimately how the Qui-Gon character engages with them, “They continually speak to us, telling us the will of the Force. When you learn to quiet your mind, you'll hear them speaking to you”, that’s an article of faith right there. They’re an endorsement of his belief system and not a counter to it.

Their presence is perceivable, but their significance is not. That's still pretty spiritual, I feel.

 

Thanks for your post, @eeprom Short and sweet, the 'GL-JC conversation' you posted brought clarity to this topic. While I now have a much greater appreciation for George's message, it got lost in translation in the PTs.

First off, if you want a message to be felt by your audience, it needs to be reflected in the entire film or trilogy of films (Tolkien's LOTRs would be a great book example of an underlying message). Secondly, you need to prepare your audience, you don't just 'throw it on them' through Force bugs and expect people to appreciate what the intent was---especially when fans have already, right or wrongly, given The Force a spiritual identity.

 

I don’t disagree. I feel the concept is a sort of ‘kill you darlings’ refusal by George. He just loved the idea so much, he wanted in there regardless. I’m of the mind he should have really either committed to the premise or left it out entirely. Otherwise, yeah, it’s an awkward inclusion that only reinforces a theme that’s already being pretty well reinforced.