Midichlorians

The main reason it has a hard time working is because it violates the rules of fantasy and more fits the rules of science fiction.

If someone has magic powers in Star Trek, they have to tell you how it physically works. No one has to tell you how Gandalf's magic physically works.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

You’re probably right.

I do feel though like they could have worked decently well as a conceit if he’d managed to better incorporate them into the character progression. I mean, in ANH, when Obi-Wan pushes the pause button to give Luke a crash course in the Force, it isn’t incidental. It’s the very thing that’s needed at the end to resolve the crisis. It was vitally important to the story that the Force, as a concept, be communicated to our hero.

The MCs operate to reflect the theme of cooperation between parties, which is what resolves the crisis in TPM, but Anakin (or us) understanding Qui-Gon’s little lecture about them isn’t narratively important. “Let go your conscious self and act on instinct.” That’s how Luke ends up saving the day. “When you learn to quiet your mind, you'll hear them speaking to you.” Isn’t how Anakin saves the day. He’s just pushing buttons and gets lucky (or it’s the will of the Force or whatever).

There’s honestly so many interesting avenues you could go down with introducing just the idea of an ‘M count’. I don’t much like how they were used, but I weirdly find myself an unexpected defender of these goofy bugs.

 

I fully agree. One thing Lucas is weak on is character.
A lot of what made good character arcs in the first ones was other people's hands helping along.

This is true across all his movies, too. Graffiti only has a fair arc in it for characters because Francis and Marcia told Lucas they didn't think he could do it (Marcia), and that he needed to get off the experimental wagon (Francis).

THX is null on character arc mostly, and most of Lucas' interests in characters are archetypal. I mean, a character writer would never have Han's most important crisis of concience happen off screen. Those are the juicy bits character writers live for.

But not Lucas. He's sort of not all that interested in them. He's more interested in what the character represents than tying their story together with narrative beat set ups that are one to one with the plot.

That's more Kasdan. Lucas would never write Bicentennial Man, for example. Instead we get THX.

I agree.

Cheers,
Jayson