Why Disney understands the force...and Lucas didn't

Exactly.

But..........but........"Finn needs the force to be cool."

 

Midi's were not needed in the PT. I think the audience would have picked up on Anakin's birth conditions to realize he's "kind of a big deal with the" Force. GL underestimated his audience (or maybe because he was aiming TPM at 9 year olds) and felt it needed something to quantify it.... some extra exposition if you will. It fell flat with nine tenths of the audience, but is now canon.

All that being said, he never does go into a deatailed explanation on how Midi's work, actually. He essentially just says high counts mean more potential (or raw power). Anakin and the Skywalkers is an exception to the rule, but then again, the Chosen One story line allowed him to break those rules. This was a near unique situation in the history of the GFFA. So having the father's potential follow his bloodline to his children and now his grandchild is certainly possible (possibly that was even the Will of the Force). So for everyone not Skywalker (and even in Skywalkers it seems to dilute each generation), the Force is random.

Random until the Force chooses you. The most interesting about Rey I find is where they'll go with her "legacy" if they even go there. If she's the product of an Awakening of the Force, then she's kind of a Chosen One herself, albeit a different kind to Anakin. Maybe it's a one off, maybe it's even temporary to counter Kylo but once the threat is gone, she loses her power up. Who knows, they can literally go anywhere. For many fans they just accept the story as presented, and that's well and good, certainly at least until the whole story has been told. That said, there are a lot of questions around Rey that fans are asking, and that's okay too. Maybe we get an explanation, maybe we don't, but I've never been one to discourage questions.

 

Midi-Chlorians suck, and so does the idea of “Force dynasty.” It is known.

 

That's very well said and I largely agree.
Though I would say another narrative reason for spelling out the midichlorian thing was because it needed to be made pretty clear that Anakin was exceptional, special and likely the chosen one. If he was just brought to the Jedi with some vague story about not having a father and seeming quite powerful, then would that have been enough to train him? To place faith in him as the chosen one?

I'm not sure. I think they needed the midi element to say - "hold on, this guy's levels are off the chart! There is definitely something up here so we should probably train him".

Note: If anyone from LucasFilm reads this, I'm free to work on the script for Episode IX.

 

Yes.

I think that's the hang-up on midis. I think one or the other would have been sufficient - some weird virgin birth prophecy thing or the midis. I think the added baggage of both was a plasma bridge too far in 1999. I'm not sure if they did it to maintain the space fantasy of it all, to blunt the effect of what essentially is a science fiction element/explanation, but one or the other would have worked just as well.

In the long run, however, the midis concept probably works better than the prophecy (insofar as a reason why they would begrudgingly agree to train him in the end, as you stated). As we drone on and on about balance and fulfillment of the prophecy, it's clear that it's become excess baggage on the Light vs. Dark dynamic in the GFFA, especially considering it was already considered 'misread' by Yoda in 2005.

Hypothetically, if today's Lucasfilm and the story group (including Filoni, most likely) would retcon the decision to train Anakin, they'd probably emphasize his age and already troublesome attachment(s). The ability for an individual to access the Force at certain times likely relies on one's emotional health and attachments, which is why they took kids so young. Still weird and troublesome and not completely relatable but again, the Jedi failed.

In light of Rey's attitude, part-naivete, and part-optimism when she confronts Luke and accepts that she indeed has a place in this conflict, and comes to peace with her past - the age, attachment, emotional capacity argument works better than the midis and the prophecy. But alas, as we have come to the conclusion that whatever the Jedi were doing and whatever dogma they developed completely sucked.....it doesn't matter (insert Rock gif here).

And for evidence of such Buddhist-like interpretation of why the Jedi would really prefer not to have trained Anakin (and Luke) for that matter, is this not the perfect image of a Buddhist-type 'peace of mind' and perfectly content (and one of the most perfect images of Rey)??

 

So true! =)

That's got some kind of steampunk vibe thing going on.

And is that a CD burner on the middle-bottom?

Doc Brown would be jealous...

 

No, but it did reference that bloodline could be important. "The force runs strong in my family. My father had it, I have it, my sister has it"

 

I always hated midichlorians because I felt they explained something that didn't need explained. I hate when films do that. They created more questions than answers for me.

I think you are spot on here because the acceptance of Rey as a character hinges on your belief in the mystic nature of the force (IMO) and if you don't then you struggle accepting that she is just the Force realizing without Luke or his temple, there is no light so it chose Rey as it's vessel.
If you are more accepting of the midichlorian route, you probably want to know WHY and HOW more with her. So the logical jumps there are: special lineage either Skywalker, Palpatine, Kenobi or Solo.

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 16, 2018, Original Post Date: Jan 16, 2018 ---

That's more along the lines of the hubris Luke refers to and why Ben Solo felt entitled to power....

 

I maintain that it needed something to qualify Anakin's potential power. He could've just been a powerful kid with a deceitful mother. The bigger problem, as you allude to later, is with the idea of the prophecy itself. Why did the Jedi put any stock in it? Was it well known? etc.

Also, like I say, it was a good device to show how detached the Jedi had become from the living force and how reliant they were upon their rules, science and power.

Yoda thought it was misread in 2005, but it wasn't. In the end, it was right. Anakin was the chosen one and he did bring balance to the Force. And I think it remains important today. For what we're seeing now is he continuing dark legacy of Darth Vader - because of the mistakes he made (and the Jedi) along the way to fulfilling the prophecy. And it of course also shows the inherent danger in his powerful bloodline.

 

It was Lucas who decided that Yoda needed to ridiculously jump around with a lightsaber like Sonic the Hedgehog after establishing that Yoda was strong enough in the force to be above all that, throwing all of Yoda's wisdom about the force in Empire in the trashcan.

 

Those scenes in AOTC and ROTS still make me smile =)

In ROTS, I think Yoda really had to get physical (LOL, cue the Olivia Newton John song) once he was confronting Old Palpy, who threw everything and the kitchen sink -- I mean Coruscant senate platform -- and his little greeeen friennnnd.

As for TESB, Yoda was training Luke to do summersaults on Dagobah.

I could just imagine Yoda chuckling: "For the Jedi it is time to leap as well."

 

A big thing at play here is the tension between what Lucas intended (he indeed had the midichlorian idea well before the prequels) and what actually ended up in the movies.

Lucas may have intended force-sensitivity to be something genetically passed on, but that's not the idea the OT leaves you with. Especially considering that so much of what we know about the Force comes from Kasdan's dialogue in Empire, not Lucas's own writing.

It's entirely possible that Lucas always intended the Force as we see it in the prequels. But I think it's severely limiting to judge a work by the intention of its creator, and sometimes the best interpretation is something other than the creator's intention.

Don't get me wrong, I think Lucas is brilliant, and I love his work in and out of Star Wars. But I think a lot of fandom's split with Lucas has to do with the fact that the original Star Wars we love was not really the Star Wars he intended. "But he created the originals, and they were great!" you argue. Yes, but when given the chance, he went back and changed them to be more like his original intention--and we didn't like it.

 

Close... more like saying relativity doesn't understand the theory of relativity.

 

Lucas is such a mixed bag for me.
I'll love him for Star Wars...but I'll hate him for Star Wars too.
It's....complicated.

 

I think the main problem is that Lucas changed his mind too much.
Just look at the sequel trilogy for example.
He said for years there would never be a ST, but after selling SW to Disney, all of sudden he claimed they threw out his treatments for the sequels.
Weird.

 

Amazing. Every word of what you just linked was wrong.

I interpret things differently.

"Indeed you are powerful, as the Emperor has forseen." , "The force is strong in my family."

This article chooses to interpret the original movies in a matter that suits the author. I believe you can have it both ways (and always have). There can be strong blood lines, and there can also be random people who are equally as strong. But the idea that 'everyone' can be a Jedi is ridiculous. If everyone can 'use' the force, then it's no longer special.

 

The context of that importance is Luke telling Leia something specific cause he feared he could fail in confronting Vader.

Not meaning that only those from certain bloodlines could and would exist with the force being strong in them.

 

I think Lucas whiffed on what people liked about the force more so than "understands it less"

 

I have another theory regarding Lucas. Most of the complaints in regards to how the Force works originate from the Prequels. Midichlorians, Jedi believing in prophecies, etc. We all know this is wrong. But here's the thing - Lucas also knew it was wrong. The failure of the Prequels is not in how they portray the Force but in improper commiunication of the failures of the Jedi.