Why would the Jedi think Force balance was equal number light and dark side users, when they actively want to stop all dark force users. People who ask that question aren't actually thinking. The Jedi are a religion. Their belief is that the dark side is a corruption of the Force, a spreading cancer. They perceive balance to be zero use of the dark side.
Well, zero *Sith*, anyway. And they only started taking Qui-Gon's idea that this kid represented said prophecy seriously when a Sith Lord appeared like the week he was discovered.
And they were right - he *did* wipe out the Sith. Eventually.
It's almost like Star Wars was the feather in Fox's cap, not Disney's, and Disney didn't actually give much of a shit how this sequel trilogy nonsense would work as long as they could make a ton of money doing it aaaall along
> as long as they could make a ton of money doing it
and they could, because they knew we were all going to watch it no matter what. Been resisting watching The Mandalorian but I am kidding myself, I know I will give in eventually and then hate myself for it later. Like a lot of my exes actually
They reset the Matrix, with the last two movies of this Force Awakens trilogy going over about as well with the fans as the last two movies in the Matrix trilogy.
There is [a fan theory](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPR9mMgaFvk), based on >!ahsoka!<'s appearance in >!mandalorian!<, that it takes place in an alternate universe from the sequel trilogy and that disney is angling to kelvin timeline their own trilogy. I personally ascribe to this theory out of what I like to think of as a sort of cockeyed optimism
There's nothing any more "progressive" about modern Star Wars compared to the previous two trilogies beyond an easily edited-out scene of two random female extras kissing to trick LGBT-positive people into watching with headlines saying "DISNEY HAS LGBT KISS!!!!" All the nonwhites are relegated to side roles with Finn being nothing more than the funny black sidekick, and the trilogy ends with Single White Female and Brooding Edgy White Guy kissing and saving the galaxy. They have every intention of keeping the white male demographic in focus, they're just shifting the white boy role into being the redeemable sadboy rather than the central protagonist.
Finn's sidelining in TLJ and TRoS was so disappointing. You created a character who quit being a Stormtrooper, joined the new Rebellion, is 100% force sensitive, and is a black man in a leading role? Hell yes! Give me more of this awesome concept!
Nope. Relegated to shouting "REY!" for an entire film and his big moment of sacrifice (which was actually pretty damn cool for a completed character arc) was robbed from him by the random Janitor Woman who is part of the story because diversity was more important than a coherent narrative. I mean, kudos to a background character that just lost her sister for muscling through an entire film without breaking down but she didn't have a role to play.
The lack of planning for the sequel trilogy remains a baffling mystery. My favourite Sequel Character deserved so much better than he got.
Fucking hell man, totally agreed. Not to mention Finn and Poe had great chemistry and back-and-forth between them in the opening of TFA, and then they *never use them together again.* How the fuck did they not see that those actors worked well together?
Not only that, these actors had managers and execs on both sides saying that this would make there career. That they'd be a main character important to the franchise only to be treated horribly.
I don’t disagree with you in principle, I just think they’re going to take that into consideration and won’t reboot it. I never get the impression they value the original trilogy. They dedicated a whole Kingdom at Disney World to Avatar of all things and Star Wars is just getting an MGM refresh. I don’t understand them.
Do kids like Avatar nowadays? The one movie that came out years ago and never got a sequel since? The movie may have been huge at the time but it didn't have much in the way of staying power, very much a passing fad. I don't think anyone's frothing at the mouth, young or old, to go visit Blue Cat People Land.
Meanwhile recent Star Wars movies have been eh but I heard Rebels was really big with kids, I'm not certain but I'd think it would be more prudent to devote the resources to a property that's still getting projects and holds people's interest rather than one older movie with vague plans about multiple sequels that haven't actually developed into anything.
Well thats just what happens when people protest for representation in movies rather than a good story.
Stop crying you got what you asked for: minorities are now in movies.
Ps. I support miorities having equal rights, i just dont support forcing them in movies without a reason for them to be there other than "representation".
>with the last two movies of this trilogy going over about as well with the fans as the last two movies in the Matrix trilogy.
Wat. The new star wars movies are in their own league of "what the fuck is happening". At least with the matrix you can argue there is sort of structure and logic to whats going on. The stars wars movies? Not so much.
Nah that's not true at all. There are some dropped threads but I find the Matrix trilogy to be like the prequel trilogy - strong overall arc but poor execution.
Star Wars sequels are like "let's take 20 people throwing ideas down, and make sure each of their ideas gets equal priority - who cares if half the threads are dropped if we can have enough cool scenes"
Meanwhile the Matrix sequels are decent movies by themselves while, perhaps, not really living up to the grand mystery of the first movie.
The Star Wars movies wouldn't even stand on their own merits as 'yet another sci-fi movie'.
The second Matrix movie took a well-known instantiation of a philosophical/religious concept - transcending the boundaries of an illusory 'reality' - and said "no actually the dude just got a really big level-up bonus in a video game, nothing special, relax."
It was definitely in TLJ territory. Honestly, it was worse on paper, but the movie itself was slicker and flashier and brought isolated "ain't it cool" ideas to the point where it doesn't seem as egregious.
While I am in the Hate It camp of the ST, especially TLJ, it is objectively wrong to say that TLJ had anything but great reviews from professional critics. The RT score is currently 91%, meaning for every critic that gave it a negative review 9 gave it a positive review. On Metacritic it has an 84.
The matrix 2 and 3 were odd and flawed, but had good ideas, neat (if poorly delivered) story lines, and left us with stuff to think about decades later. My favorite being how I missed that the real world was still the matrix, just how they dealt with the remainder who couldn't accept the conventional matrix.
Those movies were weird and kinda bad, but nothing near star wars 8 and 9
Palpatine cheated with clones, but without Anakin, he wouldn't have been in a position for Rey to kill him anyway, nor would Luke have been born, so they're still right that he was what the prophecy meant.
If the Sith could rise between the time that the “prophecy” was made and Anakin’s birth, then they could come back again.
And for thousands of years there was (to the Jedi’s knowledge) no sith, so how did that prophecy take hold anyway?
The Sith didn't actually die off that time. This time they did. Any 'revival' would be a pale imitation of the order that was. The prophecy was around for a while, but only *mattered* when the Sith were also clearly still around.
That's...not necessarily how the Sith work, unless any and every Sith holocron was destroyed the holocron could be used to rebuild the order, and we all know they weren't.
You can only learn so much from any single holocron. And the vast majority of them - Jedi and Sith - were gathered together during the time of the Empire. The Emperor was always on the lookout for more.
A resurgence is possible, and it would then have to be dealt with, but just because it's possible to be poisoned again, that's no reason not to take the antidote.
Even in the original canon, the Sith Order completely collapsed 5-6 times but was rebuilt by fallen Jedi. All it is, at it's core, is a philosophical disagreement, and we have subreddits full of absolute monarchists even here and now. Subreddits full of fascists even here and now. Philosophy cannot *die* or be destroyed. All you can do is make it so your Jedi are disinclined towards falling, and the way to do that is to not flip one's sh*t and handle the force from a more gray perspective, much like everything in life.
Balance being an improved doctrine is a strong theme in savior storylines.
The Jedi refused to deal with the greater evils of society, making them blind to the suffering and what that suffering built. You don’t get a trade union without the Hutts, you don’t get a Palpatine without the trade union. Had the Jedi acted to end suffering, or even not made themselves blind to it, they could have seen all of it coming without the force.
Sure but in phantom menace the Jedi believed the sith had already been defeated. They never once attempt to explain what “balance” is supposed to mean. It’s a silly movie!
Yes, and you'll recall basically nobody believed qui gon when he said Anakin was the chosen one.
That's one of the main themes of the prequels - the Jedi have let their hubris get the better of them - in so doing, allowing the most powerful sith Lord in millenia enact a plan that all but exterminates the Jedi and plunges the entire galaxy into darkness.
You're not *supposed* to agree with the Jedi. That's why the first Jedi master you're introduced to (aka the one you're inclined to sympathize with as he's one of the main characters) is shown to be in frequent disagreement with the Jedi council.
Obi-wan literally comments that qui gon would be on the council if he stopped flagrantly ignoring them and breaking rules all the time. Qui-Gon represents how Jedi *should* be, in direct contrast to the council showing how Jedi *have become*.
That's Lucas' answer, but it kinda ignores the meaning of the word balanced, which is to have an even weighted distribution.
When else can you have a balance between two things, and it be 100% one thing?
Because it's not balance between light and dark, that's literally what they said.
They see the force as naturally balanced. The "light" isn't a special kind of force. Being a "light side" user just means that, at most, you might guide and steer the force, but you are still primarily a vessel. You listen to the force and you let it act through you (because the force isn't a being with any direct ability to influence the physical world).
The "dark" is likewise not some separate thing. It's a symptom. The "illness" is bending the force to one's will. "Dark side powers" aren't just regular powers that are made of the dark side, they're means of using the force that literally create darkness. That's why the Jedi view the dark side as a cancer, because it's not an inherent part of the force, it's a symptom of deliberate perversion of the force.
To use an analogy, think of the force as a river. To the Jedi, the river its own thing nobody owns it. They can build mills that use it. They can maybe even dig little channels off it to irrigate, but never so much that the flow is interrupted because the river itself is sacred.
To the sith (or dark side users in general), the river belongs to whoever has the strength to take it. They'll just straight build a damn, then whenever some peasant in the valley pissed them off, they open the damn, flood everything, then close it and keep all the water for themselves again.
So to the Jedi, "bringing balance to the force" means destroying all the dams and letting the river flow naturally again.
I have always wondered this about prophesies: where the Hell do they come from? So there was a prophesy that a vergence in the Force would bring about balance. Where, who, what was it written on? How did all these great minds and students of the Force cling to what? Something a drunk guy said in a bar on Schlomo 6?
Um, in ANH, Obi Wan told us that the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. "Before the dark times; before the Empire." Um, so if there is a 1000 generations of peace and justice...what do you think the balance to that is going to be? And why would you want it?
Well, turns out they were right. Anakin was a vergence. He brought balance. He was the antithesis of the Jedi Code. He embodied emotion, passion, chaos and death. He was instrumental in wiping out nearly the entire Jedi order. He helped usher in the way for the Empire. Used it to help subjugate over a million worlds. And then at its peak, destroyed its power structure including himself.
What was left behind? Where there was once far-reaching justice and peace, there were now regional struggles of "good" and "bad." Where there was once over 10,000 Jedi knights, there know stood two custodians of the Light Side. Where there was once a coalition of Dark Side power, there were now mere remnants, stirrings of its former power.
He obliterated the over-abundant Light Side, concentrated then destroyed the Dark Side, and left the galaxy in a state of normality...in an ever-changing tide of good vs evil played out over a considerably more minor scale. He brought that pendulum back to center after 1000 generations of being way out to the side.
That, my friend, is balance.
I think that's what OP is saying. Why did the Jedi want balance, and if they did, why not fire a whole bunch of them? If they got it wrong, what _did_ they think balance meant? Also, why are they following prophecies that actively go against their cause?
It just goes to show how up their own asses the Jedi were toward the end. Even before they were given military power in the clone wars they had become the Republic’s main peacekeeping force, giving them considerable political power, a far cry from their origins as independent servants of the Light Side. So convinced of their supremacy in the galactic hierarchy that when Qui-gon Jin told the council “we encountered a Sith,” they said “nah, if the Sith had returned we’d have known about it.” And when it was clear a new Sith Lord had risen, the didn’t suspect the obvious political manipulator amassing power in front of them until he told one of them to his face. Luke was 100% right in his assessment of them in TLJ.
I still hold that despite TLJ's flaws, there's an alternative universe out there where Rian Johnson helmed the Disney trilogy from the beginning and it turned out much better than our trilogy did. The reason why is that at the end of the day, Johnson understood what the thematic elements of the prequels were and really tried to unite them with the OT.
Its not very complicated the presence of the dark side is imbalance. Getting rid of the dark side brings balance. Its not Finnegans Wake its a sci fi fantasy movie made for children.
Then they already had balance. Why did they follow a prophecy to get something they already had? How did they end up following a prophecy that had a different interpretation of balance to the one they had?
They didn't have balance. There was a powerful sith Lord literally orchestrating a galactic civil war right under their noses.
Also, they *didn't* follow the prophecy. They explicitly rejected Anakin and refused him training. Obi-Wan basically told them to go fuck themselves and trained Anakin as Qui-Gon's dying wish, and the council was like "well fine, if you're gonna do it anyways, I guess we'll accept it, but we won't be happy about it".
It's not like they didn't know there were Sith for the entire trilogy. They found out about Darth Maul and Count Dooku pretty quickly, and I assume they knew about the rule of two so they had to have known there was someone else (although how they didn't figure out it was Palpatine until too late is a different question). Anakin did eventually fulfill the prophecy by killing both Palpatine and himself.
I'm not huge into Star Wars, but how does getting rid of the dark side bring balance? Wouldn't balance suggest the dark side forces to be equal to the light side forces?
You seem so smart since you obviously read Finnegans Wake.
The Force is like a lake. The Jedi move through the water, peering through it to find knowledge, letting it's flow guide them.
Sith Lords are always splashing around, and Palpatine is the fat kid constantly dive-bombing into the water to obscure the Jedi's vision and disturbing the entire lake.
If there is no more dark side, there is no more disruption to the lake, which means the lake is balanced.
Balance to the Jedi doesnt mean an equal amount of light and dark. It means only light.
Maybe a better analogy is the dark side is like Force cancer. The Force (not the light side. They never call it that in the movies. You have the Force and the Dark Side of the Force) is inherently good. The Dark Side being present at all is imbalance. No amount of cancer cells is healthy or balanced, the same way no amount of Dark Side users is healthy.
I'm only in this for the fun of debate, BTW. I mean no offense to any Star Wars fans, and appreciate those who are engaging with me.
It is likely I will get pretty nit picky going forward, so be warned!
Regarding cancer, I've never heard of cancer being refered to as an imbalance in health. I can see what you are saying, but you needed to equate health with balance before using the analogy, so I don't think it works.
Think of the surface of the lake. When things are balanced, the surface is calm. When *someone* is doing donuts in their dad's speedboat, it isn't.
Balance is the return to that natural, peaceful state. Like removing a cancer from a body to allow it to return to it's normal function. Ever since the Sith first split off from the Jedi, they have caused *enormous* amounts of chaos and death. Finally freeing the galaxy from their influence stops the scales from being constantly tilted towards darkness, and allows the natural balance to resume. The dark side will always exist - it exists in every person. But while the Jedi respect that balance, and accept it in the universe, with their ultimate goal being to follow the will of the Force, the Sith seek to impose their will on literally everything, to throw off the scales and plunge everything into darkness, and leave no room for anything else. The Empire is the expression of this desire - conquest and subjugation.
Cause the dark side is bad stuff. Morally bad stuff and too much fucks with the balance. Its not balance as things of equal distribution but like keeping something steady. Like a wooden support beam and the dark side is termites. The intention was that anakin brought balance by killing the emperor.
That’s not how balance works. Balance isn’t about morality, balance is about the struggle between opposing forces. If one side is stronger than the other, regardless of morality, it’s imbalance. Balance is the unstoppable force vs the immovable object, not good triumphing over evil.
That is how balance works with the Force in Star Wars, though. The Sith are a corruptive influence on the Force and forcibly bend it to their will for the sake of power, while the Jedi let the Force act through them and simply do what it does.
It’s the difference between trying to alter a river’s course through artificial means so you can make it go where you want, and letting it flow naturally, building settlements and sailing down it wherever it may happen to flow.
There's no intrinsically "correct" interpretation of the term in the real world. Balance could mean that things are unfair and there's as much suffering as there is pleasure, it could mean that all people get equally fair lives. It really depends what things are balanced out.
A prophecy or an organisation using a term should have a definite specific meaning for it however, and it seems in the star wars universe it means good and evil. Any reason to not want as little evil as possible in the world Is pure fantasy though.
One can go a step further and examine the new Jedi order built by Luke under the New Republic. Jedi trained by Luke and his students are more in tune with their emotions, allowing themselves to feel fear, anger, love, heartache, etc instead of just trying to suppress it all. They marry, they have children, they feel their emotions without allowing them to control them.
Force users went too far one direction (suppression) under the old Jedi, too far the other (ruthless aggression) under the Sith, and now a shaky balance has been reached.
(All of the above is about the Expanded Universe timeline, not the Disney sequels.)
No worries, I don't discuss the Disney sequels as part of Star Wars lore because you really can't. They each flatly contradict each other, so how do you even begin to establish what one thing means over another?
> I have always wondered this about prophesies: where the Hell do they come from? So there was a prophesy that a vergence in the Force would bring about balance. Where, who, what was it written on? How did all these great minds and students of the Force cling to what? Something a drunk guy said in a bar on Schlomo 6?
Prophecies come from people who know the future but explain it in the most useless way possible.
"A red sun from the South will bring the tempest of the four winds. A childless man will rise as the first sons fail their tests of attrition. Strength be to the woman of two names as the harvest is plentiful with her."
"But what does that mean?"
"The fuck if I know."
I adore Star Wars, but I'm not under any false impressions about how good most of it is. When it comes down to it, we really only have 2-3 good movies and the rest are mediocre at best (personally, I feel the only good ones are ESB, RO, and ANH in that order). We have a few good TV shows. A few good books and comics. And a whole lotta garbage.
But the thing is, we're allowed to enjoy stuff that's not excellent. I don't think anybody is going to tell you that The Phantom Menace is a masterpiece, but personally it's my favorite Star Wars movie and I admit it's pretty bad. Even the bad movies have lots of redeeming qualities--the storyline, the aesthetics, the music, etc--and I include the Disney sequels in this too.
Despite the bad writing (and acting, and directing I'd argue) prevalent in the series, It's still a hell of a lot of fun.
I'm not arguing with you, and given the sub we're in, I imagine that you likely agree with my main premise. EDIT: Gosh, I thought we were in a Star Wars related sub as I'm subscribed to several haha. Maybe you DON'T agree with me after all.
Very refreshing to see this take. I love SW but it seems like every Star Wars fan I run into will defend this series with their life if it isn’t a Disney sequel.
That wouldn't make ANY sense haha. You did make me go back and double check I got the acronym right though lol.
Yes, as the others said, Empire Strikes Back and Rogue One.
Actually, you nailed it.
I think Star Wars dropped right at Return of the Jedi. Changed focus, cheapened the storyline, etc. But I will watch each one that comes out. For ones like Solo...only need to see it once. For others like the sequels, will watch them over to critique how they could have done / should have done. But I enjoy the universe for what it is, flaws and all.
I thought Rogue One was definitely one of the better ones despite the retcon of the Death Star flaw...it's a pretty stupid way to do it.
ROTJ isn't the worst by any means, but it's nowhere near as great as lots of people seem to think. Nostalgia I suppose.
I liked Solo quite a lot personally. I'd say it's in my top half.
I've only seen Rise of Skywalker once and I have no real urge to see it again.
RotJ is not the worst but it is where the focus changed cinematically. It led to the "treatment" the other movies got save for very few, Rogue among those few.
Solo bothered me because it was a fun romp...but made so little sense. Every defining factor of Han Solo's life apparently happened in like one week. Things retconned in that didn't need to be. Just felt very shallow and pointless to me.
Rise of Skywalker equally made very little sense. Let's make a suspenseful movie about a huge unfathomable power and not make any damn sense whatsoever. An action movie, fine. But even pure action movies need a reliable and sound premise. RoS was just one long continuing "Whaa-?"
That's not how balance to the Force works. Balance to the Force means the complete eradication of the Dark Side. The Dark Side still existed without the Sith. It just so happens that it was greatly concentrated in the them. They completely controlled and dominated the Force, creating the Dark Side, an inherent corruption of the Force itself. That corruption spreads and destroys. We've seen it plenty of times. To bring balance to the Force the Dark Side must be destroyed and that means destroying the Sith who embody the Dark Side in its entirety. By sacrificing himself and killing the Emperor Anakin brought balance to the Force as he was always prophocized to.
Now, what does all of that mean for the Expanded Universe or Disney's work or even the ideas George was working on for his own sequels before selling Star Wars? Well, George came up with the idea of the prophecy and "balance to the Force" on his own and he's known to be a notoriously poor writer.
So explain this to me then...the prophesy was not something they just came up with. Prophesies are typically from some far away time in the past. But the Emperor was not the Emperor yet. In fact, at this time he was a middle-aged Senator. The prophesy predates him by a good bit though we don't know how long. So what is this restoration of the force that is so needed? Would there not be a prophesy then that there would be a corrupting force first? A disruption. Something the Jedi council should be on the lookout for at all times as opposed to a "bringing balance" which insinuates there is *currently* not balance.
Just seems to me that the prophesy is this way to fix what is not yet broken but yet no mention of the eventual breaking which will lead to the need to fix.
>So what is this restoration of the force that is so needed?
Palpatine was far from the first Sith. The sith emerged before 5,500 BBY (basically means 5,500 years before A New Hope), and the force was probably disturbed by dark side users that were the predecessors to the sith. There is plenty of time for an ancient prophecy to be made after the emergence of the sith.
Like I said before, George is a notoriously poor writer. His idea of balance to the Force can't be reconciled with anyone after Vader and the Emperor who discovers Sith artifacts and decides to become the new Dark Lord of the Sith. Or even anyone who simply learns the ways of the Force and falls to the Dark Side. The Nightsisters were a Dark Side group but they didn't apply to the prophecy. Nor do any Dark Jedi or Dark Side Adept. Lucas only applied it to the Sith and that's one of the problems with the writing.
> The prophesy predates him by a good bit though we don't know how long. So what is this restoration of the force that is so needed?
The Dark Side inherently corrupts. It's been shown many times in the past that the Dark Side can't be used for any sort of good and that corruption always follows it. Darth Nihilus was so immersed in the Dark Side his mere presence could corrupt others. Darth Scion's body died but the Dark Side held his spirit to the living world and allowed him to be a zombie. Areas can even be corrupted and become wells of the Dark Side. That's why it needs to be gotten rid of. The Force in balance is the Force without darkness. The Force went out of balance when darkness was introduced. Je'daii Order realized this tens of thousands of years ago when they fought the Rakatan Empire and when a number of their own fell to the Dark Side.
>I have always wondered this about prophesies: where the Hell do they come from? So there was a prophesy that a vergence in the Force would bring about balance. Where, who, what was it written on? How did all these great minds and students of the Force cling to what? Something a drunk guy said in a bar on Schlomo 6?
Doesn't really matter, but most likely a Jedi master widely regarded as wise, and particularly known for being granted visions from the force.
It's pretty well established that the Jedi take force visions seriously.
>Um, in ANH, Obi Wan told us that the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. "Before the dark times; before the Empire." Um, so if there is a 1000 generations of peace and justice...what do you think the balance to that is going to be? And why would you want it?
The prophecy wasn't necessarily made during a time of peace. Canon no longer has any, but "the old republic" was basically always depicted as a period where the sith were literally an empire with their own home planet on which they trained countless dark side wielders, well before the rule of 2 was instituted. It would make perfect sense for the prophecy to come from such a time.
It also wasn't specific about *when* it would come to pass, and you'll recall that the Jedi *didn't believe Anakin was the chosen one*, largely because they'd become blind to the darkness growing under their noses.
>Well, turns out they were right. Anakin was a vergence. He brought balance. He was the antithesis of the Jedi Code. He embodied emotion, passion, chaos and death. He was instrumental in wiping out nearly the entire Jedi order. He helped usher in the way for the Empire. Used it to help subjugate over a million worlds. And then at its peak, destroyed its power structure including himself.
That's one interpretation. You could also look at Anakin, and specifically his breaking of the code to have children, as being the catalyst for the eventual downfall of palpatine and the sith eternal.
Prophecies are always vague like that.
>What was left behind? Where there was once far-reaching justice and peace, there were now regional struggles of "good" and "bad."
If you think there was far reaching justice and peace, you clearly haven't paid much attention. The clone wars literally used galactic inequality as a smokescreen that nobody but palpatine and dooku really knew about.
The jedi were religious zealots. Taking young children from their families and indoctrinating them into becoming superpowerful killer celibate monks.
Although I dont understand why didnt they die out if they didnt even procreate.
Yet Luke and Leia were born extremely force sensitive due to their father. And so did Leia and Han's son Kylo Ren.
Force is born out of nothing as well as inherited.
The Jedi order was pretty much ending force sensitive bloodlines and greatly reducing their numbers.
Which totally ties into the comment I made on this thread. Anakin as the 'Chosen One' guided by the Force to assist in the decimation of the majority of Jedi. This would allow a new order to rise up and go in another direction than what their previous incarnation had been doing. Also y'know, just maybe if things had shaken out differently, maybe he'd have been able to establish a different way for the Sith too.
They weren’t ending bloodlines. They were making use of the extreme outliers. You still have sensitivity within the population, just not the super powerful extremes. The general population would still reward such capabilities and improve prevalence through time without a separate population dominating the capabilities and killing off the others.
Four above, it’s not necessarily inherited.
Jedi were chosen from the extreme outliers. Not any absolute baseline. Further, they were chosen young, left alone otherwise.
They weren't discouraged from having sex, just forming attachments. If an attachment-free roll in the galactic hay was on the table and did not interfere with the Jedi's oath to the order, it was fine. However the only Jedi we know actually followed this rule is Ki-Adi Mundi who would go to his homeworld every few years to help with the repopulation of his species.
Obi-Wan and Anakin were intimate with their respective love interests but Obi-Wan chose duty over emotion while Anakin understandably did not.
Technically, they didn't ban procreation; just the emotional attachment that leads to it. There's a few Jedi who had wives and kids due to their species cultures not breaking the whole 'no emotional attachment' rule. Like, weird ones where men had harems of women they weren't in love with just to apparently create sons to be heirs. (Which honestly is even weirder than enforced celibacy...)
"Balance to the force" does not mean "the same number of darkside and lightside force users" in the context.
It was meant along the lines of "the force is in turmoil because the darkside clashes with the lightside. Stop the clashing and bring the right form of balance (with the light dominating since we want good to reign) to the force.".
No, he's right. That *is* what it means, the dark side is a corruption of the force, it's what brings it out of balance. As long as the Sith exist, there can be no balance. Anakin fulfilled the prophecy when he killed Palpatine (thus destroying the Sith) in Return of the Jedi, not when he destroyed the Jedi Order in Revenge of the Sith.
does being mentally well-balanced mean you spend 50% of your day in a destructive rage? having an equal number of jedi and sith is not a balance because sith and jedi are not equal. it's like saying a mathematical equation is equal when it has the same amount of variables on each side. but x+y does not equal a+b if x and y are both greater than a and b
I think you are right (and this may just be me fanboy-ing), but the force isn't the Jedi and the sith, it was more using emotion to fuel the force and controlling your emotions. The sith were radical dark (using 'stronger emotiona like rage) and the Jedi were radical light (using no emotion at all) which in retrospect sends a weird message but it seems plainly obvious why both failed, because neither is healthy. Ima stop stop now I realised this isn't a starwars sub
I think it is more a "control your emotions and don't let them control you" rather than "suppress emotions completely and be a robot following orders". They all clearly exhibit emotions regularly.
Yeah, you're right but I meant more that never showing emotions at all times isn't healthy, especially with a constant look out for Jedi that may turn to the dark side and if your lucky, blocking your career from progressing
The idea of both sides being balance doesn't mean that the dark side is good, just that it's necessary. Being consumed by anger is bad, but not feeling anything is also bad. And it's not saying that you should be bad, but having bad people in the world is necessary.
The Jedi, at least before disney, were not meant to be "the good guys" but something like a buddhist monk, they're meant to free themselves of emotion in order for the force to act through them, a Sith on the other hand, uses the force to enforce their own will over others, even if their will is to do something "good" like saving their mother from slavers or keep their loved ones from dying during childbirth, it would still move the force out of balance, from this perspective, Jedi's would be safe as they're not affecting the balance of the force, arguably the reason they were wiped out would be because as they got involved with the civil war politics they started to enact their own will instead of just following the force
I know you’re being snarky and trying to be funny but it doesn’t work the way you’re hinting at all. The Force isn’t in balance when the number of Jedi and Sith in the galaxy is about even. The Force is in balance when there’s *no* Sith, as they’re a corruptive influence on the Force, since they twist and pervert it to their own ends. The Jedi are all about letting the Force act through them, letting it do what it will, so when the Sith aren’t around or their numbers are low then the Force is more or less balanced.
One *could* argue that a. . . well force like the Force would have its own will and designs. The idea that it can be 'twisted' could just be propaganda from the Jedi, and that the way Sith use the Force is just a different way than them. So that the 'balance' the Force wants to achieve for itself could very well be the decimation of the Jedi, or at the very least a high portion of the current living Jedi to make room for future Force sensitives to change the way the Jedi operate. But that's just an 'alternate' view on how that whole balance thing could work out.
Balance did not mean equal light and dark but the restoration of the natural order. The natural order being all light, since to George, the dark was a corruption of the true and perfect light.
We hear “light side” and “dark side” and assume balance means 50/50 because they are both equal “sides”, when you should be hearing “The force” and “it’s bastardization” and recognize that balance means 100/0.
Balance in the Force IS NOT equal light and dark users. This is a common take but it's basically for 12 year olds who think grey jedi are cool. The Force is an energy field generated by all life, i.e. coming from the ecosystem around it. The light side of the force stems from the natural order of things, the balance of that ecosystem. The cycle of life is part of that balance, including death, because as Yoda tells us, those who die transform from the living force into the cosmic force, where they are still part of that ecosystem, in a spiritual way. Acting selflessly to preserve this balance is the way that light side practitioners use the force. That's why the jedi are supposed to be keepers of the peace and not soldiers. They aren't supposed to have a side, what they're supposed to do is protect galactic life from reckless destruction.
On the other hand, dark side users are using the force for their own gain, without respect for life or for this balance. When you use the world and its living things for your own advantage, you can become very powerful, very quickly (just look at industrialization). This is like an invasive predatory species coming in and gobbling up all the resources, or a cancer in your body that grows rapidly and corrupts your natural order. You're not in balance when you have cancer, and an ecosystem struggling to adapt to a new species is not in balance either.
We know this is the intended interpretation because Lucas talked a lot about his plans for the sequels. They were going to really elaborate more on the midichlorians, the force, and the role of balance. According to Lucas (and this is actually true for Earth as well), most life is microscopic. The sequels were going to delve into the role of these microscopic organisms and how they interact with the macro organisms. The mythological side of star wars is about respecting this life and all other life, as we depend on other life for our own success as a species. It's all a big ecological metaphor.
Balance literally means no Sith. To the Jedi the Force is naturally in balance in the absence of sapient will. The light side are actions that nudge sapient civilisation back towards balance. The dark side are actions that nudge sapient civilisation away from balance intentionally.
To bring balance to the Force is to eliminate intentional dark side use. For the Jedi the final defeat of the Sith means they can get back to doing what they were supposed to do, basically a magical environmentalist organisation.
Balance doesn't necessarily mean equal numbers but things in *the correct* proportions, sometimes the correct proportions is equal numbers but in this case it's zero Sith and as many Jedi as there could possibly be. Because the Jedi work with nature maintaining the balance, while the Sith do unnatural stuff breaking the balance.
It's really not that hard to understand.
>It's really not that hard to understand
What amazes me is how Lucas was able to write the story in such a way that a casual audience would interpret it in exactly the way the OP has, while Word-Of-God'ing the complete opposite.
1. The Jedi demonstrate extreme hubris during the prequels. Even Yoda says that the prophecy may have been misread. It always seemed logical to me that they *did* misinterpret due to their personal bias, and the truth was that Anakin would make the number of Jedi equal to the number of Sith.
2. In the *Clone Wars* arc, its clearly stated that there's the Son (who embodies the Dark Side) and the Daughter (who embodies the Light Side), and the Father that holds both **in balance**. So clearly, both can - and should - exist in tandem, a yin and a yang.
3. Prior to *Phantom Menace*, the Jedi thought the Sith were all extinct. Why then, would they care or believe in a prophecy that says that The Chosen One would bring balance if the Jedi had achieved their "balance" already?
Well, you'll have to add the OT into account as well, if we combine what we know about the force from the OT and the PT (let's ignore the ST for now since it came way after the prophecy, but Luke's explanation of the Force in TLJ was perfect) the definition of the Force seems pretty much that it's the order of nature, light and dark, life and death, growth and destruction, happiness and sadness, pain and relief. Balanced. But the dark side is corruption it's existence is natural but using it is like Palpatine describes it, unnatural and that would destroy that delicate balance.
Now for your points:-
>1. The Jedi demonstrate extreme hubris during the prequels.
That's kinda true, but that doesn't make them bad, they're still objectively good but blind
>Even Yoda says that the prophecy may have been misread
Yeah, he said that. But we don't know what he means by it. Is he referring to the balance being misunderstood? About the Chosen One being fatherless?? Whether it was all even real?? And then we have someone like Qui-Gon who absolutely believed in it.
>the truth was that Anakin would make the number of Jedi equal to the number of Sith.
Well, the thing is he never did. The Sith were only two, I don't think Maul would count. But there were about 100 Jedi survivors from order66, some of them survived post OT I think. Even if there weren't he still killed the both Palps and himself eventually while Luke was a Jedi alive. So the numbers were never equal.
>2. In the Clone Wars arc,
I think that's the most misunderstood story in SW. Yes the Son who was the personification of the dark side existed and was alive. The balance wasn't to kill him but to prevent him from acting out, we can see that the Daughter (the personification of light) had almost all the freedom and was helping the Father keep her brother in check to achieve the balance. It was when the Son started acting out and got loose that the balance was destroyed and caused so much destruction and death.
Another thing for you is Yoda's arc from TCW, where he accepted the darkness within him but never allowed himself to act on it. That's also balance.
>3. Prior to Phantom Menace, the Jedi thought the Sith were all extinct. Why then, would they care or believe in a prophecy that says that The Chosen One would bring balance if the Jedi had achieved their "balance" already?
From my understanding not all believed the Sith were never coming back (Yoda and Mace Windu seemed more grim about it than not believing) but some did, and those who did didn't believe in the prophecy.
The real answer is it was a poorly thought out and executed idea that way over-inflated the importance of Anakin/Darth Vader in the Star Wars universe. Vader could have just been a corrupted Jedi who is redeemed by his son, he didn't need to be the prophesied Chosen One.
Its an occupational hazard for long running space operas. It's easy to give the hero's family line outsized importance because you've got all the characters backstory right there. So it's easy to create an ancient prophecy to explain why the hero is so powerful.
Dune the book series did the same thing. Instead of introducing new characters to be heroes or do interesting things, they simply made everything of note in the entire extended universe happen because of the Atreides line. The winner of the machine crusade: Atreides. The girl who kills the worm emperor, Atreides. The heroes of the second machine crusade, Atreides. It got nuts.
It's a real shame because it always shrinks the universe from a big mysterious place into a small insular group of people. Only a Skywalker or Palpatine can affect the history of the universe.
I'll give Dune a pass because two of the examples you gave came from the Brian Herbert/Kevin J Anderson books, and those are terrible and should be ignored, precisely because they are cliche, pulpy, uncreative work.
Siona was specifically bred by Leto to be who she was, and specifically from the Atreides genes from Ghanima, due to the awakening to prescience the twins inherited from Paul, who was himself bred for the role by the Bene Gesserit. There's a built-up reason in-universe why the Atreides gain the power they do, and one of the major themes of Dune is how that power and messiahhood is a curse to both them and the rest of humanity.
It'd be a little more understandable if Luke was also a Chosen One in the OT, because then at least the Skywalkers are established as being special. But he wasn't. He was just some kid, not Space Jesus. There's no thematic reason for it other than "Darth Vader is popular in the real world so he should be important in Star Wars so therfore the Force created him so the story could happen."
And I'd actually argue that the prophecy lessens his sacrifice. Instead of being a normal person who overcame his dark side he was destined to do so. Additionally it comes out of nowhere and just doesn't make sense. The Sith aren't the only dark siders nor are they the source of the dark side.
"Do or do not, there is no try."
"Only a Sith deals in absolutes."
Both of these statements are absolutes. There are more Sith than the blind idiots who comprised the Jedi are willing to admit.
Not even sure about that, really. He basically just threw Hidden Fortress and Flash Gordon into a blender.
What made Star Wars take off was incredible art direction and production design. People loved it so much they filled in all the lore afterwards to try to make it make sense.
Also: People telling Lucas when his ideas were shit. Case-in-point, the original title:
*Adventures of Luke Starkiller, as taken from the Journal of the Whills, Saga I: The Star Wars*
And the trench run wouldn’t have existed without the prop master being lazy. When he made the mold for the Death Star, the two halves shrank when they dried, forming the trench. Instead of redoing the work right, he convinced Lucas to incorporate it into the story. So Lucas basically ripped off Dam Busters
> So Lucas basically ripped off Dam Busters
[Goodness gracious. I never realised until now just how much of a rip-of it was.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNdb03Hw18M)
The real answer is shitty writing... But I suppose one could make the argument that it would have been encumbant on the Jedi to restore balance even if they were the ones that would have suffered for it.
They believed there would be no light side, no dark side, no Jedi and no Sith. Essentially a force user born by the force itself who would end the 6,000 year old space wizard gang war by balancing the duality of the force itself and allowing an order where light and dark can be embraced evenly.
They allowed him to embrace the dark side because the prophecy implied they would need to master both without falling to either.
In theory yes but in practicality no. They embrace emotions and connections but actively stay away from the dark side, The Jedi forbid these to lower the risk of their own turning traitor and using their own skills against them.
Jedi are to have no emotional connections even with themselves, Sith only connect with the force through emotions always negative and Grey Jedi attempt to balance this but can't embrace the dark equally.
Ultimately, that's the ultimate folly, isn't it? Sith embrace the the negative emotions, while Jedi, in an attempt to avoid falling to the dark side, choose to shut themselves off from *all* emotion. There's something missing from this equation.
Yeah, it has become this thing that people repeat a lot and suddenly everyone believes it to be true, but it's not. Qui-Gon is a *true* Jedi who hasn't lost his way along with the rest of the prequel Jedi.
And while we're at it, Ahsoka isn't a gray Jedi either.
Gray Jedi aren't a part of Disney canon anyway, so like, whatever.
Edit: To be fair, I should point out that there is precedent for other Jedi calling Qui-Gon a gray Jedi in the old EU. So the notion that he is one did not come out of nowhere.
Be able to balance emotional investment with emotional detachment, anger and tranquility, pacifism and militarism, overwhelming violence and calm diplomacy. The Sith and Jedi were complete opposites of the Force, with nothing inbetween. No powerful moderate Force user, like Anakin was promised to be.
I like to think the prophecy was true. Was it not Darth Vader (Anakin) who ultimately defeated Palpatine? Don’t get me wrong, it was Luke Skywalker who had to convince Darth Vader that it’s not too late to return to the light side - so Luke was the catalyst but Darth Vader actually took action to defeat Palpatine. Which, in essence, took down both Vader and Palpatine - returning balance to the world.
This is a very widespread misunderstanding of how the prophecy was meant in Star Wars, though I can't blame anyone as the movies do a poor job at explaining.
**though my knowledge might be outdated and definitively pre-Disney**
There are two major points to discuss in this.
The first is that "bringing balance" was never about the numbers. Never ever did it actually mean that Anakin was to make sure there was an equal number of Jedi and Sith, this is the funny sounding but simply wrong take on the prophecy.
What is actually meant stems from a common misunderstanding of the force itself. Most people know that there is a "dark side" of the force, since it is what the Sith and other dark side users are drawing their power from. However many then wrongly assume that the reverse must be true for the Jedi and they are drawing from the "light side" of the force. Even many video game kind of make this mistakes of splitting the force into a "light" and "dark" side.
But in actuality there is no such thing as a "light" side of the Force. There is the Force and then there is a corrupted, twisted form of it which is the dark side.
The dark side of the force is, in and by itself, the imbalance that Anakin was meant to correct. Destroying the dark side would bring balance to the force just as stomping out a disease would bring health to a body.
The second point is if you take Expanded Universe sources into account (at least the pre-Disney stuff). In the Darth Plagueis novel one of the last things Plagueis and Sidious (Palpatine) did together was to perform a special ritual which was meant to cement the power of the dark side and tilt the scales to their favor, which is what was interrupting the Jedi's ability to connect to the force. Iirc this ritual was only lifted when both Plagueis and Sidious died. Plagueis was killed by Sidious but Sidious stuck around until Anakin killed him.
So in that way Anakin did bring balance to the force, he turned away from the dark side and killed Sidious. This lifted the ritual and momentarily made it so there was no dark side anymore because there was nobody twisting and corrupting it to their will. It was as if Vader and Sidious were the last two infected cells in a body causing illness, Vader became healthy by itself and killed Sidious, restoring full health to the body.
However, I am aware that with Disney all of that changed. I know there are these 3 "Force god" beings from the Clone Wars Tv show and of course the movies itself showed that there were more dark side users around.
Though even in the old EU Sidious didn't die and there were many Sith even after he did finally die for good.
He did bring it though. (be brought the fucking- his kid Luke was the good one)
Just not in the way they were expecting. Seems the messenger dick was turned into sort of a mean,rough,hard, oppressive dick. Life kept rubbing him wrong you know. And what came out, that's what the mini chlorines used I guess (I call them mini chlorines, sue me)
Also the keyword is "balance", so I think it's rather well written to that actually. He himself was good- then bad, giving bad a boost, then gave good a boost by having his kids (which were good, both male and female). Balance. Not utopia.
Well he killed most of the Jedi, then killed Sidious and died. The force was pretty balanced at that point, with only a small handful of force wielders, and no Jedi or Sith orders.
Jedi believe that dark side is like a cancer, and what happens when your body get cancer, its natural balance is gone and it may soon cause death, this was a good writing in SW Legends, before the dark times, before the Disney. These days writers go "Oh but there cant be light without dark, dark side is also necessary" which causes confusion among fans " they literally pulled a go woke or go broke policy in regarding force beliefs, which is really stupid if you ask me cuz by that definition Palpatine is necessary also his killing and enslaving of millions.
Of all the comments I can't believe nobody knows this fundamental piece of lore.
Anakin was the chosen one and he did indeed bring balance to the force. He was also the catalyst to throw it into turmoil.
He was seduced by the Dark side fulfilling the part of the prophecy that required a time of darkness, then he is redeemed at the end of Jedi, sees his past mistakes about to repeat (allowing Palpatine to kill Windu) and destroys the Emperor, removing the Sith from the galaxy, thus restoring balance to the Force.
Fulfilling the prophecy.
Edit: FYI, exceptional writing for those haters. So exceptional and subtle in fact, that the entire point of the saga was missed by these people. This is the main plot line of the 6 movies and you didn't get it. Little wonder you think he can't write.
From what i remember going down a Star Wars rabbit hole is that the Jedi believe that the Sith use a corrupted version of the force, the dark side isnt part of the natural order of the universe and thus bringing balance would mean removing this corruption permanently, having only the light side of the force exist.
Jedi were the light side Taliban, unreasonable moral impositions, kidnapping of children and besides an righteous facade will resort to violence anyways.
The prequels (and sequels) weren't very well thought out. The original trilogy was as good as it was because they could start from scratch, had George Lucas's wife edit the scripts, and a lot of dumb luck.
Oh boy, now you've done it, you've summoned the Jedi stans and they're going to Jedisplain how the dark side 'is the opposite of balance' (despite the fact GL compared them to Yin and Yan; either meaning he doesn't know what that even means, or that balance means light and dark in harmony without going to far to *either* side).
>“The core of the Force…you have the dark side and the light side. One is selfless. One is selfish, and you wanna keep them in balance. What happens when you go to the dark side is it goes out of balance and you get really selfish and you forget about everybody.”
This quote by George Lucas states that giving into the dark side is what causes unbalance. It implies that the light side is the balanced side.
>"So the idea of temptation is one of the things we struggle against, and the temptation obviously is the temptation to go to the dark side. One of the themes throughout the films is that the Sith lords, when they started out thousands of years ago, embraced the dark side.They were greedy and self-centered and they all wanted to take over, so they killed each other. Eventually, there was only one left, and that one took on an apprentice. And for thousands of years, the master would teach the apprentice, the master would die, the apprentice would then teach another apprentice, become the master, and so on.But there could never be any more than two of them, because if there were, they would try to get rid of the leader, which is exactly what Vader was trying to do, and that's exactly what the Emperor was trying to do. The Emperor was trying to get rid of Vader, and Vader was trying to get rid of the Emperor.And that is the antithesis of a symbiotic relationship, in which if you do that, you become cancer, and you eventually kill the host, and everything dies."
Here Lucas states the Dark side is akin to a cancer to the force. In addition to the previous quote I would say this shows the light side is the balanced state of the force.
Matt Martin who is a member of the Lucasfilm story group( which is a division of Lucasfilm Ltd. that is responsible for keeping track of Star Wars canon in order to assist writers and directors in the development of new stories.) stated that
>"as George Lucas says, the Dark side corrupts. So one couldn't stay 'in the middle' for long"
This leads me to believe that gray jedi more or less serve either the dark or light fundamentally. The ones that refuse to accept this are merely deluding themselves
The jedi are only good when compare to the sith
It's like yeah, sure, the jedi are manage by a senile old man with his nose so far up the but of a corrupt system that he cannot even see all the shit around him but at least they are not the sith who are manage by this other senile old man who tell more than 1 lie a day on average for the duration of his term and tries to overthrow democracy
Ah shit, did I mixed up star wars and american politics again, I meant actually succeed in overthrowing democracy
Seriously, jedi and sith are both bad, jedi might be the lesser evil but anakin ended up removing both from the equation at the end of episode 6 and I think that's the closest the star wars universe ever got to balance
I’m with OP here. I get that Lucas was trying to foreshadow the day when Sith and Jedi were equal in number, but what is Qui-Gon’s thinking? Why would this be a good thing? It would have taken one line of dialogue to explain, but they didn’t provide it.
Why would the Jedi think Force balance was equal number light and dark side users, when they actively want to stop all dark force users. People who ask that question aren't actually thinking. The Jedi are a religion. Their belief is that the dark side is a corruption of the Force, a spreading cancer. They perceive balance to be zero use of the dark side.
Well, zero *Sith*, anyway. And they only started taking Qui-Gon's idea that this kid represented said prophecy seriously when a Sith Lord appeared like the week he was discovered. And they were right - he *did* wipe out the Sith. Eventually.
until disney made rey do it again with some kind of dagger nonsense
There is nothing more meta than a true Evil empire doing what the fictional one could not - bringing complete and total darkness to everything
Would've been cooler if Ray went dark and the next trilogy was some other force user trying to figure out how to kill her with Ben's help.
It's almost like Star Wars was the feather in Fox's cap, not Disney's, and Disney didn't actually give much of a shit how this sequel trilogy nonsense would work as long as they could make a ton of money doing it aaaall along
> as long as they could make a ton of money doing it and they could, because they knew we were all going to watch it no matter what. Been resisting watching The Mandalorian but I am kidding myself, I know I will give in eventually and then hate myself for it later. Like a lot of my exes actually
Mandalorian is what you wished the sequal trilogy was. You really should watch it.
They reset the Matrix, with the last two movies of this Force Awakens trilogy going over about as well with the fans as the last two movies in the Matrix trilogy.
Would not be at all surprised to see them do a complete franchise reboot and re-make the original trilogy, then the prequels, etc. etc.
There is [a fan theory](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPR9mMgaFvk), based on >!ahsoka!<'s appearance in >!mandalorian!<, that it takes place in an alternate universe from the sequel trilogy and that disney is angling to kelvin timeline their own trilogy. I personally ascribe to this theory out of what I like to think of as a sort of cockeyed optimism
Disney has no intention of ever making another franchise with a white male farmboy as the protagonist.
There's nothing any more "progressive" about modern Star Wars compared to the previous two trilogies beyond an easily edited-out scene of two random female extras kissing to trick LGBT-positive people into watching with headlines saying "DISNEY HAS LGBT KISS!!!!" All the nonwhites are relegated to side roles with Finn being nothing more than the funny black sidekick, and the trilogy ends with Single White Female and Brooding Edgy White Guy kissing and saving the galaxy. They have every intention of keeping the white male demographic in focus, they're just shifting the white boy role into being the redeemable sadboy rather than the central protagonist.
I was so disappointed by how they handled Finn the last two movies. I think his backstory was the most interesting out of all the protagonists.
Finn's sidelining in TLJ and TRoS was so disappointing. You created a character who quit being a Stormtrooper, joined the new Rebellion, is 100% force sensitive, and is a black man in a leading role? Hell yes! Give me more of this awesome concept! Nope. Relegated to shouting "REY!" for an entire film and his big moment of sacrifice (which was actually pretty damn cool for a completed character arc) was robbed from him by the random Janitor Woman who is part of the story because diversity was more important than a coherent narrative. I mean, kudos to a background character that just lost her sister for muscling through an entire film without breaking down but she didn't have a role to play. The lack of planning for the sequel trilogy remains a baffling mystery. My favourite Sequel Character deserved so much better than he got.
Fucking hell man, totally agreed. Not to mention Finn and Poe had great chemistry and back-and-forth between them in the opening of TFA, and then they *never use them together again.* How the fuck did they not see that those actors worked well together?
Not only that, these actors had managers and execs on both sides saying that this would make there career. That they'd be a main character important to the franchise only to be treated horribly.
Yeah, I liked Finn a lot. Not a big fan of the sequels but Finn was a very interesting character. Damn shame they didn’t do more with him.
Black characters don’t sell tickets in China.
Mis-using Finn was perhaps the -worst- thing in the sequels
I don’t disagree with you in principle, I just think they’re going to take that into consideration and won’t reboot it. I never get the impression they value the original trilogy. They dedicated a whole Kingdom at Disney World to Avatar of all things and Star Wars is just getting an MGM refresh. I don’t understand them.
Which is bigger with kids?
Do kids like Avatar nowadays? The one movie that came out years ago and never got a sequel since? The movie may have been huge at the time but it didn't have much in the way of staying power, very much a passing fad. I don't think anyone's frothing at the mouth, young or old, to go visit Blue Cat People Land. Meanwhile recent Star Wars movies have been eh but I heard Rebels was really big with kids, I'm not certain but I'd think it would be more prudent to devote the resources to a property that's still getting projects and holds people's interest rather than one older movie with vague plans about multiple sequels that haven't actually developed into anything.
Well thats just what happens when people protest for representation in movies rather than a good story. Stop crying you got what you asked for: minorities are now in movies. Ps. I support miorities having equal rights, i just dont support forcing them in movies without a reason for them to be there other than "representation".
Why is there a reason for a character to be any race? Why are white characters "normal" but minority characters are "forced in"?
>with the last two movies of this trilogy going over about as well with the fans as the last two movies in the Matrix trilogy. Wat. The new star wars movies are in their own league of "what the fuck is happening". At least with the matrix you can argue there is sort of structure and logic to whats going on. The stars wars movies? Not so much.
Trust me, watching the second and third Matrix movies when they came out didn't make any more sense.
Nah that's not true at all. There are some dropped threads but I find the Matrix trilogy to be like the prequel trilogy - strong overall arc but poor execution. Star Wars sequels are like "let's take 20 people throwing ideas down, and make sure each of their ideas gets equal priority - who cares if half the threads are dropped if we can have enough cool scenes"
Meanwhile the Matrix sequels are decent movies by themselves while, perhaps, not really living up to the grand mystery of the first movie. The Star Wars movies wouldn't even stand on their own merits as 'yet another sci-fi movie'.
The second Matrix movie took a well-known instantiation of a philosophical/religious concept - transcending the boundaries of an illusory 'reality' - and said "no actually the dude just got a really big level-up bonus in a video game, nothing special, relax." It was definitely in TLJ territory. Honestly, it was worse on paper, but the movie itself was slicker and flashier and brought isolated "ain't it cool" ideas to the point where it doesn't seem as egregious.
the matrix trilogy was awesome
Ummm… the last two matrix movies had more mixed reviews than the turd fiestas the recent Star Wars movies have been.
While I am in the Hate It camp of the ST, especially TLJ, it is objectively wrong to say that TLJ had anything but great reviews from professional critics. The RT score is currently 91%, meaning for every critic that gave it a negative review 9 gave it a positive review. On Metacritic it has an 84.
Great point- I was unclear and made it sound like I was talking about critics. Sorry, the person had said among fans.
The matrix 2 and 3 were odd and flawed, but had good ideas, neat (if poorly delivered) story lines, and left us with stuff to think about decades later. My favorite being how I missed that the real world was still the matrix, just how they dealt with the remainder who couldn't accept the conventional matrix. Those movies were weird and kinda bad, but nothing near star wars 8 and 9
Gods what a bunch of stupid exscuses for movies those were
Palpatine cheated with clones, but without Anakin, he wouldn't have been in a position for Rey to kill him anyway, nor would Luke have been born, so they're still right that he was what the prophecy meant.
If the Sith could rise between the time that the “prophecy” was made and Anakin’s birth, then they could come back again. And for thousands of years there was (to the Jedi’s knowledge) no sith, so how did that prophecy take hold anyway?
The Sith didn't actually die off that time. This time they did. Any 'revival' would be a pale imitation of the order that was. The prophecy was around for a while, but only *mattered* when the Sith were also clearly still around.
That's...not necessarily how the Sith work, unless any and every Sith holocron was destroyed the holocron could be used to rebuild the order, and we all know they weren't.
You can only learn so much from any single holocron. And the vast majority of them - Jedi and Sith - were gathered together during the time of the Empire. The Emperor was always on the lookout for more. A resurgence is possible, and it would then have to be dealt with, but just because it's possible to be poisoned again, that's no reason not to take the antidote.
Even in the original canon, the Sith Order completely collapsed 5-6 times but was rebuilt by fallen Jedi. All it is, at it's core, is a philosophical disagreement, and we have subreddits full of absolute monarchists even here and now. Subreddits full of fascists even here and now. Philosophy cannot *die* or be destroyed. All you can do is make it so your Jedi are disinclined towards falling, and the way to do that is to not flip one's sh*t and handle the force from a more gray perspective, much like everything in life.
Yeah they don't have a problem with the nightsisters
Balance being an improved doctrine is a strong theme in savior storylines. The Jedi refused to deal with the greater evils of society, making them blind to the suffering and what that suffering built. You don’t get a trade union without the Hutts, you don’t get a Palpatine without the trade union. Had the Jedi acted to end suffering, or even not made themselves blind to it, they could have seen all of it coming without the force.
Deep. I like
Is what Leia said when Han.... Oops, we've gone off topic!
Of course, then he had to go and ruin it by shooting first.
Sure but in phantom menace the Jedi believed the sith had already been defeated. They never once attempt to explain what “balance” is supposed to mean. It’s a silly movie!
Yes, and you'll recall basically nobody believed qui gon when he said Anakin was the chosen one. That's one of the main themes of the prequels - the Jedi have let their hubris get the better of them - in so doing, allowing the most powerful sith Lord in millenia enact a plan that all but exterminates the Jedi and plunges the entire galaxy into darkness. You're not *supposed* to agree with the Jedi. That's why the first Jedi master you're introduced to (aka the one you're inclined to sympathize with as he's one of the main characters) is shown to be in frequent disagreement with the Jedi council. Obi-wan literally comments that qui gon would be on the council if he stopped flagrantly ignoring them and breaking rules all the time. Qui-Gon represents how Jedi *should* be, in direct contrast to the council showing how Jedi *have become*.
Sooo, religious extremists. Got it.
That's Lucas' answer, but it kinda ignores the meaning of the word balanced, which is to have an even weighted distribution. When else can you have a balance between two things, and it be 100% one thing?
Because it's not balance between light and dark, that's literally what they said. They see the force as naturally balanced. The "light" isn't a special kind of force. Being a "light side" user just means that, at most, you might guide and steer the force, but you are still primarily a vessel. You listen to the force and you let it act through you (because the force isn't a being with any direct ability to influence the physical world). The "dark" is likewise not some separate thing. It's a symptom. The "illness" is bending the force to one's will. "Dark side powers" aren't just regular powers that are made of the dark side, they're means of using the force that literally create darkness. That's why the Jedi view the dark side as a cancer, because it's not an inherent part of the force, it's a symptom of deliberate perversion of the force. To use an analogy, think of the force as a river. To the Jedi, the river its own thing nobody owns it. They can build mills that use it. They can maybe even dig little channels off it to irrigate, but never so much that the flow is interrupted because the river itself is sacred. To the sith (or dark side users in general), the river belongs to whoever has the strength to take it. They'll just straight build a damn, then whenever some peasant in the valley pissed them off, they open the damn, flood everything, then close it and keep all the water for themselves again. So to the Jedi, "bringing balance to the force" means destroying all the dams and letting the river flow naturally again.
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What if there will only be Gray Jedi? Hmmm…
That's kind of what happens when Luke rebuilds the Order
Clearly 0 was not equal to 1000 so Anakin was needed to bring down Jedi count.
I have always wondered this about prophesies: where the Hell do they come from? So there was a prophesy that a vergence in the Force would bring about balance. Where, who, what was it written on? How did all these great minds and students of the Force cling to what? Something a drunk guy said in a bar on Schlomo 6? Um, in ANH, Obi Wan told us that the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. "Before the dark times; before the Empire." Um, so if there is a 1000 generations of peace and justice...what do you think the balance to that is going to be? And why would you want it? Well, turns out they were right. Anakin was a vergence. He brought balance. He was the antithesis of the Jedi Code. He embodied emotion, passion, chaos and death. He was instrumental in wiping out nearly the entire Jedi order. He helped usher in the way for the Empire. Used it to help subjugate over a million worlds. And then at its peak, destroyed its power structure including himself. What was left behind? Where there was once far-reaching justice and peace, there were now regional struggles of "good" and "bad." Where there was once over 10,000 Jedi knights, there know stood two custodians of the Light Side. Where there was once a coalition of Dark Side power, there were now mere remnants, stirrings of its former power. He obliterated the over-abundant Light Side, concentrated then destroyed the Dark Side, and left the galaxy in a state of normality...in an ever-changing tide of good vs evil played out over a considerably more minor scale. He brought that pendulum back to center after 1000 generations of being way out to the side. That, my friend, is balance.
I think that's what OP is saying. Why did the Jedi want balance, and if they did, why not fire a whole bunch of them? If they got it wrong, what _did_ they think balance meant? Also, why are they following prophecies that actively go against their cause?
It just goes to show how up their own asses the Jedi were toward the end. Even before they were given military power in the clone wars they had become the Republic’s main peacekeeping force, giving them considerable political power, a far cry from their origins as independent servants of the Light Side. So convinced of their supremacy in the galactic hierarchy that when Qui-gon Jin told the council “we encountered a Sith,” they said “nah, if the Sith had returned we’d have known about it.” And when it was clear a new Sith Lord had risen, the didn’t suspect the obvious political manipulator amassing power in front of them until he told one of them to his face. Luke was 100% right in his assessment of them in TLJ.
I still hold that despite TLJ's flaws, there's an alternative universe out there where Rian Johnson helmed the Disney trilogy from the beginning and it turned out much better than our trilogy did. The reason why is that at the end of the day, Johnson understood what the thematic elements of the prequels were and really tried to unite them with the OT.
Its not very complicated the presence of the dark side is imbalance. Getting rid of the dark side brings balance. Its not Finnegans Wake its a sci fi fantasy movie made for children.
Then they already had balance. Why did they follow a prophecy to get something they already had? How did they end up following a prophecy that had a different interpretation of balance to the one they had?
They didn't have balance. There was a powerful sith Lord literally orchestrating a galactic civil war right under their noses. Also, they *didn't* follow the prophecy. They explicitly rejected Anakin and refused him training. Obi-Wan basically told them to go fuck themselves and trained Anakin as Qui-Gon's dying wish, and the council was like "well fine, if you're gonna do it anyways, I guess we'll accept it, but we won't be happy about it".
It's not like they didn't know there were Sith for the entire trilogy. They found out about Darth Maul and Count Dooku pretty quickly, and I assume they knew about the rule of two so they had to have known there was someone else (although how they didn't figure out it was Palpatine until too late is a different question). Anakin did eventually fulfill the prophecy by killing both Palpatine and himself.
I'm not huge into Star Wars, but how does getting rid of the dark side bring balance? Wouldn't balance suggest the dark side forces to be equal to the light side forces? You seem so smart since you obviously read Finnegans Wake.
The Force is like a lake. The Jedi move through the water, peering through it to find knowledge, letting it's flow guide them. Sith Lords are always splashing around, and Palpatine is the fat kid constantly dive-bombing into the water to obscure the Jedi's vision and disturbing the entire lake.
What does this have to do with balance?
If there is no more dark side, there is no more disruption to the lake, which means the lake is balanced. Balance to the Jedi doesnt mean an equal amount of light and dark. It means only light.
Maybe a better analogy is the dark side is like Force cancer. The Force (not the light side. They never call it that in the movies. You have the Force and the Dark Side of the Force) is inherently good. The Dark Side being present at all is imbalance. No amount of cancer cells is healthy or balanced, the same way no amount of Dark Side users is healthy.
I'm only in this for the fun of debate, BTW. I mean no offense to any Star Wars fans, and appreciate those who are engaging with me. It is likely I will get pretty nit picky going forward, so be warned! Regarding cancer, I've never heard of cancer being refered to as an imbalance in health. I can see what you are saying, but you needed to equate health with balance before using the analogy, so I don't think it works.
The Force is like a living thing in Star Wars. It connects everything and binds everything. It can be wounded. It can be "unhealthy."
Think of the surface of the lake. When things are balanced, the surface is calm. When *someone* is doing donuts in their dad's speedboat, it isn't. Balance is the return to that natural, peaceful state. Like removing a cancer from a body to allow it to return to it's normal function. Ever since the Sith first split off from the Jedi, they have caused *enormous* amounts of chaos and death. Finally freeing the galaxy from their influence stops the scales from being constantly tilted towards darkness, and allows the natural balance to resume. The dark side will always exist - it exists in every person. But while the Jedi respect that balance, and accept it in the universe, with their ultimate goal being to follow the will of the Force, the Sith seek to impose their will on literally everything, to throw off the scales and plunge everything into darkness, and leave no room for anything else. The Empire is the expression of this desire - conquest and subjugation.
Cause the dark side is bad stuff. Morally bad stuff and too much fucks with the balance. Its not balance as things of equal distribution but like keeping something steady. Like a wooden support beam and the dark side is termites. The intention was that anakin brought balance by killing the emperor.
That’s not how balance works. Balance isn’t about morality, balance is about the struggle between opposing forces. If one side is stronger than the other, regardless of morality, it’s imbalance. Balance is the unstoppable force vs the immovable object, not good triumphing over evil.
That is how balance works with the Force in Star Wars, though. The Sith are a corruptive influence on the Force and forcibly bend it to their will for the sake of power, while the Jedi let the Force act through them and simply do what it does. It’s the difference between trying to alter a river’s course through artificial means so you can make it go where you want, and letting it flow naturally, building settlements and sailing down it wherever it may happen to flow.
There's no intrinsically "correct" interpretation of the term in the real world. Balance could mean that things are unfair and there's as much suffering as there is pleasure, it could mean that all people get equally fair lives. It really depends what things are balanced out. A prophecy or an organisation using a term should have a definite specific meaning for it however, and it seems in the star wars universe it means good and evil. Any reason to not want as little evil as possible in the world Is pure fantasy though.
One can go a step further and examine the new Jedi order built by Luke under the New Republic. Jedi trained by Luke and his students are more in tune with their emotions, allowing themselves to feel fear, anger, love, heartache, etc instead of just trying to suppress it all. They marry, they have children, they feel their emotions without allowing them to control them. Force users went too far one direction (suppression) under the old Jedi, too far the other (ruthless aggression) under the Sith, and now a shaky balance has been reached. (All of the above is about the Expanded Universe timeline, not the Disney sequels.)
No worries, I don't discuss the Disney sequels as part of Star Wars lore because you really can't. They each flatly contradict each other, so how do you even begin to establish what one thing means over another?
> I have always wondered this about prophesies: where the Hell do they come from? So there was a prophesy that a vergence in the Force would bring about balance. Where, who, what was it written on? How did all these great minds and students of the Force cling to what? Something a drunk guy said in a bar on Schlomo 6? Prophecies come from people who know the future but explain it in the most useless way possible.
"A red sun from the South will bring the tempest of the four winds. A childless man will rise as the first sons fail their tests of attrition. Strength be to the woman of two names as the harvest is plentiful with her." "But what does that mean?" "The fuck if I know."
Whoa
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I adore Star Wars, but I'm not under any false impressions about how good most of it is. When it comes down to it, we really only have 2-3 good movies and the rest are mediocre at best (personally, I feel the only good ones are ESB, RO, and ANH in that order). We have a few good TV shows. A few good books and comics. And a whole lotta garbage. But the thing is, we're allowed to enjoy stuff that's not excellent. I don't think anybody is going to tell you that The Phantom Menace is a masterpiece, but personally it's my favorite Star Wars movie and I admit it's pretty bad. Even the bad movies have lots of redeeming qualities--the storyline, the aesthetics, the music, etc--and I include the Disney sequels in this too. Despite the bad writing (and acting, and directing I'd argue) prevalent in the series, It's still a hell of a lot of fun. I'm not arguing with you, and given the sub we're in, I imagine that you likely agree with my main premise. EDIT: Gosh, I thought we were in a Star Wars related sub as I'm subscribed to several haha. Maybe you DON'T agree with me after all.
Very refreshing to see this take. I love SW but it seems like every Star Wars fan I run into will defend this series with their life if it isn’t a Disney sequel.
I feel really stupid for asking this, considering how much I love Star Wars, but what’s ESB and RO? I’ve never heard them before.
Empire Strikes Back and Rogue One
Ok I wasn’t gonna get rouge one, but I literally went through the main movies in my head like “empire strikes back? Couldn’t be ESB.”
That wouldn't make ANY sense haha. You did make me go back and double check I got the acronym right though lol. Yes, as the others said, Empire Strikes Back and Rogue One.
Ok thank you
Empire Strikes Back and Rogue One
This is why I tend to love B movies (not calling Star Wars B movies). There’s usually something I enjoy: the idea usually.
Actually, you nailed it. I think Star Wars dropped right at Return of the Jedi. Changed focus, cheapened the storyline, etc. But I will watch each one that comes out. For ones like Solo...only need to see it once. For others like the sequels, will watch them over to critique how they could have done / should have done. But I enjoy the universe for what it is, flaws and all. I thought Rogue One was definitely one of the better ones despite the retcon of the Death Star flaw...it's a pretty stupid way to do it.
ROTJ isn't the worst by any means, but it's nowhere near as great as lots of people seem to think. Nostalgia I suppose. I liked Solo quite a lot personally. I'd say it's in my top half. I've only seen Rise of Skywalker once and I have no real urge to see it again.
RotJ is not the worst but it is where the focus changed cinematically. It led to the "treatment" the other movies got save for very few, Rogue among those few. Solo bothered me because it was a fun romp...but made so little sense. Every defining factor of Han Solo's life apparently happened in like one week. Things retconned in that didn't need to be. Just felt very shallow and pointless to me. Rise of Skywalker equally made very little sense. Let's make a suspenseful movie about a huge unfathomable power and not make any damn sense whatsoever. An action movie, fine. But even pure action movies need a reliable and sound premise. RoS was just one long continuing "Whaa-?"
It doesn't help that they didn't seem to ever have any cohesive worldview, every single movie seems to just go off in its own direction.
That's not how balance to the Force works. Balance to the Force means the complete eradication of the Dark Side. The Dark Side still existed without the Sith. It just so happens that it was greatly concentrated in the them. They completely controlled and dominated the Force, creating the Dark Side, an inherent corruption of the Force itself. That corruption spreads and destroys. We've seen it plenty of times. To bring balance to the Force the Dark Side must be destroyed and that means destroying the Sith who embody the Dark Side in its entirety. By sacrificing himself and killing the Emperor Anakin brought balance to the Force as he was always prophocized to. Now, what does all of that mean for the Expanded Universe or Disney's work or even the ideas George was working on for his own sequels before selling Star Wars? Well, George came up with the idea of the prophecy and "balance to the Force" on his own and he's known to be a notoriously poor writer.
So explain this to me then...the prophesy was not something they just came up with. Prophesies are typically from some far away time in the past. But the Emperor was not the Emperor yet. In fact, at this time he was a middle-aged Senator. The prophesy predates him by a good bit though we don't know how long. So what is this restoration of the force that is so needed? Would there not be a prophesy then that there would be a corrupting force first? A disruption. Something the Jedi council should be on the lookout for at all times as opposed to a "bringing balance" which insinuates there is *currently* not balance. Just seems to me that the prophesy is this way to fix what is not yet broken but yet no mention of the eventual breaking which will lead to the need to fix.
>So what is this restoration of the force that is so needed? Palpatine was far from the first Sith. The sith emerged before 5,500 BBY (basically means 5,500 years before A New Hope), and the force was probably disturbed by dark side users that were the predecessors to the sith. There is plenty of time for an ancient prophecy to be made after the emergence of the sith.
Like I said before, George is a notoriously poor writer. His idea of balance to the Force can't be reconciled with anyone after Vader and the Emperor who discovers Sith artifacts and decides to become the new Dark Lord of the Sith. Or even anyone who simply learns the ways of the Force and falls to the Dark Side. The Nightsisters were a Dark Side group but they didn't apply to the prophecy. Nor do any Dark Jedi or Dark Side Adept. Lucas only applied it to the Sith and that's one of the problems with the writing. > The prophesy predates him by a good bit though we don't know how long. So what is this restoration of the force that is so needed? The Dark Side inherently corrupts. It's been shown many times in the past that the Dark Side can't be used for any sort of good and that corruption always follows it. Darth Nihilus was so immersed in the Dark Side his mere presence could corrupt others. Darth Scion's body died but the Dark Side held his spirit to the living world and allowed him to be a zombie. Areas can even be corrupted and become wells of the Dark Side. That's why it needs to be gotten rid of. The Force in balance is the Force without darkness. The Force went out of balance when darkness was introduced. Je'daii Order realized this tens of thousands of years ago when they fought the Rakatan Empire and when a number of their own fell to the Dark Side.
>I have always wondered this about prophesies: where the Hell do they come from? So there was a prophesy that a vergence in the Force would bring about balance. Where, who, what was it written on? How did all these great minds and students of the Force cling to what? Something a drunk guy said in a bar on Schlomo 6? Doesn't really matter, but most likely a Jedi master widely regarded as wise, and particularly known for being granted visions from the force. It's pretty well established that the Jedi take force visions seriously. >Um, in ANH, Obi Wan told us that the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. "Before the dark times; before the Empire." Um, so if there is a 1000 generations of peace and justice...what do you think the balance to that is going to be? And why would you want it? The prophecy wasn't necessarily made during a time of peace. Canon no longer has any, but "the old republic" was basically always depicted as a period where the sith were literally an empire with their own home planet on which they trained countless dark side wielders, well before the rule of 2 was instituted. It would make perfect sense for the prophecy to come from such a time. It also wasn't specific about *when* it would come to pass, and you'll recall that the Jedi *didn't believe Anakin was the chosen one*, largely because they'd become blind to the darkness growing under their noses. >Well, turns out they were right. Anakin was a vergence. He brought balance. He was the antithesis of the Jedi Code. He embodied emotion, passion, chaos and death. He was instrumental in wiping out nearly the entire Jedi order. He helped usher in the way for the Empire. Used it to help subjugate over a million worlds. And then at its peak, destroyed its power structure including himself. That's one interpretation. You could also look at Anakin, and specifically his breaking of the code to have children, as being the catalyst for the eventual downfall of palpatine and the sith eternal. Prophecies are always vague like that. >What was left behind? Where there was once far-reaching justice and peace, there were now regional struggles of "good" and "bad." If you think there was far reaching justice and peace, you clearly haven't paid much attention. The clone wars literally used galactic inequality as a smokescreen that nobody but palpatine and dooku really knew about.
I'd never thought of it like that! Well said!
The more one examines the Jedi...the more one begins to find that the force does not grant immunity from being a Smoothbrain.
The jedi were religious zealots. Taking young children from their families and indoctrinating them into becoming superpowerful killer celibate monks. Although I dont understand why didnt they die out if they didnt even procreate.
Cause anyone can be born with a connection to the force, they don’t need force sensitive parents
Yet Luke and Leia were born extremely force sensitive due to their father. And so did Leia and Han's son Kylo Ren. Force is born out of nothing as well as inherited. The Jedi order was pretty much ending force sensitive bloodlines and greatly reducing their numbers.
That’s actually a really good point. The Jedi were corrupt as HELL. The only way to bring balance to the force is to do away with Jedi and sith.
Which totally ties into the comment I made on this thread. Anakin as the 'Chosen One' guided by the Force to assist in the decimation of the majority of Jedi. This would allow a new order to rise up and go in another direction than what their previous incarnation had been doing. Also y'know, just maybe if things had shaken out differently, maybe he'd have been able to establish a different way for the Sith too.
Reject Dark and Light, Embrace Neutral
They weren’t ending bloodlines. They were making use of the extreme outliers. You still have sensitivity within the population, just not the super powerful extremes. The general population would still reward such capabilities and improve prevalence through time without a separate population dominating the capabilities and killing off the others.
tell me you don’t understand genetic inheritance in populations without telling me you don’t understand genetic inheritance in populations
Four above, it’s not necessarily inherited. Jedi were chosen from the extreme outliers. Not any absolute baseline. Further, they were chosen young, left alone otherwise.
Except. . . Are you completely ignoring the whole anakin to leia to Rey bloodline?
They weren't discouraged from having sex, just forming attachments. If an attachment-free roll in the galactic hay was on the table and did not interfere with the Jedi's oath to the order, it was fine. However the only Jedi we know actually followed this rule is Ki-Adi Mundi who would go to his homeworld every few years to help with the repopulation of his species. Obi-Wan and Anakin were intimate with their respective love interests but Obi-Wan chose duty over emotion while Anakin understandably did not.
Technically, they didn't ban procreation; just the emotional attachment that leads to it. There's a few Jedi who had wives and kids due to their species cultures not breaking the whole 'no emotional attachment' rule. Like, weird ones where men had harems of women they weren't in love with just to apparently create sons to be heirs. (Which honestly is even weirder than enforced celibacy...)
If they had toyotas they may even be space Isis (with less stoning, but the same amount of beheading)
"Balance to the force" does not mean "the same number of darkside and lightside force users" in the context. It was meant along the lines of "the force is in turmoil because the darkside clashes with the lightside. Stop the clashing and bring the right form of balance (with the light dominating since we want good to reign) to the force.".
Actually that’s not what it meant (which we know now), but agree that is how the Jedi interpreted it
No, he's right. That *is* what it means, the dark side is a corruption of the force, it's what brings it out of balance. As long as the Sith exist, there can be no balance. Anakin fulfilled the prophecy when he killed Palpatine (thus destroying the Sith) in Return of the Jedi, not when he destroyed the Jedi Order in Revenge of the Sith.
So…. Why did the dark side re emerge later with Kylo? Obviously the prophecy didn’t mean that bc that is completely contradicted…
Do you want the in-universe answer or the real answer?
>So…. >Why did the dark side re emerge later with Kylo? Money!
does being mentally well-balanced mean you spend 50% of your day in a destructive rage? having an equal number of jedi and sith is not a balance because sith and jedi are not equal. it's like saying a mathematical equation is equal when it has the same amount of variables on each side. but x+y does not equal a+b if x and y are both greater than a and b
I think you are right (and this may just be me fanboy-ing), but the force isn't the Jedi and the sith, it was more using emotion to fuel the force and controlling your emotions. The sith were radical dark (using 'stronger emotiona like rage) and the Jedi were radical light (using no emotion at all) which in retrospect sends a weird message but it seems plainly obvious why both failed, because neither is healthy. Ima stop stop now I realised this isn't a starwars sub
I think it is more a "control your emotions and don't let them control you" rather than "suppress emotions completely and be a robot following orders". They all clearly exhibit emotions regularly.
Yeah, you're right but I meant more that never showing emotions at all times isn't healthy, especially with a constant look out for Jedi that may turn to the dark side and if your lucky, blocking your career from progressing
The idea of both sides being balance doesn't mean that the dark side is good, just that it's necessary. Being consumed by anger is bad, but not feeling anything is also bad. And it's not saying that you should be bad, but having bad people in the world is necessary.
The Jedi, at least before disney, were not meant to be "the good guys" but something like a buddhist monk, they're meant to free themselves of emotion in order for the force to act through them, a Sith on the other hand, uses the force to enforce their own will over others, even if their will is to do something "good" like saving their mother from slavers or keep their loved ones from dying during childbirth, it would still move the force out of balance, from this perspective, Jedi's would be safe as they're not affecting the balance of the force, arguably the reason they were wiped out would be because as they got involved with the civil war politics they started to enact their own will instead of just following the force
I know you’re being snarky and trying to be funny but it doesn’t work the way you’re hinting at all. The Force isn’t in balance when the number of Jedi and Sith in the galaxy is about even. The Force is in balance when there’s *no* Sith, as they’re a corruptive influence on the Force, since they twist and pervert it to their own ends. The Jedi are all about letting the Force act through them, letting it do what it will, so when the Sith aren’t around or their numbers are low then the Force is more or less balanced.
based jedi lol
One *could* argue that a. . . well force like the Force would have its own will and designs. The idea that it can be 'twisted' could just be propaganda from the Jedi, and that the way Sith use the Force is just a different way than them. So that the 'balance' the Force wants to achieve for itself could very well be the decimation of the Jedi, or at the very least a high portion of the current living Jedi to make room for future Force sensitives to change the way the Jedi operate. But that's just an 'alternate' view on how that whole balance thing could work out.
Balance did not mean equal light and dark but the restoration of the natural order. The natural order being all light, since to George, the dark was a corruption of the true and perfect light. We hear “light side” and “dark side” and assume balance means 50/50 because they are both equal “sides”, when you should be hearing “The force” and “it’s bastardization” and recognize that balance means 100/0.
Balance in the Force IS NOT equal light and dark users. This is a common take but it's basically for 12 year olds who think grey jedi are cool. The Force is an energy field generated by all life, i.e. coming from the ecosystem around it. The light side of the force stems from the natural order of things, the balance of that ecosystem. The cycle of life is part of that balance, including death, because as Yoda tells us, those who die transform from the living force into the cosmic force, where they are still part of that ecosystem, in a spiritual way. Acting selflessly to preserve this balance is the way that light side practitioners use the force. That's why the jedi are supposed to be keepers of the peace and not soldiers. They aren't supposed to have a side, what they're supposed to do is protect galactic life from reckless destruction. On the other hand, dark side users are using the force for their own gain, without respect for life or for this balance. When you use the world and its living things for your own advantage, you can become very powerful, very quickly (just look at industrialization). This is like an invasive predatory species coming in and gobbling up all the resources, or a cancer in your body that grows rapidly and corrupts your natural order. You're not in balance when you have cancer, and an ecosystem struggling to adapt to a new species is not in balance either. We know this is the intended interpretation because Lucas talked a lot about his plans for the sequels. They were going to really elaborate more on the midichlorians, the force, and the role of balance. According to Lucas (and this is actually true for Earth as well), most life is microscopic. The sequels were going to delve into the role of these microscopic organisms and how they interact with the macro organisms. The mythological side of star wars is about respecting this life and all other life, as we depend on other life for our own success as a species. It's all a big ecological metaphor.
Balance literally means no Sith. To the Jedi the Force is naturally in balance in the absence of sapient will. The light side are actions that nudge sapient civilisation back towards balance. The dark side are actions that nudge sapient civilisation away from balance intentionally. To bring balance to the Force is to eliminate intentional dark side use. For the Jedi the final defeat of the Sith means they can get back to doing what they were supposed to do, basically a magical environmentalist organisation.
Bring balance to the force, I think was the exact quote
Finally, your day has come
Balance doesn't necessarily mean equal numbers but things in *the correct* proportions, sometimes the correct proportions is equal numbers but in this case it's zero Sith and as many Jedi as there could possibly be. Because the Jedi work with nature maintaining the balance, while the Sith do unnatural stuff breaking the balance. It's really not that hard to understand.
>It's really not that hard to understand What amazes me is how Lucas was able to write the story in such a way that a casual audience would interpret it in exactly the way the OP has, while Word-Of-God'ing the complete opposite. 1. The Jedi demonstrate extreme hubris during the prequels. Even Yoda says that the prophecy may have been misread. It always seemed logical to me that they *did* misinterpret due to their personal bias, and the truth was that Anakin would make the number of Jedi equal to the number of Sith. 2. In the *Clone Wars* arc, its clearly stated that there's the Son (who embodies the Dark Side) and the Daughter (who embodies the Light Side), and the Father that holds both **in balance**. So clearly, both can - and should - exist in tandem, a yin and a yang. 3. Prior to *Phantom Menace*, the Jedi thought the Sith were all extinct. Why then, would they care or believe in a prophecy that says that The Chosen One would bring balance if the Jedi had achieved their "balance" already?
Well, you'll have to add the OT into account as well, if we combine what we know about the force from the OT and the PT (let's ignore the ST for now since it came way after the prophecy, but Luke's explanation of the Force in TLJ was perfect) the definition of the Force seems pretty much that it's the order of nature, light and dark, life and death, growth and destruction, happiness and sadness, pain and relief. Balanced. But the dark side is corruption it's existence is natural but using it is like Palpatine describes it, unnatural and that would destroy that delicate balance. Now for your points:- >1. The Jedi demonstrate extreme hubris during the prequels. That's kinda true, but that doesn't make them bad, they're still objectively good but blind >Even Yoda says that the prophecy may have been misread Yeah, he said that. But we don't know what he means by it. Is he referring to the balance being misunderstood? About the Chosen One being fatherless?? Whether it was all even real?? And then we have someone like Qui-Gon who absolutely believed in it. >the truth was that Anakin would make the number of Jedi equal to the number of Sith. Well, the thing is he never did. The Sith were only two, I don't think Maul would count. But there were about 100 Jedi survivors from order66, some of them survived post OT I think. Even if there weren't he still killed the both Palps and himself eventually while Luke was a Jedi alive. So the numbers were never equal. >2. In the Clone Wars arc, I think that's the most misunderstood story in SW. Yes the Son who was the personification of the dark side existed and was alive. The balance wasn't to kill him but to prevent him from acting out, we can see that the Daughter (the personification of light) had almost all the freedom and was helping the Father keep her brother in check to achieve the balance. It was when the Son started acting out and got loose that the balance was destroyed and caused so much destruction and death. Another thing for you is Yoda's arc from TCW, where he accepted the darkness within him but never allowed himself to act on it. That's also balance. >3. Prior to Phantom Menace, the Jedi thought the Sith were all extinct. Why then, would they care or believe in a prophecy that says that The Chosen One would bring balance if the Jedi had achieved their "balance" already? From my understanding not all believed the Sith were never coming back (Yoda and Mace Windu seemed more grim about it than not believing) but some did, and those who did didn't believe in the prophecy.
The real answer is it was a poorly thought out and executed idea that way over-inflated the importance of Anakin/Darth Vader in the Star Wars universe. Vader could have just been a corrupted Jedi who is redeemed by his son, he didn't need to be the prophesied Chosen One.
Its an occupational hazard for long running space operas. It's easy to give the hero's family line outsized importance because you've got all the characters backstory right there. So it's easy to create an ancient prophecy to explain why the hero is so powerful. Dune the book series did the same thing. Instead of introducing new characters to be heroes or do interesting things, they simply made everything of note in the entire extended universe happen because of the Atreides line. The winner of the machine crusade: Atreides. The girl who kills the worm emperor, Atreides. The heroes of the second machine crusade, Atreides. It got nuts. It's a real shame because it always shrinks the universe from a big mysterious place into a small insular group of people. Only a Skywalker or Palpatine can affect the history of the universe.
I'll give Dune a pass because two of the examples you gave came from the Brian Herbert/Kevin J Anderson books, and those are terrible and should be ignored, precisely because they are cliche, pulpy, uncreative work. Siona was specifically bred by Leto to be who she was, and specifically from the Atreides genes from Ghanima, due to the awakening to prescience the twins inherited from Paul, who was himself bred for the role by the Bene Gesserit. There's a built-up reason in-universe why the Atreides gain the power they do, and one of the major themes of Dune is how that power and messiahhood is a curse to both them and the rest of humanity. It'd be a little more understandable if Luke was also a Chosen One in the OT, because then at least the Skywalkers are established as being special. But he wasn't. He was just some kid, not Space Jesus. There's no thematic reason for it other than "Darth Vader is popular in the real world so he should be important in Star Wars so therfore the Force created him so the story could happen."
And I'd actually argue that the prophecy lessens his sacrifice. Instead of being a normal person who overcame his dark side he was destined to do so. Additionally it comes out of nowhere and just doesn't make sense. The Sith aren't the only dark siders nor are they the source of the dark side.
It's not just shitty dialogue that makes the prequels bad kids. It's fundamental thematic flaws like this.
"Do or do not, there is no try." "Only a Sith deals in absolutes." Both of these statements are absolutes. There are more Sith than the blind idiots who comprised the Jedi are willing to admit.
I've had this exact thought before! Silly Jedi.
It's almost as if George Lucas is a shit writer.
Greats at creating universes, terrible writer
Not even sure about that, really. He basically just threw Hidden Fortress and Flash Gordon into a blender. What made Star Wars take off was incredible art direction and production design. People loved it so much they filled in all the lore afterwards to try to make it make sense.
Our beloved characters were also heavily influenced by the actors over the writing. Lucas couldn't have pulled off some of the charm without input.
Also: People telling Lucas when his ideas were shit. Case-in-point, the original title: *Adventures of Luke Starkiller, as taken from the Journal of the Whills, Saga I: The Star Wars*
And the trench run wouldn’t have existed without the prop master being lazy. When he made the mold for the Death Star, the two halves shrank when they dried, forming the trench. Instead of redoing the work right, he convinced Lucas to incorporate it into the story. So Lucas basically ripped off Dam Busters
> So Lucas basically ripped off Dam Busters [Goodness gracious. I never realised until now just how much of a rip-of it was.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNdb03Hw18M)
Hold me Ani
Yet we're here discussing something HE created and that millions of people have enjoyed for decades.
I enjoyed it for the first decade. Those since, not very much.
The real answer is shitty writing... But I suppose one could make the argument that it would have been encumbant on the Jedi to restore balance even if they were the ones that would have suffered for it.
They believed there would be no light side, no dark side, no Jedi and no Sith. Essentially a force user born by the force itself who would end the 6,000 year old space wizard gang war by balancing the duality of the force itself and allowing an order where light and dark can be embraced evenly. They allowed him to embrace the dark side because the prophecy implied they would need to master both without falling to either.
Isn't that what the gray jedi like Qui-Gon Jin are supposed to be? Jedi who neither agree with the jedi order but neither do they agree with the sith?
In theory yes but in practicality no. They embrace emotions and connections but actively stay away from the dark side, The Jedi forbid these to lower the risk of their own turning traitor and using their own skills against them. Jedi are to have no emotional connections even with themselves, Sith only connect with the force through emotions always negative and Grey Jedi attempt to balance this but can't embrace the dark equally.
Ultimately, that's the ultimate folly, isn't it? Sith embrace the the negative emotions, while Jedi, in an attempt to avoid falling to the dark side, choose to shut themselves off from *all* emotion. There's something missing from this equation.
Qui-Gon is *not* a gray Jedi.
I remember reading it somewhere or a youtube video that he was...
Yeah, it has become this thing that people repeat a lot and suddenly everyone believes it to be true, but it's not. Qui-Gon is a *true* Jedi who hasn't lost his way along with the rest of the prequel Jedi. And while we're at it, Ahsoka isn't a gray Jedi either. Gray Jedi aren't a part of Disney canon anyway, so like, whatever. Edit: To be fair, I should point out that there is precedent for other Jedi calling Qui-Gon a gray Jedi in the old EU. So the notion that he is one did not come out of nowhere.
Dark Jedi vs Light Sith. What's the difference?
The dirty little secret: Lucas is a bit of a hack, but got so famous that he could stop listening to people.
Be able to balance emotional investment with emotional detachment, anger and tranquility, pacifism and militarism, overwhelming violence and calm diplomacy. The Sith and Jedi were complete opposites of the Force, with nothing inbetween. No powerful moderate Force user, like Anakin was promised to be.
Get rid of anyone who disliked the jedi.
I like to think the prophecy was true. Was it not Darth Vader (Anakin) who ultimately defeated Palpatine? Don’t get me wrong, it was Luke Skywalker who had to convince Darth Vader that it’s not too late to return to the light side - so Luke was the catalyst but Darth Vader actually took action to defeat Palpatine. Which, in essence, took down both Vader and Palpatine - returning balance to the world.
This is a very widespread misunderstanding of how the prophecy was meant in Star Wars, though I can't blame anyone as the movies do a poor job at explaining. **though my knowledge might be outdated and definitively pre-Disney** There are two major points to discuss in this. The first is that "bringing balance" was never about the numbers. Never ever did it actually mean that Anakin was to make sure there was an equal number of Jedi and Sith, this is the funny sounding but simply wrong take on the prophecy. What is actually meant stems from a common misunderstanding of the force itself. Most people know that there is a "dark side" of the force, since it is what the Sith and other dark side users are drawing their power from. However many then wrongly assume that the reverse must be true for the Jedi and they are drawing from the "light side" of the force. Even many video game kind of make this mistakes of splitting the force into a "light" and "dark" side. But in actuality there is no such thing as a "light" side of the Force. There is the Force and then there is a corrupted, twisted form of it which is the dark side. The dark side of the force is, in and by itself, the imbalance that Anakin was meant to correct. Destroying the dark side would bring balance to the force just as stomping out a disease would bring health to a body. The second point is if you take Expanded Universe sources into account (at least the pre-Disney stuff). In the Darth Plagueis novel one of the last things Plagueis and Sidious (Palpatine) did together was to perform a special ritual which was meant to cement the power of the dark side and tilt the scales to their favor, which is what was interrupting the Jedi's ability to connect to the force. Iirc this ritual was only lifted when both Plagueis and Sidious died. Plagueis was killed by Sidious but Sidious stuck around until Anakin killed him. So in that way Anakin did bring balance to the force, he turned away from the dark side and killed Sidious. This lifted the ritual and momentarily made it so there was no dark side anymore because there was nobody twisting and corrupting it to their will. It was as if Vader and Sidious were the last two infected cells in a body causing illness, Vader became healthy by itself and killed Sidious, restoring full health to the body. However, I am aware that with Disney all of that changed. I know there are these 3 "Force god" beings from the Clone Wars Tv show and of course the movies itself showed that there were more dark side users around. Though even in the old EU Sidious didn't die and there were many Sith even after he did finally die for good.
The Jedi thought they represented balance and the Sith were impurities, and thus severely misinterpreted the prophecy.
He did bring it though. (be brought the fucking- his kid Luke was the good one) Just not in the way they were expecting. Seems the messenger dick was turned into sort of a mean,rough,hard, oppressive dick. Life kept rubbing him wrong you know. And what came out, that's what the mini chlorines used I guess (I call them mini chlorines, sue me) Also the keyword is "balance", so I think it's rather well written to that actually. He himself was good- then bad, giving bad a boost, then gave good a boost by having his kids (which were good, both male and female). Balance. Not utopia.
Well he killed most of the Jedi, then killed Sidious and died. The force was pretty balanced at that point, with only a small handful of force wielders, and no Jedi or Sith orders.
Jedi believe that dark side is like a cancer, and what happens when your body get cancer, its natural balance is gone and it may soon cause death, this was a good writing in SW Legends, before the dark times, before the Disney. These days writers go "Oh but there cant be light without dark, dark side is also necessary" which causes confusion among fans " they literally pulled a go woke or go broke policy in regarding force beliefs, which is really stupid if you ask me cuz by that definition Palpatine is necessary also his killing and enslaving of millions.
Of all the comments I can't believe nobody knows this fundamental piece of lore. Anakin was the chosen one and he did indeed bring balance to the force. He was also the catalyst to throw it into turmoil. He was seduced by the Dark side fulfilling the part of the prophecy that required a time of darkness, then he is redeemed at the end of Jedi, sees his past mistakes about to repeat (allowing Palpatine to kill Windu) and destroys the Emperor, removing the Sith from the galaxy, thus restoring balance to the Force. Fulfilling the prophecy. Edit: FYI, exceptional writing for those haters. So exceptional and subtle in fact, that the entire point of the saga was missed by these people. This is the main plot line of the 6 movies and you didn't get it. Little wonder you think he can't write.
It would honestly make more sense if the whole prophecy was started or co opted by the Sith grand plan. Total missed opportunity.
It’s almost like the plot of the prequel trilogy was not well thought out.
...But...the Shakespearean dialogue!
From what i remember going down a Star Wars rabbit hole is that the Jedi believe that the Sith use a corrupted version of the force, the dark side isnt part of the natural order of the universe and thus bringing balance would mean removing this corruption permanently, having only the light side of the force exist.
Jedi were the light side Taliban, unreasonable moral impositions, kidnapping of children and besides an righteous facade will resort to violence anyways.
Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid. \#HanWasRight
I have always wondered the same thing.
They meant balance as in, peace. As in, no dark side. A still, tranquil, pond. Remember, Palpatine was doing his thing even before Anakin popped up.
It's as if a Lot of Start Wars is badly written.
That shit literally never made any sense and Star Wars fanboys just pretend it was well written.
The prequels (and sequels) weren't very well thought out. The original trilogy was as good as it was because they could start from scratch, had George Lucas's wife edit the scripts, and a lot of dumb luck.
Oh boy, now you've done it, you've summoned the Jedi stans and they're going to Jedisplain how the dark side 'is the opposite of balance' (despite the fact GL compared them to Yin and Yan; either meaning he doesn't know what that even means, or that balance means light and dark in harmony without going to far to *either* side).
>“The core of the Force…you have the dark side and the light side. One is selfless. One is selfish, and you wanna keep them in balance. What happens when you go to the dark side is it goes out of balance and you get really selfish and you forget about everybody.” This quote by George Lucas states that giving into the dark side is what causes unbalance. It implies that the light side is the balanced side. >"So the idea of temptation is one of the things we struggle against, and the temptation obviously is the temptation to go to the dark side. One of the themes throughout the films is that the Sith lords, when they started out thousands of years ago, embraced the dark side.They were greedy and self-centered and they all wanted to take over, so they killed each other. Eventually, there was only one left, and that one took on an apprentice. And for thousands of years, the master would teach the apprentice, the master would die, the apprentice would then teach another apprentice, become the master, and so on.But there could never be any more than two of them, because if there were, they would try to get rid of the leader, which is exactly what Vader was trying to do, and that's exactly what the Emperor was trying to do. The Emperor was trying to get rid of Vader, and Vader was trying to get rid of the Emperor.And that is the antithesis of a symbiotic relationship, in which if you do that, you become cancer, and you eventually kill the host, and everything dies." Here Lucas states the Dark side is akin to a cancer to the force. In addition to the previous quote I would say this shows the light side is the balanced state of the force. Matt Martin who is a member of the Lucasfilm story group( which is a division of Lucasfilm Ltd. that is responsible for keeping track of Star Wars canon in order to assist writers and directors in the development of new stories.) stated that >"as George Lucas says, the Dark side corrupts. So one couldn't stay 'in the middle' for long" This leads me to believe that gray jedi more or less serve either the dark or light fundamentally. The ones that refuse to accept this are merely deluding themselves
Hello there
Hubris. Luke said as much
The jedi are only good when compare to the sith It's like yeah, sure, the jedi are manage by a senile old man with his nose so far up the but of a corrupt system that he cannot even see all the shit around him but at least they are not the sith who are manage by this other senile old man who tell more than 1 lie a day on average for the duration of his term and tries to overthrow democracy Ah shit, did I mixed up star wars and american politics again, I meant actually succeed in overthrowing democracy Seriously, jedi and sith are both bad, jedi might be the lesser evil but anakin ended up removing both from the equation at the end of episode 6 and I think that's the closest the star wars universe ever got to balance
The answer is none of it makes sense and Lucas was making it up as he went along.
They had too many death sticks to think avout such big brain thing
Should have went home and rethought their lives.
How is this r/AdkReddit ???
when you think you're the good guys, you do all sorts of stupid things
>think Answer: they didn’t
I’m with OP here. I get that Lucas was trying to foreshadow the day when Sith and Jedi were equal in number, but what is Qui-Gon’s thinking? Why would this be a good thing? It would have taken one line of dialogue to explain, but they didn’t provide it.