CreeP_303
06-16-2002, 11:31 PM
Ok, i just saw EP II for the second time, so i think i was able to give myself a decent perspective of how it fits in with everything.
quote:
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originally posted by someone on another board
What is the Real Prophecy of the Balance of The Force? We don't know yet,
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I didn't catch this the first time, but Mace Windu said something that pretty much seems to sum up the prophecy. "Remember, he is the one who is to bring the Force back into balance". Dwelling on that for a few moments, it seemed to support my whole thought on the entire saga...that the greater theme of it all is the notion of balance. The prophecy seem simple enough...the Force is out of balance..has been for some time...the Force will bring about one who will bring it into balance.
I will give my explanation of how i see this and why I think Lucas' plot devices and explanations are not cop-outs. Where to begin about this....Luke. He is the one who brings this about, obviously not Anakin. Although there is a strange symbolism of a messiah who becomes antichrist and fathers the messiah.
There is obviously a long-standing school of how a Jedi must control his or her (yes, i saw several female Jedi) emotions and psyche in order stay within the realm the "light side". Any attribute exhibited by those of the darkside is forbidden. But, if the Force is out of balance...the Jedi are out of balance. Jedi dogma refuses to utilize a large part of the emotional rainbow. By not embracing the darker side of the psyche and learning to control it, they suffered the consequences. To use a simplistic analogy, it's like going through drug & alcohol "education" in school...only to be a party where someone shoves a big, fat doobie in your face and a bottle of JD in your hand. All you've been told is that they're bad. While some people can bite the apple and enjoy it responsibly, others dive head first into the barrel before they know what they're getting into. Along those lines, a Jedi has forbidden emotions or feelings enter his mind or is tempted with them by someone else. Without ever having been trained in their use and control for productive means, they are left open to succumb to their destructive aspects if not outright embracing the darkside. Yoda himself comments that arrogance has become increasingly common among younger Jedi. (whether or not Lucas intended, i see his portrayal of the conflict of dark and light partly as a commentary on human civilization's tendency to suffer in light of its overwhelming demands of morality, regardless if it's The Church, 21st century liberalism, etc.)
By the end of the story, all that's left of the known masters of the Force are two sith lords and a young Jedi. Luke is left to his own devices...he doesn't have the influence of generations of Jedi dogma staring at his face. In Ep. 6, he does venture into the darkside and does it without falling to it. As a Sith, the emperor is as out of balance as the Jedi were. He tempts Luke with his anger and hatred seemingly in the belief that doing so can only mean joining the darkside. Balance does not mean being in a state of static alignment. I see it more as someone walking the highwire, moving side to side in a controlled manner with their balancing stick. And I think that's what Lucas tried to show...Luke takes his lightsaber to open a can on the emperor and enters the duel with Vader...utilizing his anger to fight fire with fire.
With that said, i don't see the end of the saga as redemption for Anakin as much as i see it as Luke restoring the balance (i'm not going to debate the future since the official story will forever end there) and thereby restoring Anakin. To put it briefly, Luke vanquishes Vader...instead of finishing the job, he tosses his lightsaber and tells Sidious he won't join him as the emperor was certain he would. Certainly, this being the climactic moment of the entire story, there was a tremendous wave in the force, one strong enough to restore Anakin to his natural self. Through Anakin, the Force takes its final step to rid itself of the imbalance and the Emperor, the symbol of the darkside, is destroyed. The moral aspect is completely overshadowed...throwing the Emperor to his doom was less about Anakin doing a "good" thing as it was about a former slave-boy being finally being freed from all that had ever enslaved him...including his Master and himself.
And now i can talk a bit more about young Anakin. I definitely like what someone said previously that Anakin doesn't really choose the darkside as much as he simply falls into before he's entirely aware of it. The seeds are definitely planted and I'm very curious to see how exactly he becomes Vader. He's a great character. He's a kid who loves his mother and has a sense of justice and order for the greater good of all. His mother's death obviously leaves him with a great sense of sorrowful hatred. When he says he wants to be the most powerful Jedi of all, it seems qualified with the purpose of saving others since he could not save her. It also seems like his anger at Obi-Wan for "holding him back" comes from his sense that he feels he could do so much more to help people if only he could work faster to advance his skills and be a full-fledged Jedi.
My basic thoughts on Ep III is that Palpatine enlists Anakin to aide him personally under the guise that he can be some kind of uber-guardian of the Republic. Darth Sidious and Darth Tyrannus (Dooku) continue to manipulate the Trade Federation, et. al into a war with the Republic as part of Sidious' plan to gain acceptance in a play towards declaring himself Emperor. It appears they were also using the rebellious factions to help design and possibly build the Death Star. Skip to the end where all but Obi-Wan and Yoda remain of the Jedi, Obi-Wan goes to Tatooine to watch the newborn Luke from afar and Yoda goest to Degobah. Maybe Lucas will have an official explanation for the existence of the cave. I dunno.
Oh...on a final note, as far as JarJar is concerned, even though he's an annoying piece of CGI crap, i do like how Lucas is using him as a useful plot device. It could have caused a stir if a senator who wasn't a slack-jawed buffoon had introduced a bill to give the Chancellor his emergency executive powers. Plus, at least all the JarJar haters can say "Jar Jar caused the Empire!!! what an asshat!"
:D
and if anyone wonders why i might have spent a bit of time actually discussing a movie like Star Wars....i would like to point something out. Stories such as Star Wars and Dune are not technically Science Fiction. Something like Star Trek is more like Sci-Fi, although most die-hards would consider it to be Speculative Fiction.
What I'm saying is that just because a story takes place in a setting with strange looking races, advanced technology, and spaceships, it doesn't mean that those backdrops are the important element. George Lucas isn't some egghead talking about some experiment gone wrong whereby giant brains are taking over the earth. From his story and from interviews, I know he's done his research....be it from Goethe and Wagner to Taoist beliefs. He intentionally made his story about the various human themes which are prevalent in any story by any writer worth their salt....otherwise, a story would have no interest.
When people turn their noses to Star Wars and relegate it to geekdom, i laugh. Yes, there are tons of hardcore fans that are geeks and miss the boat by spending too much time celebrating the visual aspects of the movie. But compare Lucas' story to something like Wagner's Ring Cycle. In that story, it takes place in underground Dwarf kingdoms, mystical lands, and Valhalla with many non-human characters like dwarves, water nymphs, gods, etc. Scholarly l33tists consider Wagner's work to be intellectual fodder, but many play down Star Wars as something lesser. But Lucas deals with similar types of archetypes and struggles of humanity and the human psyche....and to audiences of the 19th century, the Ring Cycle was the same type of fantasy world as Star Wars, just in a different type of fantasy setting that people of the 20th century could appreciate.
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
originally posted by someone on another board
What is the Real Prophecy of the Balance of The Force? We don't know yet,
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I didn't catch this the first time, but Mace Windu said something that pretty much seems to sum up the prophecy. "Remember, he is the one who is to bring the Force back into balance". Dwelling on that for a few moments, it seemed to support my whole thought on the entire saga...that the greater theme of it all is the notion of balance. The prophecy seem simple enough...the Force is out of balance..has been for some time...the Force will bring about one who will bring it into balance.
I will give my explanation of how i see this and why I think Lucas' plot devices and explanations are not cop-outs. Where to begin about this....Luke. He is the one who brings this about, obviously not Anakin. Although there is a strange symbolism of a messiah who becomes antichrist and fathers the messiah.
There is obviously a long-standing school of how a Jedi must control his or her (yes, i saw several female Jedi) emotions and psyche in order stay within the realm the "light side". Any attribute exhibited by those of the darkside is forbidden. But, if the Force is out of balance...the Jedi are out of balance. Jedi dogma refuses to utilize a large part of the emotional rainbow. By not embracing the darker side of the psyche and learning to control it, they suffered the consequences. To use a simplistic analogy, it's like going through drug & alcohol "education" in school...only to be a party where someone shoves a big, fat doobie in your face and a bottle of JD in your hand. All you've been told is that they're bad. While some people can bite the apple and enjoy it responsibly, others dive head first into the barrel before they know what they're getting into. Along those lines, a Jedi has forbidden emotions or feelings enter his mind or is tempted with them by someone else. Without ever having been trained in their use and control for productive means, they are left open to succumb to their destructive aspects if not outright embracing the darkside. Yoda himself comments that arrogance has become increasingly common among younger Jedi. (whether or not Lucas intended, i see his portrayal of the conflict of dark and light partly as a commentary on human civilization's tendency to suffer in light of its overwhelming demands of morality, regardless if it's The Church, 21st century liberalism, etc.)
By the end of the story, all that's left of the known masters of the Force are two sith lords and a young Jedi. Luke is left to his own devices...he doesn't have the influence of generations of Jedi dogma staring at his face. In Ep. 6, he does venture into the darkside and does it without falling to it. As a Sith, the emperor is as out of balance as the Jedi were. He tempts Luke with his anger and hatred seemingly in the belief that doing so can only mean joining the darkside. Balance does not mean being in a state of static alignment. I see it more as someone walking the highwire, moving side to side in a controlled manner with their balancing stick. And I think that's what Lucas tried to show...Luke takes his lightsaber to open a can on the emperor and enters the duel with Vader...utilizing his anger to fight fire with fire.
With that said, i don't see the end of the saga as redemption for Anakin as much as i see it as Luke restoring the balance (i'm not going to debate the future since the official story will forever end there) and thereby restoring Anakin. To put it briefly, Luke vanquishes Vader...instead of finishing the job, he tosses his lightsaber and tells Sidious he won't join him as the emperor was certain he would. Certainly, this being the climactic moment of the entire story, there was a tremendous wave in the force, one strong enough to restore Anakin to his natural self. Through Anakin, the Force takes its final step to rid itself of the imbalance and the Emperor, the symbol of the darkside, is destroyed. The moral aspect is completely overshadowed...throwing the Emperor to his doom was less about Anakin doing a "good" thing as it was about a former slave-boy being finally being freed from all that had ever enslaved him...including his Master and himself.
And now i can talk a bit more about young Anakin. I definitely like what someone said previously that Anakin doesn't really choose the darkside as much as he simply falls into before he's entirely aware of it. The seeds are definitely planted and I'm very curious to see how exactly he becomes Vader. He's a great character. He's a kid who loves his mother and has a sense of justice and order for the greater good of all. His mother's death obviously leaves him with a great sense of sorrowful hatred. When he says he wants to be the most powerful Jedi of all, it seems qualified with the purpose of saving others since he could not save her. It also seems like his anger at Obi-Wan for "holding him back" comes from his sense that he feels he could do so much more to help people if only he could work faster to advance his skills and be a full-fledged Jedi.
My basic thoughts on Ep III is that Palpatine enlists Anakin to aide him personally under the guise that he can be some kind of uber-guardian of the Republic. Darth Sidious and Darth Tyrannus (Dooku) continue to manipulate the Trade Federation, et. al into a war with the Republic as part of Sidious' plan to gain acceptance in a play towards declaring himself Emperor. It appears they were also using the rebellious factions to help design and possibly build the Death Star. Skip to the end where all but Obi-Wan and Yoda remain of the Jedi, Obi-Wan goes to Tatooine to watch the newborn Luke from afar and Yoda goest to Degobah. Maybe Lucas will have an official explanation for the existence of the cave. I dunno.
Oh...on a final note, as far as JarJar is concerned, even though he's an annoying piece of CGI crap, i do like how Lucas is using him as a useful plot device. It could have caused a stir if a senator who wasn't a slack-jawed buffoon had introduced a bill to give the Chancellor his emergency executive powers. Plus, at least all the JarJar haters can say "Jar Jar caused the Empire!!! what an asshat!"
:D
and if anyone wonders why i might have spent a bit of time actually discussing a movie like Star Wars....i would like to point something out. Stories such as Star Wars and Dune are not technically Science Fiction. Something like Star Trek is more like Sci-Fi, although most die-hards would consider it to be Speculative Fiction.
What I'm saying is that just because a story takes place in a setting with strange looking races, advanced technology, and spaceships, it doesn't mean that those backdrops are the important element. George Lucas isn't some egghead talking about some experiment gone wrong whereby giant brains are taking over the earth. From his story and from interviews, I know he's done his research....be it from Goethe and Wagner to Taoist beliefs. He intentionally made his story about the various human themes which are prevalent in any story by any writer worth their salt....otherwise, a story would have no interest.
When people turn their noses to Star Wars and relegate it to geekdom, i laugh. Yes, there are tons of hardcore fans that are geeks and miss the boat by spending too much time celebrating the visual aspects of the movie. But compare Lucas' story to something like Wagner's Ring Cycle. In that story, it takes place in underground Dwarf kingdoms, mystical lands, and Valhalla with many non-human characters like dwarves, water nymphs, gods, etc. Scholarly l33tists consider Wagner's work to be intellectual fodder, but many play down Star Wars as something lesser. But Lucas deals with similar types of archetypes and struggles of humanity and the human psyche....and to audiences of the 19th century, the Ring Cycle was the same type of fantasy world as Star Wars, just in a different type of fantasy setting that people of the 20th century could appreciate.