How Ahsoka could finally clear up all the confusion around the Force
Every creator seems to have a different take on the most fundamental element of Star Wars, but Ahsoka just might be able to tie them all together
TV Features The Force
Dave Filoni loves Star Wars almost as much as he loves retconning it. In the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Filoni added context to the characters in a way that gave the much-maligned prequel trilogy a new emotional resonance. He addressed a lot of the complaints fans had and even brought fan-favorite Darth Maul back from the dead. Now, in his latest series, Ahsoka, it seems like George Lucas’ hand-picked apprentice is finally bringing balance to the Force. Which is to say he’s attempting to provide some cohesion to the many interpretations of the Force in Star Wars projects over the years.
The Force has been at the heart of Star Wars since Obi-Wan Kenobi explained it to Luke Skywalker (and the audience) for the first time in A New Hope. Everyone knows the iconic phrase “may the Force be with you,” yet even the creatives making Star Wars movies and TV shows can’t seem to agree on what exactly the Force is. Is it a power only certain sensitive users can tap into? Or is it an energy field flowing through every living thing? Is it strictly a light-side/dark-side dichotomy? Or is there something in between? Different filmmakers have had different answers to those questions. Even Lucas changed his mind and contradicted himself from time to time.
“The Force is what gives a Jedi his power”
The initial concept of the Force as laid out in the original trilogy was more of a spiritual or mystical power exclusively wielded by Jedis and those who had fallen to the dark side (the term “Sith” wasn’t officially part of the canon yet). Here’s how Obi-Wan describes it to Luke: “It is an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.” At this point in the timeline, most people believe it’s just religious nonsense, a reasonable assumption considering the few Jedi who are left are scattered and in hiding.
The only Jedi we see in the original trilogy are, of course, Obi-Wan, Yoda, and eventually Luke (not counting Force ghost Anakin), so the concept of the Force and how it can be used is fairly limited. It’s heavily implied that the ability is hereditary. “The Force is strong in my family,” Luke says. Some of the Force powers first depicted include the Jedi mind trick, telekinesis, telepathy, extra-sensory perception, and astral projection from beyond the grave. Other vague abilities are also referenced but not explained, like Obi-Wan sensing the destruction of Alderaan “as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced.” Lucas didn’t bother giving any scientific explanation for the Force this early on; that would come later, and it’s still a sore subject within the fandom.
“A microscopic life form that resides within all living cells”
In 1999, Lucas introduced the controversial concept of midi-chlorians in the prequel Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. We didn’t really need a biological reason why some people were more sensitive to the Force than others, but we got one anyway. According to Qui-Gon Jinn, these tiny symbiotic and sentient creatures are able to connect to the Force and communicate its will to their hosts. They can create life, too. Young Anakin Skywalker doesn’t have a father; he’s a midi-chlorian miracle child. And he’s loaded with these life forms. Qui-Gon confirms this by stealing Anakin’s blood and testing it without his mother’s consent, a totally normal and non-problematic thing to do. Anyway, even after the Jedi Council learns that Anakin’s M-count is “off the charts,” they refuse to train him. For a supposedly wise group of Jedi masters, they really didn’t think that one through. Without Qui-Gon’s intervention, what was Anakin supposed to do? Wander around with 20,000 of these little guys inside his cells continuously speaking to him and just … ignore them?
These were just some of the issues fans had with Phantom Menace (this is the movie that brought us Jar Jar Binks, after all), but the idea of midi-chlorians was so ridiculed that Lucas toned it way down in the next two films. It was too late to erase them from the canon, though. Even years later, when other creators like Dave Filoni brought the midi-chlorians back to the franchise, they remained an unpopular element that fans would rather just disregard.
“It’s true; the Force, the Jedi, all of it. It’s all true.”
The sequel trilogy and the standalone film Rogue One only muddied the concept of the Force even more. In Star Wars Episode VII – The Force Awakens, Rey is naturally gifted and able to use the Force without any training. Some fans took issue with that, calling her an overpowered Mary Sue (we don’t agree, but we’ll leave that argument for another time). She even holds her own in a lightsaber duel with Kylo Ren, a descendant of “the greatest Jedi who ever lived” (according to Filoni), who was trained by Luke Skywalker himself. Director and co-writer J.J. Abrams picked up and ran with many of Lucas’ ideas, but the midi-chlorians weren’t one of them. He had something else in mind to explain Rey’s innate abilities.
First, though, Rian Johnson would get a chance to put his own stamp on the galaxy with Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi, which he wrote and directed. Johnson’s point of view was that aptitude with Force shouldn’t be restricted to any one family or the small pool of legacy characters we’ve already met. He democratized it, appearing to solve the mystery of Rey’s parentage by having Kylo Ren tell her they were no one. She’s just a random person born with the power to instinctively tap into the Force. To really drive home the theme that talent can come from anywhere, he gave us Broom Boy (official name: Temiri Blagg). After helping Finn and Rose escape Canto Bight, we see him listening to the tale of the resistance battling the First Order on Crait along with the other stable workers. Then he goes back to his sweeping, using the Force to lift his broom. Like hope, inspiration is contagious.
After Johnson’s zig, Abrams would zag right back in his conclusion to the sequel trilogy, Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise Of Skywalker. When promoting the film, Abrams said of Johnson’s reference to burying the past, “It’s a bit of a meta approach to the story. I don’t think that people go to Star Wars to be told, ‘This doesn’t matter.’” That’s not the way a lot of fans interpreted it, but whatever. Abrams wanted Rey to be a Palpatine, so that’s what he made her. “Royalty of the dark side,” in his words. And we were back to the idea that prowess with the Force must be tied to a great house, or a long line of gifted Force users.
“I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me”
In between these installments, the standalone film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story gave us yet another take on the Force. We’d already seen Maz Kanata use the Force without being a Jedi, and here we get another example of someone outside the Jedi order who has a strong connection to it. Chirrut Îmwe is from a monastic sect called Guardians of the Whills, who worship the Force. These guys don’t see things in stark terms like light side and dark side, and are seeking balance instead. Though Chirrut, who is blind, has enhanced senses and fighting skills through training and discipline, he doesn’t use the Force the way a Jedi would. The character and his origins take us back to the spiritual aspects of the Force that we saw in the original trilogy. It wouldn’t be the last time we hear his famous chant, though.
“When you think you understand the Force, you realize just how little you know”
Ahsoka uses the same phrase as Chirrut in The Clone Wars when she’s trying to disable the inhibitor chip that caused her former Clone Trooper ally Rex to turn on her after Order 66: “I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me.” She’s left the Jedi order at this point, so it would make sense that she’d use this kind of Force invocation here. Or it’s possible Dave Filoni just really liked the phrase and wanted to use it again.
In The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels, Filoni expanded upon previous concepts of the Force in ways no one ever had before, with Lucas’ full support. As we mentioned earlier, he brought back midi-chlorians and even sent Yoda on a quest to their unnamed ancient planet of origin. There, Yoda learns of the Living Force and the Cosmic Force, two complementary but separate aspects of the energy field that binds the universe together. The lore gets very deep from here, and too complex to get into for now (we could do a whole separate essay on the Mortis gods alone). All you need to know is that Filoni has done a lot of thinking about the Force, where it comes from, and how it works. It’s with all these ideas floating around in his head that he approached the Ahsoka series.
“Talent is a factor. But training and focus are what truly define someone’s success.”
At first, Ahsoka taking on Sabine as her Padawan seems to go against everything we know about the Jedi and the Force. Sabine is not Force-sensitive, as Huyang points out every chance he gets. Ahsoka believes she’s capable of becoming a Jedi anyway. Or whatever passes for one in this era. Even Sabine has her doubts, though. “I can’t use the Force. I don’t feel it. Not like you do,” she tells Ahsoka. “The Force resides in all living things. Even you,” Ahsoka counters.
What Filoni is doing here is attempting to bring all the previous ideas about the Force together, into one Unified Force Theory that explains everything. The Force is in everyone, yes, but talent does make a difference. In other words, anyone can learn to play the cello with enough time and practice, but only a talented few will ever be good enough to play in a symphony orchestra, and fewer still will ever be as good as Yo-Yo Ma. Or if you prefer a physical comparison, Lucas himself once compared it to learning yoga or karate.
So, with this in mind, Johnson is right that the Force is accessible to everyone. Abrams is also right that a select few are capable of wielding it with great skill. Even M-count can be folded into this theory as the factor that determines that skill. We’ll have to see if Sabine gets any better at it, but we wouldn’t be surprised if she finally moves that cup by the end of season one. With the conditions for her to do so already set up by Filoni, it wouldn’t come out of nowhere. And it would finally bring the Force full circle.
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“See, everyone thinks that the Force is invisible, but it’s not. It’s purple. A subtle purple. You’re welcome.”
I forget which edition of the Star Wars RPG had it, but everyone could tap into the Force but at varying levels. One example was Han Solo, who was Force sensitive but he called it luck.
It’s amazing how much of modern Star Wars is built on the old West End Games RPG. Fantasy Flight Games did an anniversary edition reprint of the original core rulebooks, and it’s fascinating to read them now. WEG had to extrapolate so much from just three movies to make the game work, and almost every creative choice they made was taken as established fact by the creators behind the original expanded universe. It go so baked in you can see WEG’s fingerprints all over every modern Star Wars project.
I still think about Control, Sense, and Alter as the three facets of using the Force, due to the WEG game.
The way hyperspace drives are rated goes back to WEG where the lower the number the better and if you were under 1, you were super fast. The Millenium Falcon having a .5
Haha, I remember that! I can just imagine the WEG writers sitting there going, “Okay, so how do we come up with a game mechanism to explain Han’s ‘point five past lightspeed’ line?”I don’t have a problem with a game going to lengths to come up with sensible explanations for things, because you need consistent mechanics in a game (and they have to be good for gameplay). In regular fiction (prose, filmic), that’s not necessary and often a sign that someone is worrying more about the worldbuilding than the storytelling.
The WEG ethos making its way into a lot of following Star Wars projects is pretty cool, if you ask me. I found some notes from their design bible that someone shared online once, and it was very thorough – can’t remember details, but it was all about the “used future” aesthetic, the banality of evil that the Empire represents, and the scope that suggested that the entire galaxy was filled with all kinds of adventure – far beyond just the scope of the movies and the Skywalkers.
I know I’m not immune to nostalgia coloring my opinions, but I think it’s a shame more of the non-EU Star Wars products didn’t stick closer to those exact sentiments.
Seeing star wars as an 8 year old in 1977 was mind blowing and loving that the force was something your could train to use was fantastic. Having the force be an intracellular parasite was disgusting. I am so happy that the force is something aspirational again.
“Until recent times, it was believed the Force originated from little things called Midichlorians. But we now know that far from being the source of the force, they in fact are quite dangerous, and those who are Force sensitive, and have a high Midichlorian level, are far more likely to become evil and genocidal. A shame we didn’t figure this out sooner.”
As I am not that deep into the fandom where is that from?
CineCraft’s mind.
that means nothing to me sorry
The user, just up above, CineCraft made it up.
Why do we keep trying to explain the force when Yoda did so perfectly in Empire?
Size matters not. Look at me! Judge me by my size, do you? Mmm? Hm… and well you should not. For my ally is the Force. And a powerful ally it is. Life creates it. Makes it grow. Its energy — surrounds us… And binds us… Luminous beings are we! Not this crude matter! You must feel the Force around you! Here. Between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere.
Because fans have forgotten the narrative truth that the unexplained creates imaginative magic.In an ideal world, the Star Wars creative brain trust would have moved forward with new in-universe stories and built upon that truth to maintain the franchise’s feel of magic, but everything since Return of the Jedi has been tasked to retcon or explain canon and lore to the point where it’s become burdensome and tiring.
That’s wonderfully executed, powerful scene. I don’t know what changed in me, but for the past few years every time I watch that scene I start tearing up a little. Thank you for reminding me of that wonderful feeling.
It makes me feel warm fuzzies whenever I hear it. Glad to help!
I find this sort of flux-capacitor-esque non-answer to be infinitely more imaginative, creatively satisfying, and entertaining than someone spending years in the lab cooking up wookipedia-friendly worldbuilding
For sure. It leaves it up to interpretation for whoever might be viewing/listening.
Honestly, the most glaring thing about that speech is the way everyone immediately forgot that Yoda doesn’t backwards-talk, that was a thing he was doing when pretending to be an insane old space hermit.
He still puts the subject of his sentences at the end (“Judge me by my size, do you?” “Luminous being are we.”) but it’s less about being a wacky pest and more about speaking in a heightened, Shakespearean-like way.
And yes, his other appearances outside of the original trilogy are pretty grating.
AROUND THE SURVIVORS A PERIMETER CREATEKill me now.
But when he first appears as a mysterious little forest monster, his backward talking is largely verbing at the end, not subject. “Help you I can,” “Stay and help you I will,” “Slimy? My home this is,” “Take you to him, I will.”
Honestly, it seems like he does, even in that quote. My impression was that yoda always was that backwards-talking weirdo; he just dialed it up to 11 to throw Luke off.
Why do we keep trying to explain the force when Yoda did so perfectly in Empire?Size matters not. Look at me! Judge me by my size, do you? Mmm? Hm… and well you should not. For my ally is the Force. And a powerful ally it is. Life creates it. Makes it grow. Its energy — surrounds us… And binds us… Luminous beings are we! Not this crude matter! You must feel the Force around you! Here. Between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere.1) Because this doesn’t address why, if what Obi-Wan and Yoda say on the subject in the OT is true, they needed to wait around for Anakin’s kids to come of age. If its an energy field that binds all living things (what Obi-Wan said, but works with Yoda’s as well), why did they need to wait around for the twins to train them. Why not just pick a bunch of random people to train?That question is the root of why the idea of “force sensitives” was developed in Legends’ cannon. The idea that certain people are naturally more sensitive with the force is nowhere in the OT. The PT of course embraced the idea about some people being more sensitive with the force (and created the midi-chlorians to give a scientific method for measuring force sensitivity) without violating what Obi-Wan and Yoda said about it in the OT: the force is an energy field that surrounds us and binds us, but that only certain people have the innate ability to wield the force (the PT also embraced the Legends’ idea that force sensitivity is hereditary.2) What Filoni seems to be saying about the force is closer to what Yoda and Obi-Wan said about it in the OT, while also answering the question I asked above and without violating what’s said about the force in the PT and Abram’s ST films: the force is an energy field that binds everything together, we are all luminous beings, certain people have a natural/biological connection to the force that makes it easier for them to wield the force that can be passed down hereditarily, but everyone can train and learn to wield it to varying degrees.Given how strong Vader and the Emperor were, no amount of random Joes Obi-Wan and Yoda could train would be strong enough to defeat Vader/the Emperor. But because of the strength of Anakin’s biological connection to the force, Yoda and Obi-way rightfully believed that Anakin’s kids would also have very strong connections to the force.
“By the way, any snacks have you? Serious munchies, I am feeling, brah.”
I didn’t get far into this before I realized I just stopped caring about the details of a lot of this years ago. Tell good stories and I don’t give a single fuck how close you stick to the established rules of space magic.
The problem is the current section of fandom being catered to seems almost exclusively interested in debating lore and recognizing glup shitto in the backgound
I both think it’s a disappointment that Star Wars kept trying to explain the Force, and also figure it was inevitable in a shared universe of films, tv shows, books, etc. Unless you deliberately make a point of not keeping details consistent between works and saying that there’s no formal continuity, eventually you’re going to end up with world-building and fans obsessed with it.
If you keep doing stories featuring a Jedi Order, etc, then eventually fans are going to ask questions like “How are they finding people to be new Jedi? How can they tell if someone is actually strong in the Force?” Fiction doesn’t have to answer that, but it is going to get posed at some point.
In other words, anyone can learn to play the cello with enough time and practice, but only a talented few will ever be good enough to play in a symphony orchestra, and fewer still will ever be as good as Yo-Yo Ma. Or if you prefer a physical comparison, Lucas himself once compared it to learning yoga or karate. For that matter, even super-talented folks like Anakin and Luke can’t really do much with the Force without training. It basically just amounts to supernatural reflexes that they use when piloting.
That said, that kind of bumps up against the super limited number of Jedi and how effective they are. If anyone could learn low-key telekinesis and precognition in the Star Wars setting, you’d think all their soldiers and such would take lessons in it as well.
If anyone could learn low-key telekinesis and precognition in the Star Wars setting, you’d think all their soldiers and such would take lessons in it as well.Especially in a world of cloning. Why would the Empire be screwing around with “normal” soldiers if they could just clone Force-sensitive soldiers? Sure, you don’t want a million would-be Sith Lords running around, but pumping out legions of brian-washed mini-Carries sounds like a hell of a lot better option than a bunch of idiots that can’t hit the broadside of a Star Destroyer with their blasters.
Isn’t that what Moff Gideon tried to do in Mando Season 2? Or was that 3?
Maybe? I don’t really remember much of the particulars of that season other than the last episode.
Once again saying hello as the resident prequel-era millennial. Once again I’m disappointed by older men shitting on my experience. If you saw the OT in theatres I’m old enough to be your son… so enjoy shitting on someone who could be your sons childhood?
To whom are you ranting?
Why are we even looking toward Rian Johnson on what the Force means? Let alone J.J. Abrams? Neither of these idiots seemed to really understand what it was about. Everyone has a connection to the Force, but only a select few have stronger connections, which makes them Force sensitive. And the only family of Force users in the Star Wars Universe were the descendants of Anakin Skywalker . . . until Disney and Abrams screwed everything up by making Rey Palpatine’s granddaughter . . . or the granddaughter of his clone. Good grief!And before any of you get worked up over the midichlorians, let me remind you that they were simply symbiotes that connected the Force to living beings. That’s all. The topic of of symbiotes were used as a theme for “The Phantom Menace”.The real problem is that George Lucas should have never sold the franchise to Disney Studios in the first place. Even Dave Filoni has failed to truly understand the Star Wars universe.
probably because they made star wars movies.
waaaaaaah! But I didn’t like those movies! waaaaaah! no one understands the star wars universe like me (the guy who explained the force differently than the original trilogy did!)
Could….but won’t.
The Force is The Force, of course, of course
And no one can just use The Force of course
That is, of course, unless a source says you’re Force sensitive!
Ah the famous chant of the Guardians of the Whillburs!
You deserve approximately infinity upvotes for that pun.
Not going to lie, I am proud of myself for it!
You should be. I cracked up when I read it. I doff my topper to you!
You started it all with a deep cut, and I thank you.Course, I am walking around work today humming the Mr Ed theme, so thanks for the ear worm, too!
*clap* *clap* *clap*
Part of the problem is that George Lucas isn’t a particularly good writer. Sorry, it’s true. It’s no coincidence that the best movie in the series wasn’t written by him.Also, Jedi are supposed to eschew romantic entanglements as they can bring up emotions that can lead to the Dark Side. It’s hard to family lineages going if the Jedi aren’t going to fuck. The whole concept of these great families in the Force also reeks of eugenics.
illiterate.
Frankly I love this new era of Star Wars and I’m looking forward to the upcoming Filoni projects This is why Lightsabers Don’t Extend Infinitely, as well as Why It’s Sometimes Ok and Even Necessary to Kiss Your Sister.
They’re already priming that last one with Ezra referring to Sabine as his sister. It’s Star Wars so that could really go either way.
A lightsaber is a contained loop of energy. It’s not like a laser blast.
Yeah well I need eight episodes of wildly varying length to walk me through it.
This is a reference I’d understand better had I seen the cartoons.
At this point, wouldn’t it be more interesting if the force just became like a religion with different sects and interpretations and we aren’t sure which one is right. But they all kind of make sense, but also all don’t some of the time.I guess what I’m saying is I’m not 9 anymore and b/w morality isn’t as interesting as it used to be.
you’re not gonna see anything ‘interesting’ or especially ‘new’ out of star wars for some time.
Andor
I think a black and white morality is baked in to Star Wars’ DNA, which isn’t a bad thing for this genre of story. But I agree that it doesn’t have to be boring, and multiple Force-using factions/faiths can be interesting. The old EU didn’t even position the Jedi and Sith as diametrically opposed like the post-prequel continuity did. The Sith were more like a cult of evil sorcerers who had a fully separate approach to the Force, and there were Jedi that fell to the Dark Side that weren’t necessarily Sith. But then the prequels made the Jedi into a weird emotionless cult, and the Sith were likewise flattened into an equally ascetic monastic order, but angry. If those are the only two choices for followers of the Force, well, they both suck.
“Yeah, I was raised Esithcopalean, but I don’t really practice anymore.”
No one expects the Sith Inquisition
Deciding how the Force works is the least of modern Star Wars’s problems. Let’s start with making sure competent filmmakers and storytellers get hired, first.
We’ve been waiting for that since 1983. Let’s not hold our collective breath.
I think we all know what Star Wars needs: more clunky explanations as to how characters got their last names.
“Wow, you’re some pilot, kid! It’s like you’re walking across the sky!”“Yeah, he used to hang out at this pub called the ‘Ack’.”“She’s really into flying bugs that are similar to butterflies.”“Hey, fatty!”
The martial arts metaphor is incredibly apt here. Anyone can theoretically fight or try to throw a punch. most will be terrible at it especially if they’ve never done it before, and prob will never be able to knock someone out if they tried. But they can still try to throw a punch if they want. or a choke, or a takedown, or a sprawl, or whatever. In fact they will be so incompetent that it will look like they did nothing at all (watch brand new students doing jiu jitsu sometime. its basically them flopping around on the ground).Then, take most people and teach them how to do some martial arts. Most still won’t be able to do anything. Too out of shape, not athletic enough, and they don’t do any kind of training or conditioning. Even those that do will only do it once or twice and give up because its not for them. Then, take of that group those that stick and out and come train every day. Their conditioning might go up, and maybe some subset will get noticeably better over time (this is the smaller group of force sensitives bc they have some little bit of natural ability at least). However, a lot of those who come in every day will still not learn how to fight in any kind of meaningful way that an outsider would be able to discern.Then, you have the much smaller group that come in and train and develop their skills and their conditioning and more importantly want to be there. These are your jedi padawans. They are still probably going to die in a street fight against an aggressor (especially accounting for other factors like size and sex etc), but they are noticeably or visually better at this and have something to show for their efforts and aptitude.A much much smaller group of people join the fight team and test themselves fighting people similar to them. they have the aptitude, the skills, the conditioning, the mental fortitude. Most importantly, they are making sacrifices in order to train at this level. They have made time in their careers and lives, and have dropped other things to make room. They can win fights, but very well might lose to someone else. These are the jedi knights. This is a very small select group of people relative to the wider population. An even smaller group of them can fight at the amateur level, an even smaller group at the pro level, and yet an even smaller group are good enough to fight in a major promotion and actually become ranked fighters or champions.
Then finally you get our main characters. These are the Jon Jones, Demetrious Johnson, GSP type individuals. High natural aptitude in the force, can just eyeball an advanced technical martial arts move and replicate it immediately. Not only do they have insanely high levels of natural mental/emotional/physical athleticism, they have also put in the work over years to get where they are. These are the Palpatines, Skywalkers, Kenobis, Windus, Banes, etc. These guys can’t make furniture, or fix the toilet, or design a building, or other day to day jobs for the most part. They have dedicated their entire beings to this. Truly one in the universe examples are beyond nuts. Luke and anakin are natural savant fighter pilots, palpatine is also a master politician and manipulator, etc.
This metaphor to explain force aptitude and usability also works perfectly well since all these characters have to learn martial arts anyways.
I tend to find Filoni’s vision of Star Wars as an intriguing but disappointing hodgepodge. For every glimmer of clarifying unity, there’s a moment of blatant fanservice; for each new creative idea, there’s a stale rehash of the familiar. For every Mandalorian season one, there’s a Book of Boba Fett. So. All that said: democratizing the Force is the right way to go, and it’s very cool to have a Jedi choose an apprentice that is explicitly not strong (yet) in the Force. Not everyone is born with a natural aptitude for meditation and kung-fu, but that doesn’t mean that only the chosen few born with the right genes can reach inner peace through spiritual discipline.
I also think that in recent Star Wars media, the Force serves more and more to be a simple superpower generator, which is slowly changing Star Wars’s nominal genre from “sci-fi swashbuckling/Western/samurai adventure” to “superheroes.” So anything we can do to return Jedi to “occasionally clairvoyant knights-errant” instead of “X-Men in space,” I’m for it.
One of the worst things in entertainment in the past 20 (?) years has been the decision to over-explain everything. Ambiguity can lend so much power and mystery to a story. I really dislike this need to give a backstory or a definition to every fragment of a winning story.
At this point in the timeline, most people believe it’s just religious nonsense, a reasonable assumption considering the few Jedi who are left are scattered and in hiding….is it that reasonable when there were scads of Jedi running around leading armies, advising governments, and generally shaping events on a massive scale less than twenty years ago? This is one of the many reasons I was annoyed with Lucas for turning the Jedi into this theocratic, quasi-governmental entity in the prequels. In the originals I always got the vibe that there were only ever a handful of Jedi wandering around, righting wrongs and helping communities when needed, but generally behaving like powerful yet reclusive Zen masters. In this context, it makes sense for someone like Han to dismiss this Force stuff as religious mumbo jumbo—sure everyone’s heard of the Jedi, but only a tiny fraction of people have actually seen them use their abilities first-hand, so it’s probably all just stories. Except no, Lucas decided that the Jedi are these huge players in Galactic politics, so now Han looks like a blithering idiot for failing to recognize one of Galaxy’s most famous and decorated generals.
That always bothered me too.
I’ve been saying for a while that, post-prequels, Star Wars only makes sense if there’s no reliable way to disseminate information across the galaxy – i.e. no major news media and no unified record of history accessible to the public. For instance: if Anakin Skywalker was a beloved, galaxy-saving war hero (like some Star Wars properties suggests he was) there’s no way Palpatine doesn’t leverage his popularity to help buoy the new fascist state he’s building. And there’s no way Luke Skywalker doesn’t learn that his dad wasn’t actually a navigator on a spice freighter in elementary school.
Luke was clearly homeschooled by his (god)-fearing, people of the land aunt and uncle. But yes.
I never thought of it that explicitly, but me too. Thanks for making me enjoy the movies even less!
Why do we consider this a good thing? Why do fans always beg for the cool stuff to be explained? It never satisfies. Just let it be cool, FFS.
Star Wars is suffering from something that hamstrings a lot of fiction where the heroes have supernatural powers. With each successive bit of Star Wars media we expand our understanding of the ever growing list of things The Force can do, but we have absolutely no idea what it can’t do, and neither do the writers. Combine this with characters manifesting powers they’ve never used before when it’s convenient and it just drains the fun and tension out of every scene involving a Force user. The Force needs limits. These limits don’t need to be spelled out in the text, but they do need to be established and the writers need to work within those limits. Like when Russel T. Davies revived Doctor Who and impressed upon all the writers “The sonic screwdriver can do anything except something that would end the episode.” It’s a loose limit, but it helped get the Doctor into trouble and keep him there. The Jedi don’t have any limits, so its hard to buy that they are ever imperiled or under any pressure whatsoever.
And when that rule was abandoned, ‘Doctor Who’ got worse. I remember episodes from the Matt Smith era where it was just a bunch of things happening, and when that had gone on long enough, the Doctor pointed his sonic at something and the episode ended.