Midi-chlorians: dumbest idea in Star Wars history - beating out the brother/sister kiss and Jar-Jar by a country mile.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens Discussion (HERE THERE BE SPOILERS)
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Really? What is so bad about them? (And if you're going to say that it brings science into mysticism, remember the very first thing that we learn about the Force in A New Hope; it's an energy field. In other words, science was with the Jedi since literally the beginning.)
The concept of midi-chlorians is sound, (at least as sound as anything in a space fantasy world) it's just that their function and significance were very poorly explained.
They're basically like mitochondria in the real world. For those that don't know, mitochondria are microorganisms that exists in most of our cells and functions as an organelle. It's basically another life-form that billions of years ago entered a symbiotic relationship with out primordial ancestors and has been with us ever since. In the case of Star Wars, the midi-chlorians originated from the planet where life in the galaxy first appeared and later propagated out by some unknown mechanism.
It's a necessary explanation to account for why the force is strong in some bloodlines, but has not propagated across the entire species and why the ability to use it is present in individuals from many unrelated sentient species. There's still a mystical element to it since the force has a will of it's own, can transend time and can seemingly make the midi-chlorians act on it's behalf.
So one might say that a person isn't strong in the force because they so happened to have a high midi-chlorian count, but that they have a high midi-chlorian count because the force has willed that they shall be strong in the force. The cause-effect relationship might not be clear cut as it appears.
They're basically like mitochondria in the real world. For those that don't know, mitochondria are microorganisms that exists in most of our cells and functions as an organelle. It's basically another life-form that billions of years ago entered a symbiotic relationship with out primordial ancestors and has been with us ever since. In the case of Star Wars, the midi-chlorians originated from the planet where life in the galaxy first appeared and later propagated out by some unknown mechanism.
It's a necessary explanation to account for why the force is strong in some bloodlines, but has not propagated across the entire species and why the ability to use it is present in individuals from many unrelated sentient species. There's still a mystical element to it since the force has a will of it's own, can transend time and can seemingly make the midi-chlorians act on it's behalf.
So one might say that a person isn't strong in the force because they so happened to have a high midi-chlorian count, but that they have a high midi-chlorian count because the force has willed that they shall be strong in the force. The cause-effect relationship might not be clear cut as it appears.
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I still prefer Obi Wan's explanation in Episode 4
And later in ESB Yoda says that the Force is everywhere, on the ground, the trees, even the rocks. So what do trees and rocks and soil also have midichlorians too?
And later in ESB Yoda says that the Force is everywhere, on the ground, the trees, even the rocks. So what do trees and rocks and soil also have midichlorians too?
^No. The Force is everywhere, with or without midi-chlorians but it originates from life, not dead matter. The midi-chlorians are just the biological mechanism by which some life-forms directly tap into it. To some degree the midi-chlorians do create the force, but only so far as *any* living thing does.
Think of it like this: the universe is full of what we call visible light, but we only see it because we have eyes: a biological mechanisum that turns light waves into bio-chemical signals. If we did not have eyes the light would still be there, even if our eyeless perception of the universe is of a dark void. In this analogy, midi-chlorians are the eyes that can show you the "larger world" that is the force.
Think of it like this: the universe is full of what we call visible light, but we only see it because we have eyes: a biological mechanisum that turns light waves into bio-chemical signals. If we did not have eyes the light would still be there, even if our eyeless perception of the universe is of a dark void. In this analogy, midi-chlorians are the eyes that can show you the "larger world" that is the force.
Yeah but I still prefer the original trilogy and their explanation in that....... That's just how I feel.
They're not mutually exclusive.
The initial explanation is only part of an explanation, it only addresses in broad terms what the force is and where it comes from, not *how* a person can tap into it or why only some may do so. Ben never addresses it directly. The midi-chlorian side of things is simply an elaboration on this base principle.
What you're saying is the equivalent of saying "I prefer Newton's First Law". Or "I prefer protons". It's a component of the whole, not the whole itself and is meaningless without the context the further explanations provide and visa-versa.
Nothing is being negated here.
No, I think what he's saying is he prefers if there simply is no scientific explanation of the Force because nobody understands in other than mystical terms.
So it is mutually exclusive.
At least that's how I see it. I want The Force to be fantasy, not science fiction. The original Star Wars movie was very much a fantasy movie set in space.
I get that argument, but I feel it's rather self-contradictory. Kenobi flat out says "the force is what gives the Jedis power" which directly connects his seemingly spiritual or magical abilities to an outside power source, and "it's an energy field created by all living things" which describes the mechanism by which the power source is generated.
The midi-chlorians are just another piece of that same mechanism that accounts for why the Jedi (and Sith) specifically can manipulate this universal energy while others cannot. Yet another piece is the interactions of the living force and the cosmic force as described in the Yoda arc.
I honestly think the main reason why midi-chlorian's rubbed people the wrong way is the klunky way in which they were introduced. They're no more or less mystical or scientific that those two lines from ANH. Indeed, in a sense they're somewhat more mystical because these physical creatures have a direct line to the force and were first born (or created) at the very origin of life and the force itself. They're each a tiny piece of the Star Wars equivalent of Eden. A living spark of creation.
Remember also that Star Wars is not straight fantasy, it's a lived-in space fantasy. A hybrid of mysticism and high technology. A warror monk with spirit powers and a laser sword. An evil sorcerer with a cyborg body. A cellular organelle microorganism that communes with the mystical force of the cosmos fits quite well into that pattern of genre-hybrid concepts.
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Star Wars works best when it doesn't bring facts or quantifiable data into the picture.
For example - the Millennium Falcon's Kessel Run. Han says that it made the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs... what does that even mean? In TFA we find out that apparently less parsecs is better because the legend of the Falcon's Kessel Run had been incorrectly told and Han was offended at when Rey related that it made the Run in "14" parsecs.
But we still have no idea what that means.. and then Han also says it will do .05 past lightspeed. What the heck does that mean?
Pages of technical manuals and volumes of speculation have been devoted to the .5 past lightspeed and parsecs comments. Yawn. The Falcon is fast... and we see visual proof of that in the two Death Star runs.
Another example: the single environment planets - the desert planet, the forest planet, the fjord planet, the ice planet, etc.
Probably doesn't fit any scientific reality, but makes for good fantasy storytelling.
Star Trek is full of technobabble that attempts to be sort of based on real world science. Star Wars is a fantasy, and works best when the science stuff is left behind.
Life creates the Force, some people can touch the Force, some people are stronger in the Force touching than others. Nice and simple.
For example - the Millennium Falcon's Kessel Run. Han says that it made the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs... what does that even mean? In TFA we find out that apparently less parsecs is better because the legend of the Falcon's Kessel Run had been incorrectly told and Han was offended at when Rey related that it made the Run in "14" parsecs.
But we still have no idea what that means.. and then Han also says it will do .05 past lightspeed. What the heck does that mean?
Pages of technical manuals and volumes of speculation have been devoted to the .5 past lightspeed and parsecs comments. Yawn. The Falcon is fast... and we see visual proof of that in the two Death Star runs.
Another example: the single environment planets - the desert planet, the forest planet, the fjord planet, the ice planet, etc.
Probably doesn't fit any scientific reality, but makes for good fantasy storytelling.
Star Trek is full of technobabble that attempts to be sort of based on real world science. Star Wars is a fantasy, and works best when the science stuff is left behind.
Life creates the Force, some people can touch the Force, some people are stronger in the Force touching than others. Nice and simple.
I disagree, it is not the same or more of the same. One is a non-verifiable fantasy explanation of a non-quantifiable and non-detectable force. The other is very scientific.
That is what rubbed people the wrong way, not the clumsy introduction. I think most people just didn't want the Force to have a scientific explanation. They wanted a fantastical explanation.
Obi-Wan's explanation provided that. It was almost philosophical, definitely metaphysical.
(And before the strawman comes up: I'm an atheist. I'm not generally a fan of the metaphysical. It just works in Star Wars for me.)
^I'm an atheist too and not a fan of strawmen arguments as a rule.
As for the rest, sure if you want, you can choose to interpret it as 100% mysticism, but it's just that: a choice.
The alternate is just as valid an interpretation based purely on what is said and thus is demonstrably not a mutually exclusive concept. It also has the bonus validity of authorial intent.
The existence of a mystic force does not preclude a quantifiable interaction what said interaction has an observable effect on the physical universe. The Discworld books touched on this concept quite often, pointing out that while magic is magic, the universe is rather stubborn about the laws of thermodynamics.
If you turn a person onto a toad, you have to do something with all that left-over mass. So you either turn them into an equally massive toad (possibly unwise since a human sized and probably very annoyed toad might be harder to placate than the person was), numerous normal sized toads (which is going to give the mind previously attached to all that matter one hell of a migraine) or figure out what to do with an amorphous sack of mostly water. Either way, potentially very messy. Also, if you teleport someone half way around the world (disc, or globe) and fail to take into account the direction and speed of the world's spin, they might appear on the other side just long enough to be propelled over the horizon at about a thousand miles an hour.
In the context of Star Wars, the force itself is indeed a mystical thing, but if it is to act upon the physical universe it has to somehow accommodate the rules of the physical universe. This is also needed from a storytelling POV since you need to set hard limits on your characters super-powers otherwise they'll be too powerful to write compelling stories around.
For instance, the force gives the Jedi strength, stamina and speed, but they are not invincible. So long as they are tied to their "crude matter" they are still in a practical sense physical beings. They can only jump so high, move so fast and are still subject to the frailties of their bodies.
The force also offers them great insight, but they're not omnipotent. The future is indeed always in motion, mostly thanks to a non-deterministic space-time continuum. Jedi can move object with their minds, but it requires concentration and effort proportional to the mass of the object being moved.
Where things get into pure mysticism is the whole disappearing body/force ghost thing, but that would appear to be mostly a mass to energy conversion and re-distribution, at least as far as the body is concerned. The mind and personality is another thing since you can't quantify thought beyond the patterns of electrons used to transmit them. That truly is *something else*.
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Both our interpretations were equally valid as long as there was only Obi-Wan's explanation.
By introducing the scientific explanation in Episode I, my interpretation became invalid. All of a sudden there was a clear scientific explanation. Mystical things cannot be proven by science. It took away the mystical interpretation many SW fans had.
That's what we/they didn't like.
I can assure you that making something easily detectable and quantifiable makes most people think it's not mystical anymore.
That doesn't mean it has to be detectable to that great detail. That's the nature of mystical things. They escape detection.
I'm not sure why you're so desperately trying to convince people that midiclorians can be mystical, too. You got your scientific explanation, enjoy it. Most people find that an overwhelming amount of quantification and science detracts from the mystical qualities of the phenomenon in question. The less scientific explanation there is for it, the more mystical and amazing the Force sounds to us. We want the Force to be as little explainable, quantifiable and detectable as possible.
You're not going to change that. But apparently the other explanation works really well for you, so that's great. Who am I to tell you what should or should not work for you.
I personally didn't like it's introduction or the implications of the mid-clorians. I think it could add more to the lore, but it's mishandling and introduction, and basically being used to describe how awesome Anakin is without us seeing him do something awesome.
Also, it also struck me that the Jedi, if they know it could be passed along in genetics, then they should have been more like the Bene Gesserit in Dune with a breeding program to bring about the prophesied Chosen One.
Also, it also struck me that the Jedi, if they know it could be passed along in genetics, then they should have been more like the Bene Gesserit in Dune with a breeding program to bring about the prophesied Chosen One.
Midi-chlorians were an indulgence that added nothing to the story. Nada.
From a story-telling perspective, they were a solution in search of a problem that actually created problems.
From a story-telling perspective, they were a solution in search of a problem that actually created problems.
You act as if midichlorians overrule something in the original trilogy. They do not. Everything said to be true about the Force in the OT is still true with the advent of midichlorians. Midichlorians contradict nothing from the OT. And there's a reason for that.
You act as if midichlorians are an "explanation" of the Force. They are not. They explain differential innate Force sensitivity. That's a different subject. It is disingenuous in the extreme to pretend that an explanation of one somehow replaces or contradicts the so-called "explanation" of the other. When the subject itself has changed - nice sleight of hand there, by the way, I wonder if anyone noticed? - surely the "explanation" would not be expected to be identical.
If one watches the films certain things can be observed. In the PT, though we do learn things about it, the Force itself is not defined. Perhaps it was because the Force was already defined in the OT, and it was assumed that a sufficiently large cohort of the general public remembered the OT. Similarly, in the OT differential innate Force strength is not explained. Two trilogies, each with an unexplained subject which is addressed in the other. But not the same subject. Midichlorians are not the Force.
The biological basis for inheritance of Force potential is wrongly believed to be something introduced by the PT, but it exists in the OT. It's sitting right there staring you in the face in ROTJ, and is arguably also implied by logical inference of things in TESB. It's nothing new. Midichlorians are simply what you find when you look under the hood.
By way of political analogy, midichlorians are Hillary Clinton and midichlorian haters are Trump voters. In other words, everything you believe about them is wrong. It's propaganda, disconnected from the facts.
I didn't have a problem with the midichlorians, but then again I liked getting an explanation for Force powers. Just the powers, and how Jedi connected to the Force, not the Force itself. It was also a quick easy way to tell us how powerful Anakin was, granted it might have been better to just show instead of tell, but oh well...
Remember that the explanation was that midichlorians are what allow a Force user to hear the Will of the Force, but also that midichlorians were in all living cells. In theory anyone could hear the Force, but those with higher count could hear it more clearly, if they clear their mind. The Force remains an energy field generated by all living things. It surround people, penetrates people, and binds the galaxy together.
Anakin's count was super high, which has been translated as being the most powerful because it allows for better use or control of the Force. It could be something a little different. He could hear the Force more clearly, but it might also have lead to too much noise from the Force in his not so calm mind. He seems more rational after his limbs are removed and he's put into the suit. A lot less midichlorians allowing the Force to yell at him for being Anakin.
Bloodlines seem to produce strong force users, though the Jedi, on the surface, seem to avoid having families in the last years of the Republic. The Skywalker line comes out of nowhere, and children are pickup up after screening across the galaxy as a slow rate given there are something like 10,000 Jedi at the start of the Clone Wars among the entire population of the Republic. Now that might just mean that there are several million potential Force uses that were not found, or declined the Jedi's offer, or they were weak users at best and thus would not pass the trails to become Jedi Knights, or even Padawan for that matter. There does not seem to be any effort to breed strong Jedi to continue their bloodlines. Or course that is what we see. Species have needs of any gender. So there is no telling how far an wide a Jedi's bloodline might go, or if any of the female Jedi have babies of their own from time to time. Depending on species of course. I know of several fans that want Rey to be a Kenobi, for instance. A granddaughter via Satine and Obi-wan.
Anakin's count was super high, which has been translated as being the most powerful because it allows for better use or control of the Force. It could be something a little different. He could hear the Force more clearly, but it might also have lead to too much noise from the Force in his not so calm mind. He seems more rational after his limbs are removed and he's put into the suit. A lot less midichlorians allowing the Force to yell at him for being Anakin.
Bloodlines seem to produce strong force users, though the Jedi, on the surface, seem to avoid having families in the last years of the Republic. The Skywalker line comes out of nowhere, and children are pickup up after screening across the galaxy as a slow rate given there are something like 10,000 Jedi at the start of the Clone Wars among the entire population of the Republic. Now that might just mean that there are several million potential Force uses that were not found, or declined the Jedi's offer, or they were weak users at best and thus would not pass the trails to become Jedi Knights, or even Padawan for that matter. There does not seem to be any effort to breed strong Jedi to continue their bloodlines. Or course that is what we see. Species have needs of any gender. So there is no telling how far an wide a Jedi's bloodline might go, or if any of the female Jedi have babies of their own from time to time. Depending on species of course. I know of several fans that want Rey to be a Kenobi, for instance. A granddaughter via Satine and Obi-wan.
I agree. They exist, in my opinion, because Lucas cannot resist tinkering with anything and everything no matter how perfect and because he needed a way to show that Anakin was super awesome.
