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Star Wars Ep. 1

I was planning on avoiding this movie. Not only does it not merit another rewatch, much less spending $10 to see it in a theater. The added 3D element would make it even more annoying than it is on it's own. So I didn't think to write anything about it because it would be largely redundant and it just wasn't on my radar. But thanks to the Bitter Script Reader's post on the unnecessariness of midi chlorians, I had to talk about something I find even more annoying.

The thing that bugged me even more than the midi chlorian thing was Anakin's mom saying there was no father. As the BSR says in that post, we are supposed to assume that there is a biological component to being a Jedi. In fact, that is why Qui Gon asks who the father is. He wants to know why Anakin's midi chlorian count is so high.

So while I completely agree with the post, it's not as if the explanation doesn't make some logical sense. It's just redundant. But a fatherless conception of a child doesn't make much sense within the films. And worse yet, it's never addressed again. No, "Hmm. That's kind of weird. I'll look into that." from Obi Wan. No, "Well, that proves he is our Savior." from Qui Gon. Thus I think it serves even less to the plot than the midi chlorian thing.

It's almost as if Lucas wanted to give a nod to the religious folk. How else am I supposed to view it? There is only one popular fatherless child story in our society. So the Jesus story is what you invoke when you go to the fatherless child well. It's not overtly suggested that this is what Lucas is trying to do, thus my confusion with putting in the movie.

Unlike the biological component of the force, it's not suggested in the original trilogy that Luke is a chosen one type of figure. He is merely presented as the last option. In the original Star Wars, Obi Wan knows Luke is Anakin's son and has knowledge of the prophecy that Qui Gon speaks of in Ep. 1. But Obi Wan never mentions the prophecy and Luke's relation to it in the original trilogy. It could be that he just didn't believe the prophecy anymore. But once Luke finds out that Vader is his father, wouldn't it have comforted Luke to hear about the prophecy?

We don't know because there is no prophecy in the original trilogy. It was introduced in order to justify certain plots in Ep. 1 and to draw a nice, easy line connecting the new movies with the original trilogy. While lame, it at least attempts to form a coherent story. The whole fatherless child angle just serves no purpose for me. It did more to remove me from the world that Lucas created in the original trilogy than Jar Jar or midi chlorians did. Though Jar Jar is a really close second.

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