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fidodido said:
To me, the main theme of the whole ST is Balance. . . . [T]he lone justification for them (at least in my grown-up-with-the-prequels-eyes) might be that the “balance” of the force (between light and dark, good and evil, etc.) was not restored when Luke (a jedi) “killed” Palpatine (a sith), because that way the balance would be outweighed by the jedi again.
Respectfully, I never bought Lucas’s notion of “balance.” Like, what – there should be a “balance” between good and evil??? Why wouldn’t we want to see as much good as possible in the universe???
Lucas’s overriding achievement in this franchise was the Great Original Idea, best captured in A New Hope, and echoed to a lesser extent in TESB and ROTJ. The Force was left very vague, and thus open to a variety of interpretations.
Though TESB is a fantastic instalment as far as storytelling and characterization go, I felt Lucas went overboard by having Yoda wax religious about the mystical nature of the Force. At that point the concept shifted from open-to-interpretation – to basically a repackaging of pantheism.
It was (to me) downhill from there. The notions of “balance” and “the will of the Force” (only a person can have a will) crept into the prequels (especially TPM) and were echoed in the sequels.
Cumulatively, Lucas’s Force philosophy is an incoherent mess, and I’ve studiously avoided all such dialogue in my reedits. I’ve tried to preserve the simple idea conveyed originally by Obi-Wan: “The Force is an energy field created by all living things. . . .”
Just a point of view. ☺