First, please, this thread is for precise reasoning about the prequel trilogy from an artistic standpoint and nothing else. Many of you, like CO, have been doing this, but then again, some of you have clearly not. Sure, if you want to state your unsupported opinions, you can do so, but I would ask that you don't get into meaningless screaming matches over them (it serves nothing). Go-Mer, this means you. Please, stop responding to people who say nothing apart from how they hate the prequels. That’s their opinion. If you find what they say offensive, it is better to just ignore it.
Now, Go-Mer, you're a very interesting person. You seem exactly like the side of myself that seeks to be open and enjoy whatever a given author may have intend with his art, and yet you come to conclusions that are very different from mine. When reading your opinions, it seems like I can only come to the same conclusions if I dismiss logical cohesion and simplicity in art as something unimportant. In other words, I believe you are strongly moved by the emotional scenes portrayed in the prequel trilogy, as I tried to be many times, but when it comes to a logical context or foundation for those scenes you're willing to accept quite a lot of useless nonsense. Now, that's either because you're a very emotionally oriented person and logical beauty is unimportant to you, or you really, really, really enjoy thinking about far-fetched and convoluted/confusing logic (perhaps therein lies the logical beauty for you).
When I watch a movie and look for logical beauty within it, I am looking for a good story or ethical/philosophical meanings, not ways to remove seeming contradictions. For instance, the killing of “younglings” seems dramatic and horrible for me, until of course I try and understand a logical context for why on earth it is happening at all. Then my mind immediately starts to get sick of the whole thing. The emotional beauty disappears.
Sure, you guys can claim to CO that the original trilogy can work as a continuation of the "Anakin" saga. That all three of the movies are actually about a pair of twins working to "resurrect" their father from the opening scene in Star Wars to the closing scene in Jedi (as George Lucas tries to now claim), and you can jump through a million logical hoops to prove how this might work as the focus of the films as well. But where is the remaining beauty after you have tortured the films in this way?
Darth Vader was NEVER originally intended to be Anakin Skywalker or Luke’s real father until the preproduction of Empire Strikes Back. This is historical fact. Likewise, Princess Leia was NEVER originally intended to be Luke’s sister until George Lucas decided to go that route when writing the story for Return of the Jedi. This is historical fact. Therefore, to pretend that elements from the earlier movies somehow foreshadow these ideas is pretending only.
The original trilogy is about Luke Skywalker. It is about giving form to classic themes from our world’s mythology. Darth Vader was originally just a villain in this context. To force the “saga” of Anakin as the supposedly “true” focus of the film does not work in any artistic way whatsoever. It doesn’t even emotionally work since all of the emotional elements from the original Star Wars have nothing to do with Darth Vader being anything more than the totally awesome villain.
Originally posted by: Go-Mer-Tonic
Midichlorians
Lucas talks about how he always intended there to be this more scientific side to the Force, but that he just didn't get into that much in the classic trilogy (I think I am getting this from the commentary on the TPM DVD). If you read the ANH novel (even before the SE's came around) there is a part where Obi-Wan talks to Luke about how the Old Republic tried to define the Force with science, but that they never quite could. That perhaps the Force is just as much magic as it is science. Not more magic than science but just as much. Add to that the way Luke was strong in the Force because he was the biological son of a powerful Jedi and it's easy to see what Lucas is talking about with regards to the "science" of the Force even back then. So all this stuff about how Lucas took away the mysticism and replaced it with science isn't entirely accurate.
Now the concept of Midichlorians themselves is fascinating to me. Lucas loosely based them on our real world equivalent: Mitochondria. Just like Midichlorians, Mitochondria are a microscopic life form that lives in every living cell here on Earth. Scientists theorize that they are the reason life exists in the first place and that without them, we would have no knowledge of the Force (well okay maybe not that last part but these two concepts really are that close).
The really fascinating thing about them is that when scientists started studying Mitochondria, a lot of religious people were saying we shouldn't be studying them. That finding out the source of life could stand to disprove God himself. Just as many Star Wars fans were insisting that the introduction of Midichlorians could stand to de-mystify the Force concept.
In reality neither do any such thing. Neither the study of Mitochondria, or the introduction of the Midichlorian concept "explain" God or the "Force" respectively. They both merely add a whole new layer of questions on top of the ones we already had.
Some fans act like the Midichlorians fly in the face of everything we know about the Force in the classic trilogy.
For example, some people say if Midichlorians are only in living things, then how could the Force be in the rock as Yoda says in Empire? The answer is that Midichlorians aren't the Force itself; they are merely antennae which allow 2 way communication between living things and the Force.
Other people say that Midichlorians suddenly make the Force biological, but as I explained earlier, it was always something passed down from one generation to the next as exampled by Luke being strong in the Force because he's related to Anakin. Also the very concept that they would be able to make the Jedi "all but extinct" shows that Force sensitivity would be something that is genetic rather than purely spontaneous.
I could go on and on like this aimlessly, but I want to hear your questions if you have any to point me in a more meaningful direction for you.
For those of you who really didn't like the Midichlorians, please bring up concerns I have yet to address.
Wow, that is quite the lengthy explanation, but it totally missed the point unfortunately. I guess I should have been clearer with my question. I did not ask for a logical way in which the Midichlorians can function with a traditional idea of the force. I had already figured out that entire train of thought on my own after my very first viewing of the Phantom Menace.
What I was actually asking about the artistic method behind the film. You were supposed to explain why any of that stuff you typed up about midichlorians should actually matter to anyone. In what way are any of the Star Wars movies enhanced by talking about Midichlorians? To me it served no purpose other than to waste time in the movie and make the force into an overly confusing subject. Normally, in aesthetics, you have simplicity tying together a number of complex concepts, yet George’s introduction of the midiclorians actually did the exact opposite.
Same thing goes for the mountainous Jedi jumping found in the prequels. Even the longest jump that Luke made in the original trilogy does not compare to what occurred in the prequel films. So, I ask, what was the point? What was added to Star Wars by introducing something so extreme and inharmonious? Just to have something “new”? Sorry, that explanation is bullshit. Old concepts can be just as compelling as new ones and more moderate, force-jumps would have been just as dramatic. Though, this isn’t really a problem when analyzed as a film by film basis. It is simply a “saga” problem from my point of view.
Also, Go-Mer, I would like you to answer the last question from my first post if you can. Thank you. 
