Vaderisnothayden said:

If that's Lucas's intention that's dumb. The traditional view of balance (re good and evil) in fiction is that good and evil are both part of the natural order and both have a place. To talk about balance in the films while favoring a view of only-the-good-side-is-allowed is idiotic. If he wants to knock out the dark side entirely he shouldn't put in talk about balance. Balance is when you balance between opposing things, not when you have only one thing and eradicate the other. George, if you're not interested in balance don't talk about balance.

And there's identifying passion with the dark side. Passion is what makes us human. It's an essential part of life and human nature. To identify passion with the dark side while portraying the Jedi ideal as basically not feeling is pretty awful. That's a message that feeling is evil and that we shouldn't feel. Horrible message.

So balance is when the side that's associated with feeling is gotten rid of? That's a bent message.

In the Star Wars universe, the force IS the force. It is the balance, the energy field created by all life. It includes all things. It needs nothing outside of it to balance it. It's not just some standard of 'good,' it's the way the universe should be.

The pursuit of unnatural levels of control (preventing death, blowing up planets, "UNLIMITED POWER!") is inherently wrong. The dark side is an intrinsically UNbalanced thing that addcits, manipulated, and twists things. It's like a cancer.

To arbitrarily apply some outside standard that "good and evil" are two equally valid and important viewpoints (which I'm not sure where you're getting) to "Star Wars" seems invalid because that standard is not in the saga.

I don't think my wife is going to come up to me tommorrow and say, "I love you so much I'd be willing to kill a bunch of innocent children and perform other heinous and evil acts so that I'd never lose you." That kind of stuff is not the natural consequence of love. That's some twisted stuff.

But if she did, I would not respond with "Well, that seems pretty evil, but I guess I should be okay with it, since evil is a natural balancing factor of life and we need to balance things out for all the happy people."