The original films set up a certain level of pretend realism and lightsabers etc worked fine with that. Virgin births do not.

I guess you could say that it was the Force that influenced midichlorians to create Anakin. You know, the prophecy thing.

In some early scripts it was Palpatine who creates Anakin through midichlorians manipulations (he almost say that in the opera scene if you read between the lines). Of course it's a bit silly because even Palpatine could not foreseen that Qui Gon would find Anakin on Tatooine...

Anyway I always thought that midichlorians could (should!) have been an interresting sub plot instead of just a disturbing useless addition to the world of Star Wars.