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krpalmerHad I been able to respond to Rick Worley’s newest online video with a video of my own, I suppose it would include Palpatine’s line “A surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one.” I’d found the new perspectives of his video “How to Watch Star Wars, Part One” invigorating and welcomed the promise of further instalments. He’d got around to making videos on other subjects, though, and I did get to wondering if he’d found other and more rewarding topics, while recognizing I couldn’t blame him for that. A “Part 1.1” instalment of “How to Watch Star Wars” did seem confirmation that hadn’t altogether happened. While not a subset of the previously promised follow-up, it did still take on a big subject.
I might never have had the chance to form an uninfluenced personal reaction to The Phantom Menace. Jolted by the very first barrage of negative reactions just before the movie opened in 1999, I might have braced myself against some unimaginable crassness of comedy relief (or, so I can imagine the accusations twisting, “denied any sort of reasonable critical response”) to the point of reaching the end credits and thinking “now that wasn’t so bad; you know, I really liked it.” However, I do recall my brother might have been displeased with the subject of midi-chlorians as we left the theatre. It took a while to pick my way through explanations noticed that “perhaps a blood transfusion won’t make someone a Jedi” (I worked out for myself that “dialogue establishes those little organisms are in all cells; a blood sample was just conveniently available” and supposed there’d been jumping to conclusions), but spent quite a while longer telling myself “just because we’ve been told this now doesn’t mean it supersedes the explanations we heard before, which are chronologically later in the story; Obi-Wan and Yoda might have meditated their way to new and correct insights.” Eventually, I fell in with a handful of other positive fans and picked up on some subtler explanations yet, becoming particularly fond of “in fact, everyone’s said to have at least some of those little guys; that might make things less exclusive in the story if only everyone could learn to listen hard enough.”
Worley leads off by going all the way back to the start, excerpting some “how dare the explanation of the Force be demystified” complaints from the videos he had used before as part of “The Dunning-Kruger Cottage Industry.” His counterarguments did give me a certain sense I’d become quite familiar with them already, and I suppose I started remembering subtler complaints that might boil down to supposing the topic had only been tossed in as a tell-not-show attempt to quantify Anakin’s unusual importance (and that in itself seems to draw more objections that might culminate in indignation about “child actors”). A different, perhaps more charitable dismissal might amount to “trying to head off thoughts of a kid with a broken arm wailing ‘the movie said all I had to do was believe hard enough and I’d manage that jump from the roof to the tree!’” I did get to thinking of personal theories that “maybe a midi-chlorian count is not some fixed and unearned gift; perhaps Yoda has a high count because it’s increased over all the years of his life.” Then, not that long ago (a mere twenty years after the fact), I happened to wonder if Qui-Gon taking Anakin’s count wasn’t in fact “trying to quantify strength the way everyone else was doing it then” but “looking for a sign Shmi’s unusual claim of his origins is valid, because that’ll mean the prophecy applies to him.” (The video, anyway, excerpted bits of the recent and rather expensive “Star Wars Archives” book where George Lucas matter-of-factly said there is a correlation between a high count and strength in the Force.) From there, though, Worley did move on to more interesting territory.
“Journal of the Whills” was familiar enough to me from the original Star Wars novelization, as it was to Worley. Recent comments from George Lucas getting back to the name began to talk about microscopic organisms, smaller and more numerous than midi-chlorians but still within all multicellular beings, connected to the Force (but still perhaps not “the Force,” either) and able to influence it. Maybe “recent comments” amount to “recent thoughts”; just as “mitochondrial DNA” had been talked up in the popular scientific press, so too has “the human microbiome” (a comment that might be a useful counter to where “bodies are to be taken as unadulterated assemblages of human cells, and any other organism is to be eliminated at once” could be taken). Worley did mention some of the disdainful jumping to conclusions when the comments had started showing up. As he offered subtler interpretations the concepts and the idea of “there’s something larger (yet smaller) influencing events; it’s not just a matter of singular, you’re-the-only-one-who-matters efforts of will,” though, I did start thinking that this might indeed be something that could allow for a continued story.
I’d been ready to suppose working on the Clone Wars computer-animated series in a sort of mentor role had reinvigorated George Lucas and got him thinking up new ideas too big to fit into an “in-between show” (my thoughts do turn to the “Mortis Arc”), and yet there was the issue of how I’d been able to welcome the thought of refocusing “the original trilogy” away from “reasonably significant engagements in a continuing war,” which always seemed to end up producing complaints that “a victory won with the aid of Ewoks isn’t worth winning,” to “the main characters reach a resolution at last.” Dismissive comments that “you can’t tell interesting stories about characters who’ve succeeded the way you supposed” did scratch at my mind, and I was at least aware of other dismissive comments that Lucas had only sold his company to keep from being responsible for winding it up and having to lay everyone off after spending too much on Clone Wars and a first 3D re-release, and his “sequel outlines” had been nothing more than an (unnecessary) effort to try and sweeten the deal. (On the other hand, I had noticed one of the people declaring that was very attached to the rambling continuation from many hands, if one that didn’t dismiss and write off the original characters, of the “Expanded Universe” novels and comics.) With the Whills bringing the question of “what’s the balance between following a higher power and taking your own actions” into greater prominence, all of a sudden I could imagine something that could give another new context to all that had come before. A few thoughts of the ever-expanding scope of E.E. “Doc” Smith’s Lensmen novels even came to mind.
It seems obvious enough, of course, that this might only “work” for some subset of people, as I supposed myself peculiar to not have been offended in the first place and gone from there to seamless blanket condemnations. It also seems obvious that whatever Lucas was saying about his ideas, the people with the backing of the new owners nudged him out the door and came up with their own ideas, regardless of how rushed they wound up doing that and wound up with their own dose of differing reactions. Even when I pushed all that aside and got back to pondering ways these thoughts about the Whills might fit in with other comments the antagonists would be an aged cyborg Darth Maul and his “Darth Babe” apprentice in charge of the galactic underworld, I wound up thinking I was at danger of “setting my own expectations.” Should the actual outlines ever become public knowledge there did seem the risk of thinking “that’s not exactly the way I saw it.” For that reason, I don’t want to say too much more about my ideas here. However, even if I haven’t tried to assign all the credit for the old movies to anyone other than George Lucas, it still seems possible to think “seven to nine seems less essential to four to six than one to three do.” In any case, I’m at least one more video and some more interesting thoughts ahead right now.
I might never have had the chance to form an uninfluenced personal reaction to The Phantom Menace. Jolted by the very first barrage of negative reactions just before the movie opened in 1999, I might have braced myself against some unimaginable crassness of comedy relief (or, so I can imagine the accusations twisting, “denied any sort of reasonable critical response”) to the point of reaching the end credits and thinking “now that wasn’t so bad; you know, I really liked it.” However, I do recall my brother might have been displeased with the subject of midi-chlorians as we left the theatre. It took a while to pick my way through explanations noticed that “perhaps a blood transfusion won’t make someone a Jedi” (I worked out for myself that “dialogue establishes those little organisms are in all cells; a blood sample was just conveniently available” and supposed there’d been jumping to conclusions), but spent quite a while longer telling myself “just because we’ve been told this now doesn’t mean it supersedes the explanations we heard before, which are chronologically later in the story; Obi-Wan and Yoda might have meditated their way to new and correct insights.” Eventually, I fell in with a handful of other positive fans and picked up on some subtler explanations yet, becoming particularly fond of “in fact, everyone’s said to have at least some of those little guys; that might make things less exclusive in the story if only everyone could learn to listen hard enough.”
Worley leads off by going all the way back to the start, excerpting some “how dare the explanation of the Force be demystified” complaints from the videos he had used before as part of “The Dunning-Kruger Cottage Industry.” His counterarguments did give me a certain sense I’d become quite familiar with them already, and I suppose I started remembering subtler complaints that might boil down to supposing the topic had only been tossed in as a tell-not-show attempt to quantify Anakin’s unusual importance (and that in itself seems to draw more objections that might culminate in indignation about “child actors”). A different, perhaps more charitable dismissal might amount to “trying to head off thoughts of a kid with a broken arm wailing ‘the movie said all I had to do was believe hard enough and I’d manage that jump from the roof to the tree!’” I did get to thinking of personal theories that “maybe a midi-chlorian count is not some fixed and unearned gift; perhaps Yoda has a high count because it’s increased over all the years of his life.” Then, not that long ago (a mere twenty years after the fact), I happened to wonder if Qui-Gon taking Anakin’s count wasn’t in fact “trying to quantify strength the way everyone else was doing it then” but “looking for a sign Shmi’s unusual claim of his origins is valid, because that’ll mean the prophecy applies to him.” (The video, anyway, excerpted bits of the recent and rather expensive “Star Wars Archives” book where George Lucas matter-of-factly said there is a correlation between a high count and strength in the Force.) From there, though, Worley did move on to more interesting territory.
“Journal of the Whills” was familiar enough to me from the original Star Wars novelization, as it was to Worley. Recent comments from George Lucas getting back to the name began to talk about microscopic organisms, smaller and more numerous than midi-chlorians but still within all multicellular beings, connected to the Force (but still perhaps not “the Force,” either) and able to influence it. Maybe “recent comments” amount to “recent thoughts”; just as “mitochondrial DNA” had been talked up in the popular scientific press, so too has “the human microbiome” (a comment that might be a useful counter to where “bodies are to be taken as unadulterated assemblages of human cells, and any other organism is to be eliminated at once” could be taken). Worley did mention some of the disdainful jumping to conclusions when the comments had started showing up. As he offered subtler interpretations the concepts and the idea of “there’s something larger (yet smaller) influencing events; it’s not just a matter of singular, you’re-the-only-one-who-matters efforts of will,” though, I did start thinking that this might indeed be something that could allow for a continued story.
I’d been ready to suppose working on the Clone Wars computer-animated series in a sort of mentor role had reinvigorated George Lucas and got him thinking up new ideas too big to fit into an “in-between show” (my thoughts do turn to the “Mortis Arc”), and yet there was the issue of how I’d been able to welcome the thought of refocusing “the original trilogy” away from “reasonably significant engagements in a continuing war,” which always seemed to end up producing complaints that “a victory won with the aid of Ewoks isn’t worth winning,” to “the main characters reach a resolution at last.” Dismissive comments that “you can’t tell interesting stories about characters who’ve succeeded the way you supposed” did scratch at my mind, and I was at least aware of other dismissive comments that Lucas had only sold his company to keep from being responsible for winding it up and having to lay everyone off after spending too much on Clone Wars and a first 3D re-release, and his “sequel outlines” had been nothing more than an (unnecessary) effort to try and sweeten the deal. (On the other hand, I had noticed one of the people declaring that was very attached to the rambling continuation from many hands, if one that didn’t dismiss and write off the original characters, of the “Expanded Universe” novels and comics.) With the Whills bringing the question of “what’s the balance between following a higher power and taking your own actions” into greater prominence, all of a sudden I could imagine something that could give another new context to all that had come before. A few thoughts of the ever-expanding scope of E.E. “Doc” Smith’s Lensmen novels even came to mind.
It seems obvious enough, of course, that this might only “work” for some subset of people, as I supposed myself peculiar to not have been offended in the first place and gone from there to seamless blanket condemnations. It also seems obvious that whatever Lucas was saying about his ideas, the people with the backing of the new owners nudged him out the door and came up with their own ideas, regardless of how rushed they wound up doing that and wound up with their own dose of differing reactions. Even when I pushed all that aside and got back to pondering ways these thoughts about the Whills might fit in with other comments the antagonists would be an aged cyborg Darth Maul and his “Darth Babe” apprentice in charge of the galactic underworld, I wound up thinking I was at danger of “setting my own expectations.” Should the actual outlines ever become public knowledge there did seem the risk of thinking “that’s not exactly the way I saw it.” For that reason, I don’t want to say too much more about my ideas here. However, even if I haven’t tried to assign all the credit for the old movies to anyone other than George Lucas, it still seems possible to think “seven to nine seems less essential to four to six than one to three do.” In any case, I’m at least one more video and some more interesting thoughts ahead right now.