It doesn't matter if Luke is a better PERSON- being the Chosen One is a matter of being born to it, not achieving it!
Yes, the imbalance does exist before TPM starts. The Sith are slowly destroying the balance of the Galaxy; when Anakin kills Palpatine, the source of thet imbalance is destroyed- and this was the purpose of the Chosen One. Simple as that.
I agree, however, that it is very obscure to call Anakin a good guy if the Emperor can only cause the imbalance with Anakin's help. I seem to my remember my analogy is that this is rewarding Anakin for burning down a forest and then planting a seed- better, surely, to not burn down the forest?
Therefore it only works if we assume that the Emperor would have won in any case and I am unsure if the films will demonstrate that. If the Emperor would have won anyway, then better that Anakin helps and then plants the seed, than Anakin doesn't help and achieves nothing. Better STILL, obviously, if Anakin had stopped the Emperor first, but then that is the point of the tragic story of the prequel films- Anakin consciously rejects this positive destiny, and only after all hope is lost does Luke get him to accept it again- better late than never.
A Chosen One is in my understanding someone with a destiny to achieve something, not just a title by birth. And I just can't see, despite the fact that I know this is the story, what GREAT ACHIEVEMENT Anakin did that he was a Chosen One for. Chosen for what? Chucking an Emperor down a shute who's too busy killing off e Jedi, who's old and quite overconfident? Or return from the Dark Side? The latter just doesn't appear to be such a great achievement ince Luke paved the way for him.
In my mind Luke's achievement is bigger and better. "It is your destiny."
It's just a difference in appraising Anakin's messianic status. From the Jedi religion POV I can understand the ramifications Anakin's turn from the Dark Side can have for the Force. But the VIEWER can't SEE the Force, can't FEEL it, so how can we possibly understand and appreciate what Anakin does at the end of ROTJ? This is why I believe the choice for having a Chosen One in SW is a bad one: he doesn't appear to be doing a great saving deed (even here there is debate about what BAlance of the Force is, how would an average viewer understand?) and his redemption has more an emotional impact on Luke: he has his father back before he dies. But the Force being unbalanced will remain to be vague. All we see is the rise of an Empire (by use of supernatural powers: Dark Side) oppressing the universe by the help of a Jedi gone bad. Ergo the challenge: defeat the Empire, make bad Jedi go good again.
Your understanding makes no difference, queeq. The Chosen One is the one referred to by the Prophecy- you do not CHOOSE to be that one, you simply are CHOSEN to be that one, so youou cannot be anything but born to it. And that one in this case, is Anakin as, in GL's words, no-one else could have defeated the Emperor. The achievement is the former and, again, you are just going to have to live with that. GL says that is so so that is so- no-one else could have done it. Which every way you see or understand it, that is the story he has written.
Sometimes you just have to go with the flow with these things.
To summarise:
- Only the Chosen One can bring balance
- Balance can only be brought by destroying the Emperor
- Anakin is the Chosen One
- Therefore, only Anakin can defeat the Emperor
- Anakin does that, thereby fulfilling his destiny
- Luke effectively persuaded Anakin to do that, but it was still Anakin who had to do it
- That he went through the whole 'Vader' thing first is where the plot comes in, making it a story at all.
- That Anakin could not have done it without Luke is irrelevant. That Luke might be a better person is irrelevant. That Anakin failed where Luke succeeded is irrelevant. 'Chosen One' is not code for 'best person in the films', it ONLY means the one who can bring Balance! It does not mean the person who achieved the most or is the greatest hero or even, necessarily, the most important character. You may well see the person who got the Chosen One to do that as a greater hero. That's fine. You may even say that his destiny was greater than that of the Chosen One. That is also fine. But there is no point saying that he is the Chosen One as far as you see- it is not as if that would make him the better person. It's just factually not so, any more than his name is Robert.
Hey, I'm not arguing that Lucas' story is wrong here! How could it be. I am arguing that George made some poor decisions in his PT storytelling. And the basic problem is the whole prophecy thing. I agree wholeheartedly with that in a prophecy one is BORn to be a Chosen One. But that doesn't solve the problem what he is chosen for then. IN this case it's simple: to bring balance. But the problem is that the problem is unbalance of the Force is badly understood from the movies themselves, nor what it feels like to be in unbalance. All we know there's a bad Emperor that gives people a hard time. Well, from all the stories about bad Emperors not all need supernatural powers. So how does a viewer relate with both Anakin's destiny of bringing balance to the Force or with theway he achieves this goal? We don't see anything shifting into place in ROTJ, so as we SW freaks understand sort of what Lucas is on about, it takes quite a bit of behind the scenes reserach to understand what it's really about. And THAT is whatI am arguing against. Not to plot points being illogical, just to them not being very cinematic or even made clear.
this may have been said already but, couldn't it also mean that Anakin brought balance to the force by getting the jedi (at least on screen) down to two? Sidious and Vader, Yoda and Kenobi. Two masters, two apprentices. But I've also heard that the prophecy can only be full filled when the Sith are destroyed. This seemed odd since there will always be good and evil, even in the force. In which case, Anakin did this as well. He killed Palpatine and himself in the process.
on a side note, there was an issue of star wars tales (by no means in continutiy) where Mace and Yoda are having lunch in a Coruscant restaurant, discussing whether or not Anakin was the chosen one, and Yoda makes a really good point using piles of salt to show how it only takes a light breeze (meaning the slowly building tensions both in the force and galaxy at large) to move mountains. he then blows on the salt leaving only two grains, along with two he pulled out at the beginning to represent the sith. With the two pairs of grain he says "I don't want to be one of those two..."
Just kind of funny. But, two good and two evil would be technically balance.
No! Not Balance in that sense. Absolutely not. EVIL causes Balance. Only by destroying the Sith can balance be restored. Numbers of Jedi and all that have NOTHING at all to do with it. We already handled this in the thread- do not take the term 'balance' too literally.
By your logic it would not work- he leaves Luke and no Sith- hardly balance literal balance in the way you suggest. This demonstrates the fallacious nature of that thinking. To get balance you eliminate evil- you do not try and get the same numbers of Jedi and Sith or anything silly like that!
People have gotten it into their heads that Balance means equality between good and evil. It does not. It means the natural harmony of the Universe- which the Light Side promotes, and the Dark Side destroys.
I was supporting both arguements. You missed what I was saying, maybe I didn't put it right.
If balance means two sith and two jedi (which I don't agree with either, but if it does) then we know Anakin helped to facilitate this.
If balance means no Sith (which hopefully it does) then he did this also. He killed Sidious and Vader (in that Obi-wan kind of logic).
So my point is, either way, it is clear that Anakin is the Chosen One and not Luke. Luke assisted in this, but technically, so did many others. Yoda and Obi-wan helped Luke become a Jedi, training that helped him to aid his father's redemption. Who knows how many Jedi helped them to escape allowing them to assist Luke.
In short, it doesn't matter how it comes about or who helps them get there, the Chosen ONE is the one who, with there own hands, strikes down the Sith once and for all. Everything else is semantics. Who killed the Sith? Who dealt the deathblow? Anakin. 'Nuff said.