Why is there now a "light side" of the force?
It's just "the force". The dark side is a corruption of that force, referred to as such because it's implied to be like black magic in that you can "sacrifice" an aspect of yourself to access unnaturally destructive power. Saying "the light side" implies you can do something like save puppies or help old ladies across the road and unlock angelic techniques.
Only Lucas understood what the Force was. JJ and Kasdan (and later Rian to an extent) just imitated the dialogue from the OT about it without any depth or understanding.
>Without the Jedi, there can be no balance.
>The First Order arose from the dark side.
2017 is about taking sides, OP. You either take the right one or you are, by definition, part of the wrong one
>now
Who gives a fuck what that hack lucas said. Disney makes its own rules.
Lucas has used the term light side in interviews and briefings. And while I agree with you’re overall interpretation of the force, Lucas has always been really shit and vague when it comes to explaining his ideas.
Who gives a fuck what people call the force? If you have a dark side people are going to automatically call the other the light side. It doesn't matter.
Ok, I see a lot of this “there is no light side” stuff, any og Star Wars niggas wanna explain this? If there are two sides and one is referred to as the “darkside” wouldn’t the other be the “lightside?”
This is the only change I like, the kotor approach to the force makes for much better, nuanced storytelling
Good point. Concept drift.
>Saying "the light side" implies you can do something like save puppies or help old ladies across the road and unlock angelic techniques.
You can do just that in most Star Wars games though, which used to be an important part of the old extended canon.
No
Yeah and back then the force wasn't female either. Things change, get over it.
technically there isn't a "light side," or at least there wasn't.
There was a the Force, a....well, force that just kind of existed. it's not good, not bad, it just is. And then there';s the Dark Side, a twisted corrupted take on it, this is bad because it throws things out of balance.
The Jedi weren't the light side, they were balance, and against the dark side because it was throwing the Force out of said balance.
>light side of the moon
He was explicit about the dark side being a perversion, though. He said that "balance" would mean the ultimate destruction of the Sith. OP has the right of it: the dark side was essentially meant to be something cancerous. Now, it's made to seem as if the light and the dark are two equally powerful and natural aspects. This is more in line with Eastern philosophy, but the comparison here is faulty because we're still led to believe that there can be nothing good about the dark side, whereas Yin and Yang are both recognised as being vital and necessary, just in different ways and at different times. George's original interpretation at least made sense in-universe.
You could get around this by demonstrating that the dark side is, in fact, natural, and the Jedi were just religious zealots overly immersed in one side. Palpatine implies as much, and there's plenty of content in the EU which supports this interpretation.
The problem arises with the fact that Disney is still intent on portraying those who use the dark side as inherently evil. This makes no sense if it's a part of nature, and the notion of balance is still an overriding theme.
This is, of course, ironic in the sense that the dark side is analogous to masculinity, a necessary and natural force that Disney and much of modern media seem intent on undermining, despite it being a vital part of human nature.
Ultimately, you've got a bunch of essentially unbalanced people trying to come up with a story centred around the concept of balance, so there are bound to be some issues.
>Why is there now a "light side" of the force?
Because the idea of the Force being a natural force that's neither good nor evil and the Dark side being a corruption of it is apparently too complicated not just for casual fans, but even Disney execs.
This.
Jedi are led by the Force. Sith bend the Force to their will, which is unnatural.
Count the number of times the term Light Side was used in the OT and Prequels.
The "light" side is an invention of the EU, partly out of people misinterpreting bring balance to the force, and partly because of video game story/gameplay segregation.
I, huh, they never did say "light side" in the Lucas movies.
I know they said it alot in the EU. Like everywhere in there. Mostly it was to kind of promote sith and Jedi being equal which was more of a gameplay thing
This makes sense, thank you. Also throws a wrench in the whole “grey jedi” thing, which is great
>It's just "the force". The dark side is a corruption of that force,
I like your idea.
Can I find any actual school of thoughts that has similar ideas? What can I read to read more about it?
Honestly, one unpopular thing I didn't hate about the EU was the ""Light"" Sith, who were basically a group that saw "Being a Sith is all about passion and emotions that the Jedi order say you need to suppress to be in tune with the Force" and realized "Wait, we can be passionate and emotional about things other than being raging backstabbing jackasses to each other and everyone else."
This. The light side didn't exist in the movies before TFA. It just goes to show how well Disney actually understand the series.
Jedis are truly pathetic. They believe in absolute evil, when good and evil are just circumstantial conditions.
Saying the sith are evil, it's like saying impressionist painters were evil in relation to academic painters. Or that rock music is evil in relation to erudite classical music.
If the force is an universal mystical energy, no one has the the monopoly on it.
Lmao, truly pathetic jedis, leading armies of disposable human beings as general, serving as diplomats and judges of an oppressive republic who can't accept separatism, and they think themselves good.
Luke refers to "the good side" when he talks to Leia about Vader in Jedi
it's no more nuanced than the original concept; instead of "the dark side is bad and must be rejected," we now have "the right way is to find a balance between the light side and the dark side; anyone who is too much on the light side or too much on the dark is bad." it's basically "le radical centrist" meme applied to star wars
>You could get around this by demonstrating that the dark side is, in fact, natural, and the Jedi were just religious zealots overly immersed in one side. Palpatine implies as much, and there's plenty of content in the EU which supports this interpretation.
the problem with this route is that it destroys the story, characters and themes of the ot: if the jedi are wrong, that means obi-wan and yoda are wrong to train luke to be a jedi; luke is wrong to want to become a jedi; luke is wrong to try to turn his father away from the dark side, etc. it basically turns all these characters into villains, when they're supposed to be the ones we root for
>when they're supposed to be the ones we root for
I know. That's why I said George's original interpretation is still the best.
>You could get around this by demonstrating that the dark side is, in fact, natural, and the Jedi were just religious zealots overly immersed in one side.
I think that's the route they are going with. Luke is shocked that Rey felt the pull of the darkside and didn't even try to resist it, she just went straight to it. But Rey doesn't really change, she manages to stay the same good person she was.
It's like you have Rey who is good, and feels the pull of the dark but doesn't try to resist, and so has the full power of the force behind her.
And then Kylo who is bad, but feels himself being drawn to good, but is resisting it, making him weaker for not using the full power of the force.
>Kasdan
Are we really entering the "Kasdan was a hack" territory? He's the one who made the Empire great
yeah i agreed with your post. i'm just thinking aloud
Yeah, I fear you're right. As that other user said, this fundamentally undermines everything that occurs in the OT, which is what Disney seems to love doing.
This is straight from George. The most powerful force users. Evil. Neutral. Good.
If I was living inside the SW universe I would be extremely troubled by the force.
It makes some people able to levitate objects, read minds, even manipulate others minds. For all we know Anakin and Padme relationship happened entirely because he mind tricked her.
Not only that, the force seems to have a will of its own and all force users or force sensitive people end up governing large political entities, always in the upper echelons of rule.
Why didn't the jedi/sith decided to build an entire society of force users yet? Why a mad dictator didn't rise in the galaxy that hunted force sensitive people on birth only to kill them?
Why some species seems more prone and open to the force than others?
They had that in the EU, it was called Grey Jedis.
Darth Vader was one apparently.
This is the worst idea.
There's a lot of EU shit that expands on those worries, user.
Mortis was awful, one of the worst things of the cartoon.
Grey jedi are stupid, but just a natural force user who draws on the full strength of the force makes more sense.
Grey Jedi is retarded because a Jedi is a person following a specific code. It's like being a bacon eating vegetarian.
Still can't believe George not only greenlit this but reportedly loved the idea.
It implies Abit more than that.
Ren and Kylo don't know anything about the Force but found "the right way." So that implies that all the Jedi and sith teachings weren't just wrong but that they were bad for misguiding all force users.
So now ignorance is strength. You are better off not getting any training because it's all wrong and just feeling around is the right way.
It really was. The book it came from was basically a dick massage for Vader.
which book?
Not the one you quoted, but I appreciate this view because the jedi order was simply a political organization. They didn't have any "teachings", they were just a religious group in Coruscant associated with powerful politicians and similar.
Believing they had secret teachings or something like that is like believing the Dalai Lama had any knowledge instead of being a political leader.
I bet all the important people live in that building.
>Believing they had secret teachings or something like that
There are literally ancient jedi books full of their earliest teachings... They had an entire academy for teaching the ways of the jedi
that's how the prequels portrayed the jedi though. the ot presents them as more mystic/esoteric religious types rather than a weird bureaucracy that has meetings with the head of state
Yeah, I know, but I don't think that knowledge was real, with any real application to the force or the universe. Specially in a universe with advanced technology.
At most there were interesting historical knowledge, but nothing regarding the force, which by the movies seems to be infinite, invisible, unknowable. Jedis writing about it were probably projecting their own things.
>which by the movies seems to be infinite, invisible, unknowable
except in that one movie where you could do a medical exam to measure what causes the force
>invisible, unknowable
It's neither of these things. You're trying to equate the force with God, which I don't think works. The force is an exotic energy that can be measured, witnessed (i.e. force powers), and at least partially quantified (midichlorians, certain force users having a better grasp of it than others etc). You're right in the sense that no-one ever seems to have a really well-defined understanding of it, though.
>The jedi didn't have any secret teachings
>Their secret teachings were just their interpretation of things
Are you retarded?
They were a religious organisation, with specific teachings on how to use the force and shit.
Damn, you are right.
Even if I try to compared IQ tests and intelligence vs midichlorians and the force, it isn't very good.
Lucas fucked up real good.
The force can't be tamed, it is the tamer.
The jedi order was just a cult of celibate priests inserted in Coruscant politics.
Budhist monks were also warriors, healers and diplomats, this doesn't mean they knew something.
Here's the correct opinion on that
"The light side" sounds retarded and that's reason enough it was never in the OT.
Lucas always based that shit out of budism and oriental religions.
Yin and Yang everywhere. Light and dark ar two sides of the same thing. That's the whole point.
no dummy, because of Vader and Sidius, Luke was required to rise and meet them.
I thought Grey Jedi were Jedi who didn't follow dark side but were just outside the approval of the Jedi council and/or order.
Don't worry we still have force ghosts they are the ultimate proof that dark side is wrong and the force is good
After the fall of the empire a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Tatooine underground. Today, still wanted by the First Order and Rebel Alliance, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the Knights of Ren.
And yet the dark side doesn't really have any redeeming parts.