Here’s why those [midichlorians] shouldn’t trouble anyone:
Years after they were introduced as a plot device in TPM, some SW fans just cannot get over the little unseen critters called “midichlorians.” They can easily accept planets with a single environment and always have breathable air or ships that can go kaboom in huge balls of fire in space, but the concept of midichlorians sets them off into utter fanboy rage. They say it changed the Force and that ruins everything! I’ll never understand why some things, small things that don’t matter to 99% of most moviegoers, get under the skin of these fans.
Oh sure, some of them rethought their position after ROTS raised the possibility that the midichlorians were manipulated by the Sith to create Anakin. Well, then, that’s cool!
But others still hold on to their resentment all of these years, claiming the midis are symptomatic of what has become of SW since the prequels. (And yet they remain to try and ruin things for the rest of us.) The latest salvo opened when two of the executive producers on "Lost" tried to use fanboy (and their own) anti-midichlorian attitudes to avoid having to explain one of the central themes of the show. A writer on the reliably anti-PT i09 site responded with an essay that tried to say this was a lame excuse on the part of these guys but really spent the entire time beating up on the concept of midichlorians. Which you know is always an open invitation to come in and beat up on everything about the PT.
Well, here’s my take on why the i09 guy and the critics are way off.
1. The midichlorians do not change the Force
The Force is what it has always been. It’s still that mystical energy field that lets Jedi and Sith characters do all kinds of cool stuff mere mortals cannot. Not a thing that we’ve learned in TPM changes that. At least not on paper. As with a lot of other things about SW, fans had almost two decades to form in their own minds what concepts like the Force are supposed to be, and lo and behold, when new information is introduced, it blows that concept out of the water. Me, I had no concept at all. I didn’t care if the Force came from God or from carne asada burritos. It’s just what’s in the story. So when the midichlorians were introduced, I thought, “Well, that’s interesting.”
2. The midichlorians are not the Force
They’re not meant to explain the Force itself nor are they meant to be the Force itself, but to explain why if the Force flows through all living things, some have abilities with it that others do not. It’s also meant to explain Anakin’s potential and why he (along with his progeny) are so important to the story. As one fan put it, otherwise the Emperor may as well have spent his time worrying about Han Solo or Wedge’s growing skills as a pilot.
3. Midichlorians are not really scientific
A common complaint about the midis is that they introduce “science” into what is often perceived as a quasi-religious concept. After all, it’s the physical presence of living organisms in the body that act as intermediaries with the Force. Isn’t that like saying you have to have the right blood type to be touched by the Holy Spirit? Huh? Huh??
First of all, so what? Again this goes to fan concepts about SW that run headlong into what actually is in the movies. George Lucas never said, “The Force is just like the Holy Spirit and everything you learned in catchecism.” What he has said is that the midichlorians are meant to be a metaphor, part of a general theme about symbiosis that appears in TPM and throughout the prequel films. Much of the symbiosis in the films is spiritual and emotional in nature. Worth a whole ‘nuther essay, in fact.
4. The midichlorians were not unnecessary, clumsy retcon
There were a lot of different ways Lucas could have approached his story and he just happened to have chosen this one. Again, it was about the themes he wanted to explore in this trilogy. The midichlorian thing was a device. What would have been better? Anakin identified as the Chosen One because of a birthmark on his butt? Because he’s just better at being a Jedi than anyone else, without any explanation as to why? A radioactive spider bit him? The solar flares from Tatooine’s twin suns? Anakin was a symbiont with the Force, so his actions have a much greater effect than had it been any other character.
