I got into an interesting discussion today with my brother-in-law about science fiction & fantasy, specifically about whether explaining something too much takes away from the sense of wonder that is so critical to those genres. It started out with a discussion of Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace, which (surprisingly) he actually kind of likes, and eventually got on to Brandon Sanderson’s first law of magic.
I was trying to explain why The Phantom Menace was so broken, and after hemming and hawing over various things came to the midichlorians. That, more than anything else, threw me out of the story. By explaining the Force in such a banal, insipid way, it undid all the magic of the previous trilogy and completely sterilized it. There was no sense of wonder after that point–explaining the Force completely killed it, just like over-explaining any magic system always kills that sense of wonder.
… or does it? Because there are quite a few wonder-inducing magic systems that get explained in great detail. Take the Philotic Web, for example. In Xenocide, Orson Scott Card explains, in great detail, how the physics behind the ansible system works. And yet, by doing so, he increases that sense of wonder to the point where Xenocide is one of my favorite of his books. Why? Because it introduces a bunch of implications that lead to even more questions, more mysteries.
With The Phantom Menace, of course, that isn’t the case–the midichlorian thing is basically a clumsy ass pull that fails in the magic department just as hard as Jar-Jar Binks does at comic relief. But it doesn’t fail because it over-explains things, it fails because it explains the magic in a way that doesn’t allow room to explore the implications. As much as I hate to admit it, Lucas could have pulled off the midichlorian thing if the implications had been relevant to more things in the story than just a simple plot point.
This is where Sanderson’s first law comes in. Basically, Sanderson’s first law states that there’s an inverse relationship to how well the magic can induce wonder versus how well the magic can advance the plot. In order to advance the plot through magic, you have to explain how the magic works to some degree, and that’s going to take away from the sense of wonder.
But as we’ve just shown, that isn’t always the case. Sometimes the sense of wonder gets even stronger the more the magic gets explained. This is especially true in science fiction that follows the one big lie approach, where one thing (wormholes, reactionless drives, time travel) is truly fantastic and everything else more or less follows the laws of physics as we understand them; in order to maintain the suspension of disbelief, the story is basically forced to explore all the implications of the magic, often to great detail.
In other words, explaining the magic isn’t always like building a wall–sometimes, it’s like building a door. Yes, it lays down a boundary that closes off the imaginative spaciousness that a story really needs to convey that sense of wonder, but if the explanation leads to new questions–new mysteries–then that sense of wonder can be maintained. Instead of walling the reader in, it throws the reader into a maze with countless secret chambers to explore.
The relationship between plot-based magic and wonder-based magic is not linear, as Brandon Sanderson’s first law implies. Rather, there’s a second dimension that has very little to do with his law, and learning how to traverse that dimension is key to maintaining the sense of wonder in any story.
I haven’t figured out a pithy way to explain all this yet, but I’m going to, hopefully within the next few days. If you guys have any thoughts on the subject, please feel free to share. I’m definitely interested in hearing your perspectives on it.
Great stuff here, Joe.
I absolutely agree with you that there’s more than one dimension at issue here. I’d like to suggest that the other dimension is the audience’s sense of interest, or maybe investment is a better term. I think the reason midichlorians failed–and why they were bound to fail–is that there was no interest in such an answer. There was no investment in the physical reality of the force because it was the vehicle for (what must be) our real interests: the characters. Star Wars didn’t begin with midichlorians (even if we say that Lucas included those in his ideas, they weren’t there for the audience’s initial reception, and thus don’t count–in some sense), so it wasn’t part of what the film-audience contract says will be explored. Thus, I’m saying, not only was there no interest on the part of the audience, there’s no interest from the movies either. (We wanted, in some sense, a connection to the universe at large–simple egotism to increase our importance in the grand scheme of things? some “purer” sense of unity to the ‘verse? whatever the case, I think there’s a natural pull there. That is, the vague, do-nothing answer was the better answer because those who wanted a connection to the universe got it and those for whom no concrete answer would have sufficed got it, too.).
That may sound like gibberish, and maybe it is since it’s an unnecessary rationale for the actual operative element–which I think you nailed exactly: the exploration of the elements at play. (I’d argue that’s the case in any fiction, not just in speculative fiction: we want to explore the implications of the lives and actions of regular folk in realist fiction, after all.) I’m just saying that reason(s) authors explore those subjects (aside from deeply ingrained, native interest in the subjects) is a hope that those will capture the interest of readers. You’re right that the midichlorian answer fails because it closes off ripe explorations. (I personally don’t think it could have succeeded in any physical, actual manifestation, but maybe that’s just me and my predilections.)
Joe:
Great insight!
The Midichlorians bother me for largely the same reason — they were introduced in a way that completely threw the viewer out of the story and universe as we knew it…and then just ignored.
I would have forgiven Lucas if he had developed and used the concept in a meaningful way, but instead it was just a throwaway concept that could have just as easily been developed in a way that was totally in tune with the established universe.
This was another case of George Lucas “phoning it in,” as he did in pretty much most of the prequels. The prequels COULD have been great — and the problems with them were consistently in the scripts — all the awkwardness, all the flat-footed pacing, all the groaner moments — all script problems that could have been EASILY and cheaply fixed.
Implications of Midichlorians: First off, if such a thing did exist in the Star Wars universe, it should have been at least hinted at in the original movies (or the follow-up novels and comics — I know, I know, they are not canon, but basically, the existence of this “simple Force test” that can be done on a handheld computer basically makes nonsense of an awful lot of the storylines in the Expanded Uuniverse). To paraphrase Adam Sandler in the Wedding Singer, “I really should have known that yesterday!”
Secondly, this could have been developed in an incredibly dramatic way in Eps II & III — Palpatine clearly wants to wipe out all of the Force users. Boy, wouldn’t it have been a lot simpler if his Clone Troops were equipped with Qui-Gon’s Midichlorian tester and sent out to test the populace of the galaxy and eliminate anyone with a high Midichlorian count. Such scenes could have been bone-chilling and horrifying with their implications, all without being graphic.
But the most annoying thing about Midichlorians is that they were completely unnecessary for the story affect Lucas was looking for. He just needed some way for QuiGon to justify to the Jedi Council that Anakin is indeed a “super Jedi” in the making and must be trained —
So how about this: QuiGon and Company enter Mos Espa, looking for parts to fix their starship and QuiGon senses a profound disturbance in the Force, fierce, powerful, primal, dangerous…Obi-Wan senses it too from miles away. QuiGon tracks it Watto’s shop just as Anakin stumbles in, apparently roughed up by some meaner older kids…and apparently trying to get over an outburst of temper. QuiGon turns and sees the boy, trembling as he feels that rush of “Force disturbance,” and when he sees this small boy, his eyes widen as he realizes, “He, that child, is this vergence in the Force.”
It works because it justifies within the context of the universe Anakin as immensely powerful, but also it hints at Anakin as a young boy with a good heart, but also with a temper problem — which is shown delightfully in Terry Brooks’s novelization where Anakin beats up on Greedo after Greedo taunts and teases him. It was a great moment that shows Anakin has a temptation to the dark side, born of just being a child…an immensely powerful child, but still just a child.
(I don’t know if this scene was in the original script and cut, or if Terry created it himself…but it is still an essential scene that reveals to us Anakin’s struggle, which is supposed to be the emotional core of the prequels and instead is almost completely emotionally distant in the final movies.)
And the other fundamental implication of Anakin’s character: So what happens to him if the Council somehow prevents him from being trained. He is immensely powerful, obviously at risk of falling to the dark side if he ever does develop his powers (and it seems that one can develop such powers on their own). So, knowing he is dangerous, knowing he could turn evil and become the worst villain in the history of the Old Republic…can they just allow him to go running around on his own? Or do they have to “do something” about him (implication — imprisoned or killed for his power.)
We know from Episodes III & IV that Obi-Wan went to Tattooine to “look over” Luke as he was growing up, the implication being that he would have to be watched and helped as he grew up. The other implication being that if he turned out to be “just like his father,” something might have to be done about him, too.
— Bill Smith
http://www.BillSmithBooks.com
I totally agree–there are so many other ways that Lucas could have gotten across that Anakin was a force user, ways that would have fit the Star Wars universe so much better. As it is, the midichlorians gaff is so bad it almost singlehandedly ruins the whole prequel trilogy (there was plenty else that ruined it, but let’s not even go there). Your idea about bringing in the stuff from the Terry Brooks tie-in novel sounds interesting; I never got to that one (I mostly stuck to the ones by Timothy Zahn and Kevin J. Anderson), but that sounds like it would work really well.