A good point. Young kids generally accept whatever an authority tells them. When they hit adolescence, their brain starts to change: They question things and want to know *why*. When Luke wants to rescue the Princess, Han asks why and has to be persuaded by a big reward that appeals to his mercenary sense. It makes sense. If Luke had said 'Hey Han! Let's rescue the Princess!' and Han enthusiastically replies "Ok! Lets!", well, then it really would be (just a) kid's movie.
An intelligent audience asks these sort of questions; well why should they do that? You need to feel the characters motivations. When they start doing silly or pointless things, you ask, "What the heck is wrong with these people?"
There's nothing wrong per se with a prophecy, but prophecies have become used so much in science fiction and fantasy that they've become a cliche. They also tell you the ending of the movie. Imagine two versions of LOTR: (1) the movie you saw, (2) the movie you saw but with Gandalf declaring at the beginning "It is the prophecy! A hobbit will travel to Mordor to destroy the ring and his friends will defeat the forces of darkness in a big battle! It is the prophecy, and *you* are that hobbit!" The prophecy is entirely unnecessary, and worse, detracts from the story. Stories where they use a Prophecy and get away with it there is an element of doubt about the outcome: Matrix, Dune (the book, which is quite different from the movie where there is no question)
It also adds an "Idiot" dimension. It's a mistake often made in movies where you know who the bad guy is at the beginning, but no one else does. The rest of the cast run around like headless chooks, and you the audience becomes frustrated at their apparent stupidity. OT Yoda is wise. PT Yoda time and time again is the fool.
If the other characters in TPM had questioned the Prophecy, sufficient to convince the audience why they were following it, they could have got away with it. Rather than Obi-won training A* because Q* believed the Prophecy, he could have equally trained him because he was Q*'s apprentice and now Q* is dead so O* must take him on. That's all they needed to say, and by itself it would have been far more human and warm. Easy, really... They didn't need the prophecy, but having used it, they didn't explain it or even justify it.
BTW according to "Secret History ..." in the ROTJ Special Edition at the very end when everyone is partying a voice in the crowd calls out "He is the Son of Suns" referring to the Prophecy in the early draft storyline for the original script. If anyone has the ROTJ SE, could you check. When I got the Original OTs on DVD, I bestowed upon the Special Editions the fate they deserved: I taped over them. :-)
Oh yeah. I'm not out to send George to the chair. Just want to understand what worked and what didn't and why.
This post has been edited by Toru-chan: 16 July 2007 - 05:35 PM