[julie123]

I still don't understand why the force NEEDS to be balanced.

Clearly it had been UNbalanced for thousands of years and the galaxy got along just fine.

So what's the point of balancing it?

Besides Lucas' lame attempt to string together three movies, I mean.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Personally I think Lucas was looking for a lame excuse to justify Vader/Anakin's redemption at the end of ROTJ and so came up with the old the force is out of balance and we need a child of destiny to bring it back into balance. This lets Anakin off the hook, can't negate a phropecy, the force made him do it. It also means that Anakin doesn't have to take any responsiblity for the wholesale slaughter of millions of humans/creatures/aliens et al. I really hope that Lucas doesn't decide to tell the life story of Hitler or Saddam Hussein in the same manner as Star Wars!