What plot holes are in the original trilogy

[Galvatron]

Thematically speaking, it's a more moving story to have a kid from humble origins become great. It's less dramatic if the kid is raised up in the full knowledge of his heritage and destiny.

That's true; one of the charming things about A New Hope is that taken in isolation, it's about a nobody farm-boy who meets a wise old warrior, and goes on the adventure of a life-time, winding up an epic hero. All of that sort of changed with Empire Strikes Back; now all of a sudden Luke is basically a super-human prince with a convoluted back-story. However, this thematic change was probably worth it, since the idea of Vader as Luke's father is incredibly compelling (not to mention the best reveal in cinematic history).

I'd also like to take this opportunity to repeat what I've said many times in the past: Vader being Luke's father did not necessitate the merging the two into one character. The backstory would have still worked (and worked better, IMO) if Anakin Skywalker was a wholly different person and Luke was the offspring of a secret liaison between Vader and Anakin's wife.

[Channel72]

It's not exactly a plot hole, but I think it's fair to say that the timeline necessitated by Luke's age in the OT presents something of a thematic incongruity when contrasted with Ben's wistful nostalgia about the Jedi order. After watching A New Hope, you get the impression that the Jedi Order and the Old Republic are long gone...perhaps centuries in the past. Han doesn't even believe in the Force, and Tarkin thinks Vader's "religious" devotion is quaint. Plus, the Empire seems like something that's just always been around - something that most people can't even remember not existing.

But, apparently the Empire only lasted like 20 years, and the Jedi order was something most people should easily remember, especially someone like Tarkin. I suppose this wasn't necessarily a problem before the Prequels. I had always imagined that most of Anakin's back-story, including his turn to the Dark Side, happened well after the fall of the Old Republic in the waning days of the Jedi order, and that the Emperor was just another ruler in a long sequence of Emperors.

[Galvatron]

It occurred to me a while back that the Jedi may have even grudgingly served the Empire while it still retained certain vestiges of the Old Republic (like the senate) for decades or even centuries. It's possible that the early emperors were benevolent rulers that the Jedi were willing to serve, but then the technocrats eventually took over and Emperor Palpatine rose to power, becoming their version of Nero.

[Srelex]

Well, to be fair, the Soviet Union only fell a matter of decades ago, and to many people it's still ancient history.

[jollyreaper]

Thematically speaking, it's a more moving story to have a kid from humble origins become great. It's less dramatic if the kid is raised up in the full knowledge of his heritage and destiny.

That's true; one of the charming things about A New Hope is that taken in isolation, it's about a nobody farm-boy who meets a wise old warrior, and goes on the adventure of a life-time, winding up an epic hero. All of that sort of changed with Empire Strikes Back; now all of a sudden Luke is basically a super-human prince with a convoluted back-story. However, this thematic change was probably worth it, since the idea of Vader as Luke's father is incredibly compelling (not to mention the best reveal in cinematic history).

Being born of royalty/the gods and living as a commoner is also a common trope. The big question is this: do you like the idea of blood breeding true and nobility being something that is inherited and not formed in a person's character or do you like the idea of an everyman with nothing going for him being able to rise to the occasion? The whole inherent nobility of the blood trope has been extremely popular over time and squared nicely with the sort of racist and elitist ideals the power brokers want to promote. "We are rich and powerful because of our inherent awesomeness and none of you peons could become like us. If you do it's because you already were one of us or something." A properly classic example of the trope is the white man joining some primitive tribe of awesome warriors and in a matter of weeks becoming as awesomely cool and awesome and so on as their best warriors, maybe even fulfilling a prophecy or two. White man is inherently better trope, very popular.

The big hate-fest over midichlorians is because it takes being a Jedi away from being a matter of dedication and drive and is simply a trick of birth. Gone is the story of the plucky kid who can make the team with hard work and determination. Now it's privileged jerks who get all the breaks.

The way I like to view the change in Empire, being a "prince" as it were confers no special advantage. Rather, being Vader's son is a rather horrifying state and he doesn't get any special force powers to make up for it. Being strong or weak in the force is like having a body with potential for a given sport. Yeah, you might have the skeletal size to be a football lineman but you have to put in the work to build the muscle and get the conditioning to play the game. If you're small and scrappy, you might be better suited to being a gymnast. Vader was strong with the force and his son has the potential of being so the same way some football great's son has the potential of being another football great. Or he might suck at it. There's no guarantees.

[jollyreaper]

If the whole plan was to raise Luke up as the great hope against the Sith, letting a little something like that get in the way of things doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Makes more sense if things are as originally stated, Luke is the son of his dead friend and Kenobi has doubts about whether he should introduce Luke to that kind of life, going off on "damn fool crusades."

The only 'plan' in the movie and books was to get the kids safely away from Vader and the Emperor so they wouldn't be used and trained to be more Sith. Yoda and Obi Wan were going into hiding and Obi Wan decide to watch after the boy. I do believe the novelization implies that Yoda though training Luke to be a super duper anti Sith dude from the start would just keep the failed Jedi model going. Keep in mind that Yoda figured out that the Order had been stagnate, wrong, and the Sith had grown past them. The 'old ways' weren't cutting it anymore and so something outside the box would have to happen, he just didn't know what at the time.

I'm not so sure. It seemed like they were expressly playing out a "last hope" plan here. The conversation between Kenobi and Yoda seemed to imply it.

The question I've always had is what did Kenobi mean by "more powerful?" Force ghosts seem incapable of doing much more than yammering at people. Can they spy on the emperor's movements, consult the wisdom of the ages, gaze into the future? Exactly what powers are granted? How can they help their side after death?

[jollyreaper]

Yeah, no shit. Nobody is at all interested in finding the root cause of the plot holes because the root cause was never in dispute. What is in dispute is what the plot holes are and why they are plot holes.

They're plot holes because nobody cared about writing the new stuff coherently. And there's really no way to retcon them because they are too large to patch.

What? That's about as interesting as saying "the sky is blue". I mean "why they are plot holes" to be much the same as what it would take to fix them: what specifically are the defects that makes it a plot hole rather than something omitted (as any story must do as a matter of necessity).

Well, they've been pretty well explored here! A satisfying thread. I just keep coming back to why they're there, not enough care was put into making sure the new material made sense in context.

[jollyreaper]

I'd also like to take this opportunity to repeat what I've said many times in the past: Vader being Luke's father did not necessitate the merging the two into one character. The backstory would have still worked (and worked better, IMO) if Anakin Skywalker was a wholly different person and Luke was the offspring of a secret liaison between Vader and Anakin's wife.

Now that's an interesting thought. And that's an even better screwjob. Not only did Vader kill his father, his father wasn't even his father! What a double whammy. That makes the scene so much worse.

I'm trying to imagine the dynamic there. It probably wouldn't do for it to be rape. It should be a love triangle with pre-maiming Vader horning in behind Anakin's back. Or maybe to keep it fitting Anakin horned in on Vader? Vader was the injured party here. He killed Anakin, maimed by Kenobi, the children are assumed to be Anakin's and nobody ever suspected they were Vader's. Kenobi never lied, he was uninformed.

[jollyreaper]

It's not exactly a plot hole, but I think it's fair to say that the timeline necessitated by Luke's age in the OT presents something of a thematic incongruity when contrasted with Ben's wistful nostalgia about the Jedi order. After watching A New Hope, you get the impression that the Jedi Order and the Old Republic are long gone...perhaps centuries in the past. Han doesn't even believe in the Force, and Tarkin thinks Vader's "religious" devotion is quaint. Plus, the Empire seems like something that's just always been around - something that most people can't even remember not existing.

Yeah, Han seems like a Flat Earth Atheist. From TV Tropes:

"Atheism in a clockwork universe ostensibly overseen by a completely non-interventionist divinity is one thing, but what about a world that's practically the playground of the mythic forces that created it?

While some authors do this as an honest philosophical exercise, it's pretty much always done for laughs. A self-styled hardline atheist that just happens to live in a high fantasy setting brimming with both huge pantheons of gods rampaging around the landscape constantly causing all sorts of things to happen, and the worshipers that pray to (and immediately hear back from) said pantheons of rampaging deities."

I can imagine remaining skeptical of Vader if all he did was glare at you through the helmet but the first time he says "Am I gonna have to force-choke a bitch?" and does it, there's not much more room for skepticism. Unless people are thinking that he's using high-tech trickery to fake magic? Or is it more like accepting that a martial artist can crack your ribs with a one-inch punch without buying into all the mumbo jumbo a bout chi and mysticism? "Look, you're bloody fit and can kick my ass but this is all explainable by western science."

But, apparently the Empire only lasted like 20 years, and the Jedi order was something most people should easily remember, especially someone like Tarkin. I suppose this wasn't necessarily a problem before the Prequels. I had always imagined that most of Anakin's back-story, including his turn to the Dark Side, happened well after the fall of the Old Republic in the waning days of the Jedi order, and that the Emperor was just another ruler in a long sequence of Emperors.

He was always the Emperor but the original plan was for him to be a non-force user. Lucas was going back and forth as to whether he would be a Julius Caesar, a Nero, or a Caligula. He was preferring incompetence with his advisers and henchmen doing all the planning and evil in his name. Vader in this case was like a hired ninja working for a western businessman. The emperor wanted the Jedi out of the way because they could thwart his goals and Vader went along with it because it suited his purposes.

The Emperor was made a force user in Empire but the reason why he was really beefed up in Jedi was when Lucas said he needed someone for Vader to turn from. It couldn't be just Vader deciding not to be a jerk, he had to have a greater evil, a supreme evil that he rejected.

The movies implied that Vader and Palpy were the only two force users left in the Empire and I understood this as being because Palpy feared the competition. Because of this, all the other crap about emperor's hands and imperial dark jedi and such seems forced and incongruous.

While it does feel like the Empire should have been around for a longer time, twenty years is pretty long. Look how quickly Nazi Germany was established. Look at how Imperial Japan became more militarized. And the Empire was still in the process of being formed since there was still the rubber stamp Imperial Senate. It took a while before the Emperor felt secure enough to dissolve it.

[Galvatron]

I'd also like to take this opportunity to repeat what I've said many times in the past: Vader being Luke's father did not necessitate the merging the two into one character. The backstory would have still worked (and worked better, IMO) if Anakin Skywalker was a wholly different person and Luke was the offspring of a secret liaison between Vader and Anakin's wife.

Now that's an interesting thought. And that's an even better screwjob. Not only did Vader kill his father, his father wasn't even his father! What a double whammy. That makes the scene so much worse.

I'm trying to imagine the dynamic there. It probably wouldn't do for it to be rape. It should be a love triangle with pre-maiming Vader horning in behind Anakin's back. Or maybe to keep it fitting Anakin horned in on Vader? Vader was the injured party here. He killed Anakin, maimed by Kenobi, the children are assumed to be Anakin's and nobody ever suspected they were Vader's. Kenobi never lied, he was uninformed.

Sorta, but I'd make Luke's mother already Anakin's wife in Episode 1.

And I imagine less of an actual love-triangle and something more along the lines of Vader using the dark side of the Force to seduce Anakin's wife (with a Sith mind trick) whom he lusts after. I can't imagine she'd be "weak-minded" enough to fall for the standard Jedi version or even consciously cheat on Anakin, so it would be yet another way of showing us Vader's descent into evil. And it would spare us the cringingly-awful love story of the real prequels since she and Vader don't love each other.

[The Vortex Empire]

The question I've always had is what did Kenobi mean by "more powerful?" Force ghosts seem incapable of doing much more than yammering at people. Can they spy on the emperor's movements, consult the wisdom of the ages, gaze into the future? Exactly what powers are granted? How can they help their side after death?

The most impressive thing I can think of a force ghost ever doing was when Ajunta Pall, 3,000 years after his death, was capable of physically fighting and hypothetically killing Revan in Pall's tomb on Korriban. However, after all that time his memory was muddy and he didn't seem fully sane anymore. So I don't really know what Kenobi was talking about.

[Galvatron]

Yeah, Obi-Wan being capable of actually training Luke himself after his physical death AND haunting the shit out of Vader would probably qualify. Alas, it took Ben three fucking years to make another appearance just to tell Luke to find another master to learn from.

And another problem I have with TESB's placement in the timeline: it took Han three fucking years to decide to finally pay off Jabba the Hutt? I realize these people were busy having adventures with green bunny-men and shit during all that time, but come on.

TESB should occur mere months after ANH. And there's no reason it can't. The timeline is completely arbitrary.

[Stofsk]

Who's to say it doesn't? Other than the EU of course.

[Crazedwraith]

I'd also like to take this opportunity to repeat what I've said many times in the past: Vader being Luke's father did not necessitate the merging the two into one character. The backstory would have still worked (and worked better, IMO) if Anakin Skywalker was a wholly different person and Luke was the offspring of a secret liaison between Vader and Anakin's wife.

I find it difficult to see the point of this but I'd assume you'd completely change RotJ as well to accommodate this? Otherwise it would be a complete contrivance that Obi-Wan has to waste more time explaining to Luke for little pay off. And the redemption story line doesn't work. Vader is never really described as heroic and especially if he's an adultery to audience has little reason to want to see him redeemed.

[Darth Yan]

About Han: the implication is that when he went to pay Jabba a crook stole all his money and buy the time han tried to explain jabba had enough and tried to put a bounty. Han may have stuck with the rebellion because it had nowhere else to go, but when things got too hairy he figured he might as well plead his case to jabba again.

[Galvatron]

I find it difficult to see the point of this but I'd assume you'd completely change RotJ as well to accommodate this? Otherwise it would be a complete contrivance that Obi-Wan has to waste more time explaining to Luke for little pay off. And the redemption story line doesn't work. Vader is never really described as heroic and especially if he's an adultery to audience has little reason to want to see him redeemed.

Yeah, scrapping ROTJ is key.

And I don't see how it undermines Vader's redemption at all. So long as he turns against the Empire in order to save the life of his son, what else do we need to see in order to sympathize with him?

I understand that the adultery thing makes him extremely difficult to forgive, but at least he never murdered any children.

About Han: the implication is that when he went to pay Jabba a crook stole all his money and buy the time han tried to explain jabba had enough and tried to put a bounty. Han may have stuck with the rebellion because it had nowhere else to go, but when things got too hairy he figured he might as well plead his case to jabba again.

Where is any of that "implied" in TESB?

[Darth Yan]

its eu for why there's a three year gap. han did mention a bounty hunter at the start of esb.

[Stofsk]

That bounty hunter was named Skorr and his story was told in the newspaper strip by Archie Goodwin and Al Williamson and it has precisely zero to do with anything you're saying. In addition, Han was going to leave the Rebels to pay off Jabba the Hutt so he had to have his money still available to him.

The EU fucked it up as it always does, though the newspaper strip did make the interval feel a lot tighter than the blanket 3 years the EU claims.

[Galvatron]

In addition, Han was going to leave the Rebels to pay off Jabba the Hutt so he had to have his money still available to him.

Han even offered to pay him triple in ROTJ.

[jollyreaper]

And I imagine less of an actual love-triangle and something more along the lines of Vader using the dark side of the Force to seduce Anakin's wife (with a Sith mind trick) whom he lusts after. I can't imagine she'd be "weak-minded" enough to fall for the standard Jedi version or even consciously cheat on Anakin, so it would be yet another way of showing us Vader's descent into evil. And it would spare us the cringingly-awful love story of the real prequels since she and Vader don't love each other.

Doesn't quite work that way, if he's deliberately being a schmuck. Luke had a faith in the goodness of his father in the original, I suppose based on Obi-Wan saying he was a good egg. If Vader was a dick from the start, there's no reason to suspect goodness in him. The only way your suggestion works is if Vader was a good egg and fell into that love triangle in a tragic fashion. Maybe Anakin was a nice guy but neglectful. There are plenty of cases of two best buddies where one buddy falls for the other one's wife because the husband just wasn't paying enough attention.

There's the old bible story of King David lusting for Bathsheba and deliberately having her husband sent to the hottest part of the battle so he would die and he could then sleep with her. God frowned on that one like it was gay marriage. So David wrote a few psalms and his legacy was rehabilitated. That doesn't quite sit right with me.

While I love the idea of Vader's redemption, while I've been partial to heel-face turns in fiction since watching GI Joe and Transformers, I've grown skeptical of them in real life. I can understand someone forced to do horrible things and wanting to be good after it. Soldier forced to kill other soldiers in self-defense, that can leave scars. But if the soldier tortured prisoners, civilians, did all sorts of unspeakable things outside the shackles of mortal terror, outside of mortal combat, how could he do those things and have a soul? How could he then later decide to renounce his ways? Like I could understand a conscripted guard at a concentration camp wanting forgiveness. He may have been forced to do terrible things to prisoners but he never wanted to. But a volunteer guard, one who enjoyed his work, who put extra effort into inventing new cruelties, how could someone like that even be capable of repenting? If they had an ounce of humanity inside I don't see how they could have committed those acts in the first place. I would assume any such claims of "seeing the light" is simply sociopathic opportunism. "Well, the Nazi idea didn't go over too well. Let's just chalk it up to youthful indiscretion and see if I can keep my own skin intact."

To my mind, Vader hasn't really redeemed himself by saving his son. He's only proven that blood is thicker than water and that Palpatine did not own him completely. There is something powerful in seeing someone who is generally a bastard do something uncharacteristic and selfless but I don't think any one act could compensate for a lifetime of evil. The nature of Vader's actions have about as much gray to them as his outfit.

[Galvatron]

Doesn't quite work that way, if he's deliberately being a schmuck. Luke had a faith in the goodness of his father in the original, I suppose based on Obi-Wan saying he was a good egg.

Only if you count ROTJ, which this scenario doesn't.

To my mind, Vader hasn't really redeemed himself by saving his son. He's only proven that blood is thicker than water and that Palpatine did not own him completely. There is something powerful in seeing someone who is generally a bastard do something uncharacteristic and selfless but I don't think any one act could compensate for a lifetime of evil. The nature of Vader's actions have about as much gray to them as his outfit.

I agree, which is why I wouldn't try to paint him as fully redeemed, but he would become more sympathetic.

[jollyreaper]

How would you rewrite ROTJ then? Do you want to include the redemption story or go elsewhere? "Luke, I am your father!" and then Luke later decides to go the pure revenge route?

The whole sensing good in Vader thing doesn't really stand up to logic even though it's romantic as hell. (Romantic as opposed to rational.) Luke really had no reason to assume so since his last direct contact with Vader was on Bespin and he wasn't even sure he trusted what Vader said at the time. So where did he get the idea there was good left in his father? I can understand the cultural injunction against wanting to commit patricide, the same way he would recoil at sleeping with an attractive older woman if he was just told for certain she was his mother. Doesn't matter if he doesn't know her personally, just the idea would be enough to put him off. But how does he know there's good in Vader? And even if there is, it's not enough to base a plan on. His statement in the movie implied that this was nearly suicidal mission. He would save his father and escape in time or be blown up along with the station.

Now I suppose we can cut some slack with the force sensitivity thing. He could not be just speaking poetically but with the direct knowledge of something he can feel in Vader's soul. Presumably this is something the Emperor senses as well but feels he has little risk of provoking, feeling Vader is safely now his creature.

[Darth Yan]

Vader could have easily tried to kill Luke but didn't. His whole "Rule the galaxy as father and son" implied that vader's reasons for recruiting luke was as much from a desire not to kill him as practicallity. Also, he knew that anakin was once a hero, and in his youthful optimism he was willing to believe that there was some good that the emporer hadn't squashed out. As I said earlier, it was a gamble, but it did pay off.

[Galvatron]

How would you rewrite ROTJ then?

Good question, since I give that very same question a lot more thought than I should given the impossibility of it ever mattering.

As of right now, my ROTJ (assuming it even retains that title, which is doubtful) would not be the end of the saga. I'd go the full nine with episode six involving the emperor's son (Prince insert-name-here) taking personal command of Vader's fleet with the intention of capturing and executing Luke. The inevitable moment of truth is when Vader makes his choice to turn against the Empire and save the life of his son.

But that's just my current vision. It's subject to change and depends heavily upon how I'd decide to rewrite the prequels first.

[Abacus]

If RotJ were to be rewritten, I believe that the story itself was not necessarily bad, but needed to be fleshed out more. An example being that, at the end, it would have been nice to see someone, maybe Leia, explaining about how the Empire was breaking up into warlordism in the wake of the Emperor's death.

Course, if I were Lucas, I'd get off my lazy ass and make Episodes 7, 8, and 9 based off of the Thrawn series. A full fleshing out of what happens to Luke, Leia, Han, etc.