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Never forget the Star Wars plot holes so big you could fly the Falcon through them.
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00:00Now, when any franchise gets as impossibly gigantic as Star Wars, it's only inevitable
00:04that some plot holes are going to slip through the cracks. But Star Wars is definitely a unique
00:10case in this regard, given the sheer depth of its lore and the expansiveness of its universe,
00:15especially including the various novelisations and comics which have entered and exited the
00:19canon over the years. Ultimately, Star Wars is enough of an awe-inspiring spectacle,
00:24most of the time anyway, that fans are largely willing to forgive or even entirely overlook
00:28narrative inconsistencies. But that doesn't mean they aren't worth discussing. And that's what we're
00:33here to talk about today as I'm Jules, this is WhatCulture.com, and these are 10 huge Star Wars
00:37plot holes that everyone overlooks. 10. Vader Doesn't Recognize Leia is His Daughter
00:43So let's kick things off with a plot hole evidently created by the fact that George Lucas hadn't yet
00:48mapped out the original Star Wars trilogy, and it's far from the only one generated by that lack of
00:53planning. When Darth Vader boards the ship housing Leia at the beginning of A New Hope and first
00:57crosses path with the princess, why doesn't he sense a familial connection to her, even though
01:02she's standing directly in front of him? Again, the real explanation is that Lucas was simply making
01:07things up as he went along and hadn't yet conceived of Leia being related to Vader. And yet, some fans
01:12have attempted to hand-wave this by suggesting that Vader couldn't sense his daughter because she
01:16wasn't using the Force or being Force-sensitive at the time. Hmm, in the 45 years since A New Hope's
01:23release, various comics and novels have also taken a more authoritative stab at explaining
01:28this away, such as claiming that Leia managed to resist Vader's mind probe through sheer mental
01:33metal. But ultimately, reasoning like this just seems like a pretty transparent and not terribly
01:37convincing attempt to plug up a plot hole that's existed since the series' inception.
01:429. The Rule of Two Kind of Makes No Sense
01:45The Sith Rule of Two dictates that only two Sith Lords can exist at any time, a master and an apprentice.
01:51And yet, this rule, which was first mentioned by Yoda in The Phantom Menace, has created quite
01:56the massive headache amongst the fans trying to make sense of it. The wider Star Wars universe
02:00has seen the Rule of Two frequently be disobeyed. While in the original trilogy itself, it's not
02:04entirely clear what the outcome would have been had Vader managed to seduce Luke over to the dark side
02:08alongside himself and the Emperor, seemingly violating the rule in the process. While one can
02:13argue that the Rule of Two simply isn't as strict a rule as Yoda makes it out to be, in reality this is
02:18more likely an inconsistency on George Lucas' side. That Yoda's fateful remark imposed a far
02:24stricter set of boundaries on the Sith methodology than it really needed to.
02:288. Obi-Wan's Terrible Attempt at Hiding Luke
02:31With Obi-Wan hiding Luke on Tatooine in A New Hope, why exactly would he let him keep the surname
02:36Skywalker, while stashing him on his father's home planet with his aunt and uncle no less,
02:41immediately making it easier for any interested party to track him down? Now, there have been numerous
02:46suggested answers to this over the years, none of which feel fully satisfying, however. Some claim
02:50that the name Skywalker might be a lot more common in the Star Wars universe than we think,
02:55though the series' media in general seems to suggest that this is not the case.
02:58Back in 2016, Lucasfilm Story Group member Pablo Hidalgo acknowledged this plot hole as a fair
03:04question, while claiming that Obi-Wan's logic in hiding Luke on Tatooine was that he knew Anakin
03:08would not revisit the planet given the trauma that he and his family suffered there. While Anakin
03:13admittedly didn't know that Padme gave birth before dying and therefore wouldn't have any reason to
03:18look for a son, it still seems pointlessly risky not to have Luke live under a pseudonym.
03:22Ultimately, this is really because George Lucas didn't settle on Luke being Vader's son until he
03:26completed a rewrite of the Empire Strikes Back script, which was finished almost a year after
03:31A New Hope hits cinemas.
03:337. The Millennium Falcon Is Fueled Up On Jakku
03:36Let's face it, we're all so damn happy that Star Wars The Force Awakens brought the series back to
03:40Terra Firma that we weren't necessarily open to scrutinising every aspect of its plot,
03:45straight away at least. With some decent critical distance from the sequel trilogy as a whole,
03:49though, there are certainly some aspects of the story, both large and minor, that really don't make
03:54much sense. For example, when Rey and Finn hijacked the Millennium Falcon on Jakku, why exactly is it
03:59fuelled and ready to go despite seemingly sitting around on this dusty-ass planet for years?
04:04Penny-pinching scrapper Unkar didn't exactly seem like the kind of guy to just leave a dilapidated
04:08ship fuelled up with the liquid metal fuel it requires, especially as in addition to being
04:13expensive as hell, the fuel is canonically said to be highly explosive. When it was stolen from
04:18Han and Chewie, it would have certainly evaporated over the years before Rey and Finn commandeered it.
04:24The real answer to this, as is so often the case, because the plot needed it to be.
04:276. Why Didn't The Empire Fire At Yavin Prime
04:31In A New Hope before the Death Star can fire upon the rebel base on the moon of Yavin 4,
04:35it needed to be manoeuvred around Yavin Prime for some reason. This naturally buys the rebels some
04:41time to destroy the Death Star. And so you have to wonder why the Empire didn't simply just fire
04:46the Death Star's laser at Yavin Prime itself, which as a gas giant would likely allow the laser to
04:51penetrate through and in turn obliterate Yavin 4. The most cited answer is that the Empire simply
04:56didn't expect that the rebels would be able to do anything to compromise the Death Star in the time
05:00it required to get a good shot at Yavin 4. If you want to be generous to George Lucas,
05:05it's because the Empire got complacent. But really, it's a classic case of just giving the bad guys
05:09the idiot ball for a few minutes to keep the story going.
05:125. The Jedi Being Forgotten So Quickly
05:15One of the more absurd implausibilities between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope is that the
05:20galaxy seemed to largely forget entirely about the Jedi, or at least view them as quaint relics,
05:25in a period of just 19 years. Think back to 19 years ago in our own reality. Now, 2003 isn't
05:31really that long to forget about something as significant as the Jedi, so it is a tough pill
05:36to swallow. Some will argue that Palpatine's efforts to erase the Jedi legacy were just that
05:41industrious, while others have stated that, in the grand scheme of the galaxy, the 10,000 Jedi who
05:46existed prior to Order 66 isn't really a whole lot. Plus, there's the whole fact that the remaining
05:50Jedi were in hiding, and as such, not terribly active in keeping their story alive.
05:54A small subset of fans have more dubiously cited the existence of Holocaust denial as proof of
06:00humanity's ability to forget or deny something in bad faith. Though there have evidently been
06:05attempts to explain this aspect of Star Wars' lore away, it still doesn't feel right that the Jedi
06:10are basically an unknown entity less than two decades after they were integrated into society.
06:164. Luke's Inexplicable Escape From Hoth
06:19In The Empire Strikes Back, Luke heads to Dagobah in order to train with Master Yoda,
06:24as instructed by the force spirit of Obi-Wan. However, the film conveniently glosses over the
06:29fact that this required Luke to circumvent the Empire's blockade in Hoth, which should have
06:33theoretically prevented his escape. So what gives? Well, Pablo Hidalgo himself admitted that asking
06:38about the nature of Luke's escape was a very good question, while adding that The Empire Strikes
06:43Back makes the least amount of sense of the film's. The most sensible answers are, of course,
06:48that the Empire was busy chasing down the Millennium Falcon, which may have allowed Luke to sneak
06:53through the blockade, but it's still not a particularly persuasive explanation. Ultimately,
06:57Luke escaped Hoth because he had to, not because it actually made complete sense.
07:023. Droids Feel Pain For Some Unknown Reason
07:05In Return of the Jedi, you might recall that we briefly see droids being tortured in Jabba's
07:10palace, namely a gonk droid whose feet are being branded as it screams out in apparent pain.
07:15Except, why on earth would the droid feel pain? Because it's a droid!
07:19While in the original trilogy we saw C-3PO appear to experience both pleasure and pain,
07:25this doesn't quite vibe with the events of Attack of the Clones, where 3PO is straight-up
07:29dismantled without appearing to be hurt at all. Beyond any philosophical questions about whether
07:33droids are feeling pain or whether it's the pre-programmed illusion of pain, one has to ask
07:38again, why? What could the possible benefit of this offer anyone? There's never been a clear answer
07:44about this, and beyond perhaps heightening a droid's self-preservation potential, there doesn't seem to be
07:48many upsides of allowing droids to feel a distinctly human emotion.
07:522. Leia Has Memories of Padme
07:55And now another plot hole that was deemed a legit question by Pablo Hidalgo. In Return of the Jedi,
08:01Leia tells Luke that she can remember images and feelings of her birth mother, which of course is
08:06contradicted by Revenge of the Sith, which shows Padme dying soon after giving birth to Luke and Leia.
08:11So, what exactly is Leia on about here? Obviously, the real answer is that it's an inconsistency between
08:17the sequels and prequels that George Luke has just lost sight of. However, some fans, in their
08:21desperation for answers, have pawned it off as either Leia using the force to conjure memories
08:25or visions of Padme, or that she's in fact remembering her adoptive mother, Queen Organa.
08:31But any way you slice it, it's a blatant textbook prequelitis problem.
08:351. Vader Only Disables The Falcon's Hyperdrive
08:38In The Empire Strikes Back, Luke, Leia and company manage to escape Darth Vader's grasp after R2-D2
08:44reactivates the Millennium Falcon's hyperdrive. But why wouldn't Vader order the hyperdrive to be
08:49more catastrophically compromised or even outright destroyed, rather than disabling it in trivial
08:54enough fashion that R2 could repair it with relative ease? One popular theory amongst fans
08:59is that Vader simply didn't want the heroes noticing that the Falcon had been tampered with,
09:03as this might have prompted them to fly another ship out of Cloud City instead,
09:07in turn making it much more difficult for the Empire to track them. But really, the most sensible answer
09:11is that Vader didn't count on an Astromech droid interfacing with Cloud City's central computer
09:16and figuring out what was wrong with the Falcon. Even so, that's short-sighted enough to feel like
09:20a narrative inconsistency rather than a mere turn of plot.
09:24And there we go my friends, those were 10 huge Star Wars plot holes that everybody overlooks. I hope
09:28that you enjoyed that, and please let me know what you thought about it down in the comments section
09:32below. As always, I've been Jules, you can go follow me over on Twitter at RetroJButTheOIsA0,
09:37and the same for Instagram, RetroJButTheOIsA0. Hope to see you over there.
09:42But before I go, I just want to say one thing. Hope that you're treating yourself well with love
09:46and respect, my friend. And I hope that this little message of positivity gives you that boost
09:50to fill your own plot holes in your own lives, to help you make sense of things around you,
09:53because at the end of the day, I just want you to live a healthy and happy life. You are
09:57a massive ledge, and you deserve all of the best things like love, happiness, and success.
10:02And I want you to go out there and absolutely smash it. I believe in you. As always, I've
10:07been Jules, you have been awesome, never forget that, and I'll speak to you soon. Bye.
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