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You might not realise just how loosey-goosey Star Wars' internal logic actually is.
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00:00Considering the sheer wealth of mythology that comprises the Star Wars franchise, fans
00:05can't be blamed for struggling to keep track of it all.
00:08It's basically a full-time job at this point, enough that Disney literally pays a group
00:12of law keepers, the Lucasfilm Story Group, to keep it in order.
00:16Yet those in charge evidently haven't gotten everything right over the last half century,
00:21breaking their own established rules and concepts on the regular, albeit often in ways that
00:27might have passed fans by.
00:28So I am Padawan Gareth from WhatCultureStarWars and here are 10 times Star Wars broke its
00:34own rules and you didn't notice.
00:37Number 10, How Force Ghosts Work
00:39Many elements of the Force are kept ambiguous throughout the series, seemingly intentionally,
00:45but one of the more irksome inconsistencies is the means through which a fallen Jedi becomes
00:50a Force Ghost.
00:51Obi-Wan of course becomes one after being felled by Darth Vader, and Yoda and Anakin follow suit
00:57in Return of the Jedi. But what about other Jedi who died throughout the series? Namely,
01:02what about the 200 or so Jedi who died in the Battle of Geonosis in Attack of the Clones?
01:07Why didn't we see them become Force Ghosts? Beyond that, the time it takes for a dead Jedi
01:11to become a Force Ghost is totally all over the place, some near instantly transmuting into
01:17Ghost form, while others take considerably longer. Elsewhere, there are countless unanswered questions,
01:22like who Force Ghosts can reveal themselves to and how extensively they can interact with
01:27the physical world. Again, this aspect of Star Wars is kept vague to give the writers leeway for
01:33how they use it, but the constant deviation and variation makes it frustratingly hard to get a
01:39bead on what being a Force Ghost is actually all about.
01:42Number 9, Jedi Forgetting Their Force Powers
01:45The great thing about being a Jedi is that you've got a battery of basically magical abilities at your
01:51disposal at any given moment. But there's an infuriating number of times throughout the Star
01:56Wars franchise that they've conveniently just forgotten this fact. The Phantom Menace literally
02:01opens with Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon using Force Speed to escape droid fire, and yet we never see them
02:06use
02:07this again. It sure would have been useful during that climactic fight with Darth Maul, right?
02:12Elsewhere, nobody ever uses their Force powers to try and damage Darth Vader's armoured suit.
02:17And there are literally innumerable other examples of Jedi not using established Force abilities to get
02:22themselves out of a bind. If you want to try and hand wave this, you might suggest that Jedi
02:27intentionally make spare use of their powers to avoid the temptation of the dark side. But come on,
02:33it's a reach. Basically, if Jedi made continued use of the many powers at their disposal, these movies
02:39would be really damn short.
02:41Number 8, Everything About The Holdo Maneuver
02:43The Holdo Maneuver was first seen in The Last Jedi, when Vice Admiral Holdo suicidally rammed the
02:50Raddus into Snoke's flagship, The Supremacy, at near light speed to buy the Resistance time to escape
02:56to Krait. Yet this rubbed a lot of fans the wrong way, because even if you accept the science behind
03:01the move, if such an unorthodox move was possible, why haven't we ever seen it before in Star Wars canon?
03:07Why, for instance, didn't the Rebels perform a similar move on the Death Star, or the Resistance
03:12rammed Starkiller base, and in turn save themselves a ton of hassle? It feels like space warfare would
03:18be totally different if this was always a possibility, even accepting that it's clearly
03:23a difficult move to pull off. The Rise of Skywalker made an unconvincing attempt to quell
03:28miffed fans, dismissing the Holdo Maneuver as a one-in-a-million shot. Yeah, sure, JJ.
03:34Yet The Last Jedi didn't depict Holdo's act that way at all, so it basically felt like a limp attempt
03:39to sweep it under the rug, and stop fans continually questioning it. Which, of course, they still do.
03:457. Random Lightsaber Colors When It's Cool
03:48The original Star Wars trilogy plainly established that lightsabers come in three colours. Blue and
03:54green for Jedi, and red for the Sith, a scheme which remained consistent for decades. But in the
04:00prequels, Mace Windu suddenly rocked a purple lightsaber totally out of nowhere, simply because
04:05he wanted to stand out from other actors in the Battle of Geonosis. Since then, we've seen other
04:10canonical shades of lightsaber. Rey's yellow lightsaber in The Rise of Skywalker, Ahsoka Tano's
04:15white lightsabers, and of course, the Darksaber. Though the now-extinct Legends canon attempted to
04:21ascribe specific meaning to the colours, most of this has since been wiped out, ensuring the colours
04:27assigned to sabers outside of the primary Jedi Sith template are more or less a crapshoot.
04:32Ultimately, it really comes down to creatives wanting to explore the colour spectrum, and honestly,
04:37it's tough to blame them for that, even if adventurous colours are conspicuously absent in
04:42the original trilogy. 6. Tusken Raiders Reaction Times
04:46Here's a hilarious inconsistency you almost certainly forgot about, or perhaps never even
04:52noticed in the first place. In A New Hope, Obi-Wan and Luke come across a downed sandcrawler,
04:58and Obi-Wan memorably remarks, these blast points are too accurate for sandpeople. Only Imperial
05:03stormtroopers are so precise. Now, even accepting the whole issue of stormtrooper aim, Obi-Wan's
05:09summary dismissal of the sandpeople slash Tusken Raiders marksmanship runs counter to numerous
05:14subsequent depictions of their incredible sniping abilities. Take The Phantom Menace, where a Tusken
05:20Raider shoots a podracer moving at incredible speed, and more recently, The Book of Boba Fett,
05:25where Tusken Raiders manage to snipe guards on a moving train. Of course, it's possible to assume
05:30that Obi-Wan was simply mistaken in his estimation of the Tusken Raiders, but if Obi-Wan is supposedly
05:36such a wise and knowledgeable individual, it feels less like an intentional character flourish than an
05:42internal inconsistency with how the Raiders are presented. 5. Lightsabers Cauterizing Wounds
05:48Except When They Don't One of the key characteristics of a lightsaber is its extreme heat, which allows
05:55it to not only cut through basically any material with ease, but instantly cauterize wounds while
06:00cutting human flesh. Except that's not always the case. Take Obi-Wan's run-in with Ponda Baba in the
06:06Mos Eisley Cantina in A New Hope, where Obi-Wan effortlessly slices Baba's arm off with a lightsaber,
06:12before we catch a lingering glimpse of Baba's severed appendage covered in blood.
06:16Sure, you can argue that Ponda Baba's circulatory system and blood pressure act in a different way
06:22to humans, but it's another reach, my friends. In reality, most every other time we've seen
06:27someone lose a limb to a lightsaber, say Luke in The Empire Strikes Back, it's been entirely
06:32bloodless. Essentially, George Lucas hadn't yet mapped out the rules for lightsaber strikes during
06:37production of A New Hope. Ensuring Ponda Baba's gory dispatch continues to stick out like a sore thumb,
06:43compared to the more family-friendly dismemberments in subsequent Star Wars movies.
06:484. People Wearing Glasses
06:50One rule which George Lucas insisted upon from the outset of Star Wars is that glasses effectively
06:56don't exist in this universe. And given how technologically advanced Lucas' world is,
07:01that's basically fair enough. Except a few glasses wearers have crept into the universe in the years
07:07since George Lucas sold the property off to Disney. For one, an episode of animated series
07:11Star Wars Rebels Double Agent Droid featured a character wearing specs. And more recently and
07:17prominently, The Mandalorian's Dr. Pershing rocks some distinctive eye glasses. Of course,
07:22it's possible that glasses are basically a relic in this universe, with only a select few bothering
07:28to use such an ancient technology. But all the same, it's tough to believe that someone of Dr.
07:33Pershing's standing would favor them over simply having his eyesight corrected with, say, laser eye
07:38surgery. George Lucas lost the opportunity to dictate such things when he let go of Star Wars,
07:43yet in the grand scheme of things, it's a small inconsistency. And therefore, one you probably
07:48didn't even spot.
07:503. The Sith's Spare Use of Force Choke
07:53In the same vein of Jedi forgetting about their Force powers, we have Sith not using the Force to
07:59its full murderous potential. Case in point, though we see Darth Vader use the Force Choke
08:04several times on subordinate officers, why the hell doesn't he ever use it against actual Jedi?
08:10And he's not the only one guilty of this. In the Clone Wars, Palpatine Force Chokes Count Dooku
08:15from halfway across the galaxy, suggesting it could be extremely useful for the Sith to either kill or
08:20pacify enemies, namely the Jedi. You can certainly argue that Vader and Palpatine being connected with
08:26the people they Force choked made it easier for them to exert the Force upon them from a distance.
08:31But all the same, doesn't it feel like an underused skill in the entirety of Star Wars?
08:36And even if you accept that skilled Jedi can block such a maneuver, what about pesky regular
08:41rebels who aren't Force-sensitive? It's a move that could do so much damage, and yet it's rarely used.
08:47Likely because George Lucas created something a bit too powerful for its own good.
08:522. The Nonsensical Rule of Two
08:54Even casual Star Wars fans are aware of the Rule of Two, a Sith maxim first concocted by the legendary
09:00Darth Bane, which states that only two Sith Lords can exist at once, one master and one apprentice.
09:07It sounds simple enough, and yet, as stringently as Emperor Palpatine initially appears to adhere
09:12to it, it's been treated more as a guideline throughout the history of the series. To that end,
09:17Palpatine juggled Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker as apprentices, a move which could have conceivably
09:22resulted in there being a third wheel in this party. But of course, Palpatine ended up sealing
09:27his own fate when father and son reconciled, resulting in him getting lobbed down a reactor
09:32shaft by Vader. Then there's the Rise of Skywalker, which saw Palpatine residing on Exegol with a whole
09:38ass fleet of Sith acolytes, prompting the film's novelization to effectively retcon the Rule of Two,
09:44claiming that there are many Sith who are ruled by Two. Really though, it's just another interesting
09:50idea which George Lucas didn't think through enough.
09:531. Force Healing Is Now A Thing
09:55In addition to the many other ways The Rise of Skywalker left fans bitterly disappointed,
10:01it introduced a force power never seen in the Star Wars movies before. Force healing. In the
10:07film's climax, Rey and Ben Solo force heal one another, despite the fact that they seemingly
10:12haven't been trained to do so. And more to the point, we've never seen any force users do it before.
10:17Well, in fairness, Grogu did perform a force heal in an episode of The Mandalorian's first season,
10:22aired mere days before The Rise of Skywalker. But that aside, it's staggering that such a useful
10:28force skill hasn't been extensively used in canon Star Wars media prior to this.
10:33If this was a possibility, why didn't Obi-Wan use it to heal Qui-Gon, or Anakin to heal Padme?
10:38Sure, you can just hand-wave it by declaring that certain Jedi get certain abilities,
10:43and force heal just happens to be incredibly rare among them.
10:45Or even that Rey learned it from the ancient Jedi texts.
10:49All the same, it strains credibility that the movies went more than 40 years without
10:53featuring force healing at all.
10:56And that's our list. Know of any other times Star Wars broke its own rules and you didn't notice?
11:01Let us know all about them in the comments section right down below,
11:04and don't forget to like, share, and click on that subscribe button while you're down there.
11:07I've been Gareth from WhatCultureStarWars, may the force be with you as always,
11:11thank you for watching this video today, and hopefully we'll see you soon. Bye-bye!
11:15We'll see you soon.
11:16Bye-bye!
11:16Bye-bye!
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