. . . ESB

What's wrong with:

STAR WARS

The Empire Strikes Back

ESB is in the conversation with The Godfather Part II, Aliens, The Dark Knight, and The Bourne Supremacy, as sequels that were better than the originals when the originals were very good. Sorry, Wrath of Khan, that first Star Trek movie was too low a bar to clear.

I bought a Time, special edition magazine for $15 last year, subtitled, "40 Years of the Force." In it, were chronicled the laborious results of Lucas' writing process, original reviews of all the movies to date, tidbits and factoids about the characters, and the actors who portrayed them, and about Abrams, the new director of TFA. I had seen it written that the reviews for ESB were negative. The review written by Gerald Clarke for the May 19, 1980 Time magazine was not:

"Sequels of giant hits, like children who follow . . . always have an unfair burden. They are not examined on their own merits but in relationship to the picture everyone loved. In many ways Lucas and director Irvin Kershner have overcome that handicap. The Empire Strikes Back is a more polished and in some ways, a richer film. But to imitate Yoda's way of speaking, and to answer the obvious question, as much fun it is not."

That does not seem like an indictment of ESB. Plenty of others I have read are even more welcoming to the achievements of episode V. Others are not, but those tweets, twits, and other social media respondents, or article writers, like one I used to base my review of TLJ, make it seem like those, like myself, who pretend their youth is being destroyed by these new installments, would have you believe that ESB was just as widely panned as TFA and TLJ. 

The biggest difference in the responses to any movie, let alone one so revered, from 40 years ago and today, is that I don't need to be employed by Time Magazine or Entertainment Weekly, or be famous, for my opinion to matter. For it to be read, is another matter entirely. The ironic thing is that those who are paid to review movies, and have the outlet (articles published online, or that still appear in newspapers or magazines), ridicule those who don't have that outlet. Those who do have the outlet, suppose their view is more legitimate, valued, well-written and their opinions matter more. None of that is necessarily true. Don't get me wrong, there are complete goofballs out there and all of those who are, are incapable of recognizing it, just as those who are paid to watch and write about movies, are incapable of realizing how overvalued their contributions to criticism might be.

On with the defect worthy, and redeeming material from ESB.  I've got only this breakdown:
Low (3), Medium (1), High (3), Serious (0), Critical (1)- that's 8, the same number as Rogue One.

1)  The special edition Wampa scenes were excellent additions. Showing the Wampa eating something with blood dripping from its face, within its lair, more of its approach to get Luke who has awoken. All very good adds and better than anything that was "enhanced" about the SE version of A New Hope.

2) Solo holding C-3PO's words shut is funny. The humor again in this film is understated, natural and comfortable.

3) The dialogue with Han and Leia talking about their feelings makes us imagine months of sexual tension in just a couple minutes.

Low

4) Again, why wouldn't the Empire hire aliens? Another set of white guys/a soon to be force-choked to death Admiral, dismiss a potential lead before Vader weighs in on the probability of Hoth being the site of the rebel base. This is a low here, whereas it is a more serious defect in the newer films because the creators of the original trilogy didn't advertise how multi-cultural they were going to be, how hip with the overall "orientation" of the cast they were going to be. If you tell people how outside of the box you're going to think, and the people paying attention discover you've only progressed to thinking inside of a larger box, who do you think you're fooling?

5) Vader kills Admiral someone or other because he came out of light speed too close to Hoth. A scene or two earlier, the rebels had already started the evacuation. The admiral's mistakes were cumulative. This is the straw that broke the camel's back.

High

6) Luke's scars from the Wampa attack. He is recovering sitting in some comfortable loose clothing hours after a giant, albino sasquatch clawed him across the face, and is now without a scrape. Either the medics the rebels have on their payroll are miracle workers, medicine has advanced to heal wounds more quickly, or Luke is part Wolverine (of X-Men fame). This only gets a high because of the benefit of the doubt, that Luke's dipping into the container of liquid, helped aid his face. This is only the third famous full immersion of a human into a vat of water. Letterman donned a suit adorned with thousands of Alka-Seltzer tablets, and I'm sure there is footage somewhere of Linda Carter or Farah Fawcett emerging from a dunk tank from Battle of the Network Stars in the late 70s or early 80s. Damn, this deplorable research. Guess I'll have to go look.

7) The Imperial Walkers . . . set down to conveniently march toward the trenches where the rebels happen to have set up their defense, are recognized through binoculars as Imperial Walkers- so the rebels are familiar, by name, with the armored beast marching toward them. But it takes the snow speeder pilots five minutes of attacking them to determine the armor is too strong and so change to harpoons and cables taking them by the legs. The Imperial Walkers are the Rob Gronkowskis of Star Wars. Only way this isn't an issue is if the soldiers in the trenches have no way of communicating with the pilots or all of the pilots have never seen the walkers. Both are unlikely.

High (for 7 and 8 combined)

8) Once the walkers are on the ground, the strong armor is pierced, causing a walker to explode, something that couldn't happen when they were operational. Again, if this was a thing, those in the trenches would need to aim for the head, or the speeders would have defeated the walkers by shooting them in the head. This is pretty clumsy thinking on the part of both the person who wrote the story and the scriptwriters, Lucas and two credited writers Brackett and Kasden. Three people in charge of the story fail to catch this. Sloppy.

9) Yoda! Yoda! Yoda! At least when Luke goes into his cave, we understand what the hell it means. I still don't get what we learned about Rey in hers in TLJ.

Medium (for wasting Boba Fett)

10) Boba Fett, one of 3 lines- "As you wish." Is the bounty hunter telling Darth Vader, he loves him, a la the farm boy from The Princess Bride? 

Critical

11) Luke is on Dagobah training to be a Jedi-knight, who will go to confront Vader, the reason Obi-Wan and Yoda have been hiding out for twenty years with, at most, 2 days of training. So, Rian Johnson (TLJ writer and director) isn't the only one who can't manage the timing of how long it should take someone to hone their skills as a super hero.

12) Bespin approach. Another great add to this movie from the SE. It didn't work for me in Star Wars SE with Mos Eisley, but does here.

13) Yoda: "No, there is another." Did we ever learn who that was? Leia, Rey, Kylo Ren, someone we haven't met yet? Can we build a movie around this where we see Leia with force powers?

14) Han and Leia stayed an overnight on Bespin. It was dusk when they arrived; a new day is waking when Lando comes to escort the lovebirds to a meal. The point here is that if the storytellers could have used something like the long wait to get a part for the hyperdrive, some kind of creative montage showing a prolonged passage of time, Luke could have learned a lot more in a week of training than in a day, which would further establish his skill set, making him more capable of facing Vader.

Interlude: Google- "Empire Strikes Back and CinemaSins". If I had known this was a thing before starting to write these, I would have acknowledged it. I don't need someone else to break down a movie franchise I grew up watching. And most of the problems I had with the original trilogy occurred to me well before the internet existed. Course, there is the thing about the title of these Cinema Sins. I decided on "What's wrong with" while they/he (Corey Chichizola) went with "Everything Wrong With".

Since I see there is also a Star Wars, A New Hope, version, I'll have to check that out too. I'll get back to the ESB of Cinema Sins, to see how my list stacks up to his, at the end of my list.

Low

15) Bespin is short on jail cells. Putting Chewbacca, Leia and Han in the same cell is a no-no. Only reason you do it, is because this is a movie.

High

16) 6 storm troopers and 1 officer from the Empire are meant to guard one Wookie with a protocol droid on his back, a resourceful princess who isn't in handcuffs, and a smuggler, with his aid, whom Darth Vader shouldn't trust.

Low

17) More misses in hallways. Again, would it kill you to have Lobot shot and killed or Lando shot in the leg?

18) Where did Lando get a rifle?

19) Luke: "No, nooooo." Just like Vader when he's put in his black suit in ROTS. Luke's version isn't as horrible, but I'm still not a fan.

Low

20) Luke jump-falls to a too safe position considering how high up he is. If you could convince an audience that he, using his Jedi powers was able to fall in slow motion, that works, but given the oversight tradition in this franchise, I would bet against it.

21) Lando is frustrated that the hyperdrive hasn't been fixed, and about then is a line from Vader- "Did your men disable the hyperdrive on the Millennium Falcon?" These are the types of things that can stomp out the eye-rolling at the implausibility of the plot and story and laziness of the director, writers and creative team in certain areas. The creative team, writers and directors got so many things right in the whole franchise, particularly in this movie, that to quibble about relatively few perceived errors seems like complete nonsense. Sure, there are those out there whose time can't be wasted with a recount of these errors, whose passion and intensity is earmarked for other endeavors about which I wouldn't care. 

Again, if Vader and Tarkin had spoken a couple of lines about having the Stormtroopers deliberately miss our band of heroes with all the shots fired in the halls of the Death Star, in Star Wars in order to have them escape so the Falcon could be tracked to the rebel base, that would make more sense.

Or if Han had said something in TFA about how eerily similar it was to cart around a droid with galaxy-sensitive plans, to have to contend with a near relation (Leia's father, and Han and Leia's son) dressed in black with a black helmet and a scary voice, and the desperate mission of destroying a planet killer that would have been a clever way to answer for the inconsistencies, redundancy, oversights and mistakes.

Deleted scenes:
The best of the deleted scenes shows C-3PO removing a warning from a door where a wampa was captured. The Stormtroopers then open the door and one is grabbed by the wampa as other troopers and Darth Vader look on helplessly. Not including any of the deletes I saw, good call. The creatives, editors and Lucas would have said that including wampas crashing through ice walls slowed the pace of the movie. Apparently, that realization is exempted from occurring to them for all of the movies.

CinemaSins (CS):
Most of the 100+ sins aren't really "sins" and if they are, they're venial in nature, i.e. relatively slight and don't condemn one's soul to hell, not unless they're combined together- n, p, and s below might get the creatives sent to purgatory.
a) first 5 don't really count. When the filmmakers decide to only show you 1-2 day snippets of the military struggle between the empire and rebels, they, perhaps to their detriment, haven't shown a full-scale assault of the empire on a rebel base. The complaints about the walkers from my perspective are above and CS has also captured those issues.

b) #6 from their list is the happenstance of Luke seeing a probe land a couple thousand yards from him. Bothersome of course, considering it could have landed anywhere on the planet. CS #7 is more of an issue- when you have a character with traits that make him super-human (Jedi) it is a good idea to not have him abstain from using them, like sensing a gigantic beast in near proximity that is about to claw the hero in the face.

c) Stealing the look of the abomindable snowman = not a defect. And of the tens of thousands of alien creatures in the history of film, some are going to look like each other. Lucas admitted his Kaminoans were inspired by Speilberg's Close Encounters aliens. Dragging something still alive back to your cave and not killing it until later, given the frozen confines of the wampa's habitat is not a defect. I usually defrost the steak before consuming it. The wampa's treatment of Luke is different than the crazy tentacled creatures' treatment of Finn aboard the docking station when we first meet up with Han and Chewie in TFA; the latter is hunting for sport, the former for life.

d) Han refers to some adventure we don't have a context for . . . like the Kessel Run, or Jabba the Hutt, that we don't learn about for another 41 and 3 years respectively. Remember, they show us 1-2 days out of these character's lives every three years. And if Han is getting nervous about paying off a debt, that seems to be a normal human reaction to mounting pressure and increasing odds that more are looking for him.

e) is it a sin to have a human want to get out of the lair, in which he was almost ripped apart while still alive? The hypothermia sins I'm on board with, but maybe they're wearing a few more layers of under armour than we're aware of. At this point he's at 32 sins, only four of which are legitimate. Luke, submerged in a vat of liquid wearing tighty whities is not a sin.

f) We've been hearing about the whole Luke and Leia kissing/incest stuff for years. This is akin to Luke being on hand to see the probe land. It is improbable that two siblings in that big a universe, uniting without knowing about the other. In human history there have been some crazy things happen. I bet there have been two siblings who slept together without their knowing it. Not ideal.

g) It is a "sin" that Han shot 2nd, or that Chewie thought Leia and Luke kissing was noteworthy.

h) not sure the walkers would be slipping and sliding all over in snow and ice. Snow and ice are two different things. Considering how heavy the walkers are, and if it is only snow, they wouldn't be slipping.

i) like my list, the CS also has the note about harpoons, tow cables and the vulnerability of downed walkers.

j) Ku Klux Stormtrooper- not a defect. Why they are in all that costuming considering the suit does nothing to protect them, excepting the Snowtrooper suit may aid in some way against the cold.

k) Luke survives a crash. He's crashing in a lot of snow (not ice) and is wearing a seat belt. Luke gets through the blockade is a legitimate complaint and one I brought up in The Phantom Menace.

l) Vader doesn't think to force control the Falcon. It is Yoda's opinion that size doesn't matter. CS compares a stationary X-Wing 1/4 to 1/8 the size of the Falcon that is definitely on the move.

Intermission: of the 60 sins he's detailed, 4-5 are legitimate.

m) the hyperdrive isn't working. CS spends 3 sins on this, that the issue is understood initially, or eventually, are two different things, which anyone who has installed a water heater, or torn open a wall, not expecting to find the power supply to the whole house stored within it. Problems mutate and become more specifically understood after investigation.

Severe
n) Luke kept the name "Skywalker" and was supposed to be hidden from his father with the same surname. This is a serious defect and one I had overlooked.

o) Yoda is challenging Luke.

Medium
p) a giant creature lives in the middle of space with a lack of food. It is the big foot of this galaxy.

q) maybe Yoda has misgivings, the same concerns he had when Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan got to train Luke's father, when the whole Jedi council was against it.

r) I think Luke is figuring out what is going on with the symbolism of him seeing his own face in Vader's mask.

r) Why wouldn't Obi-Wan and Yoda have told Luke about his father? Humans are complicated and unpredictable; apparently, so are force ghosts and whatever the hell Yoda is.

High
s) Han doesn't wait a few minutes to continue to float off with the rest of the junk, which is an inconsistent handling of the situation, as he had been so patient sitting on the trunk of a Star Destroyer. The Falcon doesn't detect Boba Fett and Slave I right behind them. Apparently the hyperdrive isn't the only thing that isn't functioning on the Falcon.

t) Luke may have needed to go to Dagobah because Obi-Wan failed in his attempt to train a Skywalker to become a Jedi.

u) Vader can rip things from walls and send those objects violently through mid air. CS is right, he could have done more of that. However, I'm not sure that the combatants are always in rooms in which there are things to hurl. I'd already expressed my wonder at why Vader couldn't have acquired the plans to destroy the Death Star in Rogue One via essentially the same means.

. . . NH

What's Wrong With:
STAR WARS 

A New Hope

17 total defects:  Minor (2); Medium (5); High (4); Severe (4); Critical (2)

My dad brought me to watch the original in the summer of 1977. From the age of 6 until I was 13, every birthday, christmas, easter, etc. brought more ships, playsets, and action figures. I was Darth Vader one Halloween. I got baseball gloves, hockey sticks, football cards and basketballs too, but the most consistent presents had Star Wars all over them. It all started with what is still one of the best movies of all time.

Unfortunately, little kids grow up and read a lot, technology advances, time passes and expectations rise. I've learned how to look at things with a more critical eye since 1977. Despite the lifelong impression the first three movies made on me, even the original could have been better.

High
1) 20 total shots fired from both sides of two very helpless droids who bumble from one side of a hallway to another and escape unscathed. It's possible this might come up again. In the software development arena, we call this defect clustering. The troopers do manage to hit plenty of Rebel soldiers. That is why this particular defect is only a high.

A version of that first defect could be the sub-sub title of the movie: Star Wars, A New Hope, or (the good guys run in hallways with shots fired all around and escape unscathed).

Severe
2) If there is going to be any story at all, one moron has to tell a subordinate: "Hold your fire, there's no life forms." Blowing shit up is cool. Making the mistake of holding fire because some scanner cannot detect life forms is liable to get you force-choked to death. Is the Empire short on funds for ammunition? Do soldiers not want to explosively scatter an escape pod into thousands of pieces? Are those in positions of power in this fictional world not aware of the significance of robots or droids? Astromech droids, protocol droids and droids with hundreds of other talents, or programmed utility, are everywhere. I've half a mind to give this a critical designation. If I only had half a mind, it would have told my finger to press a button to blow up the escape pod.

I want to make this very clear. Don't advance the story, mr. director, writer, screenwriter, or author because you're too lazy to come up with a plausible alternative which is more realistic, or is more likely considering the mentality/motivations of the being you're giving breath to. Spending ninety minutes of screen time showing us how advanced a species is only to destroy their credibility, and yours, by allowing a non exhaustion-induced, terribly inconsistent decision to be made, considering the hero-worship you expected the audience to grant these characters you've created, is an insult to certain audience members who aren't even looking for flaws in logic or execution, but who won't ignore flaws once the attack of nonsense has commenced.

3) I consider R2-D2's mobile limitations in Star Wars and ESB. And I weigh them against the jet propelled, oil spurting wizardry of the R2 from the prequels and wonder what happened. Where did all R2's gadgets go? Sure, the going theory has been that because the special effects technology has advanced so much in the last 20-30 years since the original, the ships that have appeared more advanced were made in a time when both the rebels and the empire had more to spend on new ships. At any rate, you have to cut set designers and special effects artists some slack- they were using the equivalent of scotch tape and toilet paper rolls to cobble together sets. Judging the originals retroactively isn't fair.

4) Comedy from droids and Tunisian hoods, otherwise known as Jawas. Again, that is the kind of understated humor writers and directors of the newest trilogy have yet to nail.

High (mostly for getting something so easy to get right, so wrong)
5) Alec Guinness was 62 while filming Star Wars, 3 years younger than Mark Hamill was for TLJ. Uncle Owen is in that neighborhood, both in terms of age and even more literally, as he lived on the same 120 degree, dry, desert-infested planet Luke and Obi-Wan had. Assume that Tatooine's conditions made all of them look 10 years older than they actually were, only then would the timeline of Star Wars taking place 20 years after ROTS make any sense.

Medium
6) Luke is the whiny son, of a whiny father, and uncle to a whiny nephew. I'd prefer an insecurity and impatience more on the quiet side. I think of River Phoenix. If the movie was 10 years later, that's the kind of Luke that would have been preferable. Equal opportunity critic. White men, white woman, Asian women, little kids, old men, aliens, short-sighted directors . . . anyone can come up short- and all of these are just opinions.

Medium
7) C-3PO says something to Luke about the hologram of the princess- that she's a person of some importance, a passenger on our last ship. While on that last ship, he said something about "no saving the princess this time." He isn't wise enough to downplay the importance of R2's message by lying to a stranger/Luke about the plans carried by his little buddy. And since he's fluent in 6 million forms of communication, forgetting who the princess is from the time they're jettisoned from Tantive V until the time Luke is charged with cleaning them up, isn't likely. There was no need for these two lines to be at odds, except it is a screenwriting mistake.

8) Obi-Wan Kenobi! My favorite character played brilliantly by Alec Guinness. His wisdom is otherworldly, he's respectable, calm, confident, and intuitive. He took out Darth Maul, General Grievous, and made Darth Vader the imposing figure he was. There would be no reason for Vader to be in the iconic black helmet and cape, and he wouldn't have the distinctive, pervasive and frightening breathing without Kenobi. With apologies to Mickey (Rocky), Gandolf, Jiminy Cricket, Gordon Gekko, Mr. Miyagi, Socrates, Sigmund Freud, Morpheus, Professor X, Ezra Pound, Dumbledore, and Master Splinter, Obi-Wan is the best real, or imagined, mentor of all time.

9) Obi-Wan doesn't recognize R2, after 3 prequel movies. This is a retroactive mistake. Granted, there are likely tens of thousands of astromech droids like R2; given Obi-Wan's established talents in the areas of sensory perception, intuitiveness, I don't believe Obi-Wan would have forgotten R2's contributions. But I can't give this a defect. This is a bigger problem from a story arch, and consistency point of view, than anything in Obi-Wan's history lesson imparted to Luke about his father or the Jedi.

10) Love this- Luke and Obi-Wan talking about Ben Kenobi: "Of course I know him, he's me." To the extent I can effectively write cryptic dialogue, or fictional interactions between characters, this kind of subterfuge was an inspiration, even when I was 6.

11) Plenty of people point to all of the conflicting disinformation Obi-Wan gives to Luke about Vader as a WTF set of tidbits. But if you watch Guinness closely, he delivers the lines with a nonverbal, subtextual expertise, and an uncomfortableness, as if sparing Luke the truth, that is pretty brilliant. This allows what Kenobi doesn't say, and how he doesn't say it, to minimize what the majority of people think are contradictions. Lucas just didn't have the total plan in place when he wrote that dialogue- not a mistake. There are too many other concerns, and I only list it to prove I'm paying attention.

High (for an opportunity missed)
12) Staying on that exact conversation for this next one- Obi-Wan tells Luke that Vader hunted down and destroyed the Jedi Knights. As I mentioned in another WWW, this would have made for an intriguing subplot in one of the films, could have taken an hour of screen time to do right, if someone else besides Lucas had written the script and directed the movie. With all of that screen time saved from episodes I and II, as referenced in the other WWWs, the battles between Sith and Jedi, and throw bounty hunters in there as well, would have been much better subject matter than monotonously delivered lines about blockades, no confidence votes, and trade disputes.

Critical
13) "these blast points too accurate for Sand People; only imperial Stormtroopers are so precise." I'm not sure, if during the events of Star Wars, the Empire's crop of Stormtroopers are still being cloned from the original host (Jango Fett); nor do I know if Obi-Wan has received erroneous reports of the accuracy of Stormtroopers from the occasional visitant to Tatooine. Perhaps Obi-Wan is misremembering that the vintage of trooper he fought alongside, from the Clone Wars, was accurate weighed against the fact that those troopers would have had a harder time fighting against a band of armless cartoon midgets than the droid army. Any way you slice it, his statement is hogwash and the rest of the movie is proof of that. Stormtroopers fire on Han, Luke, Leia and company a thousand times and don't hit them in the leg, arm, hand, or back.

14) Obi-Wan, about Mos Eisley- "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy." The only time this line could be more appropriately placed is if I said it to my former neighbors as we drove away from those bitches for the better neighborhood in which we currently reside.  Excellent line.

Medium (only a medium because Lucas wasn't pretending to be multi-cultural- those who inherited the franchise- Abrams and Johnson, the other creatives and casting have prided themselves on it for some reason and are unaware they're failing at it)
15) Beating a dead horse, which, by the way, wouldn't be a bad idea for an alien creature that could have been featured in the cantina. Seeing the cadre of patrons, the total alienness of them all, no one could convince me that while all those freaks are imbibing, others of their race, aren't making laws, inventing, teaching, wisely investing, or writing scholarly articles that would open up pathways to leadership in the galaxy on the side of the empire or the rebellion.

16) Who the hell cares who shot first, Han or Greedo? In the original, Greedo didn't appear to fire at all. It wouldn't surprise me though, that in the original, Greedo fired first and missed; maybe he grew up with a clone trooper and Jango Fett taught them both to hunt. See #1 and a few of those which follow.

Severe
17) Stormtroopers looking for the droids in the sandy avenues of Mos Eisley: "Door is locked, move onto the next one." If I ever lost my keys in a Death Star full of Stormtroopers I would be supremely screwed. If I lost my keys in an empty bowl sitting at a kitchen table, where all the seats were occupied by Stormtroopers, I would also be screwed.

18) Star Destroyers- nothing that big could move that fast chasing the Millennium Falcon and if it could, why would you need a Death Star? Money to burn I guess.

19) "You've taken your first step into a larger world." Obi-Wan is the perfect mentor, the epitome of the old wizard. He's a better version of Gandalf and Gandalf is pretty awesome.

20) If Chewie had kicked in auxiliary power the first time Han asked, maybe they wouldn't have been sucked into the Death Star.

See defect #17
21) Go figure, the Stormtroopers sent aboard the Falcon to look for stowaways, can't find anyone, probably after an exhaustive search of 21 seconds.

Medium
22) How do the brainiacs who advised a scanning party be sent aboard the Falcon for a more detailed search, have only 2 Stormtroopers flank the ramp to the falcon. Also, no one among a room full of "experienced" officers watch a ship potentially carrying cargo (a droid) with information that might help the enemy blow up the space station they're currently occupying. Maybe an inter-office communique didn't go out to everyone on the Death Star alerting them all to the potential danger. I wrote that last line in anticipation of anyone who would counter the one which preceded it. Do you think Lucas would have anticipated this while writing the script? One line from Vader or Tarkin about not telling the minions about the risk of staying could also have eliminated this issue.

Minor
23) Per Tarkin, the Princess was to be terminated immediately. Apparently, immediately doesn't mean the same thing in our world as it does in theirs. If I'm Tarkin, I'm not letting chores like taking out the garbage, or signing pardons, distract me from putting an enemy leader to death. Its always possible Vader told Tarkin about his plan to track the Millennium Falcon to the rebel base and gave order 132 to all the Stormtroopers.
     Note: Imagine that order 132 is a made up command, ala Order 66, where the troopers are prevented from killing the heroes, allowing them to escape, so that their ship can be tracked. Of course, if you wanted to prevent the heroes from getting the plans to the rebels, couldn't you, since a tracking device has been planted on the ship, just put a detonator on there, set to explode once the Delorean hits 88 miles per hour, or hits hyperspace, whichever occurs first?

24) Garbage compactor- there were a few things in there that could have been brought to the recycling center.

25) A second- "I've got a bad feeling about this." This is where it all started, before we got tired of it.

Severe
26) One trooper is told to stand guard in the room R2 and 3PO are occupying. He's only told to stand guard there because of the droids, droids believed to have ridden in a ship (the Falcon) that's serial number matches that of a ship that departed from a planet where those droids were tracked. 3PO tells the trooper they are going to leave and the very responsible, potentially trained soldier, lets them. These are droids that Vader has been tracking since the escape pod shot out of Tantive V onto Tatooine. Communication seems to be a huge problem with the Empire. No wonder aliens don't fight on their side, since the willingness to communicate in English has been such a problem.

Medium
27) After R2 shuts down the trash compactor, wouldn't everyone on the Death Star know that the disturbance in the detention ward should be a location to which a swarm of support should be sent? I don't want to turn into one of those guys who just makes crap up, but the only way the heroes are able to get out of the compactor and take their time putting on fashionable belts outfitted with all kinds of useful gadgets is because Tarkin and Vader are allowing them to escape from the Death Star. Here too, I'm probably thinking more about these character's motivations than the man who wrote them into existence.

28) We've learned the suits the Stormtroopers wear don't provide them any safety against bullets. We also learn, when Obi-Wan distracts two of them with a noise so they look away from his direction, it appears the troopers can't see a thing peripherally. Anyone could explain this away by saying, now, that if a Jedi can force ghost themselves onto another planet, they could move unnoticed 25 yards on some scaffolding after shutting down a tractor beam. Besides, if the troopers had seen Obi-Wan, what would they have done? Fired their weapons and hit him?

See #s 1, 13, 17, 21-23, and 26 for general Stormtrooper incompetence. "General Stormtrooper" would probably be a good idea. Of course, being king of the idiots is hardly a promotion, unless you are too incompetent to realize it. My dad, in reference to an ex-girlfriend: "I was too stupid to know how stupid she was."

already gave this one a critical - see #13
29) Mindful of Obi-Wan's comment about the accuracy of Imperial Stormtroopers, the heroes run all over the Death Star, teeming with Stormtroopers, on different levels, open doors, swinging across expanses, and not one of them gets hit in the back, leg, stomach, hand, or shoulder.

Severe
30) How a pilot/pirate as galactically experienced as Han Solo would think that his ship wasn't being tracked, after he and his "cocky" new buddy Luke only had to take out 4 Tie-Fighters is something only a 6-year-old watching the movie for the first time would accept. Send your heroes to another planet and have them send the plans to the military base another way. This is a military operation; the Rebels blew up two Death Stars. I wonder how both the Empire and the Rebellion would have done against the Japanese, the Germans, or in Mogadishu, or hell, against the British marching in single file columns wearing bright red coats. The two sides, the Rebels and Empire, might be ready to play a game of Risk, if their part of playing the game means they listen as the first sentence of the rules is acted out by puppets.

High
31) It took 30 minutes for the Death Star to orbit one planet to get to the moon on which the rebel base resides. This is a planet-sized base that just traveled at light speed. If someone thinks the reason it is taking the Death Star so long is because the Empire is sneaking up on the Rebels and doesn't want to alert the rebels to their presence . . . if the rebels don't have military safeguards in place enough to be warned of something that big coming into range . . . see #30.

32) Wait, did someone just call the fat X-Wing pilot "Porkins"?

33) Vader decides to leave the supposedly impregnable confines of the Death Star for a much more vulnerable one-manned star-fighter. For 33 years I thought this was a tremendous flaw, and the only reason Lucas had Vader leave the safety of an immense space station was so that there would be a sequel. The best man at my wedding and I differed on this point. He thought that given Vader's pilot skills, his hubris, his assertiveness, his talents and confidence, Vader would think he could thwart the efforts of upstarts attacking this massive base.

However, I was watching an Indianapolis Colts v. New England Patriots football game in 2009. The Pats coach, Bill Belichick, who I had often compared to Darth Vader, leader of the cheating Patriot Empire, made a decision to go for it on 4th down and 2 from their own 28 with 2 minutes to play and a 34-28 lead. Peyton Manning had driven the Colts up and down the field in that game, even when they didn't score. Most every coach, most every time, would decide on the safe and comfortable decision to punt the ball and make the Colts go 80 yards for the touchdown. I could write another couple paragraphs about the game itself, but the focus is the film.

The next thing I did on that Sunday night was phone my friend, to apologize for doubting him and conceding that he was right all those years. I had seen a cocky, talented, wild-card of a human being, despite how hateable he is, make a real-life decision akin to Vader's. Belichick and Vader both took the riskier option; both ultimately failed. In this case, Vader's "gamble" saved his life and Belichick's cost the Patriots a game.

34) Nice hall-of-fame yellow jacket Luke. Yikes.


Deleted Scenes- nothing I've seen that was left out of the movie should have been included.

Special Edition:

35) Much clearer color picture, clear definition. Darks are darker, brighter whites, deeper colors, more variation, much more appealing. Still. The original is dark, grainy, rough, like Michael Jackson's nose before all the surgeries, and raw, like Jackson's nose after repeated surgeries. The continued "enhancements" took as much away from the nose, er, film, as were added. Too much care can be taken that it ruins a child. Lucas was like a helicopter parent. Part of Rogue One's appeal, you can see it in the bonus features, is the ability of the set creation/designers who aged Jedha, made it lived in, wrecked it, gave it character. Star Wars lost some of it's character because of the enhanced color and sound.

36) Enhanced Dewback scene- one is seen walking, where they only stood in the original, and there are just more of them. No problems with this.

37) The scene where Luke looks at two suns in frustration, is better in the special edition. The disparity in the color from one sun and the other is more pronounced. And the close up on Luke's face is an improvement.

Minor
38) A better perspective of the size of Mos Eisley, with more animals and ships. Not a fan. It's too clean and too comical after Obi-Wan has just spoken his line about scum and villainy.

39) Greedo fires, but since I don't care who fired first, like Obi-Wan mind-effs the Stormtroopers, we're going to "move along".

Critical- (is there a defect severity above critical?)
40) Jabba. I'd rather Lucas just put Jesus Christ or Thor in this movie. It wouldn't have been as awkward or ill-placed.
         a) "Han my boy."
         b) Han negotiates the interest percentage down to 15%
         c) Han says- "Jabba, you're a wonderful human being."

This scene was a more glaring inclusion than the omission from TPM where Anakin, a future Sith Lord, wrestles around with Greedo, a future bounty hunter. It enhances nothing. Lucas should have learned from the hundreds of horror movies and his peer's (Spielberg's) minimalist use of the slasher/shark (Jaws)- see "e)" below. We heard about Jabba, or the bounty on Han's head, for two movies and the payoff was worth it. Lucas had this knowledge from 1983 to 1997 and still couldn't keep himself from the terrible decision to make Jabba look like a weakling, running his own errands.

          d) The capper is when Han circles behind Jabba, who was originally a human, in the deleted scenes, and steps on Jabba's tail. This causes Jabba to yelp and make a ridiculously uncomfortable face. Between this scene in Star Wars and those in ROTJ, Jabba probably put on 400 pounds.

          e) I'm aware that Spielberg had a dearth of funding for Jaws and elected to not show the shark because it either didn't work as well as he had hoped and/or he was working on a budget. The point is that not having enough money to throw at a problem is sometimes a good thing. The government has all kinds of problems like that.

Han's situation, and Jabba's imposing presence, are things I would much rather Lucas had alluded to as a back story for a couple of films rather than adding Jabba as an afterthought and having him treated as a dupe and a push over.

In the intro. paragraph to Rogue One, I wrote that it might be the best of the films, if you could remove the childish fascination from the original trilogy. The verdict on that is another case of the heart versus the head. In my world, you can't beat nostalgia. Despite the fact that Star Wars has double the issues, it also has the best lines and perhaps my favorite film character of all time (right up there with Cool Hand Luke)- Obi-Wan Kenobi. Verdict = once again, a child's imagination beats a man's logic; Star Wars over Rogue One.

Next up: The best of the Star Wars movies- from an adult's perspective.