What's Wrong With:
STAR WARS
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.
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.
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