10 Times Star Wars Broke Its Own Rules (And You Didn't Notice)
You might not realise just how loosey-goosey Star Wars' internal logic actually is.
Transcript
00:00Considering the sheer wealth of mythology that comprises the Star Wars franchise,
00:05fans can't be blamed for struggling to keep track of it all. It's basically a full-time job at this
00:10point, enough that Disney literally pays a group of law-keepers, the Lucasfilm Story Group, to keep
00:15it in order. Yet those in charge evidently haven't gotten everything right over the last
00:20half-century, breaking their own established rules and concepts on the regular, albeit often
00:26in ways that might have passed fans by. So I am Padawan Gareth from WhatCulture
00:31Star Wars and here are 10 Times Star Wars Broke Its Own Rules And You Didn't Notice.
00:3710. How Force Ghosts Work Many elements of the Force are kept
00:41ambiguous throughout the series, seemingly intentionally. But one of the more irksome
00:46inconsistencies is the means through which a fallen Jedi becomes a Force Ghost. Obi-Wan,
00:52becomes one after being felled by Darth Vader, and Yoda and Anakin follow suit in Return of the
00:57Jedi. But what about other Jedi who died throughout the series? Namely, what about
01:02the 200 or so Jedi who died in the Battle of Geonosis in Attack of the Clones? Why didn't
01:07we see them become Force Ghosts? Beyond that, the time it takes for a dead Jedi to become a Force
01:12Ghost is totally all over the place, some near instantly transmuting into ghost form, while
01:18others take considerably longer. Elsewhere, there are countless unanswered questions, like who Force
01:24Ghosts can reveal themselves to, and how extensively they can interact with the physical world.
01:29Again, this aspect of Star Wars is kept vague to give the writers leeway for how they use it,
01:34but the constant deviation and variation makes it frustratingly hard to get a bead on what being a
01:40Force Ghost is actually all about. 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
01:50your disposal at any given moment. But there's an infuriating number of times throughout the
01:55Star Wars 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 this again. It sure would have been useful during that climactic fight with Darth Maul,
02:11right? Elsewhere, nobody ever uses their Force powers to try and damage Darth Vader's armoured
02:16suit. And there are literally innumerable other examples of Jedi not using established Force
02:21abilities to get themselves out of a bind. If you want to try and handwave this, you might suggest
02:27that Jedi intentionally make spare use of their powers to avoid the temptation of the dark side.
02:32But come on, it's a reach. Basically, if Jedi made continued use of the many powers at their
02:37disposal, these movies would be really damn short.
02:41Everything About The Holdo Maneuver The Holdo Maneuver was first seen in The
02:46Last Jedi, when Vice Admiral Holdo suicidally rammed the Raddus into Snoke's flagship,
02:51the Supremacy, at near-light speed to buy the Resistance time to escape to Crait. Yet this
02:57rubbed a lot of fans the wrong way. Because even if you accept the science behind the move, if such
03:02an unorthodox move was possible, why haven't we ever seen it before in Star Wars canon? Why,
03:08for instance, didn't the Rebels perform a similar move on the Death Star, or the Resistance ram
03:13Starkiller Base, and in turn save themselves a ton of hassle? It feels like space warfare would be
03:18totally different if this was always a possibility. Even accepting that it's clearly a difficult move
03:24to pull off, The Rise of Skywalker made an unconvincing attempt to quell miffed fans,
03:29dismissing the Holdo Maneuver as a one-in-a-million shot. Yeah, sure, JJ. Yet The Last Jedi didn't
03:35depict Holdo's act that way at all, so it basically felt like a limp attempt to sweep
03:39it under the rug and stop fans continually questioning it. Which, of course, they still do.
03:46Random Lightsaber Colours When It's Cool The original Star Wars trilogy plainly established
03:51that lightsabers come in three colours – blue and green for Jedi, and red for the Sith,
03:57a scheme which remained consistent for decades. But in the prequels, Mace Windu suddenly rocked a
04:02purple lightsaber totally out of nowhere, simply because he wanted to stand out from other actors
04:07in the Battle of Geonosis. Since then, we've seen other canonical shades of lightsaber – Rey's
04:12yellow lightsaber in The Rise of Skywalker, Ahsoka Tano's white lightsabers, and of course,
04:17the Darksaber. Though the now-extinct Legends canon attempted to ascribe specific meaning to
04:23the colours, most of this has since been wiped out, ensuring the colours assigned to sabers
04:28outside of the primary Jedi-Sith template are more or less a crapshoot. Ultimately,
04:33it 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
04:42in the original trilogy. Tusken Raider's 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 Sand People,
05:02only Imperial Stormtroopers are so precise. Now, even accepting the whole issue of Stormtrooper
05:08aim, Obi-Wan's summary dismissal of the Sand People slash Tusken Raider's marksmanship runs
05:13counter to numerous subsequent depictions of their incredible sniping abilities.
05:18Take The Phantom Menace, where a Tusken Raider shoots a podracer moving at incredible speed,
05:23and more recently The Book of Boba Fett, where Tusken Raiders manage to snipe guards on a moving
05:28train. Of course, it's possible to assume that Obi-Wan was simply mistaken in his estimation of
05:33the Tusken Raiders, but if Obi-Wan is supposedly such a wise and knowledgeable individual,
05:39it feels less like an intentional character flourish than an internal inconsistency with
05:43how the Raiders are presented. One of the key characteristics of a lightsaber is its extreme
05:54heat, which allows it to not only cut through basically any material with ease, but instantly
05:59cauterise wounds while cutting human flesh. Except that's not always the case. Take Obi-Wan's run-in
06:05with Ponda Baba in the Mos Eisley Cantina in A New Hope, where Obi-Wan effortlessly slices Baba's
06:11arm off with a lightsaber, before we catch a lingering glimpse of Baba's severed appendage
06:15covered in blood. Sure, you can argue that Ponda Baba's circulatory system and blood pressure act
06:21in a different way to humans, but it's another reach, my friends. In reality, most every other
06:26time we've seen someone lose a limb to a lightsaber, say Luke in The Empire Strikes Back, it's been
06:31entirely bloodless. Essentially, George Lucas hadn't yet mapped out the rules for lightsaber
06:36strikes during production of A New Hope, ensuring Ponda Baba's gory dispatch continues to stick out
06:42like a sore thumb compared to the more family-friendly dismemberments in subsequent
06:46Star Wars movies. One rule which George Lucas insisted upon from the outset of Star Wars is
06:55that glasses effectively don't exist in this universe. And given how technologically advanced
07:00Lucas' world is, that's basically fair enough. Except a few glasses wearers have crept into the
07:05universe in the years since George Lucas sold the property off to Disney. For one, an episode of
07:10animated series Star Wars Rebels Double Agent Droid featured a character wearing specs. And
07:16more recently and prominently, The Mandalorian's Doctor Pershing rocks some distinctive eyeglasses.
07:22Of course, it's possible that glasses are basically a relic in this universe,
07:26with only a select few bothering to use such an ancient technology. But all the same,
07:31it's tough to believe that someone of Doctor Pershing's standing would favour them over simply
07:36having his eyesight corrected with, say, laser eye surgery. George Lucas lost the opportunity to
07:41dictate such things when he let go of Star Wars, yet in the grand scheme of things,
07:45it's a small inconsistency. And therefore, one you probably didn't even spot.
07:53In the same vein of Jedi forgetting about their Force powers, we have Sith not using
07:58the Force to its full murderous potential. Case in point, though we see Darth Vader use
08:03the Force Choke several times on subordinate officers, why the hell doesn't he ever use it
08:08against actual Jedi? And he's not the only one guilty of this. In The Clone Wars, Palpatine
08:13Force Chokes Count Dooku from halfway across the galaxy, suggesting it could be extremely useful
08:19for the Sith to either kill or pacify enemies, namely the Jedi. You can certainly argue that
08:24Vader and Palpatine being connected with the people they Force Choked made it easier for them
08:29to exert the Force upon them from a distance. But all the same, doesn't it feel like an underused
08:34skill in the entirety of Star Wars? And even if you accept that skilled Jedi can block such a
08:39manoeuvre, what about pesky regular rebels who aren't Force-sensitive? It's a move that could
08:44do so much damage, and yet it's rarely used. Likely because George Lucas created something
08:49a bit too powerful for its own good.
08:51Even casual Star Wars fans are aware of the Rule of Two, a Sith maxim first concocted by
09:00the legendary Darth Bane, which states that only two Sith Lords can exist at once – one Master
09:05and one Apprentice. It sounds simple enough, and yet, as stringently as Emperor Palpatine
09:11initially appears to adhere to it, it's been treated more as a guideline throughout the
09:15history of the series. To that end, Palpatine juggled Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker as
09:20apprentices, a move which could have conceivably resulted in there being a third wheel in this
09:25party. But of course, Palp's ended up sealing his own fate when father and son reconciled,
09:30resulting in him getting lobbed down a reactor shaft by Vader. Then there's the Rise of Skywalker,
09:35which saw Palpatine residing on Exegol with a whole-ass fleet of Sith acolytes,
09:40prompting the film's novelisation to effectively retcon the Rule of Two, claiming that there are
09:45many Sith who are ruled by two. Really, though, it's just another interesting idea which George
09:51Lucas didn't think through enough. In addition to the many other ways the
09:58Rise of Skywalker left fans bitterly disappointed, it introduced a force power never seen in the
10:03Star Wars movies before – force healing. In the film's climax, Rey and Ben Solo force-heal
10:09one another, despite the fact that they seemingly haven't been trained to do so. And more to the
10:14point, we've never seen any force users do it before. Well, in fairness, Grogu did perform a
10:19force heal in an episode of The Mandalorian's first season, aired mere days before the Rise
10:24of Skywalker. But that aside, it's staggering that such a useful force skill hasn't been
10:29extensively used in canon Star Wars media prior to this. If this was a possibility,
10:34why didn't Obi-Wan use it to heal Qui-Gon, or Anakin to heal Padme? Sure, you can just handwave
10:40it by declaring that certain Jedi get certain abilities, and force heal just happens to be
10:44incredibly rare among them. Or even that Rey learned it from the ancient Jedi texts. Or the
10:49same. It strains credibility that the movies went more than 40 years without featuring force healing
10:55at all. And that's our list. Know any other times Star Wars broke its own rules and you didn't
11:00notice? Let us know all about them in the comments section right down below, and don't forget to like,
11:05share and click on that subscribe button while you're down there. I've been Gareth from What
11:08Culture Star Wars, may the force be with you as always. Thank you for watching this video today,
11:13and hopefully we'll see you soon. Bye bye!