You might not realise just how loosey-goosey Star Wars' internal logic actually is.
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00:00Considering the sheer wealth of mythology that comprises the Star Wars franchise,
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 in ways
00:26that might have passed fans by. So I am Padawan Gareth from WhatCulture Star Wars and here are
00:3210 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
02:26that 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
03:18be totally different if this was always a possibility. Even accepting that it's clearly
03:23a difficult move to pull off, The Rise of Skywalker made an unconvincing attempt to
03:28miffed fans, dismissing the Holdo Maneuver as a one-in-a-million shot. Yeah, sure,
03:33J.J. Yet The Last Jedi didn't depict Holdo's act that way at all, so it basically felt like
03:38a limp attempt to sweep it under the rug and stop fans continually questioning it.
03:46Random Lightsaber Colours When It's Cool The original Star Wars trilogy plainly
03:50established that lightsabers come in three colours – blue and green for Jedi,
03:55and red for the Sith, a scheme which remained consistent for decades. But in the prequels,
04:00Mace Windu suddenly rocked a purple lightsaber totally out of nowhere, simply because he wanted
04:05to stand out from other actors in the Battle of Geonosis. Since then, we've seen other canonical
04:10shades of lightsaber – Rey's yellow lightsaber in The Rise of Skywalker, Ahsoka Tano's white
04:16lightsabers, and of course, the Darksaber. Though the now-extinct Legends canon attempted to
04:21ascribe specific meaning to the colours, most of this has since been wiped out, ensuring the
04:26colours assigned to sabers outside of the primary Jedi-Sith template are more or less a crapshoot.
04:32Ultimately, it really comes down to creatives wanting to explore the colour spectrum. And
04:37honestly, it's tough to blame them for that, even if adventurous colours are conspicuously
04:41absent in the original trilogy. Here's a hilarious inconsistency
04:49you almost certainly forgot about, or perhaps never even noticed in the first place. In A New
04:54Hope, Obi-Wan and Luke come across a downed Sandcrawler, and Obi-Wan memorably remarks,
05:00these blast points are too accurate for Sand People, only Imperial Stormtroopers are so precise.
05:05Now even accepting the whole issue of Stormtrooper aim, Obi-Wan's summary dismissal of the Sand
05:10People-slash-Tusken Raiders marksmanship runs counter to numerous subsequent depictions of
05:15their incredible sniping abilities. Take The Phantom Menace, where a Tusken Raider shoots
05:21a podracer moving at incredible speed, and more recently The Book of Boba Fett, where Tusken
05:26Raiders manage to snipe guards on a moving train. Of course, it's possible to assume that Obi-Wan
05:31was simply mistaken in his estimation of the Tusken Raiders, but if Obi-Wan is supposedly
05:36such a wise and knowledgeable individual, it feels less like an intentional character flourish than
05:41an internal inconsistency with how the Raiders are presented.
05:455. Lightsabers cauterising wounds, except when they don't
05:50One of the key characteristics of a lightsaber is its extreme heat, which allows it to not only cut
05:56through basically any material with ease, but instantly cauterise wounds while cutting human
06:01flesh. Except that's not always the case. Take Obi-Wan's run-in with Ponda Baba in the Mos Eisley
06:07Cantina in A New Hope, where Obi-Wan effortlessly slices Baba's arm off with a lightsaber,
06:12before we catch a lingering glimpse of Baba's severed appendage covered in blood. Sure,
06:17you can argue that Ponda Baba's circulatory system and blood pressure act in a different
06:22way to humans, but it's another reach, my friends. In reality, most every other time we've seen
06:27someone lose a limb to a lightsaber, say Luke in The Empire Strikes Back, it's been entirely
06:32bloodless. Essentially, George Lucas hadn't yet mapped out the rules for lightsaber strikes during
06:37production of A New Hope, ensuring Ponda Baba's gory dispatch continues to stick out like a sore
06:42thumb compared to the more family-friendly dismemberments in subsequent Star Wars movies.
06:48People wearing glasses One rule which George Lucas insisted
06:52upon from the outset of Star Wars is that glasses effectively don't exist in this universe. And given
06:59how technologically advanced Lucas' world is, that's basically fair enough. Except a few glasses
07:04wearers have crept into the universe in the years since George Lucas sold the property off to Disney.
07:09For one, an episode of animated series Star Wars Rebels, Double Agent Droid, featured a character
07:15wearing specs. And more recently and prominently, The Mandalorian's Doctor Pershing rocks some
07:20distinctive eyeglasses. Of course, it's possible that glasses are basically a relic in this
07:25universe, with 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
07:41to dictate 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.
07:51The Sith's spare use of Force Choke In the same vein of Jedi forgetting
07:55about their Force powers, we have Sith not using the Force to its full murderous potential.
08:02Though we see Darth Vader use the Force Choke several times on subordinate officers,
08:06why the hell doesn't he ever use it against actual Jedi? And he's not the only one guilty of this.
08:12In The Clone Wars, Palpatine Force Chokes Count Dooku from halfway across the galaxy,
08:17suggesting it could be extremely useful for the Sith to either kill or pacify enemies,
08:22namely the Jedi. You can certainly argue that Vader and Palpatine being connected with the
08:26people they Force Choked made it easier for them to exert the Force upon them from a distance.
08:31But all the same, doesn't it feel like an underused skill in the entirety of Star Wars?
08:36And even if you accept that skilled Jedi can block such a manoeuvre, what about pesky regular
08:41rebels who aren't Force-sensitive? It's a move that could do so much damage, and yet it's rarely
08:46used. Likely because George Lucas created something a bit too powerful for its own good.
08:52Even 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 initially
09:11appears to adhere to it, it's been treated more as a guideline throughout the history of the series.
09:16To that end, Palpatine juggled Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker as apprentices,
09:21a move which could have conceivably resulted in there being a third wheel in this party.
09:25But 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.
09:33Then there's the Rise of Skywalker, which saw Palpatine residing on Exegol with a whole-ass
09:38fleet of Sith acolytes, prompting the film's novelisation to effectively retcon the Rule of
09:43Two, claiming that there are many Sith who are ruled by two. Really, though, it's just another
09:49interesting idea which George Lucas didn't think through enough.
09:531. Force healing is now a thing
09:56In addition to the many other ways the Rise of Skywalker left fans bitterly disappointed,
10:01it introduced a force power never seen in the Star Wars movies before – force healing. In the
10:06film's climax, Rey and Ben Solo force heal one another, despite the fact that they seemingly
10:12haven't been trained to do so. And more to the point, we've never seen any force users do it
10:16before. Well, in fairness, Grogu did perform a force heal in an episode of The Mandalorian's
10:21first season, aired mere days before the Rise of Skywalker. But that aside, it's staggering that
10:27such a useful force skill hasn't been extensively used in canon Star Wars media prior to this.
10:33If this was a possibility, why didn't Obi-Wan use it to heal Qui-Gon, or Anakin to heal Padme?
10:38Sure, you can just handwave it by declaring that certain Jedi get certain abilities,
10:43and force heal just happens to be incredibly rare among them. Or even that Rey learned it
10:47from the ancient Jedi texts. Or the same. It strains credibility that the movies went more
10:52than 40 years without featuring force healing at all.
10:56And that's our list. Know any other times Star Wars broke its own rules and you didn't notice?
11:01Let us know all about them in the comments section right down below,
11:04and don't forget to like, share and click on that subscribe button while you're down there.
11:07I've been Gareth from What Culture Star Wars, may the force be with you as always,
11:11thank you for watching this video today, and hopefully we'll see you soon. Bye bye!