Star Wars: Of Plot-Holes & Loose-Ends Obscura

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Now that the Tril...er, I mean HEX-ilogy is complete, you'd think that all the loose ends and unexplained story points would have been cleared up in the final installment, as we were all promised and most of us expected. But like many people who've watched Revenge of the Sith, I don't have the complete sense of closure that I thought I would. So I hereby dedicate this thread to all things left unanswered by the final installment of the Star Wars prequels (and post-quels).

Feel free to add your own questions to the list.

Sidenote: Big B, this thread pretty much has your name tattooed to it's ass.

1) Who the hell was the Jedi Master Sypho Dias who ordered the clones? Or at least, who pretended to be Sypho Dias?

2) At the end of RotS, the Death Star is just beginning construction. At the beginning of ANH, it's just barely become "operational." There's at least a 20-year gap between RotS and ANH, so we're lead to believe the Death Star took 20+plus years to build. With me so far?

There's only about a 3-year gap (if memory serves) between ANH and RotJ, and in RotJ the second Death Star looks to be physically about 80% complete, though fully operational offensively. Why did the first Death Star take so damn long to build? Or, if you prefer, why the second one so quickly?

3) The Empirials - from the Storm Troopers to every single offiicer - are human. Yet before the rise of the empire, the Republic - and particularly Curascant - was extremely diverse. In fact, it seemed like Humans were a vast minority. Does the Empire become the intergalactic Nazis and purge the other species or what? And if so, why is it never touched on in the prequels that the Emporer "prefers" humans, enough so to severely oppress and completely exclude the other beings of the galaxy?

4) What happens to all the Clones between RotS and ANH? I'm sure they all die off, as they age at twice the normal rate, but are they retired? Ordered to kill themselves? At any point does Charleton Heston start shouting "SOILENT GREEN IS CLOOOOOONES!" Any theories here would be snazzy.

5) Chewbacca. In RotS, he appears to be second in command of all the Wookiee armies. He stands at an equal footing with Tarrful, who's clearly the leader of some sort. How does he go from that to being Han Solo's furry space-bitch? I just rewatched the original trilogy, and never really noticed how much Solo treats him like a hired hand, rather than an equal comrade. What gives?

6) Owen and Beru Lars can't be older than 25 at the end of RotS. Yet in ANH, presumably 20 years later, they're in at least their 60's (or older). Does moisture farming just suck the years out of you or what? (and "casting" isn't a valid excuse, because Lucas could have easily cast two 30-year-olds to make the transition more believeable).

7) I'd thought we were actually going to find out what the significance of the name "Darth Vader" was in this film. I'd read somewhere that Anakin was supposed to be "knighted" as a Sith by Sidious, and that there would be a little ceremony involved where he would be given the name "Vader" and it would be explained why. It seems like he just pulled the name "Vader" out of his ass. Lame! It just seemed so arbitrary. Good thing Sidious wasn't looking at a soda can at the time, or we would have been quaking in fear of "Darth Fanta" for the last 28 years. Seriously - it was just as arbitrary. Big let-down for me, personally.

8) Why does Mace Windu get a purple lightsaber, and everybody else can only have blue or green? And no, "Because Sam Jackson wanted a purple one, and he's a bad muthaf*cka" is not an acceptable answer.

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I'm sure I'll think of more later, but this is at least enough to get us started.

 

1) I don't think it really matters. Just something left hanging, I think.

2) They may have started DS2 immediately after the original was destroyed. But that's still a very short time compared to the first. Perhaps the workers just got a good routine going.

3) It's made clear that the Empire was rather predudiced to non-humans. They introduced slavery, as shown by Chewbacca's background. It's mostly clear from the books, though.

4) I always assumed that the Stormtroopers were clones. It's why Leia is surprised that there's one of a different height to the rest.

5) Chewbacca was a slave who rebelled, and Han saved him from getting shot, ensuring he got a nice dishonourable discharge from the Imperial army and forcing him to be a smuggler. That's from the books.

6) I didn't think they looked *that* old... but perhaps they are. I can't judge ages.

7) I was quite disappointed about that... I suppose they couldn't think up a good reason for creating such a weird name.

8) Purple lightsabres are cool. Mace Windu was cool. Or perhaps Mace had a special role in the council. He seemed more of a fighter to me than the others, so perhaps he earned the right to use one. I have no idea.

 

Good questions.

1) It was either Palpatine pretending to be Sypher Diaz or Sypher Diaz under the influence of Palpatine. Either way, Palpatine probably killed him.

2) The first one was experimental so took ages to work out what to do. I also believe it was bigger.

3) Yeah, the Empire is a bit racist.

4) I thought they just died of old age. The Emperor got sick of hearing Temuera Morrison's cool Kiwi accent from all of them.

5) That's one thing that's in the books but there was no easy way to slip Chewbacca's slavery into RotS. The only evidence on ANH is the way the imperials accept the fact of a Wookiee prisoner so easily.

6) It's a tough life in the desert. The wind and those two suns wreak havoc with your skin.

7) Good point.

8) Ostensibly it's because he uses a different crystal to focus the energy in his lightsabre. The crystals cause the colours. Mace flirts with the Dark Side more than the other Masters so it makes sense that his would be 'redder' than everyone elses.

 

Doesn't Darth Vader mean "Dark Father" in some Scandinavian language (or possibly Dutch... someone who knows which help me out here), which seems pretty apt to me. Although it would spoil the end of ESB for at least an entire nation.

 

My answer to the Windu question is a bit like the "Samuel is a Bad MoFo" tag you cited, but I saw him (Samuel, not Mace) in an interview and he said that he wanted to stand out in the fight scenes, so he asked for a sabre different than everyone elses. Given that he was supplying some of the Star power to the franchise, he got his wish.

As for the clones, maybe they just kept getting new ones produced. Or perhaps they started a breeding program. Perhaps the accelerated aging only lasts until they are adults, and then slows to normal.

 

1) Who the hell was the Jedi Master Sypho Dias who ordered the clones? Or at least, who pretended to be Sypho Dias? Sypher Dias was very likely Darth Tyrannus/Count Dooku. Since they said a jedi placed the order, and Jango said that he was recruited by a guy named Tyrannus for the clone job. Dooku/Tyrannus was once a jedi, so I think it fits.

2) At the end of RotS, the Death Star is just beginning construction. At the beginning of ANH, it's just barely become "operational." There's at least a 20-year gap between RotS and ANH, so we're lead to believe the Death Star took 20+plus years to build. With me so far? The first death star was the original prototype. In engineering and manufacturing, the prototype almost always cost more and takes longer to build. Each successive build is usally cheaper and faster to make...Thus it is with Death Stars too...I guess

There's only about a 3-year gap (if memory serves) between ANH and RotJ, and in RotJ the second Death Star looks to be physically about 80% complete, though fully operational offensively. Why did the first Death Star take so damn long to build? Or, if you prefer, why the second one so quickly? See my answer above.

3) The Empirials - from the Storm Troopers to every single offiicer - are human. Yet before the rise of the empire, the Republic - and particularly Curascant - was extremely diverse. In fact, it seemed like Humans were a vast minority. Does the Empire become the intergalactic Nazis and purge the other species or what? And if so, why is it never touched on in the prequels that the Emporer "prefers" humans, enough so to severely oppress and completely exclude the other beings of the galaxy? From bits I've read about the Emperor over the years, he becomes very xenophobic, preferring to have humans in almost all the highest posts in the Empire. Most of the other races are subjugated as slaves.

4) What happens to all the Clones between RotS and ANH? I'm sure they all die off, as they age at twice the normal rate, but are they retired? Ordered to kill themselves? At any point does Charleton Heston start shouting "SOILENT GREEN IS CLOOOOOONES!" Any theories here would be snazzy. I think they have a shortened lifespan since their birth and development are accelerated. By the time ANH comes around, most of the clones have died, very few remain.

5) Chewbacca. In RotS, he appears to be second in command of all the Wookiee armies. He stands at an equal footing with Tarrful, who's clearly the leader of some sort. How does he go from that to being Han Solo's furry space-bitch? I just rewatched the original trilogy, and never really noticed how much Solo treats him like a hired hand, rather than an equal comrade. What gives? Han Solo saved Chewbacca's life when he was a slave. Solo was an Imperial Officer. Afterwards, Chewie owed him a life debt. He's been his companion ever since.

6) Owen and Beru Lars can't be older than 25 at the end of RotS. Yet in ANH, presumably 20 years later, they're in at least their 60's (or older). Does moisture farming just suck the years out of you or what? (and "casting" isn't a valid excuse, because Lucas could have easily cast two 30-year-olds to make the transition more believeable). Tatooine is a desolate planet where it's difficult to survive. And as Jar Jar says in Episode I, those twin suns are murder on the skin!! Sorry, it's the best I got.

7) I'd thought we were actually going to find out what the significance of the name "Darth Vader" was in this film. I'd read somewhere that Anakin was supposed to be "knighted" as a Sith by Sidious, and that there would be a little ceremony involved where he would be given the name "Vader" and it would be explained why. It seems like he just pulled the name "Vader" out of his ass. Lame! It just seemed so arbitrary. Good thing Sidious wasn't looking at a soda can at the time, or we would have been quaking in fear of "Darth Fanta" for the last 28 years. Seriously - it was just as arbitrary. Big let-down for me, personally. You've obviously never pledged a fraternity...I think Darth is a Sith term for Lord or evil priest or whatever. Vader was just the add on, the name her takes to symbolize his passage to the Dark Side, much like getting a nickname like "Flounder" would be to a fraternity initiate.

8) Why does Mace Windu get a purple lightsaber, and everybody else can only have blue or green? And no, "Because Sam Jackson wanted a purple one, and he's a bad muthaf*cka" is not an acceptable answer. He asked Lucas for a purple lightsaber because purple is Sam's favorite color. At least that's what he said in an interview on "The Actor's Studio."

I hope this helps!!!

 

Darth Flounder? Classic.

 

Just a word on the lightsaber colors, where did this idea come that only Dark Jedi can have red lightsabers? Granted, they may be more common among Sith, but that's just tradition. It's just a matter of the Jedi's personal choice, and what kind of gemstone happens to be conveniant.

As for the rest, I agree with pretty much everything Sir Bel said, except to add that by the time of ANH, the Stormtroopers are made of of conscripts and recruits, and that the Emperor was also very sexist.

 

As I mentioned in another thread, the crystals which make a lightsaber red come from a certain creature. You, of course, had to kill one to get the crystals. It was a sign of a Sith's cruelty. That's what I remember. Can anyone verify?

Ah! I was right about Mace Windu's purple saber.

 

@The Magpie Yes Vader is the dutch word for Father. But I always wondered what it ment in english, I mean I don't think the black metal band "Vader" just wanted to use our word for father as a name...

About the deathstar question: It always goes faster when you do something for the second time, they now knew how to build the deathstar so it didn't took them so long... (EDIT: I just noticed Sir Belisarius said something simular.)

About the clones, I also thought they where the stormtroopers.

 

I don’t think Darth Maul was super-cool. I think he had the potential to be, but it never really turned out that way. I think if you took the characters of Darth Maul, Count Dooku, and General Grievous and combined them into one, you would have had a better overall character, and a more climactic fight victory for Obi Wan in RotS.

All it would have taken would have been for “General Darth Dooku” to run away after killing Qui Gon in TPM, have the same role in AotC, then fight Obi Wan in RotS. The only problem then would have been that Anakin still needed someone to kill at the start of RotS to hasten his descent to the dark side but that could easily have been someone else.

 

I like the idea that Mace Windu's lightsaber was purple because of symbolic reasons... add red(dark side) and blue(light side) and get purple. He was much more prone to having what I think of as emotional outbursts than the other 'pure' Jedi (Anakin doesn't count) and I've heard elsewhere that his fighting style was supposed to contain a lot of dark side influences.
I actually have a couple of plot hole questions myself...

1) DUDE. Anakin comes back from a long mission to find his dearly beloved announcing her pregnancy. So, at that point it isn't obvious that she's pregnant. His descent into the the dark side takes about... oh, I'll be generous and say a month. In that month, Padme becomes *very* obviously pregnant and then *gives birth to two very large babies*. HOW?! Is this some kind of Naboo pregnancy thing that we humans aren't privy to?
2) General Grievous... and stop me if there's another thread on this somewhere.. is obviously a human that was placed for some reason in a robot form to preserve him (a la Darth Vader... an early prototype, at least.) If he was so important that he needed to be saved in that way, then who was he? (My theory, which is more of a gut feeling than anything else, is that it was the former..... Darth Maul. Come on, you know it would make the character so much cooler.)

 

DJ - I don't think RotS takes place over the course of a month - I think it's longer, you just "see" the months pass by on screen.

2) Grievous isn't a human, he's a cyborg (half machine, half human)

Good to see you stalking the boards again!

 

Darth Vader does come from father. From the perspective of the original trilogy it is a foreshadowing of the end of Episode 5-"Luke, I am your father." So he gets it in Episode 3 for continuity.

 

Couple things.

Thank you, DJ - an explanation that not only makes tons of sense, but has nothing to do with Sam Jackson. Bravo. I actually just finished reading the novel version of RotS, and they do spend quite a bit of time talking about how Mace Windu is the only living master of a lightsaber form he developed (can't remember the name) that derives so much of its power from the Jedi's ability to "give himself over" to his own dark-side tendancies while still being a force for the light. Yeah, I guess I should have figured that one out.

@ Sir Bel

Yes, I was and still am a member of the Delta Sigma Phi fraternity, and the nicknames you are given as a pledge aren't arbitrary - they usually have a purpose or a story behind them, and that's the way it is in most greek systems I've ever seen. I think you've seen WAY too much Animal House, buddy.

As for "Darth Vader" - of course I knew that the "Darth" part wasn't part of the actual name - Darth Maul and Darth Sidious and Darth Tyranus didn't all get the same label by accident. I was referring to the "Vader" part, and was pretty sure it had some kind of significance, like the word "Vader" actually meant something in the old Sith languages or something. In fact, I'm sure it isn't arbitrary, I'm just a little annoyed that it was never explained in either the film or the book.

As for Grievous - he is a cyborg, but no part of him is human. According to the book, he's alien - one of the reasons Dooku, quite the aristocratic snob himself, despises him so much.

 

Someone, somewhere told me that Greivous was a Jedi hunter who had basically been good enough to kill a whole lot of Jedi, but not good enough to do it without losing body parts. So, he just got cybernetic replacements for everything 'till he was the way he was in the movie.

@Charlie: Granted, my best evidence for my point about lightsaber crystals is KOTOR (where red crystals were just red crystals), and the Jedi Academy series where Gantoris has a red lightsaber. True, he (sorta) falls to the Dark SIde, but he clearly wasn't making his lightsaber out of critters, what with being stuck on Yavin 4 and all.

 

Thanks, Kam. I guess it's time to do some research then!

 

Darth is not a Dutch word, but Vader is, and yes it means father, when I was 6 and watched SWtESB I was certain that George Lucas was Dutch since he used Dutch words

2) In the games I've played it was said that there where multiple Death Stars being build (more than 2 even) I think it was the Rebellion game.

6) Tantooine has two suns, that means that every time the planet made one full cycle 2 years have passed

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Here's mine:
When Han Solo said that he had the fastest ship in the galaxy, going just faster than light, how can Obi Wan jump to the other side of the galaxy in under a day?

 

How do you know it only took a day? Space travel isn't explained very well in the Star Wars universe, neither is the passage of time. It may have taken Obi-Wan a few days to fly those distances, but for the movie, it just glosses the travel part over - we never see how long it really takes.