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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, fans
00:05can't be blamed for struggling to keep track of it all.
00:08It's basically a full-time job at this point, enough that Disney literally pays a group
00:12of law keepers, the Lucasfilm Story Group, to keep it in order.
00:16Yet those in charge evidently haven't gotten everything right over the last half century,
00:21breaking their own established rules and concepts on the regular, albeit often in ways that
00:27might have passed fans by.
00:28So I am Padawan Gareth from WhatCultureStarWars and here are 10 times Star Wars broke its
00:34own rules and you didn't notice.
00:37Number 10, How Force Ghosts Work
00:39Many elements of the Force are kept ambiguous throughout the series, seemingly intentionally,
00:45but one of the more irksome inconsistencies is the means through which a fallen Jedi becomes
00:50a Force Ghost.
00:51Obi-Wan of course becomes one after being felled by Darth Vader, and Yoda and Anakin follow suit
00:57in Return of the Jedi.
00:58But what about other Jedi who died throughout the series?
01:01Namely, what about the 200 or so Jedi who died in the Battle of Geonosis in Attack of
01:06the Clones?
01:07Why didn't we see them become Force Ghosts?
01:09Beyond that, the time it takes for a dead Jedi to become a Force Ghost is totally all
01:14over the place.
01:15Some near instantly transmuting into Ghost form, while others take considerably longer.
01:20Elsewhere, there are countless unanswered questions, like who Force Ghosts can reveal
01:24themselves 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
01:34it.
01:34But the constant deviation and variation makes it frustratingly hard to get a bead on what
01:39being a Force Ghost is actually all about.
01:42The great thing about being a Jedi is that you've got a battery of basically magical abilities
01:50at your disposal at any given moment.
01:53But there's an infuriating number of times throughout the Star Wars franchise that they've
01:57conveniently just forgotten this fact.
01:59The Phantom Menace literally opens with Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon using Force Speed to escape droid
02:05fire, and yet we never see them use this again.
02:08It sure would have been useful during that climactic fight with Darth Maul, right?
02:12Elsewhere, nobody ever uses their Force powers to try and damage Darth Vader's armoured suit.
02:17And there are literally innumerable other examples of Jedi not using established Force abilities
02:22to get themselves out of a bind.
02:24If you want to try and handwave this, you might suggest that Jedi intentionally make spare use
02:29of their powers to avoid the temptation of the dark side.
02:32But come on, it's a reach.
02:34Basically, if Jedi made continued use of the many powers at their disposal, these movies
02:39would be really damn short.
02:41Number 8, Everything About The Holdo Maneuver
02:43The Holdo Maneuver was first seen in The Last Jedi, when Vice Admiral Holdo suicidally
02:49rammed the Raddus into Snoke's flagship, The Supremacy, at near light speed to buy the
02:54Resistance time to escape to Krait.
02:57Yet this rubbed a lot of fans the wrong way, because even if you accept the science behind
03:01the move, if such an unorthodox move was possible, why haven't we ever seen it before in Star
03:07Wars canon?
03:08Why, for instance, didn't the Rebels perform a similar move on the Death Star, or the
03:12Resistance rammed Starkiller base, and in turn save themselves a ton of hassle?
03:17It feels like space warfare would be totally different if this was always a possibility,
03:21even accepting that it's clearly a difficult move to pull off.
03:25The Rise of Skywalker made an unconvincing attempt to quell miffed fans, dismissing
03:30the Holdo Maneuver as a one-in-a-million shot.
03:32Yeah, sure, JJ.
03:34Yet 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.
03:43Which, of course, they still do.
03:45Number 7, Random Lightsaber Colors When It's Cool
03:48The original Star Wars trilogy plainly established that lightsabers come in three colours, blue
03:54and green for Jedi, and red for the Sith, a scheme which remained consistent for decades.
03:59But in the prequels, Mace Windu suddenly rocked a purple lightsaber totally out of nowhere,
04:04simply because he wanted to stand out from other actors in the Battle of Geonosis.
04:08Since then, we've seen other canonical shades of lightsaber.
04:12Rey's yellow lightsaber in The Rise of Skywalker, Ahsoka Tano's white lightsabers,
04:17and of course, the Darksaber.
04:19Though the now-extinct Legends canon attempted to ascribe specific meaning to the colours,
04:24most of this has since been wiped out, ensuring the colours assigned to sabers outside of the
04:29primary Jedi Sith template are more or less a crapshoot.
04:32Ultimately, it 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.
04:436. Tusken Raider's Reaction Times
04:46Here's a hilarious inconsistency you almost certainly forgot about,
04:50or perhaps never even noticed in the first place.
04:53In A New Hope, Obi-Wan and Luke come across a downed sandcrawler, and,
04:58Obi-Wan memorably remarks, these blast points are too accurate for sandpeople.
05:02Only 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
05:16their incredible sniping abilities. Take The Phantom Menace, where a Tusken Raider shoots a pod racer
05:21moving at incredible speed, and more recently, The Book of Boba Fett, where Tusken Raiders manage to
05:27snipe guards on a moving train. Of course, it's possible to assume that Obi-Wan was simply mistaken
05:32in his estimation of the Tusken Raiders. But if Obi-Wan is supposedly such a wise and knowledgeable
05:38individual, it feels less like an intentional character flourish than an internal inconsistency
05:43with how the Raiders are presented.
05:455. Lightsabers Cauterizing 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 cauterize wounds while cutting human
06:01flesh. Except that's not always the case. Take Obi-Wan's run-in with Ponda Baba in the
06:06Mos Eisley Cantina 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.
06:17Sure, you can argue that Ponda Baba's circulatory system and blood pressure act in a different way to
06:22humans. 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 thumb
06:43compared to the more family-friendly dismemberments in subsequent Star Wars movies.
06:484. People Wearing Glasses
06:50One rule which George Lucas insisted upon from the outset of Star Wars is that glasses effectively
06:56don't exist in this universe. And given how technologically advanced Lucas' world is,
07:01that's basically fair enough. Except a few glasses wearers have crept into the universe in the years
07:07since George Lucas sold the property off to Disney. For one, an episode of animated series Star
07:12Wars Rebels Double Agent Droid featured a character wearing specks. And more recently and prominently,
07:18The Mandalorian's Dr. Pershing rocks some distinctive eye glasses. Of course, it's possible
07:23that glasses are basically a relic in this universe, with only a select few bothering to use such an
07:29ancient technology. But all the same, it's tough to believe that someone of Dr. Pershing's standing
07:34would favor them over simply having his eyesight corrected with, say, laser eye surgery. George Lucas
07:40lost the opportunity to dictate such things when he let go of Star Wars, yet in the grand scheme of
07:44things, it's a small inconsistency. And therefore, one you probably didn't even spot.
07:50Number 3. The Sith's Spare Use of Force Choke
07:53In the same vein of Jedi forgetting about their force powers, we have Sith not using the force to
07:59its full murderous potential. Case in point, though we see Darth Vader use the force choke several times
08:05on subordinate officers, why the hell doesn't he ever use it against actual Jedi? And he's not the
08:10only one guilty of this. In the Clone Wars, Palpatine force chokes Count Dooku from halfway across the
08:16galaxy, suggesting 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 people
08:27they force choked made it easier for them to exert the force upon them from a distance. But all the
08:32same, doesn't it feel like an underused skill in the entirety of Star Wars? And even if you accept that
08:37skilled Jedi can block such a maneuver, what about pesky regular rebels who aren't force-sensitive?
08:43It's a move that could do so much damage, and yet it's rarely used. Likely because George Lucas
08:48created something a bit too powerful for its own good. Number 2. The Nonsensical Rule of Two
08:54Even casual Star Wars fans are aware of the Rule of Two, a Sith maxim first concocted by the legendary
09:00Darth Bane, which states that only two Sith Lords can exist at once. One Master and one Apprentice.
09:07It sounds simple enough, and yet as stringently as Emperor Palpatine initially appears to adhere
09:12to it, it's been treated more as a guideline throughout the history of the series. To that
09:16end, Palpatine juggled Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker as apprentices, a move which could
09:22have conceivably resulted in there being a third wheel in this party. But of course,
09:26Palpatine ended up sealing his own fate when father and son reconciled, resulting in him getting
09:31lobbed down a reactor shaft by Vader. Then there's the Rise of Skywalker, which saw Palpatine
09:36residing on Exegol with a whole-ass fleet of Sith acolytes, prompting the film's novelization to
09:42effectively retcon the Rule of Two, claiming that there are many Sith who are ruled by Two.
09:48Really though, it's just another interesting idea which George Lucas didn't think through enough.
09:53Number 1. Force Healing Is Now A Thing
09:55In 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.
10:06In the film'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 before.
10:17Well, in fairness, Grogu did perform a Force heal in an episode of The Mandalorian's first season,
10:22aired mere days before The Rise of Skywalker. But that aside, it's staggering that such a useful
10:28Force 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 hand-wave it by declaring that certain Jedi get certain abilities,
10:43and Force heal just happens to be incredibly rare among them,
10:46or even that Rey learned it from the ancient Jedi texts.
10:49Or the same, it strains credibility that the movies went more than 40 years without featuring
10:54Force healing at all.
10:55And that's our list. Know of 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.
11:08I've been Gareth from WhatCultureStarWars, 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!
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