SWTOTD SWTOTD 29 - I See Dead Jedi 5/24/2005 05:09:00 PM | Zeroplate There are enough plotholes in the now-completed Star Wars saga that I can now fully empathize with people who just wish the prequels had never happened. In 1997, the idea of MORE STAR WARS just sounded too good to pass up, but now in 2005, the reality of MORE STAR WARS seems to have generated a lot more questions than it has answered. If you are like me and you can shut off the question-asking part of your brain long enough to just enjoy the spectacle or get caught up in the reality on screen, then this isn't a problem. However, some of the holes are big enough to herd bantha through, and there's two in particular that really stick with me. [SPOILERS AHOY] Jedi Spirits I understand that a scene that has Yoda conversing with spirit Qui-Gon was cut from the final version of Revenge of the Sith and frankly, I understand why but I wish it had worked out differently. The moment where Yoda explains to Obi-Wan that an old friend has learned to communicate from beyond the grave was the moment I finally lost my comoposure and the tears welled up a bit. It wasn't that the scene was so well-written or so brilliantly acted that I was swept up by it, but it was a the idea that the last lingering question I had about the movies was about to be answered and that the prequel trilogy was finally going to make its own closed loop as a part of the larger whole with the re-emergence of the saga's first Jedi hero. I just knew Obi-Wan was going to turn around and see Qui-Gon sitting there peacefully, but that never happened. Since Qui-Gon was a bit of a rebel on the Jedi Council, and had his own way of studying the force, it seems appropriate that he was the one to discover the spirit appearance ability, but there are then so many questions the fall out from that. Qui-Gon teaches Yoda, who teaches Obi-Wan this trick, but who teaches Anakin? If Qui-Gon can come back and talk to the living, why isn't the first person on his list of Jedi to look up Anakin? Surely he'd be interested to see how Anakin's training was progressing. He would have likely helped avert the whole turn to the dark side too, as what Anakin always needed was a warm, caring father figure/mentor--the very thing he had in Qui-Gon until the master's untimely demise. Yoda also implies that it requires training to commune with the Jedi spirits, but if that's the case, how does Luke see Obi-Wan on Hoth, or hear him in the Death Star trench? Why doesn't Qui-Gon show up at the Jedi Spirit party at the end of Return of the Jedi, and why is the ghost of Anakin now a 20 year old and not the old man, if Darth Vader was truly redeemed? This is the kind of stuff that can make a fan's head split right open! I mean, on the surface of the movies--WHO GIVES A SHIT? The ghosts are cool, and they help fill in the story and they aren't really hurting anything. On the other hand, when there's a prequel trilogy that's been created to answer questions, to fill in backstory, and to complete this larger picture, why leave something like this with so many logical pitfalls? The Death of Padme When Luke asks in Return of the Jedi, Leia says she only vaguely remembers her mother as beautiful and sad. That's a touching moment where Luke gets a little glimpse through his sister's eyes of their mother. For all these years, I've imagined that Leia lived with her mother for a couple years until maybe her mother died of a broken heart or was killed by stormtroopers (thus ushering in Leia's sense of urgency for the rebellion.) Instead, mom dies in childbirth of an unknown reason, summed up by a droid as a loss of 'the will to live.' Now, these droids don't have the best track record of summing things up in the movies, but this is the only indication we have in the film as to why Padme is dying. It would have made tremendously more sense if the droid had said "she got choked pretty bad and she's near death," but instead, Lucas went for the more emotional suckerpunch of a woman dying because her husband turned into an evil child-killer. Frankly, that's just stupid. Padme's reason to live is her kids, plain and simple. Not only that, but her last words are "there's still good in him..." which would seem to indicate that she has some hope for Anakin. None of this adds up to a fatalistic Padme, and the death doesn't jive with the original trilogy. So... WHY? Playing the ultimate conspiracy theorist, you could say that Padme didn't die, that the funeral was a farce for show (she's got the preggo belly in the funeral, so it's obviously at least a PARTIAL show) and that she went on to live in secrecy with the Organas or something. That's just too much of a stretch, and it's not supported by the film. So instead, we have Leia waxing nostalgic about Bail Organa's wife, Padme biting it for no reason, and the twins split up so that they can one day defeat the Empire DESPITE the fact that Yoda wants nothing to do with training Luke, and that Yoda has to remind Obi-Wan that "there is another" when Obi-Wan claims that Luke is their last hope. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Don't worry, I have a firm grip on reality and I know that none of this actually matters and that none of it diminishes my enjoyment of the movies to the point that I wish I'd never seen them. But still, it makes you wonder in a kind of meta-saga way, what the whole thing would have been like if Lucas had had his head on straight and had been able to get the prequels right the way he did the originals. I enjoy all 6 movies, and there are pure Star Wars parts in the new ones that I love even more than the originals. Thanks to these kinds of questions though, there will always be a great 'what if' out there, and that's kind of sad. Back to Top {5} Comments

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