CT Plot holes in the OT that weren't plot holes until they made the PT

I never thought we would agree about anything Star Wars.

 

Maybe not a plot hole as such, but the thing that bugged the hell out of me when the prequels were over was the fact that Skywalker's seduction to the dark side seemed to take less than 5 minutes midway through the final film!! How Skywalker fell from grace and become Vader was always on my mind watching the OT so when the prequels were announced I was ecstatic, knowing that all my questions would finally be answered. How disappointed was I leaving the cinema after Ep III, that he just seemed to turn there and then and pledge himself to Palpatine (okay he was implicit in the murder of Windu and pledged himself to save Padme but it was all done too quickly). And another thing was that Vader hand built C3PO from scratch.....the less said about that the better!!

 

If you got up to go for a piss and them came back and asked whoever you were with, 'what have I missed?' And they told you, 'we'll he's now pledged himself to Palpatine, who has bestowed the name of Darth Vader on him' 'What? I was only gone a coupla minutes!' And I know people will say, 'Well it's been a gradual seduction' and in truth it was,in a way. But it just seemed GL was kind of stuck how to finally portray the transformation (and I don't mean the suit) How about a dramatic, foreboding moment when we see Anakin (on his own) thinking about everything that is happening/happened to him and we see him drifting into madness. The conflict with his emotions. His hatred and anger rising to the surface so its palpable. And I don't mean having nightmares.

 

Not entirely from scratch, I thought he basically just assembled the parts.

 

It's definitely not stated in any of the films that he built him from scratch.

Do you have a problem with circles?

You sense it through the Force.

Not really. The fact that we're not told how does not negate the fact that it happens.

I guess, but why should we make up explanations? I haven't made up anything. I've drawn conclusions and suggested a few possibilities. Never have I claimed to have found the definitive answer.





- Around the survivors a perimeter create!
- You watch your language!
/LM

 

IMO if your telling a story, and a character relates to something in their past and tells something which is quite clear and definite, then if your going to revisit that moment in future storytelling,where you actually witness what the character had previously alluded to, it has to be done and tie in SEAMLESSLY. That fact this has been endlessly debated clearly shows that it wasn't.

 

IMO, it doesn't have to be anything.
"Images", "feelings", "beautiful", "kind" and "sad" aren't all that clear and definite, BTW.





- Vader's on that ship.
- He'll be expecting you.
/LM

 

None of which she would have from about 15 seconds with her mother while a newborn infant, definite or not. You're force rationalization is flawed, and makes little sense. Yoda has already been pointed out to have been mistaken before. "One you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny" was clearly a mistake. Unless we actually see a Force User using the Force to see the past (which we never do) than it should be assumed that such an action is not possible.

 

he asks her for her memories and she answers him.

he doesn't' ask her about force visions. She doesn't respond to his question by saying, I keep having these weird visions.

He asks her a question and she answers it. Memory, not force.

Force memory is a contrivance, it's a crafted argument to explain away an obvious plot hole.

 

Except if we consider that it did dominate Anakin's destiny up until nearly the moment of his death.

It's said in dialogue they can do so, that's good enough. The above is tantamount to circular logic.

 

On this one, armchair quarterbacking though it is, but there was so much more that GL could have made out of Anakin going to rescue his mother. GL all but mentioned that this part of the story was meant to echo Luke's entry into the Dark Side cave and how Luke, like his father, rushes off on his own personal quest (saving his friends at Bespin) and thereby comes close to falling to the Dark Side as a result.

Even with AOTC as it was they had a great opportunity to make Anakin's "rescue" mission the very heart of the three films, just as the confrontation between Luke and Vader in the cave is the powerful, pulsing heart of the entire CT (IMHO). It's not mere coincidence that that scene falls at the midpoint of ESB and consequently the entire CT. And tThat one scene has so many different interpretations, all of which serve the film and the implications of which push into ROTJ -- I've argued before that the cave scene, with Luke seeing himself under Vader's mask, is a possible reason for Luke to have the conviction that there's still good in Darth Vader, because Luke thinks of himself as good and sees himself in Vader. In an emotional way that doesn't require overt statement, the cave scene drives Luke's character development from then on.

Compare that with Anakin's scene in the hut with his mother, which comes down to a little sentimental conversation and then Pernilla August doing an unintentionally funny impression of a rag doll. GLAAAACK! Flop, she's dead. I don't know whether it's intended characterisation, poor direction, bad acting, or what, but the scene just doesn't come off. You don't quite believe Anakin's grief; you don't quite believe Shmi's pain or edge-of-death mutterings. And the "slaughter" scene that follows is poorly done. There's that cringingly bad "cutaway" (no pun intended) made with the lightsaber, focused on Anakin when he's finished his cut and standing still, and following which we have what I call the "Tylenol" scene with Mace and Yoda: "What is it?" "Pain. Terrible pain!" "Try Excedrin. Works faster on headaches than any other leading brand." Terrible, terrible editing choices all round there. Anakin should still be moving in that last shot when we move to the next scene, he shouldn't be just standing there in "angry" pose.

Personally, the quickest fix I could think of would be a shot focused on Anakin as he marches forward, saber slashing, the camera cutting closer and closer in to his eyes, interspersing lightsaber strikes with sentimental flashback shots of he and his mother, finishing with a sentimental shot of the Emperor congratulating him from the end of TPM. And as the camera gets closer and closer, we should've got the most disturbing thing of all: Anakin smiling as he engages in the murder, an indication of the potency and seduction of the Dark Side.

And like I said, with a little thought or more care, it could have been so much more. Where the cave scene in ESB has Luke entering the cave to find the monster living there and confronting it, this scene in AOTC should have had a similar, horrible mythos to it: a scene where Anakin enters the cave, finds the monster living within it, and is consumed by it, Darth Vader emerging from where Anakin entered. I would contend that should've been the scene where Anakin most obviously turns to the Dark Side, that from that point on he's then oddly subtle, starts getting dishonest with Obi-Wan and Padme, turns to Dark Side teachings in an overt way, starts dressing in black, and so on. His elevation to the title of Darth Vader in ROTS should have been the confirmation of what he already had become by that point, not a sudden flipflop to the Dark Side as it currently is. The scene in AOTC with his mother should have had the mythical, equivocal quality about it that the cave scene in ESB had. Hell, you could've even left the disturbing implication that Anakin killed his own mother to end her suffering in there without too much trouble if you really wanted to amp up the power of that scene. "What's in there?" "Only what you take with you." That should have driven the scene, just as the cave scene in ESB was driven by that exchange.

Done this way, with the right images, with the right impact, there wouldn't even have been the need for Anakin (three times, IIRC) to mention his mother's death in the films from then on. And we should not have seen the very hamfisted way in which Palpatine brings up the mother's death, complete with Tusken Raider sound effect for no real reason in there. The event should have been so defining, so unforgettable, that we didn't even need to recall it consciously. I'll get the argument here that GL did all this, but the issue was a lack of focus and a lack of knowing how to tell the story properly.

 

That was beautiful.

key word: Forever

No. Incorrect. Dialogue is not good enough. It has been demonstrated numerous times in the films themselves that dialogue =/= fact.

 

So now, Yoda is a liar just because you don't want to believe it...
Whatever floats your boat, my friend.





- Remember what you told me, about your mother and the sand people?
- The cave! Remember your failure at the cave!
/LM

 

On that one, at least, it's not the "forever" part that people should be focusing on, it's the "dominate".

Dominate =/= compel, at least not in all of its definitions. Per a quick Google...

dom·i·nate
/ˈdäməˌnāt/

Verb

1. Have a commanding influence on; exercise control over.
2. Be the most important or conspicuous person or thing in.

(Emphases mine) Of these four possibilities, three of them do not require that it utterly controls or compels Anakin's destiny. Yoda's full line in ESB, which he repeated in part on his deathbed in ROTJ, is "Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will, as it did Obi-Wan's apprentice." And there follows an assurance from Yoda that the Dark Side is not stronger, just easier, quicker, more seductive. That suggests not that the Dark Side would control Anakin's destiny, just that it indicates a very strong influence or prominence in that thing. "Forever will it dominate your destiny" does not mean it's impossible to rebel or that other factors won't play into that destiny - it only indicates the Dark Side overshadows that destiny. Where Anakin could have stayed in the Light, could have chosen to (who knows?) take on Palpatine with Mace and probably win, he chose the Dark Side instead and therefore surrendered to it being the most important thing in his life, having a commanding influence upon him - but not an unescapable influence.

 

What are you talking about? His seduction to the dark side is spread out over all 3 PT films. Even in TPM, Anakin always faces away from the light, becomes perturbed at the Jedi council and gives them a flip reply and already has both fear and anger issues. Only at 9 years old, Anakin gives the council a dirty look. Then in AOTC he gives in to his hatered and kills the Sand People camp, then attacks Dooku in rage. Then forms an unhealthy attachment with Padme that is doomed to end badly for the both of them. He doesn't just hop from the light to the dark, it is a progression over 3 films.

 

I'd say it's a horribly muddled progression over three films, which is part of why it doesn't work as well as the CT for me, and also why it verges on creating a plot hole where there wasn't one before.

See, Obi-Wan's whole story about Anakin implies, if it doesn't make it explicit, that Anakin was much older when Obi-Wan first met him. "When I first knew him, your father was already a great pilot" conjures up images of a teen or twentysomething, not an infant whose age can be expressed in single digits. Armchair quarterbacking again, but I think the story would've worked far better had Qui-Gon and the gang run into Anakin when he was in his late teens with all that newly-arrived testosterone swimming around just begging to get hyped up on midichlorian magic.

As it is, all three PT movies seem unwilling to express whether Anakin is the Bad Seed, destined to evil from birth, or just a good person who went the wrong way in his life. On one hand, they pronounce Anakin as a good guy, awesome dude, but on the other hand they're constantly dressing him up in black robes and making him have big angry teen outbursts right in front of Jedi Masters. The PT doesn't really try to say whether Anakin is innately good or bad; in fact I'd say they lean towards him being innately bad, particularly if one accepts he starts falling to the Dark Side before he's over the Age of Reason. This is a problem because generally when you have child protagonists, they're not meant to be morally complex. Either they're the Bad Seed (see Rosemary's Baby, The Omen, The Good Son, Orphan) or they're a good kid with a spiritual bent. They're presented like that in films because generally kids aren't morally complex.

The problem with the PT's equivocation on Anakin's nature is that the CT suggests you have free will no matter what. Anakin according to Obi-Wan was a good man who chose to become evil, and therefore he can choose to be good again. Only evil cackles that it's in your destiny to be like your father, good says you can decide to throw the old dude with the acne problem down the garbage chute any time you like. The PT instead offers the argument that life's predestined -- all Anakin's costuming, imagery, and actions point at his fundamental nature being evil, that he can't choose good because it's not in his nature to be good. That clashes badly with the CT because the CT makes no bones about its philosophy: you can choose good or evil, you are not bound to one destiny or another beyond having to make the choice.

 

[Lars_Muul, post: 50623123, member: 276198"]

No, merely pointing out the flaw in your argument, that it it based on circluar logic.

Is that the only way? Guess non-Force sensitives think that noone is kind to them.

Wrong, you are using circular logic. You say Leia is more Force aware and this is why she remebers and she remembers because she is more Force aware. This is circular logic.

Also by this logic there can never ever be any plot holes in any film. Because anything can happen and since it happens it must have a clear logic reason for why it happens even if we don't know it and even if everything we do know speaks against it.
For ex Luke could die in ESB and be alive in RotJ without explanation and this would not be a plot hole according to your reasoning. Luke is alive so something happened to bring him back to life even though we have no idea what that is.

All of this is making up explanations.
Leia has memories she should not have and we are given no explanation in the films as to why or how she has them.

Option 1. Simply view it as a plot hole or inconsistency and leave it at that.
Option 2. Make something up to explain this.
How much you make up varies depending on what theory you propose.
"Leia is talking about Bails first wife." This requires us to make up that Bail first wife died and he remarried.
"The Force gave Leia memories." This also requires us to make certain things up. We know that a Force user can get "Visionary" power through the Force and see the past, present of future.
What is not estabilshed is that the Force can give you memories of people you don't know or have never really met. Futher things have to be made up to explain why Luke DOESN'T get these "Force memories"

In closing, I find the "Force-memory" theory flawed as it a) invents a new Force power and b) this power is used very inconsistently and thus creates an even bigger problem

Bye for now.
Old Stoneface

 

Well all the obvious plot holes have probably been said by now. How about the fact that at no point in the OT was the Emperor called Palpatine. That's a bit odd but I guess it isn't exactly a plot hole.

 

Option 2 seems to very popular as a way for some to explain the inconsistencies with Leia remembering her mother. And Owen as regards to his opinions on Luke's father in ANH as told by Obi-wan. It still baffles me as to how Lucas allowed for these to arise. Attention to detail is paramount IMO when you want things to blend seamlessly. If it had been done correctly, the question wouldn't even be asked.

 

A movie that doesn't raise questions is not a very interesting movie, IMO.
Honestly, though, I've never quite understood the problem with Owen's opinions and the way they're presented. Obi-Wan talks about what Owen's been telling him, not Anakin.

I find circular logic fascinating rather than faulty, myself.

Of course not.

That is correct - There are no plot holes.
No, but seriously, that's not remotely the same thing, because A: Leia's memory doesn't affect the plot and B: That scene in ROTJ doesn't really contradict ROTS.

Option 3. Don't make anything up, but realize that there's no true contradiction.

a) The way I see it, there aren't any Force powers. The Force is used to enhance our natural abilities, that's all.
b) Some people have better memory than others. Again, Luke and Leia are not the same person.





- My lord, it's impossible to locate the ship.
- I find your lack of faith disturbing.
/LM

 

Jcuk For some now-apparent holes, the version of the backstory/prequel story that existed (vague as it was) around the time of ROTJ probably did blend seamlessly. (For the Obi-Wan finding Anakin thing, plus that Luke would have been three in Episode III so he might have been born in Episode II, meaning that the Young Queen might have died in Episode III and Leia could have still remembered her normally, etc). It seems like Lucas probably changed things around to make whatever story he was currently telling "better," which may or may not have been successful (opinions differ) but it definitely took the story further from the probably-better-matched version of the backstory that was floating around his head years earlier.

Actually let me emphasize that for everyone else too, because I didn't realize how relevant that was as I was writing it: As of the middle/end of the development of the OT, Luke would have been three in Episode III so he (and Leia) might have been born in Episode II, meaning that the Young Queen might have died on screen in Episode III and Leia could have still remembered her in the standard fashion.

 

I don't see it that way at all. I see it as as a slow progression to the dark side, but he always had free will to make the right or wrong choice, not predestined to be complete evil by the force. TPM did show Anakin being a great pilot at the age of 9 which is not an infant (a framing tactic), and gave shelter to Qui-Gon and the gang, and risked his life to win the parts they needed. Even when he becomes Vader he isn't complete evil, as both Padme and Luke knew there was still good in him. Having Anakin discovered already in his late teens or 20s would only have served to make his turn to the dark side much more abrupt and problematic. In fact I found Luke's near turn in ROTJ was much more abrupt than Anakin's full turn, that he was manipulated for almost his whole life instead of just a few hours. It also would have made the PT films just a rehash the OT films too much, but I guess some fans may have preferred that more lazy route. The PT films clearly shows Anakin was a good, but very flawed person, the prophecy never stated the chosen one would be perfect. His flaws put him on a more narrow tightrope than most people, more easy to tip either way. But his flaws were manipulated by the Sith and cohearst to turn in complete desperation. Not to be a complete badass some would want, but in a effort to prevent another loss in his life, something more people can understand. I think some people just don't like how the PT films shows good people being forced to do horrible things. As for kids not being morally complex is simply your opinion you are passing off as a fact, an opinion I don't share with you. The writers of The Walking Dead would disagree with that opinion as well as Lucas and many other writers. Still you have every right to it, but it isn't a fact. Also are you saying Lucas and other film makers should only follow a set of rules to storymaking instead of being creative? Again I disagree that any fim maker should have to follow some strict set of rules to make an acceptable and predictable film. I have seen these arguments before and they are pretty thin.
The PT, just like the OT shows you can choose good or evil, but unlike Luke, Anakin was suduced to choose evil and while he always had a choice doesn't mean he still can't be influenced to make the wrong one or that circumstances can still be against you.

There was an episode of CSI that mirrored this. A serial killer in prison was trying to get a pardon into a mental hospital by claiming he wasn't really at fault, it was his bad genes that made him predisposed to murder, to be evil. That he could not help that he was predisposed and needed help, he never really had a choice. However ones of the CSIs testified that he also had the same bad genes, but he still could choose to still be a good person, and that the genes didn't stop the killer from making the right choices instead of the wrong ones, also both had rough childhoods. While both Anakin and Luke had anger issues, Anakin made the wrong choice, Luke made the right one, and at the end, Anakin finally makes the right choice. To me, the PT films never implied Anakin never had a free choice, that had had free choice like the OT, but he had hard ones to make. Hard choices hopefully none of us ever have to make in real life. But even the nature of free will is pretty subjective, and Lucas' view of it may not match yours.

 

I understand your point. But how many years did Lucas have to get this right? Didnt they watch through the OT and specifically mark anything that would be relevant relating from it to story to be told in the PT? Isn't that good, cohesive storytelling taking into account every detail? The OT was MASSIVE!! It's what put Star Wars on the map. Without its success there would be no PT. if everyone had thought it was a load of crap and it made no money whatsoever and didnt make Lucas a VERY rich man, do you think there would've been a prequel trilogy? But he just wasn't meticulous enough with it. Too busy dreaming about what he could do with the SFX.

 

Good for you but it is rather limited in a discussion because one person can simply say "I say you are wrong and you are wrong because I say so, QED."

Good so people have other ways to think that someone is kind to them, like a person being kind TO them, which was my point.

And again, I don't measure plot holes to their relative importance to the plot.
In the orignial version of Blade Runner, Deckards boss say that SIX replicants escaped and ONE was was killed when they tried to break into the Tyrell Co. But then he only speaks of four and we only see Deckard deal with four. This fifth replicant is never mentioned and so it is of minor relevance to the story. Doesn't change that this was a plot hole until the latest version corrected it. Now Deckards boss said TWO were killed when breaking into Tyrell Co. leaving four.

It does contradict RotS because Padme dies before Leia can get any memories of her, not to mention the memories she says she has. And Luke, who spent more time with Padme, and is Force sensitive and all that, has no memories at all.

But since there is a contradiction, this option isn't possible.

Really? People have a natural ability to move rocks with their minds, to controll the minds of others, to speak in the minds of others, to live on after death?
Sorry don't agree, the Force gives the user supernatural powers. But this "Force memory" power is not an established power, it is something that fans have made up in order to explain away an inconsistency.

We aren't dealing with "better memory" because what Leia is describing can't really be her mother dying in child-birth. If she really is talking about Padme, which we don't know for sure, then she must be talking about other bits of Padmes life than just the minutes she had with her.
Also Leia was a newborn and newborns don't see very well so she would not have made much sense of the bright lights and blurry images she saw. Nowhere near enough to get "Beautifull, kind and yet sad."

So again, I find the Force-memory explanation lacking because it relies on made up powers, isn't used consistently and creates more problems than it solves.
But since it appears we are not getting anywhere with this, why don't we drop it and agree to disagree?

Bye.
Blackboard Monitor