PT Plot Holes and Inconsistencies in the Prequel Trilogy

An interesting tidbit I just thought of:

In Heir to the Empire, Luke, while reflecting on something Obi Wan said to him, thinks to himself:
"A Jedi can't get so caught up in matters of galactic importance, that it interferes with his concern for individual people."

Ironically(or rather, fittingly), this moment of compassion was predicted by his enemy(Mara), and successfully used against him.

 

Good point!

Lucas ordered Anakin to wait there until the plot of the movie caught up with him.

 

For the first, seeing as only the Geonosians have those weapons, could say they're pretty rare. They are weapon's manufacturers after all, makes sense they save the best kit for themselves.

Ad for the latter, Anakin could be waiting for Palpatine to finish his Empire founding speech before confirming his elimination of the Separatists. Palaptine gives Anakin a new order after contacting him, to shut down the droid army, so Anakin probably knew his mission wasn't complete yet.

 

The Geonosians are in league with Dooku. Dooku is opposed to the Jedi. Dooku sees these weapons in action. Yet the technology is never used en masse by the Separatists? Or against Jedi by anyone else? As a separate point, why don't the Jedi ever try to Force-push the Droidekas? Or pick them up & smash them against a wall, like they do with other enemy droids? Do force-shields repel Force powers? It makes no sense for Droidekas to be so formidable against Jedi just bcs they're shielded.

& Anakin immediately sees Padme's ship & goes out to her. Did he deactivate the battledroids? The poster above is right though. There seems to be a very, very long time between Anakin dispatching the Separatist leaders & Padme arriving. Still there are a lot of time & distance issues in the saga. I tend to overlook those.

 

The sonic blasters are probably too expensive for mass production or else they have other drawbacks which make them less than desirable for common use.

Jedi don't Force push droidekas for the same reason Darth Vader doesn't just remotely Force choke all the Rebel pilots in ANH rather than chasing after them in a starfighter. If Jedi could just instantly defeat all non-Jedi enemies with a simple flick of the wrist then it rather reduces the fun of them as vulnerable, human characters, no?

The question is based on a false premise. Anakin doesn't leave for Mustafar until after Obi-Wan and Yoda are secure aboard Bail Organa's ship and decide to head back to Coruscant. Anakin arrives on Mustafar at the same time Organa and the Jedi arrive on Coruscant. While the Jedi are investigating the temple and Palpatine gives his address, Anakin is slaughtering the Separatists. Obi-Wan then talks to Padme and they both head to Mustafar. Meanwhile, Anakin has finished his slaughter and is standing on the balcony, taking some time to himself to reflect on the enormity of what he's done. We have no idea how much time passes while he does this, but it very reasonably could be an hour or more. Finally, Anakin manages to collect himself and reports to Sidious, and right after this is when Padme lands.

Given that ANH shows the Millennium Falcon traveling from the Outer Rim to the Core in what appears to be a matter of minutes, I'm not sure time is a concern here.

 

Ah yes, when all else fails the old "It's too expensive" defence. That poor Dooku & those commerce guilds sure did seem short of a buck. Maybe a fundraising drive was in order.

Except it's much harder to swallow such inconsistencies when it's the same situation. In other words, since the Jedi use the Force against enemy droids that they encounter in person why not do the same against Droidekas or Magna guards?

So, Anakin is hanging around on Mustafar during the entire time that: Obi-Wan & Yoda leave their ship, get to the temple, have a battle against clonetroopers, investigate the slaughter inside, find the hologram footage & then have their conversation, Obi-Wan makes his way to Padme's apartment, has a chat with her, leaves, waits for her to leave, follows her, leaves on her ship, & finally travels all the way from Coruscant to Mustafar. Anakin's first 4 minutes seem to be taken up with dispatching the Separatist leaders. What did he do with all of the rest of the time? Why take all of that time to report into Palpatine?

No issue there bcs there's a montage of scenes & there's no one waiting around in a location for no apparent reason as they traveled. That said, I agree that nitpicking time & distance in SW is silly, as I mentioned above. However there's no need to always try to justify what should be simply written off as dramatic convenience.

 

Jedi are relatively rare. Every droid is going to carry two guns in every situation in case they run into a Jedi? And, besides, Dooku has no intention of winning the war.

 

No, I'm saying perhaps they're too expensive for mass production. Perhaps the cost/benefit ratio doesn't make sense. Just because a faction has a lot of money doesn't mean they have infinite money. According to you it must be a plothole in real life whenever the United States military can't afford to do something.

And how is this not a plot hole in the OT? Are you telling me a light speed capable civilization hasn't developed sonic weapons technology? We're currently developing sonic weapons technology. You're basically saying you don't want to see any cool or unique weaponry in the Star Wars universe because you're not willing to suspend your disbelief.

No, the plot hole applies across all situations. Both humans and droids are made of matter. Nice try.

Why don't you try actually reading the posts you're responding to? Anakin leaves for Mustafar at the same time Obi-Wan and Yoda leave for Coruscant, and they arrive at their respective locations at the same time. That's the first part of my post you ignored. I'm not going to repost the rest. You can just read it again, slowly and carefully this time, and then report back to me.

There isn't a montage of scenes. Han walks back to the hold and says, "Well, you can forget your troubles with those Imperial slugs. I told you I'd outrun 'em." Unless he's inexplicably been hanging out in the cockpit for hours and hours before waiting to tell them this after jumping to hyperspace, only a matter of minutes can have passed. Then the scene with the seeker droid plays out. Then an alert sounds and Han says they've arrived at Alderaan. This is a continuous scene, there are absolutely no cuts. Again, you should really make sure you're familiar with a movie before trying to engage in an argument about plot minutiae on a forum devoted to the series it belongs to.

Now, there is a montage of scenes intercut with each other in the ROTS example. Did you get mixed up, is that what confused you? There are a lot of movies in this series, it's okay if you confused one with another.

 

Great and obvious point that people need to be reminded off (far more often than should be needed I'd say).

Always baffles me when people blithely ignore the actual events as seen in the movie which show the rules that Lucas set up.

The Force causes physical exertion on the users part. They don't have an endless well of energy to call upon to do whatever they please when they need it.

Force users can get exhausted and weak and their power can stumble. This is evident over and over again.

 

Let's say Anakin was there for two hours, and watched a holodrama in the meantime. Or maybe he had other task that needed to be accomplished.

Perhaps he was there longer. Maybe shutting down every droid army out there takes a long time. Maybe it involves communicating with other worlds. Maybe he was there for.... 5 hours.

 

For the purposes of the plot, huge wealthy factions like the Republic, the CIS or the Empire do have infinite money. Or at least enough to afford some guns that are effective against Jedi. If Palpatine & Dooku have the coin to secretly design & build a Death Star, I'm pretty sure they can scrounge around & get enough to buy those sonic guns

I did but it looks like you need to.

Yes, I heard you the first time. My response takes that perfectly into account. Pls read your post & my answer again, slowly and carefully this time, and then report back to me.

Watch again. The Falcon jumps to light speed, it cuts back to the Imperials for some time, then back to the Falcon which has been traveling at lightspeed for who knows how long. The length of the intervening scene on the Death Star would suggest quite a while. Han later joining them in the recreation area & telling them they've alluded the Imperials is hardly proof that the entire trip has taken a few minutes! Perhaps it's been hours & he's been in the cockpit monitoring their sensors to make absolutely sure they'd lost them. Like I said, who knows.

Doesn't really stack up as an excuse. The Jedi are shown casually Force pushing battle droids around, then seemingly losing this ability as soon as Droidekas show up bcs, reasons. Then instantly getting the "energy" back again when more battledroids appear. Seems they're incredibly unlucky to get puffed-out & fatigued whenever the more dangerous droids appear, where their Force abilities would be of most value. For instance when they face off against those Magna guards. The two Jedi didn't seemed overly tired then as they stood there in handcuffs trading insults with Grievous. Or in the subsequent highly energised fighting.
Sometimes it's fine to just answer with "dramatic convenience". Lucas wanted cool fight scenes & he prioritised that over in-universe logic. No crime in that. These are entertainment movies after all.

 

I assume you guys are talking about these sonic blasters, right?


And not these:


So the original question was "The Genosians used some weird sonic blasters that Lightsabers apparently could not defend against.
Why don't all bad guys in the galaxy use those weapons? Then the Jedi would be killed rather easily..."

Well... I would imagine lightsabers could not defend these weapons, but let's apply some logic here. Are the droid armies in the clone wars fighting primarily Jedi? Are these sonic blasters of any use whatsoever in a typical engagement between droids and clones where the two lines are 200-300 meters apart? Should every soldier be issued a shotgun, or say...a flamethrower, in place of their rifle? That would be a terrible idea.

An army armed entirely with sonic blasters would get annihilated by a clone army armed with blaster rifles before they could even get in range. Maybe it would be useful for a bounty hunter in the immediate post clone wars era, who specializes in hunting jedi, to keep an authentic Geonosian sonic blaster handy in case he comes up against a particularly stubborn jedi traitor. Other than that, I'm not sure of the benefit here.

Droidekas:
The original comment was:

Let's investigate. How many times are the Droidekas depicted in the films going up against Jedi? I know of the scene in TPM where Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan get cornered by them, and the scene in AotC when Obi-Wan gets cornered by them on Geonosis, which we only see a glimpse of through a holorecording. Are there more? Is there enough in the films to make any kind of conclusion on the capabilities of the Jedi in regards to the capabilities of Droidekas?
I know they show up a lot in TCW, which Jedi do attempt different ways to take them out, including trying to "force-push" them, but the trick that seems to work best is to gently roll a grenade through its shield. The Jedi are far from invincible. A pair of Jedi can take out a team of B1 battle droids when catching them by surprise, but if you have enough droids with enough firepower, Jedi will begin to die(like we see on Geonosis).

So I started making this really awesome gif, but I gave up. It takes too long. Here's a Droideka. It is tri-legged. It turns into a ball and rolls. It is ray-shielded, and heavily armed:

If you forced-pushed a Droideka in the same manner that they do with the B1 droids, this would probably happen:

It would not fall over. And if you pushed it hard enough, it could simply revert into a ball, roll backwards, then continue firing. There are probably better ways to take these things down...you know... "work smarter, not harder."

What happens when you drop your guard to try and force push one of these things? Especially if you are facing more than one? Will they wait for you, or just shoot you?

 

Picking it up & smashing it against a wall or ceiling could work. What of the Magna guards. Any reason the Jedi forgot to use the Force against those droids? Force pushing the buzz droids from their ships could've also been a smart idea. Rather than having R2 engage in a drawn out action scene.

 

Same reason Dooku doesn't pick up and lift Anakin like he does Obi-Wan on the Invisible Hand, or why Vader never lifts up Luke, or why Maul is never lifted up. It would end the dramatic tension of every fight if the Jedi could just lift their opponents up and throw them every time. The only time's that's really done was in the Dooku duel with Obi-Wan, to put him out of the fight for a minute.

TCW even gives us a plausible workaround, showing us Commando droids with magnetised feet to resist Force pushing. It stands to reason that the even rarer and stronger Magnaguards would have a similar feature. It's no like Obi-Wan didn't crush them via another object using the Force.

 

Bingo. That's all the explanation that's needed, rather than far-fetched in-universe justifications.

 

I just assume that there are all sorts of obscure in-universe reasons for why the Jedi use different tactics for different enemies that on the surface may come across as similar; reasons that I don't need to hear in order to enjoy the action.

That's kind of the beauty of Star Wars and something that GL deliberately set out to achieve already in the 70's: that feeling of being transported to an alien galaxy and seeing all these strange things happen with no one there to explain them. He got that idea after watching Kurosawa movies and liking the feeling of not knowing everything about the world he was seeing (because those movies sort of assumed that the viewer had prior knowledge of the culture they portrayed).

I also like that feeling and sometimes, I like speculating about why certain Star Wars characters behave the way they do in certain situations, but mostly, I think I just like going with the flow, safe in my assumption that there is an in-universe reason for everything that happens.
Except Ewan's wigs. They defy all logic and reason

 

Then why do you even focus on that type of plothole in the first place?
It's a fairytale, and is Imo relatively logically consistent. Enough to be enjoyable anyway.

 

Because he had to wait while Palpatine was going on and on and on in his speech about the Jedi uprising and the declaration of the Empire. The person to blame is Palpatine, not Anakin. Remember that Palpatine is doing his speech while Anakin is killing the Separatist leadership. By the time they talk to each other, a lot of time has passed. I would wager that there was a prearranged time to make contact with each other, which is why he waits. Palpatine never bothered to tell him to shut down the Droid Army before sending him to the Temple and then on to Mustafar. That's why Palpatine tells him after the slaughter is over and the Empire has been born. Anakin shuts down the Droid Army before coming out to greet Padme, since she has enough time to brood before she sees him.

 

And here I was, under the impression that Palpatine and Dooku's goal for the clone wars was to have it be a prolonged conflict that Palpatine used to draw more and more executive powers towards him.

 

Palpatine had gained complete control of the republic by that point.

Also, he had replaced the Separatist threat with a new threat -- the Jedi. Essentially, he replaced an actual war with a "war on terror" type scenario against the Jedi. A "war on terror" is a better way to maintain control. Palpatine knew that Dooku, being a sneaky Sith that he is, might disobey him and use his army to overthrow him. The Jedi are so over-matched once he's established a dictatorship that they pose far less of a threat to him.

 

It would make sense for the Separatists to use them I guess, not being in on the war's ultimate outcome. Not that the Sith would suggest it, unless they restructured their whole plan.
But saying Dooku or Palpatine should use them is bizarre.
Why would they, they can do more damage with their arts.

 

Anakin is on Mustafar for a lot more time than the duration of that speech, according to our colleague Mr Calamari.

 

Yeah, but he had to find a toilet and that took a long time. And then he got lost on the way back to the control room and ended up in some obscure chamber where he found a minibar and a nice armchair so he could rest a bit -killing separatists is a hard job after all! Lucas deleted all these scenes, which was obviously a mistake because he created a huge plot hole.

 

Doesn't matter. Anakin still has to wait for Palpatine to make contact. Remember, we see Vader being told by Sidious to wait on the Executor until he has need for him. Vader only breaks this protocol when Luke shows up and then he's told to wait further, in the deleted scene when Vader is blocked by Jerjerrod and the Imperial Guards.

 

The reasons is that they are faster, more powerful and have shields!

It's evident in the storytelling.

That doesn't even make any sense. You are saying all droids are the same when they are clearly not and that is shown to be the case.

It is in-universe logic. Jedi can't go through better battle droids like butter like the run of the mill droids.

By that logic then why keep going for far-fetched reasons why things don't work when they objectively work that way per the fiction?

If Jedi could just so casually use the Force to hurl things around all the time to the point where it was easy to do so then they would but since they don't they can't.