There are no plot holes in the Saga

Here's a thought ...

Film; like any medium; is a form of communication. Successful communication only happens when the audience comprehends what the author has said.

So what's the criteria for a plot hole in a story?
A plot hole is when the chain of logic in character motivation and experience is broken

This is a rhetorical question. Is the criteria of a plot hole determined by what the author intends or by what the audience sees?

 

Think of it like this. When we are out there in the real world, there are things that we might notice all the time that do not make immediate sense. Because we are in the real world, our brains automatically assume that whatever the apparent discrepancy may be, it could be explained if only we had further information.

When we watch a movie like Star Wars, we have to have that mindset. We have to assume that anything we might at first think is a discrepancy could be explained if only we knew more about it. Then when we are thinking about the movie later on we can investigate what we know and figure out how the apparent contradictions could possibly make sense.

It's like balancing an equation.

On the one hand, the filmmaker is trying to get his intentions across. But there is only so much he can do. The viewer has to pick up their slack and choose to suspend their disbelief.

 

Very well said Go-Mer-Tonic! I think it also has to do with the whole point-of-view concept that's been mentioned throughout the saga. If you could just look through someone else his/her eyes you would understand the things he/she does or did.

Unfortunately most people do not think like that. One cannot understand someone else his/her actions because one has not experienced the path that he/she walked. So everything has to be explained to the last detail for someone to believe or understand it.

I have been thinking about what makes Star Wars so damn good and I believe it is the things that are not explained completely. e.g. Palpatine talking about Darth Plaeguis (or something like that) but not telling whether it was his master or whether it's a complete bullsh** story. And there are many more examples to give in the saga. The power in that is that the viewer can try and make up the truth for him/herself.

 

Fantastic

A lively debate has begun!

I think it is quite amazing Lucas had the chance to answer any fanboy questions from the OT with the making of the PT, and while he did do so to some extent, he also CHOSE to create lots more questions in the process.

That is not to say that there are any unanswered questions in the movies. I believe there is an answer to all of them if one looks hard enough...

except perhaps for why Han Solo believes he "owes Luke one" after Luke saves him from Jabba. In TESB Luke "owes Han two", surely after the Jabba save - Luke still owes Han one!!!

 

Just my opinions remember:

I dont think it is that the cave is particularly strong with the dark side as much as it is Luke's time to have a vision warning him of a possible future. Is the cave on Nelvaan on which Anakin has a vision in (CW cartoons) also strong with the dark side? I dont think so, it is more the jedi than the location.

It has been said the Jedi couldnt sense the change in the clones because they were literally just following orders, like droids, there was no emotion involved.

I also guess the "force being out of balance" situation mustr account for a lot of the weakened perception of the Jedi, especially ones less strong in the Force than Yoda.

 

Does the Making of ROTS book count as EU???

Here is a quote from it (page 61):

"PADME STAYS ALIVE LONG ENOUGH TO SEE BOTH BABIES BORN, AND THEY'RE HELD UP FOR HER TO SEE. BUT SHE CAN "OFFER UP ONLY A FAINT SMILE" - THE SMILE LEIA WILL RECALL IN EPISODE VI"

This is from the second draft of Lucas' script.

 

Captain Cholo:

Thanx for ur kind words and valued input into this thread.

 

I'm still not convinced on this point...
Lucas made the point of showing that a huge issue about Anakin in TPM was that he was much older than normal to begin training. Emphasized the resultant fear and the serious effect of his mother dying in AOTC.
They made a big age exception for Anakin, and guess what, he turned!

So why in the world would Yoda and Kenobi decide to risk waiting even longer to start Luke's training? Perhaps for some odd reason, they decided Anakin actually needed more maturity (in terms of age), not less, at onset of his training. I don't know how they would come to that conclusion, but even so... they had twins - they could have tried training one young, and if that didn't work, train the other one old. But they waited an unheard of amount of time for both. Yoda died not long after meeting Luke... that's a risk in itself; he could have died before he was able to help train either twin.

And though I don't buy for a second that Obi-Wan was a poor master to Anakin, that's another plot hole to me. If training of Anakin was such a cloudy and risky venture, why is he Obi-Wan's first padawan? Forget Qui-gon's dying words... the boy with the most Force potential ever, who has a cloudy future, needs to be given the best trainer possible. If nobody else, then Yoda himself. He approved Anakin's training even though he knew it could be dangerous, and it's already an extra challenge that he's considerably older than he should be. Why would he bestow this HUGE responsible on a just-knighted Jedi?

PS. Surely, Yoda and/or Kenobi could make their way to SOME secluded destination where training of a young twin could be conducted quietly and undetected, or at least, not pinpointed. The Sith don't even know the twins exist, after all.

 

There are no plot holes in the Saga...
and the Moon is made of green cheese.

There are plenty of plot holes, hence the need for all the rationalization and out-of-film additions, EU, etc.

Are these plot holes a problem? Not really, as they don't ruin the enjoyment of the films--I still like the films just as much, but, as a realist, I can't deny that they exist. I fail to see the existance of these small problems as important however. What difference does it make to me if Lucas made a few mistakes? What bothers me is when he pretends he didn't, though he seldom talks about these things, it usually just us fans who do this. So yah, there are a lot of plot holes, but, no, I don't really care. My problems with Saga, and I do have some, particulary with Return of the Jedi, Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones, are not plot holes, but bad writing and acting.

 

I didn't think Yoda approved Anakin's training. It was the others on the Jedi Council that approved Anakin's training. My take on the scene was that the other 11 members of the Jedi Council approved Anakin's training because of their respect of Qui-Gon and his last request.

The thing is training a Jedi from birth is a flawed practice and has no bearing on whether a Jedi will fall to the dark side or not. That's the whole reason for Dooku's character.

 

there are no easy answers to this.
i still think that it had to do with letting things happen rather than rigidly enforcing them.
the jedi have a very scientific approach towards who should be trained and who shouldn't hence the midi test.
they don't let the kids come to them, they want to make sure they develop the absolute best. there is no longer chance incvolved. hence the image of QGJ manipulating the chance cube.
watching over luke, being there in the event that he is ready is completely different. it turned out that luke wasn't too old to pull it off. i don't think there is an age for that.

had they continued to do with luke what they did to the other padawans, they would have screwed up his life just as well. coz they don't leave any space for individuals.

you get the wrong end of the stick if you say that anakin was to turn anyway, the point is that he might totally have. they had time to get it right but sadly they didn't use it.

 

If they trained Luke earlier, they would cause ripples in the Force. Vader would sense that and eventually find them. They had to lay low until the time was right.

 

For me, it's not a question of suspending disbelief. Most people were probably willing to accept almost anything Lucas did in the OT because it was all new and we were seeing his universe unfold for the first time.

For me, the "plot hole" issue is like trying to fit square pegs into round holes, or trying to fit some of those Renaissance-exploration-era maps of the world onto today's current understanding of the globe. When the OT was all there was and the EU was just getting developed (the early '90s), my understanding of the SW universe was mapped in my mind. There were lots of big foggy holes, but I was pretty sure I knew the important principles of how the SW universe worked, and my imagination could fill in a bit of it. In the years that we were waiting for the prequels to come out, I skimmed drafts of the OT scripts that were posted online, looking for clues that my imagination could build on, like guideposts in the fog. But as the PT came out, I became concerned when it seemed one of Lucas' intentions was to "turn the original trilogy on its head." Stuff in the OT, like Leia remembering her mother and the relationships between Obi-Wan, Anakin and Owen were laid out in the PT on a map that was incompatible in places with the map in my mind. A square peg in a round hole. It's a jarring sensation to feel someone trying to overwrite your rich imagination, overwriting what "feels right" to you. It also hurts to realize that large swaths of foggy holes have been filled in, leaving no opportunities for me to imagine the possibilities.

It still hurts, and this SW fan still doesn't know what to do about the pain and the suffocating feeling that my personal interpretation of SW is stifled, if not wanton heresy.

 

He isn't turning the OT on its head; the OT is only one side of the saga. As such the other side is the flip side to everything.

Look at the amazing symmetry. You start out with 2 Sith in hiding who take over the galaxy and make it their own. Then you have 2 Jedi in hiding who take over the galaxy make it their own again.

In the prequels you have the same kind of fight as you have in the classic trilogy, only in the prequels, the "Good Guys" are the establishment, and the bad guys are the rebels or separatists.

The Classic trilogy dwells on the more spiritual side of the Force, while the prequels elaborate on it's more scientific aspects. It's not that one is right and the other is wrong, it's that there's a little of both involved in the mystery of life.

Anakin shows us how the hero can fall, Luke shows us how the hero can prevail. By showing the fall right up front, it gives Luke a more precarious situation to triumph in.

A lot of you guys say it makes no sense that they trained Luke at 18 when they had reservations about training Anakin when he was 9. But what else were Obi-Wan and Yoda going to do? Admit defeat? Of course not. They had to bide their time and mount a last ditch effort to take the galaxy back for the forces of good. If they had trained Luke or Leia right away, it would only make it easier for Vader or the Emperor to figure out where they were.

Also from a dramatic standpoint, this is genius because everything about Luke's situation seems more desperate than Anakin's. At every juncture in Luke's story there will have been a comparable moment in the PT where Anakin made the wrong choice. So now the audience can't just assume Luke's the hero and he will do the right thing, they know he could eat it at any moment. He is always a hair away from the total eradication of the Jedi Order.

And that's what makes great drama.

 

Sinjin_Sith:

I believe your concern is still the age for training a Jedi.

It is good that you pointed out the fact that the Jedi Coucil saw that Anakin was too old to receive the training. Moreover, they realized that there was much fear in him, and that their future was clouded ... The reason why he couldn't detach from people, specially his mother, and later was his wife.

What happen to Luke is almost the same thing, in the sense that he was old to begin the training ... This is what Yoda told him and Kenobi at Yoda's place in TESB ... Right?

But, there is only one thing that makes Luke different from Anakin ... And that is Luke was detached from his family when he turned out to be 18-19 years old. Sadly, his family was murdered in a ANH by Imperial troops, and he decided to become a Jedi like his father when he realized it ... There was nothing for him left, and he tought that he wasn't coming back to Tatooine when Anakin told his mother, after being free and leaving with Qui-Gon, that he was going to return to free his mother.

Ben was wise enough to encourage Luke to become a Jedi his old man. He spoke very highly of Anakin, and he never revealed the truth to him because he knew that Luke wasn't going to accept it. Sitll, Luke was much of his own father ... He had no patience and he had much anger, but Yoda risked all in training him, eventhough he said at first that Luke was to old ...

On the other hand, remember, Sinjin_Sith, that Luke wasn't their only hope ... And at the end he was a good learner and defeated the Sith by turning his father to the good side, like he had forseen it.

Hope this works for you ...

 

Why can't Luke remember Padme but Leia does?

Luke lives with Owen and Beru, two people who have no idea who Padme was other than some fancy rich chick that came along with Anakin that one day.

Leia lives with Bail Organa, a good friend of Padme and knows her very well. Therefore he could tell Leia about her mom. Then the force theory kicks in and Leia has memories of skinny old mom through dreams or some other kinda force trick.

The force doing everything I don't buy either. Bail telling Leia about her mom just sounds better to me. In the offical star wars website, I think it says that it was well known that Leia had been adopted. So Leia knew she was adopted.
So she probably was curious about who mom was and dad too. But we can all guess what Bail told little Leia about Anakin.

 

Not training either twin at an earlier age is definitely a difficult question to answer. Thanks for your comments though.

It certainly isn't that I think Luke should have failed because of his age. I think he succeeded because he isn't his father... he's a stronger person. And certainly there are many factors that determine a student's liklihood of turning to the Dark Side - not just age of training. But age of entry was certainly portrayed as one of Anakin's biggest problems.

Therefore I still just don't understand how Yoda and Obi could have possibly reasoned that it would be fine to train the twins at a later age. Sure, Dooku and maybe some other Jedi of the past had turned. But compare that to thousands of other traditionally trained Jedi who didn't turn .... then compare that to the one exception (that we know of .. maybe there had been a FEW others) for Anakin, and HE turned. The odds appear to be VERY much against it being a good idea to wait too long into life to train a person. Yoda and Kenobi's logic doesn't add up.

The most convenient explanation apparently is that early training would somehow make them be found by the Emporor. But really, on what basis is this assumption being made? Remote use of the Force certainly doesn't ring through the galaxy like a foghorn, does it? I mean, proximity allowed Vader to sense Obi-Wan on the DS. Likewise with Luke and Vader near Endor. But Luke trained very intensively with Yoda in TESB, and apparently the Empire found it necessary to draw him out rather than using ripples in the Force to know where he was. Obviously he trained extremely intensively between TESB an ROTJ too, and apprently the Sith were unaware of his whereabouts.

So, I'm not trying to be difficult, but I'm afraid this still remains a plot hole to me. The reasoning that it would somehow be better to train Luke later than sooner, when the PT so clearly portrayed Anakin's age and attachment-related problems. And considering that they had two twins to work with, that's quite convenient... they certainly could have tried traditional early training with one of them. Not to treat it like a science experiment or anything

 

Though it doesn't really address the reasoning of Yoda and Obi-Wan some 20 or so years in the past, I liked this observation. I would say though, there are many differences between Luke and Anakin, just being that they're not the same human being. Both biologically and in life experience, they're different.

You gotta admit, it was a very risky upbringing for Luke. He had lots of time to grow HATRED for the Empire (in fact, he actually said in Ben's hut "I hate it," didn't he?), he had every reason for hatred to be deeper and darker having his adoptive parents burned alive by the Empire... but that wasn't Luke. He had a long time to grow into an impatient person on Tatooine (and did), and even to grow up in a hopeless world Fearful of the Empire.

It was simply fortunate for the good guys (and really a credit to Luke) that Luke didn't develop the kind of capacity for anger and hatred his father did, though he clearly did have "much anger" in him, and also that He was able to eventually calm his chronically impatient nature. The only key thing Luke didn't seem to develop much of was fear. It is a credit to the Lars' too, but growing up with Jedi guidance surely would have kept his values even more in line with the Light, and further from the common everyday Dark Side influences such as anger, hatred, fear, impatience.

It's truly amazing Luke turned out to be great Jedi Master material despite his relatively dangerous upbringing .... and in spite of Yoda and Obi-Wan taking such an extremely unconventional, risky, and unproven approach to Jedi training.

 

There are no plot holes in the Saga

Correct.

 

The only plot hole I see is "Leia remembering her mother".

Apart from that - I think the Saga flows perfectly from one trilogy to the next

 

Of course not, that's why he made the most successful film franchise of all time, while the rest of us merely enjoy or complain about them.

Luke and or Leia were not trained because if they were to start using the Force, Vader and the Emperor would have a better chance of finding them. They wanted to wait until the heat had cooled before they did that.

Luke doesn't call himself Skywalker until after Obi-Wan tells him about his father, and the first time it happens is when he gets to Leia's cell on the Death Star.

They hide out on Tatooine because it's the best shot they have. It's the place farthest from the center of the universe. The chances of Vader looking there for a child he thought was dead was pretty slim. Especially considering what happened to his mother there. It wouldn't exactly be his #1 vacation spot if you know what I mean.

Check out this video clip and see what Lucas has to say about it.

Leia remembers her mother through the Force. All she has are "images really... She was very beautiful and sad." Yoda says that through the force you can see loved ones long gone as well as stuff that could happen in the future.

I still say there aren't any plot holes in the movies as they stand.

 

If fans would admit there are, and then in the next sentence say it doesn't bother them, I would respect that, some fans like myself do look too much into it, but to think there isn't any plot holes, when you had the original SW written a totally different way then the other 5 movies, and they aren't filmed in sequential order, plot holes are likely to happen.

 

They waited not because of Anakin's flaws; but beacause the Emperor was directly responsible for Anakin being manipulated for 13 years and seduced into dark side servitude.

"Anakin was tricked by a lie; we all were" ROTS Obi Wan

By letting Luke grow up his being influnced by Sidious wouldn't have the affect it had on Anakin. Luke would already be fully grown and his ties to family would be to the Lars. The thing of it is, I'm not sure Obi Wan or even Yoda realized this until the very end. They were waiting for a sign from the force to tell them when to act. The force guided Luke away from Sidious' influence til he was old enough to see him for what he was. According to Luke's example,when Anakin sees the flipside of his own choice concerning Dooku he then understands that Sidious never cared for him in the slightest. He, like Luke, was a means to an end. That's when Anakin returns.

 

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[b]CJedi72:[/b] If fans would admit there are, and then in the next sentence say it doesn't bother them, I would respect that, some fans like myself do look too much into it, but to think there isn't any plot holes, when you had the original SW written a totally different way then the other 5 movies, and they aren't filmed in sequential order, plot holes are likely to happen.[hr][/blockquote]I would have more respect for your point of view if you actually cited examples of plot holes, instead of just assuming there have to be as a result of them being filmed out of order. Your proof is that "plot holes are likely to happen" when you film your movies out of order.

If you would just investigate your claim, you would find there aren't any plot holes. Sure it was a tough task for Lucas, but he just remembered what he had done before, and made sure he didn't contradict anything.

As far as I can tell Lucas has employed the exact same writing style to all of the Star Wars films. There are differences tonality wise between the prequels and the classic trilogy, but no more than there were between any two star wars films in the classic trilogy. He has remained consitent by varying the tone, but the writing has remained basically the same.