My 3 personal Star Wars peeves - AKA "Actually, that doesn't make any sense.."

If you really take a hard look at the Star Wars movies you'll quickly see that there is a bunch of stuff in there that just makes no sense. The most obvious and talked about peculiarity is the comically poor ability for Stormtroopers to hit anything at just about any range, even though they are supposedly some of the finest soldiers in the galaxy.
Or like the absurdity of those same elite forces being beaten by a tribe of angry teddy bears with rocks and spears.

Then there are things that you might initially not really think about, but then after seeing the movies a few times you go "hang on a minute..."
I've gathered my three favorite/worst of those moments and I submit them to you here:

1) Jabba the Hutt getting killed by Leia

Jabba the Hutt was supposedly one of the most badass crime lords in the galaxy at the time of his demise. He was obviously no stranger to people wanting to brutally murder him, as we can see from his calm reaction to first being threatened by a person with an armed thermal detonator and then a Jedi.
Hell, just having two people trying to murder him is probably a slow day in the office for Jabba.

So you'd think that he'd be pretty interested in some high quality bodyguards. You know, someone who wouldn't immediately abandon their post as soon as the shit hit the fan. People that would have a vested interest in the continued well being of their boss and employer and not let him get slowly strangled by a female slave.

"I could have been able to afford decent bodyguards if only I hadn't wasted all those money on liposuction"

Seriously, how the hell do you have a skiff full of guards, bounty hunter, mercenaries and criminal scum in general and as soon as there's a small explosion everyone just freaks the hell out? No one saw an opportunity to get on Jabba's good side by making sure he got out of there alive?

It wasn't even like it was a deadly Jedi with a lightsaber that was assaulting Jabba. All they had to do to save him was just shoot Leia in the back. 5 seconds of work for the gratitude of the most notorious Hutt in the galaxy.

2) Luke is named Skywalker and lives with the only surviving family of Anakin

Here's a couple of pro tips if you want to hide someone from an interplanetary organization with near infinite resources:

Firstly, you might want to think about changing their name so tracking them becomes a little harder than just asking if anyone knows X or taking a look at the public records. We know that Luke worked for Owen and helped out on the farm. There's a good chance that he had lots of interaction with people in towns and used digital transaction methods that would be easy to track, so maybe you don't wanna use the name "Skywalker".

Secondly, you should probably not put them in the care of their only known family, which is certain to be the starting point for anyone that is looking for you.

"Skywalker? Who is this Skywalker? My name is Guy Incognito"

Now I know that some people will argue that Vader didn't even know he had any children until he encountered Luke in Episode IV, but what about Palpatine?
Palpatine knew that Padme didn't die on Mustafar, or at least he had no real grounds for assuming that she did. He almost certainly also knew that Padme was pregnant, so you would imagine that he would go to great lengths to determine what happened to Padme and the unborn baby (or babies rather, but he couldn't have known that there would be twins).

So how the hell did Luke manage to live 20 years or so on Tatooine, with the name Skywalker and staying with Anakin's step dad?

3) Who the hell were the Stormtroopers trying to fool when they destroyed the Jawa Sandcrawler?

In their attempts to track down C-3PO and R2-D2 the Imperial Stormtroopers come across and attack a Jawa Sandcrawler. Now, first of all I don't really understand the point of having to massacre all those Jawas, but I guess they are kind of annoying little glowy-eyed hood-wearing midgets, so I'll overlook that.
But then the Stormtroopers apparently go through the effort of trying to cover up the attack and make it look like the Sand People did it.

Why?

Why the hell does the Empire care if anyone finds out that they murdered a bunch of Jawas in some backwater dust planet in the Outer Rim? This is the same Empire that dissolves the Galactic Senate and BLOWS UP A WHOLE GOD-DAMN PLANET. It's not like they are sensitive about PR.

"Man, I'm glad we covered our tracks so people won't find out how cruel the Empire is.
Wait, we did WHAT to Alderaan?!"

Sure, you could argue that the operation is part of locating the plans for the Death Star and they want to cover their tracks, but that really only explains the part where they need to kill the Jawas. Are they afraid that someone would start questioning why the Stormtroopers killed the Jawas and then investigate the whole matter and discover that the Death Star plans were floating around somewhere?

If that is the case then why the hell didn't they bother camouflaging the murder of Owen and Beru? Isn't it much more likely that someone is going to care about the brutal murder of two moisture farmers that interact regularly with the local community than some seclusive aliens that spend most of their time roaming around the deep deserts?


These are just some of the nerdy thoughts that bug me about Star Wars. It doesn't make me love the movies any less, but it just makes very little sense if you start to think too hard about it.



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