Over the holidays, I was able to watch the original Star Wars movie (the 4th in the series and now titled “A New Hope”) for the first time in many years. While it’s enjoyable and still stands up well 30 years later, there are some glaring problems with logic and continuity that are hard to overlook:
• Princes Leia stores the plans for the Death Star in R2D2 and sends him on his way to find Obi Wan. They never explain how she managed to steal these plans, but you have to figure if she was clever enough to get through the Empire’s security (especially given the fact that her identity would have been hard to conceal), she should be clever enough to send an email attachment to the Rebel Alliance headquarters. The film is full of holographic subspace transmissions (all those grainy, disembodies torsos barking orders) so why doesn’t she just do that?
• The Empire spends the bulk of the film casing down the R2D2 droid to get back their stolen Death Star plans. Is this really the best use of the Empire’s resources? Wouldn’t it be reasonable to assume that once the plans were stolen, the Rebels would have made copies so capturing R2D2 is pretty much a waste of time? I know they pretty much control the galaxy, but at some point somebody has to justify the expenses for all the fuel and manpower. Just accept the plans are gone, so make some adjustments, like to that exposed ventilation shaft, so the Rebel’s intel is useless.
• You never see any janitorial staff on the Death Star. Are they really so advanced that all cleaning is completely automated? In all those thousands of Storm Troopers, isn't there at least one A-hole who wipes boogers on the wall over the urinal?
• If Anakin built C3P0 as a child, why doesn’t Darth Vader recognize him when they meet up again? He even has significant interaction with R2D2 in the first films but also has no recollection of him in Episode 4. In fact Obi Wan doesn’t recognize either droid either.
• The only roles women have in Star Wars is as wives, servants or prostitutes. In a society advanced enough for intergalactic travel, they can’t get a little progress for the Sisters?