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Inconsistencies, retcons, and other problems between the PT and OT or within the PT

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I was bothered how Anakin became so much less homely between Ep 1 and Ep 2. 

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I know. He went from a little egghead to a hot fine sexy good looking demigod with rippling muscles. Weird.

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Nah, the rippling muscles didn't come until Ep 3. AOTC Anakin is scrawny.

Every 27th customer will get a ball-peen hammer, free!

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That really needs to be on a t-shirt. If Lucasfilm can make a dishonest buck off of "Han Shot First"...

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Where were you in '77?

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I like it!  I'd wear a shirt like that, especially if it had a picture of CPY on it.

But CPY isn't an inconsistency... CPY is awesome.  An inconsistency is Anakin telling a senator that he just killed an entire village, and the senator not having him arrested immediately.  It would be like the Newtown kid showing up at City Hall and the mayor saying "oh, that's ok, it's human to get mad now and then".

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I guess you could argue that Tusken Raiders aren't thought of a having rights or feelings...but then, with all the alien species in the Republic that is really weird. Especially for a liberal politician. And it makes for really poor characterization for the two leads to more or less forgive themselves for a mass slaughter of what amounts to unarmed civilian women and children.

I know characters are sometimes interesting when they have flaws. If they are a little bit racist or sexist or whatever. See the filmography of Martin Scorsese. But to go on  a rampage and butcher kids and parents? That's your "character flaw"? This might be the first time that has ever been portrayed in a mainstream film that I can think of, where that was ultimately overlooked.

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Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

 An inconsistency is Anakin telling a senator that he just killed an entire village, and the senator not having him arrested immediately.  It would be like the Newtown kid showing up at City Hall and the mayor saying "oh, that's ok, it's human to get mad now and then".

...and then the mayor marries him. 

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and then he kills the mayor. But the mayor dies saying "there's still good in him" for no real reason.

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zombie84 said:

and then he kills the mayor. But the mayor dies saying "there's still good in him" for no real reason.

If there was a seen of a real joyous and giddy Anakin trying to figure out how to put the Ikea cradle together, while Padme paints the nursery, I think the movie would have been better.

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Can we please leave recent tragedies out of this discussion?

There might be a parallel to some old Western where a character takes vengeance too far, but I can't recall a specific film at the moment. It certainly doesn't work here in making our "hero" likeable though.

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Where were you in '77?

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Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

But CPY isn't an inconsistency... CPY is awesome.  

Awesome, yes...but also an inconsistency between the PT and OT...AND within the PT.

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The larger aspects of the PT are more often than not, simply not ever mentioned in the OT. 

-Chosen One/Balance to the Force

-Qui-Gonn or Windu

-Warning of excess attachment to people

-The term "Sith" is thrown around much less and not even mentioned on screen in the OT. 

All of these take up major parts of the Prequel Films, and while some not being brought up could be dismissed as a part of the passage of time, that none of them really highlights the differences between the two trilogies. 

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Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

I like it!  I'd wear a shirt like that, especially if it had a picture of CPY on it.

But CPY isn't an inconsistency... CPY is awesome.  An inconsistency is Anakin telling a senator that he just killed an entire village, and the senator not having him arrested immediately.  It would be like the Newtown kid showing up at City Hall and the mayor saying "oh, that's ok, it's human to get mad now and then".

Not to keep it on this topic, but I think Tatooine is outside of the Republic's jurisdiction.

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DominicCobb said:

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

  An inconsistency is Anakin telling a senator that he just killed an entire village, and the senator not having him arrested immediately.  It would be like the Newtown kid showing up at City Hall and the mayor saying "oh, that's ok, it's human to get mad now and then".

Not to keep it on this topic, but I think Tatooine is outside of the Republic's jurisdiction.

But she DID still marry him. 

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CWBorne said:

The larger aspects of the PT are more often than not, simply not ever mentioned in the OT. 

 

-Warning of excess attachment to people

 

Yoda does tell Luke he needs to be able to sacrifice his friends for the greater good, and a refusal to do so leads to bad stuff. 

Luke almost goes to the Dark side when Vader plays on his feelings for his sister, those feelings themselves, not Luke, the feelings are what betrayed her. 

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Padme being a strong, confident woman who kicks ass in TPM and AOTC, yet in ROTS she dies of a broken heart ...

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 (Edited)

Padme was replaced with a Clone between AOTC and ROTS, as part of Palpatine's overly complex Rube Goldberg plot for galactic domination. ;)

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Where were you in '77?

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Someone should make another similar thread pertaining to the EU and its relationship with the OT/PT.

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Where to begin?

Let's start with the temporal problems:

In the OT, it is implied that Leia knew her mother for several years before her death, whereas in the PT Padme dies moments after she was born.

The Old Republic existed for over one thousand generations in the OT, whereas in the PT it existed for only a thousand years.

Owen, Beru, Anakin, and Obi-wan age forty years in the twenty years between trilogies.

Character Problems:

It is implied that Obi-wan trained Anakin because of hubris (and in other versions of Jedi it confirms this), and not merely to fulfill a promise to his dying master (who, by the way, was never mentioned in the OT).

Obi-wan and Yoda simply run away at the end of Episode 3, even though they were prepared to kill both Anakin and the Emperor directly prior to this. They even meet up after their injury-less defeats, and they never consider returning together to destroy the Emperor while Anakin is incapacitated. Instead, they wait for twenty years for Luke to come of age (which actually would be considered too old to begin Jedi training anyway), and never even consider training Leia. Obi-wan even considers Luke their "only hope", even though the PT confirmed the existence of female Jedi, making Leia a perfectly acceptable candidate for becoming a Jedi. Add to all of this the fact that it is never mentioned that Anakin's children would be "chosen ones" in the style of their father (whatever that means), thus making their waiting pointless, as they should just finish the job themselves.

Anakin is described as the best starpilot in the galaxy in the OT, but no mention is ever made of this in the PT.

Technical Problems:

In the PT we see that a tracking device is a small, handheld device which can be hidden practically anywhere on a ship in order to track it, which makes Han's certainty that they are not being tracked in the OT rather perplexing. Before this I had assumed that a homing beacon would be a large device like the scanner suite that was hauled on-board the Falcon.

The chances of Chewie being familiar with Yoda from the PT and then meeting Obi-wan and company twenty years later strain credulity and shrink the universe immensely.

Anakin building C-3PO. In fact, having R2 and C-3PO in both trilogies is far too convenient.

Vader routinely says "The Force is with _", a practically meaningless statement considering that according to the PT, the Force is simply a certain concentration of organisms in a person's blood.

Force lightning can be blocked by a lightsaber in the PT, drawing undue attention to the fact that Luke threw it away in the OT, and thus exposing himself to this attack.

Thematic/Miscellaneous Problems:

The technology of the PT is much more advanced than in the OT.

Tatooine seems to be the center of the Star Wars universe, being in every Star Wars movie except one.

The Sith are focused on in the PT, whereas they are never mentioned in the OT. Conversely, destiny is focused on in the OT, where it is almost never mentioned in the PT.

When watched in numerical order, the three big reveals of the OT (Yoda, Anakin, and Leia) are ruined in the PT.

And perhaps the biggest problem of all: The central problem of the OT is that Luke cannot kill his father, whom he knows was a good man. From the PT, we know that Anakin murdered a tribe of Sandpeople and all the younglings in the Jedi temple, for no other reasons than 1: he was angry and 2: he was following orders in order to save his wife, whom he kills anyway. From this I can't call Anakin a good man. I would have no qualms with killing someone who did such evil acts, and thus if Luke knew the truth as the audience does, he probably wouldn't either. Therefore according to what the audience knows, the PT destroys the central conflict of the OT.

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NeverarGreat said:


Vader routinely says "The Force is with _", a practically meaningless statement considering that according to the PT, the Force is simply a certain concentration of organisms in a person's blood.


When Qui-Gon commented on the midi-chlorians, he said this

Without the midi-chlorians, life could not exist, and we would have no knowledge of the Force. They continually speak to us, telling us the will of the Force.


Notice that he says that without midi-chlorians, life would not exist and there would be no knowledge of the Force, not that the Force itself wouldn't exist. It clearly makes the case that the midi-chlorians are meant to be conduits to the Force, not the source of it.

I'm not saying midi-chlorians are a good idea - I have my own reasons for disliking them - but it's not a good idea to use a flawed argument to make a case against them.

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DuracellEnergizer said:

 

NeverarGreat said:


Vader routinely says "The Force is with _", a practically meaningless statement considering that according to the PT, the Force is simply a certain concentration of organisms in a person's blood.


When Qui-Gon commented on the midi-chlorians, he said this

Without the midi-chlorians, life could not exist, and we would have no knowledge of the Force. They continually speak to us, telling us the will of the Force.


Notice that he says that without midi-chlorians, life would not exist and there would be no knowledge of the Force, not that the Force itself wouldn't exist. It clearly makes the case that the midi-chlorians are meant to be conduits to the Force, not the source of it.

I'm not saying midi-chlorians are a good idea - I have my own reasons for disliking them - but it's not a good idea to use a flawed argument to make a case against them.

 

By stating that life could not exist without the midichlorians, Qui-gon is implying that the Force is one of life itself, animating matter in the universe. While I don't particularly have a problem with this idea, the implication is that the more midichlorians a person has, the more power they have with the Force, regardless of the "will" of the Force. For all intents and purposes in the Star Wars movies, the will of the Force is nil after the number of midichlorians in a person's blood has been determined.

I should have stated the inconsistency as:

Vader says "the Force is with _", a practically meaningless statement considering that according to the PT, the number of midichlorians in a person's blood determines how strong they are in the Force.

The inconsistency in my opinion is that Vader viewed the Force like a spiritual gift or blessing, something that could imparted or revoked at any moment. This is why Obi-wan states twice to Luke that the Force will be with him always. The PT does away with this aspect of the Force in my interpretation.

You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)

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There are many.

One day we will have properly restored versions of the Original Unaltered Trilogy (OUT); or 1977, 1980, 1983 Theatrical released versions (Like 4K77,4K80 and 4K83); including Prequels. So that future generations can enjoy these historic films that changed cinema forever.

Yoda: Try not, do or do not, there is no try.

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Sallah says :

Midichlorians very dangerous, you go first Indy.