Yoda can’t help the Rebels because he’s old and he’s basically just a teacher, not a warrior. The Prequels messed this up by portraying Yoda as a warrior.
As for stuff in the OT I don’t like:
Well, ANH and ESB are probably my favorite movies of all time - but they’re not perfect. ANH in particular has a lot of problems, which is understandable because it was the first movie, and a lot of “Star Wars lore” hadn’t yet been established. But I have to admit, the entire ending to ANH barely makes any sense:
- Leia takes the Falcon to Yavin IV, despite knowing they’re being tracked. She spent the entire movie - even endured torture - trying to keep the location of the Rebel base a secret. But at the end, after strongly suspecting they’re being tracked, she’s just like “well whatever hopefully it all works out.”
- You can argue she did this strategically, to lure Tarkin and the Death Star to Yavin IV, so the Rebels would have a chance to take it out - but from her perspective this would have been a completely insane gamble. She didn’t know if the Death Star plans would reveal any weakness, or even if they did, whether it was something they could discover and figure out how to exploit in the few hours they would have before the Death Star arrived.
- Even if this was supposed to be some insane strategic gamble on Leia’s part, they still make no effort to evacuate the base, like they do with Echo Base in Empire Strikes Back. The moment Leia arrived at Yavin, they should have initiated an evacuation of all personnel except for the fighter pilots necessary to attack the Death Star.
- And then even after they miraculously blow up the Death Star via Luke’s one-in-a-million shot, instead of immediately evacuating, they still don’t evacuate the base. Instead, they stay around for an award ceremony. It’s unclear why a fleet of Star Destroyers doesn’t immediately show up at Yavin and obliterate the base.
That last point is likely partially a result of ANH being the first movie. With only ANH in mind, we can perhaps infer that the Rebels didn’t evacuate Yavin IV because they figured it would take weeks or months for the nearest Star Destroyer to arrive at Yavin. (Later movies made this an impossible option, as hyperspace travel seems to take only a few hours most of the time - perhaps a few days at most.)
These issues with the Death Star assault likely occurred because originally, the ending to ANH was written without any “ticking clock” countdown as the Death Star comes into firing range of Yavin IV. Originally, the Death Star didn’t come to Yavin at all. Rather, the Rebels just someone know where the Death Star is (I guess it was still parked at Alderaan), and after discovering the weakness they fly X-wing squadrons to the Death Star. I think Marcia Lucas suggested that the Death Star should actually show up at Yavin, which introduces a much-needed “ticking clock”, so the Rebels have limited time and a dramatic count-down before the Death Star blows up Yavin. But unfortunately, this introduces the side problem that it makes Leia look incredibly reckless. I thought of a solution to this once that probably makes everything work, providing both the ticking clock and not making Leia look crazy - but I wouldn’t bother trying to implement a fan-edit because most people don’t have any problems with the ending to ANH.
