Star Wars plot holes

Originally published March 21, 1997, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1218

[Editor's note: Last week, Peter David, writer of stuff, pointed out that there's a plot concept missing in Star Wars that, as he wrote, "didn't even exist when the film came out two decades ago."]

Consider, if you will, the universe of Star Wars.

They have spaceships.

They have faster-than-light drive.

They have blasters.

They have lightsabers.

They have satellites capable of reducing an entire planet to rubble instantly.

They have land speeders. They have All-Terrain Armored Transports (AT-ATs). They have robots in a variety of shapes and sizes, capable of independent thought and action—basically, artificial intelligence. They have laser crossbows. They have cities in the clouds. They have suspended animation capability wherein they can put you to sleep inside carbonite, thaw you out, and you’re none the worse for wear except for the shakes and blurred vision. They have force fields, holographic chess, and high-speed air bikes.

What haven’t they got?

E-mail.

E-mail and the capability of copying a floppy disk.

Think about what the first film hinges upon. Princess Leia has plans to the Death Star that must be conveyed to the rebels. And the only way that she can think of to get it to them is to carry the one existing copy of those plans, by hand, herself, to the rebels.

I mean, c’mon. What the hell is that all about?

If there’s one thing that we’ve learned, it’s that one of the first things that happens as a result of computerization is that the world gets a whole lot smaller. Communication and dissemination of information becomes the easiest thing in the world.

Which means that the instant that anyone outside of the Empire’s chain of command got his hands on the plans for the Death Star, that information would be posted all over the place. Within two hours there would have been a Death Star website with a hundred million hits on it.

Now, just for argument’s sake, let’s say that the rebels only had accounts through GOL (Galaxy Online) and, naturally, were not able to access their web servers because the lines were always busy.

That still leaves the question of just what the hell Leia was doing as the sole possessor of the information. Someone somewhere along the line should have duplicated a hundred—a thousand—copies of it. It’s just a computer file, for crying out loud. Rather than all the eggs being in Leia’s basket, there should have been rebel agents coming from hundreds of different points, each with their very own copy of the Death Star plans. You want inconspicuous people carrying that information—not someone as high-profile as Princess Leia. She’s not Mata Hari or the Shadow, for God’s sake. She’s got challah on the sides of her head and she says stuff like, “I thought I smelled your foul stench the moment I came on board,” with a really bad accent. That tends to get you noticed.

Now, of course, this wasn’t a consideration back in 1977. While George Lucas was busy constructing a universe with the trappings of science fiction and the mythologies of Joseph Campbell, the realities of what technology might actually provide didn’t factor in.

So when you look at the big picture, what it boils down to is: In the real world we’ve progressed, and in the cinema world we’ve regressed. Perhaps, in the final analysis, art does imitate life. It just imitates it in the wrong direction.

As a side note, there’s another “hole” now visible in the Special Edition, but this one doesn’t exist as a result of the passage of time. Although, actually, perhaps it does, because time’s passage has rendered the character of Han Solo significantly un-PC when it comes to the extremely touchy subject of violence.

One of the defining moments of Solo’s character is his violent departure from the Cantina. A rubber-headed alien named Greedo intercepts Solo just as he is preparing to leave. A gun leveled at Solo, Greedo makes it eminently clear that he’s planning to blow a hole in Han for the purpose of pleasing Jabba the Hutt (which, of course, flies in the face of Boba Fett’s contention in The Empire Strikes Back that Han would be no good to him dead, but that’s neither here nor there).

For the past 20 years of video releases and umpteen plays on the USA network and the Sci-Fi Channel, Han Solo shot Greedo before ol’ bug-eyes could plug our favorite Corellian. Greedo slumps forward onto the table, Han apologizes for the mess, end of scene.

Not any more.

It could be argued that Greedo doesn’t intend to pop Solo right there but, instead, bring him to someone else who is going to do it. But that’s a subtle distinction and, besides, the dialogue sure makes it sound as if Greedo’s intention is to do our hero grievous bodily harm. (“Over my dead body,” Solo says, regarding giving up his ship, to which Greedo replies, “That’s the general idea. I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time.”)

A threat of imminent danger, however, is insufficient motive for Han Solo to save his neck. Through the magic of computers, we now see Greedo firing a blaster bolt at Han’s skull. Han, through a slight movement of his head, dodges the bolt and then fires back and kills Greedo.

It used to be that Han Solo was someone you didn’t mess around with. Wave a gun in his face, threaten to do him bodily harm, and he’d pop you. He simply assumed that, if you made it clear you were out to get him, he’d get you first. Period.

Not any more. Now we’re asked to believe that Han Solo adheres to such a demanding standard of fair play that—even though Greedo is threatening him with a blaster from across the table—Solo will sportingly give an enemy a free shot at him before acting to save his skin. And what an opponent Greedo is: He fires at Solo, a relatively stationary target, from a point-blank distance of no more than a meter—and misses. With aim that abysmal, he could probably have gone to work as a Stormtrooper.

Cold-bloodedly killing someone who intended to kill him helped make Han Solo believable as a hard-bitten, tough-as-nails smuggler and “space pirate.” What we have instead is a highly dubious scene featuring a needlessly stupid risk by Solo and stupendously bad shooting by Greedo. I thought the purpose of this computer gimmickry was to make the Star Wars universe more believable, not less.

Perhaps this newly conceived “sporting chance” should be applied to other films. I can’t wait for the re-release of Raiders of the Lost Ark wherein Indiana Jones confronts a swordsman who, thanks to computer enhancement, is waving a scimitar in one hand while cradling a machine gun in the other. He’ll be blasting a path of bullets all around Indy until the intrepid archeologist’s patience wears thin and he shoots the swordsman. It’s a far superior alternative to the current depiction, wherein Jones simply shoots down the inconvenient sword wielder from a comfortable distance of 30 feet.

Special editions. Why did it have to be special editions?

 (Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to a Second Age Inc., P.O. Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705. Next week, and this time we promise: The untold story of the single most important individual in the entire Star Wars legend.)