My Thoughts from Re-watching Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977)

Here are some random thoughts I had after re-watching Star Wars for what was probably the thousandth time:

What was the point of lying to Luke? I get keeping secrets when Luke (Mark Hamill) was a child but a warning about who his father was would have had him much better prepared and at very least, would have helped him understand why his Uncle Owen (Phil Brown) was so reluctant to let him leave.

Are runaway droids a problem on Tatooine? The Jawa's main source of income comes from re-selling unclaimed droids which is only a good business model if there are a lot of them just wandering the desert. Not to mention the decision to put restraining bolts on them to keep them under control. Are they sentient enough to realize they are being used as slaves and seek freedom at every opportunity?

Overall, Princess Leia takes the destruction of her home planet and the loss of her family surprisingly well. Did Leia (Carrie Fisher) even take the time to mourn them after the Death Star was blown up? I mean, Luke got a blanket wrapped around him after Obi-Wan (Alec Guinness) died along with a moment of sadness later and he barely knew the guy.

Did the TIE pilots attacking the Millenium Falcon know Vader's plan? I know the intent was to make the escape look realistic so the ship would lead the empire to the rebel base, but what would have happened had one of those ships gotten lucky and hit with a kill shot? If they didn't know they weren't supposed to win, that was a big risk and signaled a clear lack of faith in their pilots. If they did know, you would think they would make more of an effort not to be killed.

If Leia knew they were being tracked, why fly straight to the rebel base? It's not as though they were on such a time crunch they couldn't have stopped midway, found and destroyed the tracking device first instead of needlessly putting their cause and countless lives at risk.

The addition of Luke's friend, Biggs, just misses the mark. The problem with Biggs (Garrick Hagon) is he is excluded from the majority of the film and there's just no opportunity to earn enough about him to care. Even Luke seems relatively unphased by his friend's death and, as we've established, he is a guy who mourns people he barely knew.

The rebels would have lost a lot less pilots had some of them simply turned around. The big flaw with the X-wing fighters is they don't have a rear gunner, despite having a droid in the perfect position to be one. Yet the pilots decided to run some sort of stupid flank maneuver to draw fire from the guy trying to shoot the Death Star rather than simply flying interference in the opposite direction and shooting down the enemy.

On the flip side of that, the Empire sure gave the rebels plenty of opportunities. If it were me, I'd be attacking their ships before they had a chance to dive into that trench and never give them the chance to make a run at the exhaust port. Of course, they could have just been short on pilots after wastefully ending four to their deaths chasing a ship they wanted to escape.

Yes, Chewbacca deserved a medal at the end, but the insult went much further than that. If you aren't going to recognize Chewbacca's (Peter Mayhew) contributions, then the only reason to have him walk to the front with Luke and Han (Harrison Ford) is to bring attention to the slight. As I told my wife, Chewbacca's growl at the end was probably him yelling "this is bullshit!"

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