Star Wars, Highly Illiogical Captain

[The Romulan Republic]

Note: Slave doesn't not necessarily mean "working the fields/mines from Sun up to Sun down". For all we know, Watto may have been fine with Anakin building a droid- that he could then use or sell. Hell, him being technically skilled would increase his value.

Also, I think you may be underestimating how readily available high tech. components are in Star Wars, even on a backwater planet like Tatooine. In A New Hope, buying an FTL-capable starship is treated as being equivalent to maybe buying a fancy sports car, or maybe a private plane (Luke says that they could almost buy their own ship for 10,000 credits, and while he may be exaggerating a bit, there's no indication that this estimate is wildly off). And Obi-wan, living as a hermit in a hut, is able to cobble together 2,000 credits on short notice (including selling Luke's somewhat dated speeder). So expensive, but well-within the means of many private citizens. I'd expect a droid to be orders of magnitude less, in all probability.

As to why he built a protocol droid... kid Anakin is a nerd?

[MissKittyFantastico]

Moreso than Anakin building a droid, his podracer always bugged me, specifically that it's stored under a tarp in the backyard of Casa de Sandstorms. I mean, it's not just a space pickup, that thing's a Formula 1 racer, advanced enough to outpace the monster Sebulba was driving (amid all the silliness, man those engines sounded amazing) - even assuming podracing's the sci-fi equivalent of The Force and the Furious, not an F1 meet, and therefore all the engines are built in back-alley chop shops not McLaren wind tunnels, there's big money in it, and the forerunners have got to be looking for an edge in as close to top-of-the-line tech as they can hijack and file the serial numbers off of. I'm thinking assembly in clean-rooms, super-precise hardware, even just tools used being specialty, and never winding up in a general-purpose parts shop because even if they break the metals they're made from are too valuable to not repair and reuse. Even in a world where any dirt farmer with fifty buckazoids can afford a T-16, Sebulba and his ilk are going to be driving one-of-a-kind ultra-bastards that no amount of 'innate technical understanding' can compete with without a professional workshop.

Granted we know sod all about Star Wars racing technology, so maybe there's some handwavey explanation for how none of those objections apply, it just feels a bit beyond the amount of handwavium I'm prepared to accept in my daily diet (and that's normally a lot). They couldn't at least have had him build the thing in a garage with a closing door, or something?

[TGLS]

Honestly, if Anakin was just a decade older the whole thing would have made a lot of sense. Teen rebuilding a busted up protocol droid? Sure! Teen tuning a hot-rod? No problem. Lucas did a whole movie about that. The slave thing and the child thing screw it all up.

[The Romulan Republic]

As I said, I don't think the slave thing is a deal-breaker, though it may have needed more development to not seem so to a lot of viewers.

Now, his age is more problematic, perhaps, but there are child prodigies (Mozart composed music when he was younger than Phantom Menace Anakin, for example), and Anakin is a Force using prodigy. Of course, that doesn't automatically translate to a particular gift for machines-Obi-wan seems almost a luddite by Star Wars standards, for example.

[Karha of Honor]

Ok, I'll give you a genuine one. Bendu's "balance-ness" is depicted as neutral which is inconsistent with how Lucas describes balance in the Force.

balance in the Force.

Kill that concept and burn the corpse.

[Dînadan]

This is all the more egregious because there is a perfect area to introduce C3PO: have him be the Protocol Droid to the Nabu contingent on Coruscant. He'd have about the same amount of screentime since he's barely in the first prequel anyway. And you'd still get the intro and interaction between him and R2D2. That'd even give him a great reason to be in the sequel! Even if Palpatine gets promoted, the droid belongs to the diplomatic mission, so he'd stay there to handle protocol for Almadala (and presumably go with her when she left the capital).

Second alternative, make him Amidala's butler.

In fact, put like that, it would have made more sense to have 3PO and R2's roles switched; 3PO makes sense as part of the royal entourage and R2 is probably more likely for Anakin to have scrounged parts for (I'd imagine a down on his luck spacer that had put into port at tatoonie would be more likely to have an astromech to hock than a protocol droid meaning astromech parts would be more likely to wind up in Watto's junk yard) and would probably be more useful for Anakin (assisting his work for Watto and in building his pod racer).

(Although I suppose the whole point of him building 3PO was to show how selfless he was in building something to help his mum rather than for himself so having it be R2 he built wouldn't fit with that).



That aside, ideally any droids should have been other droids to avoid the sense that there's only a dozen or so people in the entire galaxy.

[ORCACommander]

The thing that really stood out to me from Force Awakens.

Wait...you can get around shields by going into hyperspace and then coming out of hyperspace INSIDE the shield? That seems like it would render planetary shields almost completely pointless, and frankly would make shields on space stations and even large ships kinda moot as well. I mean, sure, maybe the Falcon is the only ship cool enough to pull that try off, but it can't be that hard to start making hyperspace missiles and torpedoes. Strap a fusion warhead on one of those babies and you could have turned the Starkiller Base to slag from a couple of systems away. Death Stars would be irrelevant - they would only ever be a missile away from destruction. No space station would be safe. Anything that isn't HIGHLY mobile would have no way of protecting itself.

in the old EU there was a hyperdrive accident during th clown wars that half shattered an inhabited planet and left the other half inhospitable.
Further since hyperspace seems to be rather hands on for navigation instead of computer controlled to much precision required for organics

[The Romulan Republic]

Ok, I'll give you a genuine one. Bendu's "balance-ness" is depicted as neutral which is inconsistent with how Lucas describes balance in the Force.

balance in the Force.

Kill that concept and burn the corpse.

The morale relativist contingent of the fandom, which sneers at a light vs. dark dichotomy*, has been insinuating their reinterpretations into canon for years.

Now, if that's the kind of story you prefer, fine. But let Star Wars be Star Wars.

*Note: I am referring to the existence of metaphysical good and evil in Star Wars canon, which is pretty clearly established in the OT. Their are plenty of individual characters that are more layered, with strong elements of both good and bad- Anakin/Vader and Han are likely the best-known examples, but my personal favourites are probably Finn and Lando.

After all, falling to the Dark Side would pose no threat if people were all good or all bad in Star Wars, no would redemption be possible. For a villain to seek redemption, they must have the capacity for good, and for a hero to fall, they must have the capacity for evil.

Note also that "Light Side" is not synonymous with "Jedi", and "Dark Side" is not synonymous with "Sith". This is a false equation which I think leads to a lot of confusion about Light vs. Dark in Star Wars, as people equate Light Side with Jedi, and/or not following the Prequel Jedi's code with being a "grey" Jedi, and conclude that the Light Side is bad, or at any rate no better than the Dark Side, based on the glaring flaws in the Prequel Jedi's doctrine. I've seen this type of argument more than once, and its a misconception about the most fundamental thematic underpinnings of the franchise which deeply irritates me.

Of course, the very existence of Ashoka, for one (a generally good and heroic Force user who emphatically and repeatedly rejects the Jedi), weighs against this interpretation. Heck, the fact that she is the only prominent canon character who uses lightsabers with pure white blades (in Rebels) could even be taken as symbolizing that she is more Light Side than the Jedi.

[GandALF]

"What happens is when you go to the dark side is it goes out of balance"


youtu.be/44H1zWYubmM

So the Lucas view of balance is as the light side "win state" with the light keeping the dark in check, whereas Bendu and the more recent SWTOR expansions treat it as a "neutral" third way.

Its all up to Rian Johnson now.

[Karha of Honor]

Ok, I'll give you a genuine one. Bendu's "balance-ness" is depicted as neutral which is inconsistent with how Lucas describes balance in the Force.

balance in the Force.

Kill that concept and burn the corpse.

The morale relativist contingent of the fandom, which sneers at a light vs. dark dichotomy*, has been insinuating their reinterpretations into canon for years.

Now, if that's the kind of story you prefer, fine. But let Star Wars be Star Wars.

*Note: I am referring to the existence of metaphysical good and evil in Star Wars canon, which is pretty clearly established in the OT. Their are plenty of individual characters that are more layered, with strong elements of both good and bad- Anakin/Vader and Han are likely the best-known examples, but my personal favourites are probably Finn and Lando.

After all, falling to the Dark Side would pose no threat if people were all good or all bad in Star Wars, no would redemption be possible. For a villain to seek redemption, they must have the capacity for good, and for a hero to fall, they must have the capacity for evil.

Note also that "Light Side" is not synonymous with "Jedi", and "Dark Side" is not synonymous with "Sith". This is a false equation which I think leads to a lot of confusion about Light vs. Dark in Star Wars, as people equate Light Side with Jedi, and/or not following the Prequel Jedi's code with being a "grey" Jedi, and conclude that the Light Side is bad, or at any rate no better than the Dark Side, based on the glaring flaws in the Prequel Jedi's doctrine. I've seen this type of argument more than once, and its a misconception about the most fundamental thematic underpinnings of the franchise which deeply irritates me.

Of course, the very existence of Ashoka, for one (a generally good and heroic Force user who emphatically and repeatedly rejects the Jedi), weighs against this interpretation. Heck, the fact that she is the only prominent canon character who uses lightsabers with pure white blades (in Rebels) could even be taken as symbolizing that she is more Light Side than the Jedi.

I am fine wih Light Side, Dark Side. How the fuck does killing 2 Sith bring balance? Some special forces dudes can just kill Luke with a bomb. What happens in that case?