With a universe this big, it's no surprise there's some misinformation!
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00Let's say you've gone on a search across the globe, checking under rocks and in caves,
00:04trying to find the most remote hermit in the entire world.
00:08When you finally stumble across them, you might ask,
00:11Oi, have you heard of Star Wars?
00:12Thinking they'll not have a clue what the hell you're on about,
00:15but it is a 100% chance that they would probably clap back with,
00:19Of course I have, it's Star Wars, what are you talking about?
00:23With a reach as far as that, then it's no wonder that little tidbits and factoids
00:28about this series have become universal knowledge.
00:32But that fame has also brought plenty of misinformation as well,
00:36leading to many so-called well-known facts being totally misunderstood.
00:41With that in mind then, I'm Josh from WhatCulture.com,
00:43and these are 10 things everyone always gets wrong about Star Wars.
00:48Number 10, the Ewoks are friendly little teddy bears.
00:51Yes, alright, I'll be the first to admit it, Ewoks are incredibly cute, adorable even.
00:56But so are bears, honey badgers, and dare I say even Wookiees,
01:02and that doesn't mean that they aren't going to try and rip you to shreds if given a chance.
01:07The general consensus on these little fellas is that they are the sweet, helpful, and friendly types,
01:13but that conclusion ignores plenty of warning signs given in Return of the Jedi.
01:18Assuming the best from these creatures completely forgoes that they are dangerous warriors with a penchant
01:25for devouring any meat they come across.
01:28And let's not forget that the first thing they tried to do with Luke, Han, and Chewie was to scram them down.
01:35Their more dangerous nature isn't even hidden, it's right there on the surface.
01:39If you look around the ensemble of these Endor Moon inhabitants,
01:43you'll see that plenty of them have adorned themselves with skulls and bones,
01:47using them for primitive tools and even decoration, like a predator.
01:53You know, from the movie Predator.
01:55They are indeed cute, but what kind of friendly creatures kill, skin,
01:59and keep the trophies of those that they have defeated?
02:03Simply put, the Ewoks are deadly, which is why those stormtroopers never stood a chance.
02:08Number 9. Starships travel at lightspeed
02:11Everyone is familiar with the iconic visual of a starship flying off at lightspeed.
02:15Ever since Star Wars graced the silver screen,
02:18viewers have been obsessed with the image of the stars themselves pushing back
02:22as Han and Chewie punched the hyperdrive.
02:24However, a lot of those people interpreted this incredible form of space travel in the wrong way entirely.
02:31That's because most viewers, myself included,
02:33saw lightspeed and assumed it was the ship moving across the galaxy faster than lightspeed.
02:38But that's not what actually happens.
02:41Instead, the ship jumps in and out of an alternate dimension known as hyperspace.
02:46So rather than traveling across the real galaxy at breakneck speeds,
02:50you simply jump to this alternate plane of existence and then jump back out where you need to be.
02:55As a form of fast travel, this is by far the best way to do it.
02:59I mean, traveling at lightspeed would undoubtedly move you places,
03:02but in the vastness of the universe,
03:04even a ship traveling faster than light would still be a stone's throw in the ocean.
03:09The movies themselves even corrected this by switching from calling it lightspeed to hyperspace,
03:14but the confusion still remained.
03:16Number eight, Rey shouldn't have stood a chance against Kylo Ren.
03:20The frustration that some viewers felt when Kylo Ren lost in a lightsaber duel
03:25against the newly force-sensitive Rey was well-founded.
03:29At least if you take that final scene without context.
03:32I mean, on paper, it makes very little sense for a force-wielder
03:35and experienced lightsaber handler at his best
03:38to lose to someone who'd barely even touched and activated a blade before.
03:43But the thing is, this scene does have context,
03:46and most people forget that Kylo Ren was not at his best during this fight.
03:50There were plenty of reasons why Ren and Rey's odds were on par.
03:55For example, bear in mind that Ren was sporting a few nasty injuries,
03:59including a side wound from Chewie's bowcaster and a slice on the arm from Finn.
04:05The bowcaster itself was repeatedly shown absolutely annihilating First Order soldiers
04:10with a single blast, and Kylo took a direct hit.
04:14The chances are he was also probably pulling his punches as well,
04:17as he openly told Rey that he wanted to train her.
04:20Thus, killing her wouldn't have been his primary intent in this scene.
04:24Finally, while he was experienced with his lightsaber,
04:28he'd never actually fought a fellow force-slash-saber-wielder before,
04:32meaning it was entirely new territory for him to go head-to-head in a mortal battle.
04:37And all of this is without saying that Rey herself was presented as a capable fighter
04:41from the very beginning, especially with her quarterstaff.
04:45Number 7, Darth Vader's name is a spoiler.
04:48Myths about movie franchises get tossed around a lot,
04:51especially when the creator of that series adds fuel to the fire.
04:55This fate certainly befell the big bad of the original Star Wars trilogy,
04:59as it became common knowledge that Darth Vader's name
05:02offered up a massive clue about Luke's parentage.
05:06The idea goes that Vader's name can be translated in German to mean Dark Father,
05:11as the German word for Father is Väter.
05:14But this falls apart almost entirely when you find out that the German translation for Dark
05:19is Dunkel, and Dunkel Väter, yeah, it's not quite right.
05:24There's also a claim that you can do the same thing in Dutch,
05:27as the word for Father is Väter pronounced Vader.
05:30And again, that sounds quite like the English word for Father,
05:34but again, again, Dark in Dutch is Donker.
05:38So, Donker Vader.
05:40I don't know, Jim, these translations seem a little bit shaky to me.
05:44Now, this myth, of course, is certainly entertaining,
05:47but it can also be burst right away by the simple fact that George Lucas himself
05:50didn't even intend for Darth Vader and Anakin Skywalker
05:53to be the same person when he wrote Star Wars.
05:57This iconic plot twist was conceived during the creation of The Empire Strikes Back,
06:01meaning any vague translations are just pure coincidence.
06:04Cool coincidences, but yeah, coincidences.
06:08Number 6, Captain Phasma was the first female stormtrooper.
06:12When fans found out Disney would be creating an all-new trilogy,
06:15it was obviously a cause for great excitement.
06:18The idea of more Star Wars films meant a chance to flesh out slash diversify the galaxy,
06:24and that's why it was so exciting to see the first female stormtrooper
06:27in Gwendolyn Christie's Captain Phasma.
06:29Except, she wasn't technically the first.
06:33That's because the first named female stormtrooper to appear in Star Wars
06:37was actually called Jess Jistang,
06:39and she was part of the comic book series Star Wars Legacy.
06:42But on top of this, there were also plenty of references to
06:44female troopers across the Expanded Universe novels,
06:47and even the female death trooper DTF-16 in Star Wars Rebels.
06:52Additionally, while the stormtrooper extras were played by men in the original trilogy,
06:56there's no storyline implication that they were all male in those movies.
07:01Their armor is completely uniform, meaning any of those troopers could be women underneath.
07:06So yeah, this is nothing to take away from Phasma,
07:08who was undoubtedly the first on-screen live-action female trooper.
07:12It's just interesting that canonically, it was a little bit of a different story.
07:16Number 5, Hayden Christensen was the wrong choice for Anakin Skywalker.
07:21Casting, as we all know, could be a very subjective matter.
07:24I mean, when Robert Pattinson was announced as the Batman,
07:27a huge portion of the internet lost their minds,
07:30and then the movie came out and everyone realized that,
07:32oh, this guy is awesome.
07:34Still, what works for some might not work for others.
07:37However, there are those rare occasions when everyone does collectively agree
07:41that someone was miscast.
07:44And unfortunately for Hayden Christensen, he found himself at the tail end of this,
07:48being universally loathed back in the day for his performance as Anakin.
07:53But did he deserve that backlash?
07:55Well, the title to this entry, of course, reveals that no, he didn't.
07:59And time has been kind to this actor.
08:02The prequels back then were mocked relentlessly for their wooden acting,
08:06and Hayden Christensen seemed to be at the height of that revolution.
08:09Audiences everywhere criticized his whiny voice and teenager-like personality,
08:15claiming that he was not a good depiction of a young Darth Vader.
08:19However, while it is true that his acting was wooden in those movies,
08:23he's hardly alone in that boat.
08:26So much of the acting in the prequels came across as awkward and stiff,
08:30with even decorated performers like Natalie Portman and Samuel L. Jackson
08:34struggling to reach their regular standard.
08:37And that's probably because it's been well documented that George Lucas himself
08:41cared very little about engaging with his actors in order to give them proper direction.
08:47He cared more about the visual storytelling,
08:50while the actors were mostly just left to fend for themselves,
08:53hence why there are so many performances that fall flat across those three movies.
08:58Number four, Kyber Crystals Power Lightsabers.
09:01Star Wars is a series populated with some of the coolest things sci-fi has to offer.
09:06Giant space battles, blaster rifles, gargantuan monsters, it really does have it all.
09:12Yet, despite all of those mind-blowing science fiction treats,
09:16it's the humble lightsaber that is undoubtedly the most iconic part of the series.
09:21Now, the inner workings of this remarkable weapon don't tend to bother most viewers.
09:25You just turn them on, make the noises, and voila, an instrument of death is born.
09:31However, one thing most people do know about the technical side
09:34is that they, of course, need Kyber Crystals to power up.
09:38And consequently, many have interpreted this to mean that said crystal
09:42is actually the power source of the saber, but that's not quite right.
09:47The Kyber Crystal is indeed the beating heart of the weapon,
09:50but it's not the mechanism that actually powers it.
09:52Instead, it's a component of the blade that has energy transmitted through it
09:56by the actual battery of the machine, the diatium power cell.
10:01So if you want to put your own lightsaber together, and first off, good luck with that,
10:05you'll get nowhere with just the crystal and a hilt.
10:08So don't forget that power cell.
10:10Number three, Vader's body didn't disappear after his death.
10:14This point of contention has bothered fans since Return of the Jedi.
10:18The climax of the original trilogy, of course, saw the death of Darth Vader slash Anakin Skywalker.
10:24Yep, something felt a little bit off with it,
10:27as while the bodies of Obi-Wan and Yoda disappeared upon their deaths,
10:31the same thing didn't happen for Vader.
10:34Well, Anakin's body did disappear, it just took a little bit longer than the others.
10:39When looking at the funeral pyre Luke made for his dead father,
10:43you'll notice that it's only Anakin's mechanical components being burnt,
10:47with no biological part of him shown at all.
10:51Now, this evidence admittedly might feel a little bit tenuous,
10:54as there's a chance that his body was still underneath his mask.
10:57But that's where the expanded universe comes in.
11:00It's confirmed in the book Champions of the Force by Kevin J. Anderson,
11:04and the original databank formerly from the Star Wars website,
11:07that Anakin's biological body did disappear,
11:11and that the items Luke burned were, in fact, Vader's suit and mechanical features.
11:16Of course, the introduction of the Disney sequel trilogy officially ended the canon of the EU,
11:21but despite that, there have been no retcons for this detail in the new trilogy,
11:26so that canon should stand.
11:28Number two, Stormtroopers can't aim.
11:31There are plenty of in-jokes among Star Wars fans.
11:34Poking fun at Darth Vader's dramatic nooooooo,
11:38imitating Yoda and joking, of course, about Luke and Leia's accidental incest are chief amongst the best.
11:45But nothing compares to the mockery that Stormtroopers get for their so-called terrible aim.
11:52And at a glance, it does make perfect sense to accuse these soldiers of being poor shots,
11:56as yes, they never actually managed to hit any of the main characters,
12:00but let's not forget that these Troopers are the standing army for the most powerful empire in the galaxy.
12:07And there's plenty of evidence to suggest that clones slash Stormtroopers are decent shots and good shots at best.
12:14The iconic Order 66, for instance, showed them hitting their targets with stark precision for the most part.
12:20Plus, in A New Hope, they managed to kill plenty of Jawas,
12:23with Ben Kenobi even uttering the memeable phrase,
12:26only Imperial Stormtroopers are so precise.
12:28And those are just a few examples.
12:31The truth is, they are only bad shots when it comes to catching the central characters.
12:35Because, of course they are.
12:36If they shot them all, there'd be no movies,
12:38and you can never underestimate the power of plot armour.
12:42Number 1, Luke, I am your father.
12:44No, being a franchise fan often brings about plenty of debate,
12:48with one of the most compelling questions being,
12:50what is the series' most iconic moment?
12:53But while most fandoms can argue about that until the sun goes down,
12:57pretty much every Star Wars fan knows that it's the shocking reveal that Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father.
13:03This moment had a huge impact on popular culture at large,
13:07with parodies all over the place,
13:09and almost everyone remembering that iconic line,
13:12Luke, I am your father.
13:14Except, of course, that's not actually what Vader says at all,
13:17and instead, this line seems to be a big old slice of the Mandela effect.
13:22And that's because the actual dialogue went a little bit something like this,
13:25Luke says that,
13:26he told me, he told me you killed him,
13:28and then Vader replies,
13:30no, I am your father.
13:32Cut to poo a mind-blown Luke having an absolute screaming fit.
13:36So yeah, while it might not sound as cool in isolation,
13:39the line was a response to something that Luke had said,
13:42rather than being an explicit declaration.
13:44Even so, it does feel strange to say the line without the name included.
13:48So yeah, this is a weird one.
13:50It's a truly bizarre example of everyone getting something wrong,
13:53but all just agreeing to do so together,
13:55because it sounds a little bit better.
13:58So that's our list.
13:58I want to know what you guys think down in the comments below.
14:00Did you already know about all of these Star Wars facts,
14:03and are there any things that people get wrong that I missed off here?
14:06While you're down there as well,
14:07could you please give us a like, share, subscribe,
14:08and head over to WhatCultureStarWars for more lists like this on the regular.
14:12Even if you don't though, I've been Josh.
14:13Thanks so much for watching, and I'll see you soon.