The universe is pretty filthy, if you think about it. Methane clouds, asteroid debris everywhere, organisms that consume and expel smelly stuff, and don't get me started on movie theater floors. The same can be applied to a galaxy far, far away. You just have to look close and not have many other hobbies.
Here are a few gross observations I've had about Star Wars after peeling away the veneer.
Lose a hand, gain a hand, and lose half an arm.
In the still up there, Luke clearly loses his hand at its base. But bellow, you see that almost half of his arm is now cybernetic. Can you imagine going to the medical droid and saying, “You gotta help me, doc! I lost my hand in a laser sword fight,” and then it replies, “No problem. Let me just get my bone saw out. Now roll up your sleeve about halfway, please.”
Who knows? Maybe the robot hand needs all that room for batteries, wires, and nerve ending stuff. But why do all of Anakin's robotic impants start at the injury? Another thing I always found creepy was that it felt pain, just like his flesh and blood. When his hand gets shot in
Return of the Jedi, it really smarts. So with no flesh on his arm now, is Luke walking around in agony all the time? Does the metal itself feel pain? Wizard science can be frustrating.
Ponda Baba has super blood.
Ponda was the first in a long line of severed limbs in the Star Wars universe. What he thought was going to be a good time beating up a geriatric turned out to be a lifetime of one-handed claps. But the thing that bothers me most about this attempted elder abuse is all that blood. With every other dismemberment, via lightsaber, the wound cauterizes instantly. What’s in Ponda’s blood that refuses to be charred? And why would a creature with aquatic ancestry need that trait? And why aren’t they draining all of Ponda’s blood for wizard science?
Darth Vader sits down to pee if he could.
With 90% of his body suffering from 3
rd degree burns, we can pretty much guess his arm and legs weren’t the only “limbs” Anakin lost on Mustafar. I saw no evidence of reconstructive surgery going on when the Emperor simply slapped him into his suit. I hate to say this, but a slippery noodle of flesh v lava fire is something I don't want to think about, so I wrote about it instead.
Revenge of the Sith was already pushing a hard PG-13, so it’s no surprise they didn’t include this from the original script, “You were my brother, Anakin! I loved you!” “I hate you!! I'm on fire!! OWWW!! My penis!! Why are you walking away?!!”
I’m sure Vader’s suit takes care of all of his bodily functions since he’ll die if he takes it off, so I doubt he ever knew the comforting feel of a porcelain throne. His suit was probably like the ones in
Dune that recycles everything. The only time he could be out of it was when he was chilling in a bacta tank.
Luke’s diaper.
I’m not sure why they went with the soggy-diaper-that-leaks look. They had speedos in the 80s. Hamill would have rocked a speedo. Instead, they went full-on Depends with Liefeld pouches.And maybe tight-cut swimwear was a little too cheeky for Star Wars at that time. They were probably saving up for slave outfits.
Jabba’s Palace: Clothing optional.
You can’t count Wookies or Ewoks because they had hair to cover their naughty bits, but you could let it all hang out at Jabba’s palace if you wanted. Jabba was always in the buff and loving it. And before you gripe about how could a giant slug could wear clothes, even Watto, a bulbous creature with wings, wore a jacket. I could never see past Watto’s belly to find out if he had a speedo on. Hold on. I’ll check...
He’s totally rocking a speedo.
For such a lighthearted entry,
Return of the Jedi took us to some Grade-A debauchery at Jabba’s. I think Lucas realized this and decided to clean up as best he could with his remastered RoJ. Instead of CGI-ing a bra on Sy Snootles, he took her from a B-cup down to a No-cup, got rid of her smoker’s voice and vacuumed up place.
I hope Luke routinely gets his booster shots.
Even though he’s our plucky hero, poor Luke has been dragged through every filthy situation in the original trilogy. He’s been bludgeoned by Sand Peoples’ grimy staffs, laced with bantha scat. He’s been attacked by a living cold sore in a trash compactor and nearly drowned in waste water, probably filled with cold sore creature scat. He’s been exposed to any intestinal parasites that reside in a tauntaun’s belly, plus tauntaun scat. He’s swam in Dagobah's swamps, most likely filled with tiny fish that look for a nice, warm urethra to live in, and judging by the size of the swamp creatures living in the water, a whole lot of scat. He’s been exposed to rancor drool and personally handled bone scat in order to choke a rancor on its own bone scat. Plus, I can’t be 100% that was a rock Luke picked up to hurl at the gate controls.
The poor farm boy wanted a taste of the galaxy, but nobody told him a lot of it tastes like crap.
I get older, but these princesses stay the same age.
Han and Leia's romance was never a storybook story. It was filled with insults, uninvited groping, creepy pickup lines, and lack of respect. They were from two different galaxies, metaphorically. Han was older and a cosmic Jack Sparrow, and Leia was smart, level-headed royalty working on her British accent after spending summer break abroad. We thought Star Wars might be the exception to the "opposites attract" trope and they might live happily ever after. But like any other Tom Cruise adventure where a 50 year-old man shacks up with a 20-something-year-old at the end after fighting the whole time, the sequel ditches the relationship in some way.
The Force Awakens did just that, and probably for the best. Han would have been bored helping run the galaxy and she was probably out of her "bad boy" phase. I hope Leia got herself tested, though. They didn't call Mos Eisley a retched hive of sum and space gonorrhea for nothing.
Snoke’s lazy eye.
Judging from the images we’ve seen, one of the few things we can gather about Snoke’s past is that one day the left side of his body had a really bad day. We’ve seen him focus both eyes in the trailers so it doesn’t seem to be totally lazy. Just for giggles, I copied and pasted his good side to see what he really looks like without the damage.
He’s not a bad looking old, evil man, is he? But he’s kind of generic without the scars, so I understand the need to make the old, evil man the most evil, old man there is. The image I made just makes you worry if he’s had his prunes today, and that’s not the tone you want to set with the man who wants to enslave the galaxy. Speaking of slavery…
What happened to the Anakin’s quest to end slavery?
Slavery is one of the grossest things there is, but Lucas used it as a throwaway plot device that has never been brought up again. When Anakin told his mom, “I’ll come back for you and free ALL the slaves,” I thought that might be a good side-plot for
Episode 2. You don’t hear about slaves in the original trilogy, so maybe Anakin followed through on his promise. Nope.
He got tied up at Jedi College and then came home and slaughtered an indigenous village. That’s about it. Anakin was told by Watto that he sold his mother, Shmi, to Old Man Lars so that he could marry her (there’s a rom-com script there somewhere, I know it). But as soon as Anakin finds his mom captive by Sand People (they just kidnap people to kidnap people, I guess), she dies. Now, Anakin can make good on his promise to his mom to try and end the slavery situation on Tatooine, but killing Sand Children seemed like the better way to go. Then, all of a sudden, Jedi Spring Break is over and he’s out of there.
You would think slavery in the outer rim planets would be a big deal for a democratic Galactic Republic. I know there’s a lot of red tape in government, but it would have been nice if Lucas could have thrown in a line when the senators were debating Naboo or something, “We’ll form a committee to look into these Trade Federation allegations. Oh, we apparently have a slavery problem on some planets, too. We should form a committee and look into that.”
Or, you could just send a couple Jedi. It works pretty well with trade disputes.