The Star Wars saga has one of the most dedicated and passionate fan bases in all of popular culture. That used to be a fun thing but, as those fans have rejected some of the decisions made by the franchise’s new corporate overlords at Disney, they’ve shown the ugly side of that passion.
Still, it’s nothing new. Certain moments, characters, and lines of dialogue have divided Star Wars fans for decades. Before the sequel trilogy, the prequels and even the original trilogy polarized fans. So, here are 10 Star Wars Moments That Divided Fans.
Leia flies through space like Peter Pan (The Last Jedi)
Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi, as a whole, divided Star Wars fans. Some critics thought that it was the best Star Wars film of all, while a lot of diehard fans felt that it betrayed the characters and the in-universe mythology. One of the weirdest moments in the movie, which is filled with weird moments, comes about halfway through.
Leia is blown out the side of a ship. Fans expected it to be how she was written out of the series following Carrie Fisher’s tragic passing. Then she starts flying through the vacuum of space like Peter Pan, or Mary Poppins. It came out of nowhere and made absolutely no sense.
“Now, this is podracing!” (The Phantom Menace)
Midway through The Phantom Menace, George Lucas treats us to an extended homage to Ben-Hur when Anakin takes part in a podracing event with a podracer made of scrap metal that won’t start. The podracing scene is highly divisive – Star Wars fans either really love it or really hate it.
On the one hand, the actual podracing is pretty cool, and it’s fun to see plucky Anakin with a little podracer compared to the others use his wits to beat the bigger, more advanced podracers. But on the other hand, the alien ESPN announcers commentating the game are a tad too cartoonish, even for this universe, and Jabba the Hutt’s inclusion feels almost as forced as Legolas’ role in The Hobbit trilogy.
The First Order builds its own Death Star (The Force Awakens)
When Disney bought Lucasfilm and immediately announced plans to produce Star Wars: Episode VII, fans were excited. A whole new chapter in the saga would be opening up, with all-new worlds and all-new characters to inhabit them. However, a lot of those fans – and George Lucas himself – were disappointed that J.J. Abrams just remade A New Hope, retooling the Empire as the First Order and even rehashing the Death Star plot.
Abrams defended the decision, saying he felt the need to stay in familiar territory while ushering in this new era of Star Wars. But that’s just a fancy way of dressing up the fact that he combined playing it safe with being derivative, two qualities that fans both feared and expected this movie to have.
The Ewoks show up (Return of the Jedi)
Every Star Wars fan has their own opinion of the Ewoks. They either really love them or really hate them, usually determined by how old they were when they first saw the movie. To some, they’re cute and cuddly and a lot of fun. To other, more cynical fans, they’re annoyingly cute and irritatingly cuddly and the death of the final chapter in the original trilogy.
Even some crew members working on Return of the Jedi hated the Ewoks. When it became apparent to legendary concept artist Ralph McQuarrie that Lucas wanted him to create teddy bears who could be easily merchandised, he refused to design them.
Using CGI to resurrect Peter Cushing (Rogue One)
Digital de-aging is one thing, but digital resurrection is a different ethical discussion entirely. At least with de-aging, the actors themselves are there, taking part in the process and giving the performances. But Rogue One, in order to bring back Grand Moff Tarkin, gave us an eerie on-screen performance by Peter Cushing, who has been dead for years.
The filmmakers dug a plaster mold of Cushing’s head and face out of an old studio warehouse and started work from there, bringing him back to life for one final screen appearance. And naturally, this was very controversial, due to countless moral considerations.
“I don’t like sand.” (Attack of the Clones)
There’s a subsection of the Star Wars fan base that adores the prequel trilogy, either because they were kids who enjoyed the spectacle and let all the disappointment go over their heads when the movies came out, or because they appreciate the litany of memes that have been produced from them.
Kids who grew up with the prequels realizing how drab and unusual Anakin and Padme’s romantic dialogue is – particularly Anakin’s soliloquy about not liking sand – have come to enjoy it purely for the fact that the oddity of it went over their heads when they were younger. (The same thing has happened with millennials who grew up with Bee Movie.) But the fans who went to the prequels as adult Star Wars fans have never had such an affinity for those scenes.
Leia makes out with Luke (The Empire Strikes Back)
Although George Lucas had vaguely mapped out twelve movies for the Star Wars saga, he ironed out the details on a movie-by-movie basis. Unfortunately, some of those tiny details turned out to be quite major. When Lucas was hammering out the story for The Empire Strikes Back, he hadn’t decided if Leia was going to be Luke’s sister or not.
Still, he chose to hedge his bets with a scene where Leia makes out with Luke. That didn’t mean much then, but when the two were revealed to be siblings in Return of the Jedi, the kiss was recontextualized as an unwittingly creepy act of incest.
Boba Fett’s death (Return of the Jedi)
George Lucas has said that he regrets giving Boba Fett such an underwhelming death scene in Return of the Jedi. The ice-cold bounty hunter was established as a badass in The Empire Strikes Back, then lost his life due to a faulty jetpack over the Sarlacc Pit. Lucas hadn’t realized how popular Boba Fett became after Empire was released, and if he had known, he would’ve given him a more interesting role in Jedi.
So, basically, if Twitter existed in 1983, Fett would’ve gotten a more ceremonious death. (But then there also would’ve been bigoted trolls slating all the women and people of color in the cast, like there are today.)
Luke Skywalker attempts to murder Ben Solo in cold blood (The Last Jedi)
The way that Luke Skywalker was characterized in Rian Johnson’s screenplay for The Last Jedi felt completely unfaithful to the Luke we remember from the original trilogy. This is the starry-eyed farm boy who saw the good in the evilest man in the galaxy.
He refused to even fight Darth Vader in the Emperor’s throne room, and yet, 30 years later, when he had a slight hunch that his nephew might be getting lured over to the Dark Side, he was fully prepared to murder him in cold blood while he slept.
Greedo shoots first (Star Wars Special Edition)
When George Lucas pioneered computer-generated effects for the prequels, he went a little overboard with it. He took the original trilogy – three movies that were virtually perfect – back into the editing room to ram them full of instantly dated primitive CGI effects. A lot of controversial changes were made, like having a giant CGI creature wander past the camera and fill the entire frame, which is just bad composition.
The most controversial change, by far, was having Greedo fire at Han right before Han shot Greedo. Lucas’ justification was that he didn’t want to make Han a cold-blooded killer but, if Greedo shot first, then Han couldn’t tell that Greedo was going to shoot him and he’s just a lucky guy whose enemy missed a point-blank shot.