All Of The Retcons That Have Happened In ‘Star Wars’
When you have a film franchise as long running and expansive as Star Wars' it can be difficult to maintain all the diverging plot lines. Since 1977, the franchise has grown across every medium imaginable. Comics, books, video games, and TV shows have added to the brand and sometimes established plot points that need to be reworked. There are many reasons for such changes. Sometimes the writers decide something works better in a different way, or maybe it’s to patch potential plot holes. Here’s a few of the more famous, or sometimes infamous, changes added to Star Wars over the years.
Han Shot First!
Who shot first? No retcon in cinema is quite as notorious as the infamous scene in the Mos Eisley Cantina where Han faces down the bounty hunter Greedo. Their face-off is brief, but it serves as a good character-building moment for Han. Not one to suffer fools, Han is quick to reach for his pistol as Greedo prematurely celebrates his victory. As they talk, Greedo keeps his own gun trained on Han, but before he can react, Han guns down the would-be bounty hunter. Greedo is dead before he can even retaliate. Han’s actions may arguably be justified but they hardly fit the classic definition of a hero. He was something else entirely and much cooler.
A few specials editions and movie ports later and this scene has been changed, not once, but thrice. The first change came with George Lucas’s special edition “remasters.” The reworked scene plays out much like the original but as the confrontation comes to a head, Greedo is the first to pull the trigger. Despite being across a small table with scarcely a meter between them, Greedo misses his shot and is gunned down in retaliation. Jump forward to 2004 and now both Han and Greedo fire on each other almost simultaneously. And in 2019, it's as such, but not before Greedo can defiantly shout "Maclunkey."
Why these changes were deemed necessary is anyone’s guess. This obscurity is part of the reason these scenes have plagued the fan base. As I mentioned before, many fans see the scene as a showcase of Han’s morals and his self-serving outlook. Therefore, it’s often said that Lucas made the change to soften the character up and make him more heroic.
Boba Fett’s Origins
From the time when we first meet Boba Fett in The Empire Strikes Back (or the Holiday Special before then), to his defeat and plunge into The Pit of Carkoon, not much was known about the stoic bounty hunter. He may not have received much screen time, but he made the most of it. His popularity was so high that his story was fleshed out in the Expanded Universe. Originally from an unnamed planet in the Outer Rim, Fett was a sort of lawman with a strict moral code and an absolute commitment to his own sense of justice. However, after a falling out with a fellow lawman, Fett kills him and is removed from his guild; forcing him to turn to the occupation of bounty hunter.
Like many other characters in the original trilogy, Boba Fett’s origins are retconned by the arrival of the prequels. Now we’re introduced to Jango Fett, a bounty hunter chosen as the genetic template for a clone army that would later go on to fight the eponymous Clone War first mentioned by Old Ben in A New Hope. Boba is introduced as an unaltered clone of Jango to be raised as his son.
Boba’s large role and subsequent retcon in the prequels is likely a result of his huge popularity in the original trilogy. And while he had a backstory, it only existed in supplementary material that could easily be disregarded. This new story made him more of a key player and allowed him to share the spotlight with his equally popular father Jango. Plus, two Fetts are better than one.
Survivors of Order 66
The beginning of the end for the Jedi Order was delivered in one phrase: “Execute Order 66.” This military order caused the clone troopers working under the Jedi of the Republic to turn on their commanders and eliminate them. By the time of A New Hope, it’s heavily implied that Obi Wan and Darth Vader are the last remnants of the Jedi. We would later add Yoda and Emperor Palpatine to the list of remaining Force users, but for the most part, it seemed that Luke was the beginning of the new age and the only Force user left alive after Return of the Jedi.
However, with the myriad of new stories being explored, it was inevitably revealed that more Jedi had survived the purge. New stories bring new characters, and the roster of Order 66 survivors is at a steady rise. Most of these characters have their own unique reasons for how they survived, but most of them boil down to evading their clone betrayers or simply being absent from the war and having no clones nearby to turn on them. Some are even alive during the reign of the Empire, away from the Galactic Civil War.
The reason for these survivors is pretty straightforward. Star Wars' plot often revolves around the struggles between the Jedi and the Sith. If all but a couple of Jedi die at the end of the Clone Wars, writers are pretty limited with their options. By having some Jedi slip through the cracks, we are allowed to view the lives of Jedi on the run dealing with the collapse of their order. The enemies also get more diverse such as the inclusion of the Imperial Inquisitors, Dark Side users tasked with hunting down Jedi survivors.
Midi-chlorians
The arrival of the prequel trilogy brought with it many new changes to the Star Wars mythos. It’s up for debate if the good outweighed the bad, but one change will live in infamy among fans: the addition of midi-chlorians. In the original trilogy, Jedi like Obi-Wan and later Yoda explain that the Force is a mystical energy field that binds the galaxy together. It’s also the source of power for both Jedi and the Sith. It is originally pitched more as a magic system, mystical and otherworldly, more spiritual than scientific.
Then came the fateful scene in The Phantom Menace, wherein Qui-Gon Jinn is able to determine a young Anakin Skywalker’s amazing potential with the Force via a blood test. The new explanation for access to the Force is that a collection of microscopic bacteria live in a host body and it’s these organisms that help form a connection to the Force. This led to a more science fiction approach to the Force. Now great wielders of the Force can quickly be identified through a blood test and greater concentrations of midi-chlorians. The more bacteria, the stronger the user. This was eventually expanded upon and became a hereditary trait, with entire lineages possessing strong connections to the force.
Perhaps more than any retcon in its long history, this one is the most reviled. There are many half-formed ideas and interviews that try to make sense of the change, but the most common idea is religion. George Lucas was concerned that the Jedi and Sith Orders were too cultish and introduced midi-chlorians as a course correction to address the issue. However, when a retcon becomes a shorthand for overexplaining lore in a fantasy franchise, it’s probably not a good sign.
The Death Star’s Fatal Flaw
One of the main driving forces in A New Hope is the delivering of the stolen plans for the Death Star, an Imperial superweapon, to the Rebel leadership on Alderaan. The plans reveal that the station has a fatal weak point in the form of a small thermal exhaust port. This plot culminates in the Battle of Yavin, where our hero Luke Skywalker manages to destroy the battle station with a well-placed proton torpedo to the weak spot. Many fans speculated as to why such a powerful weapon and the culmination of imperial might would have such a weakness. Some argued that the exhaust port was well designed and easily overlooked. After all, Luke only made the shot with the aid of the Force. Other fans simply looked the other way and chocked it up to the Empire’s overconfidence.
At any rate, the arrival of the spinoff Rogue One brought an official answer to the age-old question; the flaw was intentionally installed by the rebel saboteur Galen Erso. Galen was a former Imperial scientist tasked with creating the Imperil space station that would later become the Death Star. When he learned of the station’s true purpose, Galen fled the empire and hoped the project would fail without his insight. It was not to be, as he was later found and strong-armed back into imperil service. To make sure the project would ultimately fail Galen intentionally designed the exploit that would be the Death Star’s undoing, making sure that the reactor is unstable.
This change, while not integral to the larger plot of the series, was done to patch what could be perceived as a plot hole. It also comes as a surprise to Galen’s daughter Jyn Erso, who believed that Galen had willingly returned to his project to ensure its success. While it wasn’t exactly necessary, this particular retcon was largely accepted by most fans.
Source(s): EkharsLadder, Wookieepedia