Common Knowledge / Star Wars

Due to the franchise being extremely popular and spanning more than 40 years of stories, the popular image of the films is often somewhat disconnected from the films themselves. And since a few popular misconceptions about the films have become the basis of numerous memes and popular jokes over the years, the internet has created something of an echo chamber for them.

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• It's common among recent fans, in Cracked and other pages, to argue that the only reason Star Wars is good is because of George Lucas' collaborators rather than Lucas himself, much of which, while taking nothing away from the collaborative part of film-making (which contrary to belief, even auteurists admitted^note They pointed out that directors work via Production Posse and carefully sustain collaborations so as to maintain a common style), is based on misconceptions about film-production. An often cited fact is that Marcia Lucas saved Star Wars after a disastrous "rough cut". The truth of the matter as anyone with familiarity with film production will tell you is that rough cuts of most good to great films are always pretty lousy (and so they are called "rough" for that very reason). So while Marcia Lucas did play a major part in making A New Hope great, it would be an exaggeration, and likewise unfair to other collaborators (including George himself), to claim that she single-handedly saved the movie or was alone responsible for the movie turning out right simply because she did what many great editors have done on countless film productions.
• The idea that the Prequel Trilogy’s films exclusively used CGI for their special effects or relied too much on blue screening is common ammunition used by fans to bash the Prequel Trilogy. While its true that every shot has some digital effect or processing applied (The Phantom Menace uses CGI in 90% of its shots), there were actually more sets, models and miniatures built for The Phantom Menace alone than there were for the entire Original Trilogy. Amusingly, The Force Awakens got considerable press for its use of practical effects, even though only around 500 shots in the film had them, with the rest of the film having even more CGI shots than The Phantom Menace. It is also worth noting that shots of actors interacting with unseen blue screen effects (such as any of the spaceship battles and the speeder bike chase) were absolutely abundant in the Original Trilogy.
• With the release of the Prequels and Sequels and those films being dubbed as subpar follow-ups themselves by parts of the fandom, the claim that "people hated Empire at the time too" or that it was "divisive too" allegedly because of the darker tone and the twists has somehow taken root due to defenders of these trilogies and Lucasfilm-affiliated people themselves, with newer fans who were brought into the series by these later films unwittingly perpetuating this in turn. But in truth, this is really blowing the Vocal Minority at the time out of proportion. While Empire's original release had the lowest theatrical gross of the trilogy, the film got an overall positive reception from critics and fans alike. It even got more positive professional newspaper and magazine reviews than A New Hope had, though averaging slightly lower in terms of scores. While some critics consigned the movie to the Sci Fi Ghetto as they had with the first, and some of them who liked Star Wars better claimed that it worked as both a straight adventure and a winking pastiche/homage to various media genres and stories while Empire was "only" a self-referential straight adventure, many others just took it on its own terms. The darker tone and the twists actually got people excited. Empire topped the worldwide box office in 1980 (with steadier legs at the box office compared to some later movies in the series, though they were still chart-topping) and had three successful re-releases in theaters in the intervening years before the third movie. It did not need to be released on home video in order to be better appreciated, all the more because its first home video release was in 1989, years after the trilogy ended. The very year it came out, so without the benefit of the passage of time, it even won Best Film at the People's Choice Awards. Besides, claiming this about Empire is not only whataboutism, but the "proof" is just taking those critics who didn't like the first film to begin with as representative of the critics and fandom at large. As much as the later films may be divisive, the originals were the ones that pretty much everyone liked, which enabled the later films to be made.
• The idea that David Prowse was the only guy who played Darth Vader inside the suit (not counting Sebastian Shaw as the unmasked Vader) in the Original Trilogy's films. In truth, Vader's many fight scenes in the suit were done by stunt swordsman (and duel coordinator for the first six theatrical films) Bob Anderson. It was Anderson in the suit when Vader fought Luke at Bespin and then in the Throne Room.
• The idea of Darth Vader as the ultimate villain of the franchise instead of simply the most famous villain, tends to obscure that he was only the Big Bad in one film: The Empire Strikes Back. In A New Hope, Grand Moff Tarkin was the main villain with Vader as The Dragon. He was Vader's superior and he was the one who commanded the Death Star and ordered the destruction of Alderaan. In Return of the Jedi, Emperor Palpatine/Darth Sidious is the villain, in addition to being the overarching villain of the story. Vader is also seen as a case of The Bad Guy Wins, when in The Empire Strikes Back, he completely fails in both his given tasks, i.e. crushing the rebellion and capturing Luke (the rebel command staff escapes at Hoth, and so do the heroes at Bespin), and his real plan, i.e. converting Luke to the Dark Side and pulling a coup on Palpatine, and those failures strip him of his command, being given a minor overseer task in Return of the Jedi and denied command of any ground or air forces at the Battle of Endor. Lucas himself has affirmed that Vader was intended to be a frightening and cool adversary but never an ultimate embodiment of evil, seeing him as the man who "goes down the corner and gets Satan's cigarettes" and a "flunky" to a bigger and more evil organization. The franchise is one of the most famous examples of It's Personal with the Dragon, as Obi-Wan and Luke have the closest connection to Darth Vader.
  George Lucas: Ultimately, he’s just a pathetic guy who’s had a very sad life. He’s so overwhelming in that first film, but you get to the point where you say, “Wait a minute, if he’s so powerful, why doesn’t he run the universe?” He even gets pushed around by the governors! They know the Emperor is the final word, so what happens is the same thing that happens in any corporation: everybody worries about the top man, they don’t worry about his goon. And by the time the Death Star is finished, it gives them the sense that they have a bigger, better suit than Darth Vader. In a standoff between the Death Star and Darth Vader, they have no question about who would win, and it’s not this mumbo-jumbo Sith guy. So it’s even more tragic, because he’s not even an all-powerful bad guy, he’s kind of a flunky.
• The unclear wording of The Chosen One prophecy in the prequel films, "bring balance to the Force", often leads to a misconception that Anakin Skywalker's purpose was to destroy both major Force-using orders, Jedi and Sith alike, on the grounds that this would balance the strength of the light and the dark (a notion built in part off the "gray Jedi" idea that sometimes cropped up in Star Wars Legends and the Unintentionally Unsympathetic portrayal of the Jedi Order in the prequels). Lucas, never one for Gray-and-Grey Morality, has always maintained that the dark side itself is the imbalance (he often compares it to cancer, with the light side being a healthy body), and that Anakin falling to the dark side and wiping out the Jedi was a perversion by Palpatine of the Force's intention to eliminate the Sith.
• Darth Vader doesn't have the planet Alderaan destroyed in the original Star Wars—Grand Moff Tarkin is the one who orders it. Vader just watches it happen from the bridge of the Death Star. Relatedly: contrary to popular belief, Tarkin is the primary antagonist of the original film, not Vader; Tarkin outranks Vader, who was originally portrayed as Tarkin's brutish enforcer before the sequels retroactively established Vader as the Emperor's apprentice and right-hand man.^note  A relatively common Hand Wave among fans is that Tarkin is the commander of the Death Star, and Vader chooses to respect his authority while he's aboard the Death Star as an invited guest—explaining why he takes orders from him.
• It's almost a trope on its own that the Empire could build an amazing technological marvel like the first Death Star, but couldn't protect its only weak spot. Except they did protect it: it was ray-shielded (forcing the Rebels to use proton torpedoes to breach the shield), and it was at the end of a narrow trench surrounded by gun turrets; the Rebels only make it through because the turrets were designed for large warships rather than one-man fighters, since the Empire believed that it would be suicide to attack the Death Star with a squadron of lightly armored fighter craft. ^note  Moreover, the idea that such a tiny shot can destroy the entire Death Star actually isn't that unrealistic; most Real Life naval vessels actually do have weak spots that can cause catastrophic damage when hit, which is why the sea captains of yore would always aim for enemy ships' powder magazines during battles. If anything, it's actually more unrealistic that the Rebels would have been able to find the weak spot by stealing the plans to the Death Star, since Real Life navies usually keep important ship blueprints split into several parts as a safeguard against enemy espionage, making it nearly impossible to find a single complete copy of such plans - in fact, due to all the contradictory descriptions of these plans being stolen, the old EU ultimately stated it's the case here as well, and something like five separate databases had to be obtained for the full schematics. And even taking that into account, they also had a squadron of TIE fighters on hand just in case. ^note And according to the old EU, this was only Vader's personal squadron - the hundreds of other TIE fighters on the Death Star remained in their hangers since Tarkin didn't take the Rebel threat seriously There's a very good reason why Luke and Wedge were the sole survivors of the Trench Run (and two of only three survivors of the attack wing in general), and even Luke only pulled off the decisive shot with the aid of the Force and the immensely lucky timing of the Millenium Falcon to prevent his X-Wing from being shot down before he even got the chance.
• Similarly: the AT-ATs of The Empire Strikes Back are often viewed as impractical and ineffective, to the point that it's basically a meme to depict them as useless, clumsy monstrosities that can be easily felled by exploiting their glaring weakness. In fact: in the film, they are shown to be scarily effective, cleaning the Rebels' clocks so efficiently that General Veers casually tells Vader to begin his landing before he's even taken out their shield generator, as he knows victory's inevitable at that point. Their "glaring weakness" is a vulnerability to a desperate, esoteric tactic requiring tricky flying and a specific armament that most ships don't even have. And even with this vulnerability, It Only Works Once: the Rebels only manage to take one of them out in this manner and suffer heavy casualties in the process as the Imperials simply begin shooting down the Rebel Snowspeeders before they can attempt a second try.^note Furthermore, such a weakness is surprisingly reasonable and realistic as most military vehicles in real life are severely vulnerable to wire tangling up their axles. There's a reason why vehicle checkpoints in real life make heavy use of concertina wire (imagine if a slinky and barbed wire had a baby, being a springy coil of razor wire that can easily be pulled across a street) and knife rests (a flimsy x-shaped frame of wood or stakes held together with barbed wire), as these will both stop a vehicle dead in its tracks. And contrary to popular belief, they don't just shoot forward: the film shows that they're easily capable of flexing and bending with their legs to accurately snipe small targets — they even easily land hits on Luke multiple separate times, despite his talent as a pilot, killing his gunner and shooting him down fairly early into the battle. They even outright declare, In-Universe, that their attack against the AT-ATs is, at best, a desperation tactic with no hope of even working.
  Luke: Rogue Group, use your harpoons and tow cables. Go for the legs. It might be our only chance of stopping them.
• It's not "Luke, I Am Your Father", it's "No, I am your father." Even an EU/Legends novel once had Luke remember the line this way. It's not "No, Luke, I am your father" either, except in the radio play adaptation.
• Many Bothans died getting plans for the second Death Star (in Return of the Jedi), not the first (in A New Hope). The Expanded Universe gives a number of different sources for the first Death Star's plans (eventually explained as it being split up, as described above). The film Rogue One likewise shows just how the original Death Star plans fell into Rebel hands within the current canon.
• People Rooting for the Empire say the Clone Troopers are Jedi slaves. While their production was first ordered by a Jedi, it's on behalf of the Republic, from whom both Troopers and Jedi take orders. The Republic led by Chancellor (and future Emperor) Palpatine, without whom there would never have been a war to need Clone Troopers or Jedi generals. Palpatine commands both the clone army and (secretly) the droid army that kills vast numbers of the Clone Troopers. This also ignores Star Wars: The Clone Wars, where the Jedi and Clones have a clearly co-operative relationship, as well as the Clone's capacity for independent thoughts and opinions. In reality they're most similar to a military Proud Warrior Race, though admittedly they hardly have a choice in the matter. Much of the confusion and assumption comes almost exclusively from Star Wars: Battlefront II (the original from 2005, not the EA one from 2017), where the Clones have a negative view of the Jedi and comment on how they feel the Jedi treat them, coloring most people's perception of the relationship well before Star Wars: The Clone Wars was a thing.
• Many people also think that the Ewoks live on the 'planet' Endor: they actually live on the Forest Moon of Endor (which is itself called Endor on occasions, adding to the confusion).
• This is less common given the release of the newer films, but it was once common for non-Star Wars fans (who were usually only aware of/only had seen the first film) assume any romance of Luke Skywalker is with Leia.
• The Phantom Menace does not, despite the outcry of many fans, explain away the Force as "bacteria in the bloodstream". Qui-Gon specifically tells Anakin that midichlorians are just microorganisms that allow living things to communicate with the Force (all living things carry them, not just Jedi), and that measuring an individual's midichlorian count provides a convenient way to measure the strength of their Force abilities. It doesn’t actually give the person Force powers. The nature of the Force itself is left vague enough that it can still be justifiably called "magic".
• When complaining about the Continuity Drift in the Star Wars movies, many fans like to point out that Darth Vader never seems to recognize any of the characters that he is later revealed to have known as a young man in the prequels. Actually, of the four characters that Anakin interacts with in both the original and prequel trilogies (Obi-Wan, Palpatine, Tarkin and C-3PO), C-3PO is the only one that he never acknowledges knowing—and that's because they only have one scene together in the original trilogy, when Vader is preoccupied with freezing Han in carbonite and Threepio is strapped to Chewbacca's back. Not to mention the fact that most protocol droids are completely identical, so it's to be expected that Vader wouldn't immediately recognize one that he hadn't seen in two decades. And taking into account how Vader views his past, it's entirely possible that Vader does recognize 3PO and is simply choosing not to acknowledge the droid. On C-3PO's side of things, his memory was wiped at the end of the prequels, so he wouldn't know of their past connection either. Chewbacca and R2-D2 are frequently cited as examples, but Anakin never meets Chewbacca in the prequels, and Vader never meets R2 in the originals. The only other Orginal Trilogy character Chewbacca interacted with in Revenge of the Sith was Yoda, while in the original trilogy, the closest Vader got to seeing R2 was in A New Hope when he shoots Luke's X-Wing and damages R2, but they're too far away from each other for Vader to recognize R2. In The Empire Strikes Back, R2 conveniently gets locked out before Luke confronts Vader, while in Return of the Jedi, the two are never in close proximity to each other. Another cited example is Boba Fett, but the closest thing they had to an interaction in the prequels was Boba as a child watching Anakin's attempted execution from afar in Attack of the Clones and there's no reason why Boba Fett would know or care that Anakin is Vader.
• Some fans like to point out that Obi-Wan doesn't recognize R2-D2 and C-3PO in A New Hope when he is revealed to have met them in the prequels, particularly scrutinizing his line "I don't seem to remember ever owning a droid". In truth, though the droids are part of the main cast in both the prequels and the originals, Obi-Wan has almost no meaningful interactions with them in the prequels. ^note He never meets C-3PO in The Phantom Menace because he doesn't accompany Qui-Gon and Padmé to Mos Espa to meet Anakin, and he doesn't meet him in Attack of the Clones because Anakin and Padmé reunite with him at the Lars homestead while Obi-Wan is on Geonosis. In Revenge of the Sith, he simply passes by 3PO while boarding Padmé's ship, and since he just killed Vader (he thinks) and Padmé is also mortally wounded, his mind is clearly elsewhere. The most extensive interaction he has with R2 is over the communicator so they can navigate the interior of the Invisible Hand. And like the example with Anakin/Vader, most astromech droids look the same, so it's understandable why Obi-Wan might not immediately recognize R2 when they reunited on Tatooine. According to the prequels, he also isn't lying when he says that he never owned R2; R2 was Padmé's droid which she later gifted to Anakin. While he did have other droids in his Starfighters (most notably R4-P17), he technically didn’t own them. And even in A New Hope itself, it's heavily implied that R2 is lying about being owned by Obi-Wan, and that he just wanted Luke to take him to Obi-Wan so that he could deliver Leia's message.
• Many fans also like to joke about Luke and Leia "making out" with each other in the original trilogy before they were revealed to be twins. Though they do kiss at two points, it's played completely non-sexually both times: Leia gives Luke a peck on the cheek "for luck" in A New Hope, and she kisses him on the lips in The Empire Strikes Back when she wants to make Han jealous.
• The popular theory that Darth Vader's name is a bit of Bilingual Bonus foreshadowing ^note  "Vader" is the Dutch word for "Father" has been pretty thoroughly debunked, but it's still cited as fact by many fans. For one thing, the Dutch word "vader" is pronounced more like "FAH-der" than "VAY-der"; for another, Word of God has indicated that Vader wasn't supposed to be Luke's father when the character was first conceived, while the decision to make them related was made several drafts into The Empire Strikes Back, and released early versions of the script have confirmed this, though did claim in a 2005 interview that the name was based on a variation of "Dark Father" which likely helped spread this one. It's more likely that his name is supposed to evoke the word "invader" (as in "Space Invader"), as a nod to the old sci-fi serials that inspired Lucas. There was also a Gary Vader who graduated from Lucas' high school a year before him, and Lucas has been known to name characters and worldbuilding elements after people and places from his own life.
• Everybody knows that Boba Fett is a classic example of a walk-on extra who became far more popular than his creators intended; people often assume that this is why he only has a handful of lines in The Empire Strikes Back. ^note  Hence the old joke, "Sometimes it's not what you say, it's how friggin' cool you look not saying it". In reality, not so much. Though there's a very good reason that most people don't know this, Boba made his on-screen debut as the star of an animated short film in The Star Wars Holiday Special almost two years before The Empire Strikes Back hit theaters; in said animated short, he's unambiguously the Big Bad, he converses with the other characters at length, he's explicitly called "The best bounty hunter in the galaxy" by Darth Vader, and C-3PO states that he's "Darth Vader's right-hand man". And even before that, he made a public appearance during a parade. While Lucas and co. probably didn't expect the character to be as popular as he is, it seems that they always saw him as a main character.
• One of the most oft-cited factoids about the long development history of Star Wars is that the surname "Skywalker" was a last-second change from "Starkiller", which is why the name "Starkiller" constantly shows up in the Expanded Universe as a Development Gag. Actually, that's only half-true: in the earliest known draft of The Star Wars, "Annikin Starkiller" and "General Luke Skywalker" are both main characters; Annikin Starkiller is a young rookie Jedi warrior, and Luke Skywalker is an older military leader in the Rebellion. The final version of Luke Skywalker is essentially a composite of the two characters, being a young Jedi apprentice who rises up the ranks to become a Commander in the Rebel Alliance.
• Because of all the jokes about Lando Calrissian being "the only black man in the Galaxy", it's something of a common misconception that Billy Dee Williams is the only actor of color who ever appears in the Original Trilogy. While Lando is the only non-white major character in the first three movies, and definitely the only one to get a name stated in the movie, there are a few other non-white characters in incidental roles. The Rebel forces at the Battle of Endor include Lieutenant Telsij (second-in-command of Grey Squadron) and Grizz Frix ("Red Five"), played by a Japanese-American actor and an African-American actor, respectively. There are also two black extras in the Cloud City scenes; one plays one of Lando's guards who greets the heroes at the landing platform, and the other plays a panicked citizen fleeing as the Stormtroopers arrive. ^note  The latter character became something of an Ensemble Dark Horse after eagle-eyed fans noticed that he's apparently carrying an ice cream maker while running away. For what it's worth, Oola the Twi'lek dancer is also played by black actress Femi Taylor, though her character obviously isn't human and it's nearly impossible to tell with her heavy green makeup. Lyn Me, another Twi'lek, portrayed by East Asian actress Dalyn Chew, also appears in the special edition of Return of the Jedi, as does Rystáll Sant, who was played by Afro-Hispanic dancer Mercedes Ngoh.
• George Lucas was supposedly much less involved with the Original Trilogy than he usually claims, and that his collaborators (producer Gary Kurtz, writer Lawrence Kasdan, and editor Marcia Lucas, in particular) were really responsible for the movies being as successful as they were. While this is true to a point—in the sense that all films are collaborative works, to one degree or another, and Lucas was hardly the one-man auteur project he tended to act as or claim to be later on—it isn't quite as true as many people claim. It's true that the original unedited cut of A New Hope has been described as "unwatchable" before Marcia Lucas stepped in as editor, but this is pretty normal in the film world; unedited cuts are called "rough cuts" for that very reason (though Marcia's editing work on A New Hope is very rightly seen as exemplary, and did significantly impact the story in ways that were her idea). Likewise, while Lucas may not have written the screenplays for The Empire Strikes Back or Return of the Jedi, he was responsible for the stories of both. Most notably: the famous Plot Twist at the end of Empire, which changed the entire direction of the saga, was all his idea.
  • A specific narrative on the production history of the original Star Wars holds that George Lucas himself started out as editor, and the version he created was horrendous, having to be salvaged by his then-wife Marcia, who took on sole editing duties afterward and saved the movie from her husband's mismanagement. In reality, the movie had an editor during production and early post-production, John Jympson, whom George Lucas fired due to not liking the results he was producing. A three-editor crew of Richard Chew, Marcia Lucas and Paul Hirsch were brought in to edit the movie afterward, with George Lucas supervising and contributing, not "locked out the editing room", as some would have you think. The three editors won a joint Oscar in Film Editing for their work, and thanked George Lucas in their acceptance speech.
• Princess Leia's famous line "Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi! You're my only hope!" is not imploring Obi-Wan to rescue her from captivity, as many people seem to assume. Leia hadn't yet been captured by the Empire when she recorded that message, and she says it imploring Obi-Wan to complete her last mission for her. While the heroes do end up rescuing Leia, it's only due to a Contrived Coincidence that Leia never could have predicted herself. ^note  The Millennium Falcon conveniently gets pulled into the Death Star via tractor beam just before Leia is due to be executed, giving Luke and co. just enough time to break her out of the detention center.
• Relatedly: everybody knows that the original Star Wars is a movie about an apprentice knight, a wizard, and a pirate teaming up to rescue a princess...IN SPACE! Except it's not: Luke and Obi-Wan's mission isn't to rescue Leia, it's to transport the Death Star plans to the Rebel Alliance. They only end up rescuing Leia by coincidence, and (apparently) aren't even aware that she's a prisoner of the Empire when their mission begins.
• One of the common criticisms of The Force Awakens is that Rey is a better pilot of the Falcon than Han. There's absolutely no evidence to support such a claim. She nearly crashes the ship trying to take off, and takes more damage dogfighting two TIE Fighters than Han did back in the day, even with the Force to help.^note To be fair, Han had two gunners to her one. The closest she comes to besting him is fixing a mechanical problem, even though the film clearly establishes that she's a) a mechanic, and b) is familiar with the modifications made to the ship since Han owned it, and specifically advised against the one she fixes. And, if his track record in The Empire Strikes Back is anything to go by, Han and Chewie aren't actually the best mechanics in the galaxy. Not to mention she was working for Unkar Plutt (who modified the Falcon).
• On a somewhat related note, a minor but very vocal part of the fanbase has a problem with most of Rey's abilities in The Force Awakens, one of the main criticisms being how Rey defeated Kylo (who was trained by both Snoke and Luke Skywalker) despite never having held a lightsaber before. Even though the movie offers several justifications for this, first, she already had experience in hand to hand combat as shown with her staff in Jakku, second, Kylo had been shot by Chewbacca and had fought Finn (who did have experience with a lightsaber) as well having just killed his father and finally, Kylo didn't even want Rey dead, he was trying to convince her to be his apprentice as he tells her "You need a teacher!" which makes it even more plausible the outcome of her besting Kylo as he wasn't taking her seriously. This connects to the belief by some that Rey is a "Mary Sue", even though she gets captured several times throughout the movies, gets treated like a joke by Snoke and literally dies (briefly) in the films.
• After The Last Jedi made a very big deal about "nobodies" finally being able to use the Force, and The Rise of Skywalker seemingly rolled it back to those of superpowered Force-sensitive bloodlines only, and fans fighting over both approaches, it seems everyone forgot The Phantom Menace in fact established that potential Jedi are identified and taken as children from random Muggle families, and Attack of the Clones established that Jedi are in fact forbidden to have romantic relationships, and thus to marry and have children. So Force bloodlines shouldn't even really exist in general, and Anakin and his children and their descendants in the mutually exclusive old Expanded Universe and Sequel films are actually the outliers, the exception to the rule.
• The Last Jedi is often referred to as the film in which Luke tries to kill a young Ben Solo in his sleep. It would be more accurate to say he briefly considered killing him upon realizing that Snoke had already corrupted Ben and instinctually activated his lightsaber, but immediately thought better of it. The scene of Luke actually swinging his lightsaber at Ben comes from Kylo later recounting the story to Rey. Kylo has every reason to want Rey to mistrust Luke, and may honestly remember the event this way, plus he didn't see the whole event, so he made assumptions about Luke's actions. A later flashback shows what actually happened. Whether this is an Out-of-Character Moment for Luke, or a mistake to include in the film is a different question entirely.
• Everybody knows that Darth Vader has a habit of choking his underlings to death at the drop of a hat whenever they disappoint him, and that he regularly murders underlings for trivial reasons. In reality, he doesn't do this nearly as frequently as parodies often imply; in fact, he only does it twice in the entirety of the original trilogy, both in The Empire Strikes Back.^note  Three times if you count him choking Admiral Motti for insubordination before Grand Moff Tarkin convinces him to let him go in A New Hope. It’s unknown if he would have killed him had Tarkin not intervened. He also starts to choke Moff Jerjerrod in a deleted scene in Return of the Jedi when Jerjerrod denies him access to the Emperor's throne room, but relents when Jerjerrod says it was the Emperor's command. He kills Admiral Ozzel for making a tactical error during the Battle of Hoth that allows the Rebels to escape, and later kills Captain Needa for failing to capture the Millennium Falcon. And while execution is undeniably a pretty harsh punishment for a tactical error, it's strongly implied that Ozzel had a long history of making careless blunders, and Vader killed him because his patience finally ran out (Vader's line when he does the deed is specifically "You Have Failed Me for the last time"). Granted, he does do it slightly more often in Expanded Universe works, likely due to the creators playing to popular perception of the character—but that's largely the result of Flanderization. In fact, there are quite a few instances in both the films and the expanded universe where he does congratulate his subordinates when they do the job correctly.
• On a related note, while Vader does strangle Raymus Antilles at the beginning of the first film, he does so with his bare hand while giving him a Neck Lift, not using the force as people often misremember. For the record, the first person in the original trilogy he force-chokes is Admiral Motti, whereas the first person he force chokes to death is Admiral Ozzel, which doesn't happen until the second movie.
• Everybody knows that Leia's hairstyle is two woven "donuts" on the side of her head. In actuality, she only had this hairstyle in A New Hope (and for her brief cameo in Rogue One). Although she never wears this hairstyle in any of the other Star Wars movies, her original hairstyle remains so iconic that most people who aren't hardcore Star Wars fans assume that she always has it. For instance, it's common for people who dress up as Leia for Halloween to pair her hairstyle from A New Hope with the infamous gold bikini she wore in Return of the Jedi, even though her hair was styled differently in that film and outfit.
• Many people believe the Naboo celebration added in the 2004 Return of the Jedi includes Jar Jar Binks shouting "Wesa free!" But it's actually a different, unidentified Gungan voiced by Matthew Wood, not Jar Jar's actor Ahmed Best.
• Some people tend to misunderstand what "The Battle of Crait" is about in The Last Jedi, this misunderstanding seems to stem from the idea that its a remake from "The Battle of Hoth" in The Empire Strikes Back, when actually they are quite different. While both feature the bad guys invading a Rebel Base with AT-AT's, that's their only similarity. In "Empire", the Rebels have a fighting chance and use the snowspeeders to delay the AT-AT's and give enough time for the Rebels to escape. While in "Last Jedi", the Resistance has nowhere else to escape, and lost a big chunk of their fighting force, with their plan being to stay inside of the Fortress until the reinforcements arrive, however, once the First Order unveils their "Death Star tech" battering ram. The Resistance has to hold them off until their allies come to help them, unfortunately They don't.
• One of the (if not the most) controversial moment in The Rise of Skywalker is Poe's "Somehow Palpatine returned" line, as some people tend to believe that this was the film's entire explanation for Palpatine's return. This isn't entirely true. Leaving Supplementary material aside, the film opens with Palpatine's Sith Lab where one can infer the Sith used Dark Magic to bring Palpatine back to life. Besides that, Poe's line isn't even an explanation on how he returned, he's explaining that the Intelligence branch of the Resistance confirms that the transmission mentioned in the Opening Crawl is indeed Papatine's voice, and not an impostor. He also is as dumbfounded as the rest of the Resistance on how Palpatine came back. It's the lines following the infamous line that are meant to be the actual explanation.
  Poe: We've decoded the intel from the First Order spy and it confirms the worst. Somehow, Palpatine returned.
  Rose: Wait, do we believe this?
  Colonel Aftab Ackbar: It cannot be. The Emperor is dead.
  Beaumont Kin: Dark science. Cloning. Secrets only the Sith knew.
• People often claim at the end of The Rise of Skywalker that Palpatine stupidly kills himself by shooting lightning at Rey even though she's deflecting it at him. If you watch carefully, he actually stops shooting lightning once it starts getting deflected at him, but has already suffered a fatal "dose" of lightning by this point and so it disintegrates him.
• Detractors of Star Wars Legends often cite Skippy the Jedi Droid, in which the droid that Luke originally bought before getting R2 turned out to be force-sensitive and intentionally sabotaged itself because it knew that R2 had a purpose, as an example of how ridiculous the old EU was, especially in regards to how it gave complex backstories to every minor character and made every other character force sensitive. However, even in the context of Legends, that story was always a non-canon joke comic and never actually part of the EU.
• Many fans (some jokingly, some seriously) paint Padmé Amidala as a pedophile due to the Age-Gap Romance between her and Anakin Skywalker, who was just a child when they met in The Phantom Menace. For one thing: they're only five years apart in age (he was 9 years old when they met, and she was 14). For another thing: he had a Precocious Crush on her as a child, but she only viewed him as a friend at the time. And lastly: they didn't actually start dating until Anakin was 19, making him a legal adult. This largely owes to their ages only being given in supplementary material, and Natalie Portman having been in her late teens and quite mature-looking when The Phantom Menace was filmed, making Padmé look older than she was supposed to be. When combined with her makeup and extravagant outfits making her look even older, and with her status as an elected monarch and head of state (being referred to as "Queen" most of the time), it's pretty easy for a casual viewer to assume that Padme is at the very least college-aged in The Phantom Menace. What's even funnier is that each of the trilogies have a romance with a considerable age gap: Han is 32 while Leia is 19 ^note  Though they start dating when Leia is 22 , with Rey and Kylo having a similar age gap.
• The infamous Star Wars Holiday Special is often incorrectly described as a Christmas Special. In fact, it aired the week before Thanksgiving.
• Many fans point out how Obi-Wan shouldn't know Anakin Skywalker's Sith title in A New Hope. These people weren't paying attention to Revenge of the Sith, where the security hologram Obi-Wan watched features Darth Sidious addressing Anakin as Lord Vader and Yoda says right after "The boy you trained, gone he is. Consumed by Darth Vader". In Obi-Wan Kenobi, when the Third Sister informs Obi-Wan that Lord Vader has been looking for him, Obi-Wan starts panicking even before Reva outright says that "Anakin Skywalker is alive", so he knows Darth Vader is Anakin.
• Some detractors of The Phantom Menace criticize Qui-Gon Jinn for not attempting to free Shmi Skywalker along with Anakin (his line to Shmi "I didn't come here to free slaves" doesn't help his case). Except he does try to free her: he tries to make a side bet with Watto wagering Anakin's pod against his and his mother's freedom if Anakin wins the podrace—but Watto insists that no pod is worth two slaves, and rolls a "chance cube" to decide whether to wager Anakin or Shmi, leading Qui-Gon to use the Force to manipulate the cube in Anakin's favor. After Anakin wins the race, Qui-Gon addresses this explicitly: "I tried to free your mother, Ani, but Watto wouldn't have it." Sure, he could have forced Watto to give Shmi up if he really wanted to, but doing so would have almost certainly caused unnecessary conflict too great for him to handle alone, particularly since the Republic has little influence on Tatooine. Qui-Gon probably could have done more to free Shmi, but to say that he didn't try to free her at all is false.
• The Star Wars films are often blamed for codifying the Planetville trope (where "planets" are functionally only about as big as countries or cities), but they actually don't indulge in the trope as egregiously as many people seem to think. As far back as the original film, the franchise has been pretty consistent about referring to specific towns and cities on individual planets, making it clear that those towns and cities aren't meant to be the whole planet. The original film name-drops the towns of Anchorhead and Mos Eisley on Tatooine, all of the action on Bespin in The Empire Strikes Back explicitly takes place in the orbital city of Cloud City (which is the only city on an otherwise uninhabitable gas giant), The Phantom Menace features the cities of Theed and Otoh Gunga on Naboo, and Attack of the Clones features the city of Tipoca City on Kamino (although it's only named in the supplementary materials).
• Some fans claim that, if Anakin had never been trained by the Jedi and fallen to the Dark Side, none of the conflicts in the saga (the Clone Wars, the destruction of the Jedi, and the rise of the Empire) would have happened. However, this ignores the fact Palpatine was already pulling a Xanatos Gambit to become Chancellor around the time Anakin was discovered and non-movie works show that the Clone Wars were already in preparation before Palpatine even became Chancellor. The most that Anakin does for the rise of the Empire is to inform the Jedi that Palpatine is a Sith (with many Jedi already considering overthrowing him if he continues to amass power) and then lead the attack on the Jedi Temple (where he seems to mostly focus on younglings while clones kill most of the already trained Jedi). So for all the horrible things he did as Vader, claiming that the Jedi or the Republic wouldn’t have fallen without Anakin is incorrect.
• A frequent complaint about Ochi's dagger in The Rise of Skywalker is that it is "ancient" yet the shape matches the only 30 year old Death Star wreckage. The dagger itself is never stated anywhere to be ancient, only that it has markings written in the ancient Sith language. Similarly, some people make fun at the idea that when Rey holds the dagger, she feels that "terrible things have been done with this dagger", while holding on the other hand the lightsaber that Anakin infamously used to kill younglings in Revenge of the Sith. Even though when she first touched Anakin's lightsaber in The Force Awakens, she does feel the events that the lightsaber lived through, mainly the duel between Luke and Vader in The Empire Strikes Back. Not to mention, that particular dagger was used to kill her parents which explains Rey's more personal connection and more emotional reaction.
• One of the more minor nitpicks about the Sequel Trilogy is that Finn and Rey exclusively use the button on the small cylinder jutting out below and perpendicular to the blade emitter, rather than the "activation matrix" on the large box sticking out of the central to the hilt (a feature shared with many other lightsabers, including Obi-Wan's, Yoda's, and Darth Vader's) — see here . Even barring the fact that placing a the button where the user can keep their grip closer to the blade would offer far more control over their swing, Anakin's lightsaber has often been depicted with the cylinder being an alternate button in the pre-Disney era, particularly◊ in The Clone Wars.
• Many people believe that the Jedi are forbidden to engage in romance and sex. While it is true that Jedi are forbidden to enter romantic relationships (since they believe that such relationships can tempt a Jedi to turn to the Dark Side), George Lucas has stated that Jedi are allowed to have casual sex if they wish.
• There is a persistent belief among fans that Lucas broke a Director's Guild of America rule by not including opening credits for any of the films (believing that they would disrupt the excitement of the openings), sometimes including the fanciful detail that Lucas was the first director of note to forego the orthodoxy of having opening credits in his film. The common story is that the DGA required that all movies include an opening credits sequence, but that they did not consider Lucas big enough to bother going after for breaking the rule, as Star Wars was not expected to be anything more than an unremarkable B-movie, so they let it slide... until a then-much-more-famous Lucas did it again in The Empire Strikes Back, whereupon the DGA fined him $250,000, leading to him ultimately leaving the DGA altogether. In reality, there is no DGA rule requiring opening credits in a movie and there never has been; Lucas did not break any rules by not including opening credits in A New Hope, and numerous other movies have - and had - foregone them as well without controversy (Citizen Kane and West Side Story (1961) are two of the more well known examples). However, the DGA did have a rule that stipulated that any film that included a credit in the film's opening (including a recognizable part of a name) had to also credit the director in the same sequence. Unfortunately for Lucas, he included a splash card after the 20th Century Fox logo for each movie that included the phrase, "A Lucasfilm Limited Production". Since "Lucasfilm" contained Lucas's name, that would trigger the DGA rule. It didn't apply to A New Hope, since Lucas was the director, but in Empire, Lucas opted to hand the director's chair over to Irvin Kershner, resulting in the mandatory credit rule coming into effect. Since Kershner wasn't credited and hadn't officially waived his right to be credited, Lucas got hit with the fine, resulting in him resigning the DGA out of annoyance at the ruling.
• A lot of people seem to think that Watto’s accent is “Israeli” or “Yiddish”. While it is true that Watto does have many traits that resemble Jewish stereotypes, his accent is not one of them. Watto’s voice actor has confirmed that his accent is supposed to be Italian, and if one was to actually listen closely to his accent, they’d find that to be the case (“Mind tricks don’t-a work on-a me!”).

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