janelane wrote:
] Did anyone else notice the disconnect about how Padme dies in
] childbirth but yet Leia in later Episodes remembers her mother
] being "beautiful, but sad"?

Yup! I had someone try to explain that away for me by saying that Leia has magical force powers and so she can recall her birth. Others seem to think the Leia thought her step mother was her real mother...

Another one is when Yoda is expressing doubts about Luke, OB-1 argues that Luke is the last hope for the future. Yoda says there is another, and OB-1 seems suprised by this, although he was present at Luke's birth and knows there is a twin sister!

The best comment I've read recently about all of this is here:

Even a crank scientist knows that at some point a theory must be subjected to experimental confirmation or falsification. Without that, the theory remains no more than a fanciful notion, and clearly Star Wars is more than a fanciful notion. I was pleased, then, that my friend David Whitney (a talented Boston-area architect and a pillar of his community) decided to subject his older son, a youngster named Charlie, to an experiment that might conclusively prove, in a way that my theorizing never could, whether the whole Star Wars saga logically holds together.

It is well known that children pay far more attention to the details of these stories than adults do (due to advancing age even a nerd like me has trouble following who’s shooting at what in the midst of Star Wars: Episode II—Attack of the Clones). Still, even an alert child might well become confused watching Lucas’s films in the order of their release, due to the chronological hijinks inherent in having Episodes IV–VI come out two decades before Episodes I–III. Ah! but here was the genius in Dave’s proposed Fiendish Star Wars Experiment: he would show the films to Charlie in numerical order (and thus fictional-chronological order) rather than in the order that they were released. Charlie would meet Vader as a child before the character becomes an evil adult.

It would not be easy keeping an energetic youngster from clamoring to see the 1970s and 1980s films while waiting for the prequel trilogy to be completed in May 2005 with the release of Episode III. The impatient child might at times suffer, but Dave had a mission, and though he was primarily concerned with the happiness of his son, wanting to give Charlie a coherent entertainment experience without giving away later developments in the Star Wars saga (such as, pivotally, the revelation that Vader is the father of Luke and Leia), I had an ulterior motive for egging Dave on. Getting the child to watch the series with fresh eyes from Episode I through VI in order, in a way that we Generation Xers never can, would enable us to watch the child for signs of confusion: the child might spot contradictions that our chronology-skewed brains never would. Other obvious research questions suggest themselves: When would Charlie first notice that Senator Palpatine is a bad man who wants to become Emperor, for example? When would he first have doubts about Anakin? Would Charlie be saddened that in Episode IV Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru don’t remember their old friends C-3PO and R2-D2? (Note: I do not have children of my own and do not intend to have any, so it is only natural that I experiment on children from other families.)

Tragically, the entire investigation—upon which so much theorizing rested—was cut short when Charlie’s mother, Sharon, in a misguided attempt to please the child, rented Return of the Jedi (which is Episode VI, not even Episode IV or V!) before Episode III came out in theatres. How much psychological damage the child will suffer from this chronological whipsaw has yet to be determined, but one conclusion is unavoidable: due to contamination by girl, the experiment is now invalidated and must be abandoned.

RE: Star Wars: Databank | Chewbacca