42 Questions From a Star Wars Newbie

Some thoughts from watching the nine movies for the first time.

Photo by Ben Lei on Unsplash

A couple of years ago, I watched the Star Wars movies for the first time. I had watched the original trilogy as a kid but really had no recollection of them, so now that all nine were out I decided to go through them all, as a fun project.

It was December 2019 and I spent the whole Christmas that year home alone, watching movies 1–8. (I might not have done it had I known I was going to spend the entire following year home alone, but at that moment I needed the space.) On Christmas Eve, I went to a movie theater to finish with 9.

And I’m not going to lie, I had some questions. I typed them into my Notes app and forgot all about it. As it happens, I just found the note, so now you get to enjoy them.

So here they are, edited a bit for clarity. If you want to provide explanations for a Star Wars newbie or tell me I’ve been sacrilegious with your heroes, please do so in the comments.

A Couple of Things

The order I picked to watch the movies was beginning with the original trilogy, then moving on to the prequels and then the sequels: episodes 4–6, 1–3, 7–9. You might notice this order in my observations.

There are fewer observations about the last three movies, mainly because they’re a little more coherent and also because the major worldbuilding questions already come up in the first ones.

Some of these questions might be explained later on, but I didn’t catch them. Others, like the one about stormtroopers, I know I’m not the first one to ask. But it’s weird.

So here goes.

1. If stormtroopers are so bad at shooting and die so easily, they never seem to be useful to their cause at all. After watching all movies: Why do they still make them, decades later? Wasn’t there a way to make them better, considering the Empire was able to rebuild the Death Star?
2. What is under the uniform? (Okay, explained in the sequels. They’re people, too.)
3. How are there humans on Tatooine? How can they live on a planet that’s completely deserted? What do they eat and drink? Or are they even really…