If you believe in the God of the Bible, why try to prove it logically?

[Cyberman]

I must say, it's nice to see Drich debating a different piece of fiction for once.

The one in which Luke blew up the Death Star and killed tens of thousands of people after listening to the voice in his head? Not all that much different, really.

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Plus I don't think Lucas was all that much of a genius. Sure, the original trilogy was fun with some fascinating story strands and which would stand today as classic cinema if only he'd quit dicking around with it. However, consider this:

Princess Leia obtains the Death Star blueprints, beamed specially to her ship, and spends the first two acts of the original film actively resisting the Empire's attempts to recover them, not to mention protecting the Rebel base location. She hides the plans inside R2D2 with orders to locate Kenobi and get them delivered to her father on Alderaan. She even allows herself to be captured in order to divert attention from the droids and she is willing to die to protect the information, even gambling her home planet. She is a true leader and hero of the Rebels (I'm not even going to mention that the Empire pretty much forget about the stolen plans immediately after capturing her.)

While this is going on, Kenobi et al have found the remains of Alderaan and are captured by the Empire. They don't even know that Leia's aboard the station at this point; their focus is on freeing the Falcon and escaping. Rescuing Leia is just a bonus.

Okay, so they've escaped - and this is where the whole story goes down the pan. Vader and Tarkin have planted a homing device on the ship and allow it to escape. Now this is the important bit: Leia is fully aware of this. I can't stress that enough. She's realised their escape was too easy and therefore the Empire must be tracking them. So what would you do in that situation? Ditch the Falcon in deep space somewhere and hitch a ride on a ship without a tracking device on it? Look for the device on the Falcon and dump it out of an airlock? How about beaming the vital plans to another ship and then leading the Death Star on a merry wild goose chase across the galaxy? If you said yes to any of those options, congratulations - you're smarter than anyone aboard the Millennium Falcon, who go for the common sense route and proceed to lead the Death Star straight to the Rebel base. A base, remember, for which the Empire has literally no clue of the location. Bear in mind as well that none of the Rebels have even seen the stolen plans, so have no idea of their contents. Still, no worries; thanks to their brave and noble Princess, their one and only hope, they've now got a few hours at most to look for a weakness they might be able to exploit - that is, if there even is one ("I only hope that when the data is analysed, a weakness can be found.")

This complete dropping of the ball in the third act is especially mystifying, because right up until then, all the characters (and particularly Princess Leia) had done exactly the right things. Such totally out of character behaviour, that throws the first three quarters of the story so wildly off track, positively reeks of third-act desperation.

Nice one, George. No wonder you left the writing and direction to someone else for the sequels.