Amidst the hubbub of each episodic instalment of the Star Wars saga, a single film slipped in to effectively be “Episode 3.5”. This film was Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and it was the first time a tale had been told in the Star Wars Universe that didn’t directly involve Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia, or any of the main characters whose lives had, up to that point, formed the basis for visiting a galaxy far, far away.

Rogue One follows the story of Jyn Erso, the daughter of the man responsible for building the Death Star, and her efforts to steal the plans that will reveal its fatal flaw. The Rebel Alliance uses these same plans in A New Hope when Luke eventually flies his X-Wing into one of the Death Star’s trenches, firing a direct hit into its reactor core vent. Discovering the perilous events leading up to that iconic moment is where the appeal of the film lies. As much as Rogue One captures all the thematic elements that make a Star Wars movie so classic, it also has components that just don’t make sense. Star Wars movies have become somewhat notorious for having gaping plot holes, and Rogue One is no exception.

20 IT TOOK 20 YEARS TO MAKE THE DEATH STAR

Prior to the timeline where Rogue One is situated (between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope), planning began for the dreaded Death Star as early as Attack of the Clones, where we see Poggle the Lesser looking at a holographic projection of it in miniature. Fun fact: the Geonosians were contracted to not only build the Droid Army for the Separatist movement that resulted in the Clone Wars, they were also the engineers behind the Death Star. Eventually, they are unable to figure out how exactly to create and use the giant laser cannon (kind of the whole point of the thing), and so are replaced by human engineers (enter Galen Erso).

Attack of the Clones is roughly 20 years before A New Hope. At the conclusion of Revenge of the Sith, when Obi-Wan Kenobi has reduced Anakin to a torso, the Emperor manages to reach him in time to preserve what’s left of his human body and use machine parts to fill in the gaps. After he is reconstructed as Darth Vader, we see him aboard his Star Destroyer, along with Grand Moff Tarkin, watching the Death Star be constructed... for the next 20 years! The next time we see it is in Rogue One, which takes place just months before the events of A New Hope. Considering it only takes a few months for them to construct a second Death Star between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, this makes no sense.

19 KRENNIC DOESN’T KNOW JYN IS A GIRL

Orson Krennic was the Director of Advanced Weapons Research, a division of the Imperial military. He was the commander of the Death Star up until the Galactic Civil War. He was once a lieutenant commander in the Republic Army, but after the Empire was formed, he rose to the rank of Admiral in the Imperial Navy. He was a friend to Galen Erso, a crystallographer who he persuaded to start researching the properties of kyber crystals in the name of “sustainability”. A pacifist, he had spent his time traveling the galaxy looking for rare crystals, and was somewhat of an authority on kyber crystals. Galen had no idea he was designing the power behind the Empire’s superweapon.

When Galen Erso deserted the Empire, he took his wife and young daughter Jyn to hide out on the the backwater world of Vallt in the Outer Rim. Posing as moisture farmers, he thought they would go undetected. Krennic eventually finds them, and despite having known Galen’s family for some time, acts as though this is the first time he is learning Galen had a child. He tells his death squad “He has a child. Find it!” with no actual description of “it”, like he read the information on Galen’s file on a dossier on the shuttle over.

18 LYRA’S DEATH

When the Empire learns of Galen Erso’s whereabouts, they dispatch Director Krennic to get him back. Galen fled employment with the Empire ever since learning his research into kyber crystals was going to lead to powering a superweapon. Though he picked a planet in the Outer Rim to hide on, he must have known that eventually, the Empire would catch up with him. And that they would send the man responsible for surveying his research to retrieve him, with orders to threaten Galen’s family if he didn’t cooperate and return to finish his research.

Galen and his wife Lyra have planned for this day -- if by “plan” you mean agree to hastily shove some supplies into a pack and head for the hills. He has a contact in the Rebel Alliance, a newly formed resistance group that targets the Empire, named Saw Gerrera. Galen’s plan is to contact Saw, who will help get him and his family to safety. Galen ends up having to stall Krennic while Lyra and their daughter Jyn escape. He even tells him Lyra was killed. But there she is, abandoning the carefully orchestrated plan to pop up from the grass and try to take out Krennic. She’s shot, of course, Galen is taken, and Jyn is left to her own devices. It was completely unnecessary, and only made things harder for all involved.

17 SAW GERRERA IS SURPRISED BY GALEN’S TRANSMISSION

Galen Erso entrusted Saw Gerrera, a known political extremist, to take care of his family should anything happen to him. When Director Krennic comes to Galen’s remote farm house on Vallt to force him to return to his research for the Death Star, Galen’s Jyn ends up fleeing into the hills to the point of rendezvous with Saw. With her mother dead and her father now in the hands of the Empire, Saw is all she has in the world.

When Jyn meets Saw again, it’s as an emissary from the Rebel Alliance, a political group of freedom fighters that have decided to take on the Empire. Saw was once a Rebel himself, but his ideas were too extreme for their purposes, and he and his allies made Jedha their base of operations as a solo unit. When Jyn appeals to him to rejoin the Alliance, she gives him a transmission from her father, who outlines the dangers of the Death Star. Saw acts like this is the first time he’s hearing about any of this, and yet if he was such a good friend to Galen (who he entrusted with his family), is the message really that surprising? You would think Galen would have explained to Saw aspects of his research, and impressed upon him why it was so important for him and his family to hide.

16 SAW GERRERA’S DEATH

When the Empire eventually finds out about where Saw Gerrera and his splinter faction are, they decide to hit two birds with one stone. They have been steadily extracting kyber crystals from the planet of Jedha, once the home to many great Jedi Temples. When they have what they need, they decide to test the might of the Death Star’s laser cannon on Jedha. They can display the might of the Death Star by testing its abilities, as well as wipe out a thorn in their side like Saw Gerrera and his crew.

While this is happening, Jyn, and her allies in the Rebel Alliance have a chance to escape to their ship. Many of Saw Gerrera’s crew escapes the headquarters before the blast. There’s literally no reason that he can’t escape as well. Jyn wants to save him, but he tells her she should only save herself, and turns to face the blast like one bad dude. The moment ostensibly exists to prove a point about the sacrifices necessary in order to gain freedom from tyranny, and to show that Saw adheres to his principles right up to the end. But this was a man with valuable information about Imperial battle tactics, and the fact that he’d kept himself in one piece (mostly) is a testament to his skill facing them. His death was a waste, and the point the scene made was made later at the end of the film anyway.

15 THE REBEL ALLIANCE WANTING TO KILL GALEN ERSO

Galen Erso was never one to side with any political faction or government -- he was a scientist and a pacifist. He specifically stayed neutral during the Clone Wars, agreeing with neither the Galactic Republic nor the Separatist Movement in terms of conflict, preferring to keep his attention focused on crystallography and energy enrichment. When his colleague Orson Krennic wanted his assistance in researching kyber crystals, he didn’t know they would be weaponized. At that time, Krennic was a lieutenant commander in the Grand Army of the Republic. He would go on to be the Director of Advanced Weapon Research for the Empire.

When Galen discovered his role in helping to construct the Empire’s superweapon, the Death Star, he wanted no further part in it. He took his wife and daughter and fled to Vallt to hide out. Later, when the Empire found him and forced him to continue his work, he was determined to find a fatal flaw in the Death Star. When he sends a transmission to his daughter explaining as much, she informs members of the Rebel Alliance who decide that it’s in the best interest of everyone... to kill him. This isn’t substantiated by much other than the fact that they think he could be lying because he works for the enemy now. In any case, his assassination seems out of character for the Alliance, especially since they called Saw Gerrera and his tactics “too extreme”.

14 ROGUE ONE GETTING AWAY SO EASILY

When Jyn Erso finds herself among the company of seasoned Rebel Alliance officers and their veteran crews of freedom fighters, few of them want to give her a chance when it comes to matters of war. For all they care, her father is a traitor and in cahoots with the enemy. When she delivers a somewhat rousing speech about commitment and loyalty to the cause, they’re still not really on her side, but a few “rogue” individuals get her message. She’s willing to risk everything based on a grainy transmission from her father, even if it happens to be a trap.

Jyn, the Imperial deserter Bodhi, even the skeptic Rebel pilot Cassian are on board to accompany Jyn to Scarif, where the plans to the Death Star are kept. One minute they’re in the hanger bay on Yavin 4, being told that under no uncertain terms are they to leave on their mission because it’s too dangerous and the likelihood of success too small. The next thing we know, they’re all about to grab a ship and take off. They even get stuck over the comm with the equivalent of the air traffic controller telling them they’re not allowed to leave. They basically say “We’re Rogue One, losers, and we out!” before blasting off and absolutely no one going after them.

13 VADER LETS THE TANTIVE IV GO

After Jyn and Cassian successfully infiltrate the Imperial data base on Scarif, the Empire has to swiftly rethink its tactics. Jyn and Cassian had to properly align Scarif’s ginormous satellite dish so that it could beam the Death Star plans to a waiting Alliance cruiser orbiting the planet. The plans could have been beamed to any ship in the Rebel fleet. It so happens they were beamed to one of the Rebellion’s only battle cruiser’s, captained by the Mon Calamari Admiral Raddus.

The Tantive IV, aka the ship carrying Princess Leia of Alderaan, is refueling on the Raddus. As soon as the Death Star plans have successfully downloaded onto a disk (that bizarrely resembles a micro floppy), it’s passed off in a baton race of Rebel troops, as they one by one hand it off at a series of checkpoints. Why? Because they’re being chased by the indefatigable manifestation of pure evil that is Darth Vader. Wielding his lightsaber in a sizzling red pinwheel of death, he’s about to mow them down like so much space grass. He doesn’t manage to get the plans, thanks to the heroic efforts of a trooper that passes the disk to a crewman of the Tantive IV right before it takes off (and his hand gets cut off). Vader just watches from an open air lock while the ship slowly... drifts... away.

12 JYN TRIES TO PASS AS AN IMPERIAL 

When Jyn and her band of misfits land on Scarif, they pull a classic Star Wars stunt to infiltrate the data base. Like Luke Skywalker and Han Solo in A New Hope, they adopt the disguise of the enemy and sneak in undetected. Unlike Luke and Han (who were wearing helmets and posing as stormtroopers), Cassian poses as an officer and Jyn, who has a helmet, removes it after a few seconds. This is problematic and asinine for two reasons.

First, why bother to wear a helmet at all if you’re just going to take it off a few seconds later? The audience hasn’t had time to forget who’s under the helmet in the brief seconds that there’s been a scene change or a screen wipe. Second, this isn’t the Rebel Alliance! There are no women in the Imperial ranks! The Empire had a strict, extremely sexist (and also xenophobic) view on recruitment, and they universally selected white human males (the First Order would later change this policy by the time of The Force Awakens). This means that anyone seeing a woman in Imperial livery would automatically make her for an intruder. Literally wouldn’t have been able to blend in precisely because she was female, so she should have kept the helmet on.

11 BODHI IS SUPPOSED TO LOSE HIS MIND

When the Imperial pilot deserter Bodhi is brought before Saw Gerrera, he is not only believed to be a spy, he’s also given no chance to plead his case. He went out into the wild dunes of Jedha in search of Gerrera and his band of merry men in order to turn himself in, and offer whatever resources he could against the Empire. Sounds like a pretty good guy to have on the team, right? Saw Gerrera thinks otherwise and decides to let his bor gullet, a gelatinous pet/torture device, suck out his brains.

Alright, so it doesn’t suck out his brains, but it’s mind-probing abilities are supposed to make a person go insane. The bor gullet attaches itself to Bodhi for a while, and when he finally gets placed into holding cells beside Jyn, Cassian, and company, he appears to be a human potato. He’s mostly vegetative, with a few moments of rambling nonsense to the open air. When the Empire decides to nuke Jedhat o test out the Death Star’s laser cannon, Bodhi is shockingly cognizant. He’s even able to flee with everyone else, and by the time their ship is blasting into outer space, he’s spilling his guts on his history with the Imperial Navy like his brains didn’t just get turned into a smoothie by a giant bowl of jello with tentacles.

10 KRENNIC’S UNIFORM

The first time we see Director Krennic, he immediately stands out for two reasons: he’s the villain of this Star Wars film, and he’s wearing a white uniform. He’s the only Imperial officer to sport one on-screen. Since officer’s uniforms (and their color) are typically used to denote rank, it seems odd that he has a uniform that’s completely different in color to say, the one worn by Grand Moff Tarkin (who outranks him). Tarkin wears the same olive drab uniform as he did in A New Hope, which is the same uniform color worn by every other high ranking Imperial officer.

One plausible explanation is that Orson Krennic is the Director of Advanced Weapons Research within the Empire, and is personally overseeing the Death Star -- it’s his baby. So perhaps he would stand out in that sense, and therefore get a special uniform outside of the typical Imperial Navy. Then there’s the matter of the cape. Not only does his uniform make him extra conspicuous, he also has a grand, flowing cape attached to it. Much like Captain Phasma in The Force Awakens, his character is made to stand out from the “ordinary” members of the Empire in some way, and yet his character does nothing particularly significant to deserve the spiffy costume. Why draw attention to a member of middle management who never features prominently in the Star Wars Universe ever again?

9 GALEN BEING CRYPTIC ABOUT HOW TO BLOW UP THE DEATH STAR

Galen Erso wasn’t always known as the engineer that helped design the power supply for the Death Star. He was a crystallographer, with a special interest in energy enrichment, as well as a pacifist. Had he lived on Earth, he’d have been a big fan of “going green”. When his colleague Orson Krennic (who would one day become the Director of Advanced Weapons Research for the Empire) came to him for research about kyber crystals, he never expected his knowledge to be used for the Death Star construction.

When Galen eventually deserted the Empire and fled with his family to the remote planet of Vallt, he couldn’t stay hidden for long. Krennic tracked him down, and forced him to return to his research or his family would be killed. He was able to get a transmission some years later to his daughter Jyn who managed to escape Krennic’s death troopers, in which he told of a weakness in the Death Star design that could be exploited. He was not specific about this flaw, which meant Jyn would have to track him down for him to be able to explain it. He could have simply said, “fire a torpedo down the vent for the reactor core and it will explode”, but then we would have no movie.

8 VADER WATCHING THE DEATH STAR PLANS GET HANDED OFF 

Darth Vader mowing through Rebel scum is one of the last (and greatest) scenes in Rogue One. He’s methodically killing Rebel troops because one of them has the Death Star plans physically in their possession. A crew member of the Rebel cruiser is able to hand it off to a crewman of the Tantive IV (Princess Leia’s ship), just as it’s pulling out of the docking bay. Vader watches as the Tantive IV slowly lurches away, mentally shaking his fist in anger and cursing his luck.

Flash forward to A New Hope, which takes place moments after this, in which the Tantive IV is caught in the tractor beam of Vader’s Star Destroyer. Princess Leia has hidden the Death Star plans in the astromech droid R2-D2, who has hidden himself away in an escape pod and jettisoned down to the planet of Tatooine. When Leia is brought before Vader, he asks her about the plans. She predictably lies to his face about their whereabouts. He remarks that the plans were beamed to the ship... when he literally just made a Rebel trooper mince meat pie trying to grab them. This creates a continuity error, which originated with Leia’s ship being anywhere near Scarif in the first place.

7 SAW GERRERA ABANDONING JYN AT 16

When Galen Erso needed to entrust the livelihood of his child to someone, he called on Saw Gerrera. An Onderonian freedom fighter, Saw was part of the Onderon Rebels, who fought against the Confederacy of Independent Systems and the Separatist movement. Though they were successful in achieving independence for Onderon, it would be short-lived, as soon after the Clone Wars were over the Empire rose to power. He joined the Rebel Alliance hoping to restore the Galactic Republic, and his tactics against the Empire were extreme and aggressive.

Though Galen Erso was a pacifist, he nevertheless valued the fighting spirit of men like Saw Gerrera, because they fought for justice and opposed tyranny. When Galen was forced back into servitude to the Empire and his wife Lyra was killed, Saw raised his daughter Jyn from a young girl into her late teens. However, at 16, Jyn claims she was suddenly abandoned by Saw, but doesn’t go into why. When she is reunited with her old ward, no new light is shed on the subject. A man like Saw wouldn’t shy away from any heat placed on him for having the daughter of Galen Erso around. We can only guess he didn’t want her getting involved in his even more extreme strategies.

6 SAW GERRERA AND HIS GROUP BEING SEEN AS EXTREMIST

Saw Gerrera and his Onderon Rebels were one of the founding factions that started the Rebel Alliance. In order to have a Rebellion, you need guerilla fighters on the ground willing to do the dirty work that needs to be done. Bureaucrats in floating robes like Mon Mothma and Bail Organa didn’t see eye to eye with Saw’s methods, finding them too extreme and aggressive for their liking.

High ranking members of the Alliance explain to Jyn Erso that they had to part ways with Saw for the benefit of the Rebellion. In reality, Saw ran off to Jedha to build his headquarters and continue to launch aggressive terrorist attacks on the Empire. The Alliance wanted to use Jyn as a bargaining chip to get Saw back in the fold, and tell them the location of Galen Erso, the engineer responsible for powering the Death Star. The fact that Saw is seen as an extremist isn’t well fleshed out. From the series Rebels, we are vaguely familiar with his choice to use civilians as collateral, and it’s hinted he has no qualms about torturing captured Imperial agents, but these aren’t stressed nearly enough in the film. For being the OG Rebel that he is, and his actions during and after the Clone Wars building the foundation of the Alliance, a history of their relationship should have been thoroughly examined.

5 KRENNIC KILLING THE ENGINEERS AFTER GALEN CONFESSES

 

When news of an Imperial defector with information about the Death Star reaches Director Krennic, it casts a black shroud over his achievements involving the superweapon. An Imperial cargo pilot, who had seen the kyber crystals being carried to the construction site and could corroborate Galen Erso’s knowledge of the planet killer, had originally been stationed on Eadu. This Imperial research and development facility was where Erso was shanghaied into continuing his research to power the superweapon, and he had come to trust the pilot with certain information.

Director Krennic goes to Eadu personally to discover how the pilot obtained his information. He suspects the leak could have come from any one of his engineers, Galen included. He has them all line up in front of a firing squad in order to make them confess, and just before he shoots them all, Galen steps forward as the culprit. Though he believes he’s spared their lives, Krennic gives the order to shoot them all anyway. Because engineers grow on trees, and he can just go form another crackerjack R and D team without any prior working knowledge of the material. A team that’s been working together for the past twelve years. Good thing for Krennic the Death Star is mostly operational.

4 THE LACK OF BOTHAN SPIES

In A New Hope, after the Rebel Alliance has successfully downloaded the Death Star schematics from R2-D2, General Nadine and Mon Mothma present them to a room full of starfighter pilots, including Luke Skywalker. The mission is outlined in detail, with several squadrons of fighters each taking turns making a run down the trench that leads to the vent to the reactor core. A single fighter needs to launch a torpedo directly into the vent, setting off a chain reaction which will ultimately blow the entire superweapon up.

There’s a line that Mon Mothma delivers very solemnly after she discusses the manner in which the plans were obtained: “Many Bothans died, to bring us this information.” It’s so specific, and yet when Rogue One premieres, there’s not a single Bothan in sight. Not even when Jyn, Cassian, and the rest of “Rogue One” go to the Imperial data facility on Scarif and risk their lives to get the Death Star plans to the Rebel fleet. It was an opportunity to actually show audiences the bravery of the Bothans and they blew it, making Mon Mothma look like a fool when she clearly didn’t need to be so specific about exactly which alien species did the most for the cause.

3 LEIA’S SHIP ORBITING SCARIF

When we first see Princess Leia’s consular ship the Tantive IV in A New Hope, it’s fleeing from a firing Star Destroyer carrying Darth Vader. Audiences of the original trilogy were plunked right down in the middle of an intergalactic conflict, with only some scrolling yellow opening credits for context. Upon her capture, Princess Leia informs Lord Vader that she’s on a “diplomatic mission to Alderaan”. Lies. She’s in fact headed to Tatooine to find the Jedi recluse Obi-Wan Kenobi, who fought alongside her father in the Clone Wars.

So what the hell is the Tantive IV doing orbiting Scarif in Rogue One? Yes, there needed to be some way for Princess Leia to get the Death Star plans (since we see her hiding them in R2-D2), but Scarif isn’t remotely near Tatooine, and the ending events of Rogue One and A New Hope occur within minutes of each other. It’s been thought that Admiral Raddus’s ship was escorting the Tantive IV on its mission to Tatooine (it’s only a consular ship after all, and wouldn’t have many defense capabilities) and that once it got news of the Battle of Scarif, it altered course to help and the Princess had to go along for the ride.

2 TARKIN BLOWING UP THE DATA FACILITY ON SCARIF

Once it’s clear that the data facility on Scarif has been compromised, Grand Moff Tarkin decides that Scarif is a liability. Mind you, this data facility houses an enormous library of Imperial secrets, including hyperspace tracking, a technology that Jyn Erso mentions in passing that would go on to appear in The Last Jedi some decades later. There are technical readouts for every class of ship in the Imperial Navy, as well as transcripts of every briefing session for every major military offensive strike the Empire has done up until that point. What would be the point of blowing it up?

Presumably the thought of the Rebels succeeding is too disgraceful for the Empire, so Tarkin decides to make the tough choice. Even if the Rebels beam the Death Star plans to the Rebel fleet, using the Death Star laser on Scarif can cover that. The stolen plans can be covered up, and damage to Imperial credibility can be maintained. But at a high cost: not only is valuable information being destroyed, but thousands of Imperial personnel as well. Tarkin seems to have no issue with the collateral damage of the men on the ground, but having to destroy the entire facility because of one band of Rebel misfits seems like it would greatly displease the Emperor.

1 VADER’S MAD LIGHTSABER SKILLS

Anyone that has seen the Star Wars prequels knows what an accomplished, if reckless, duelist Anakin Skywalker was. Anyone that has seen the original trilogy knows what a lurching, labored duelist Darth Vader was. Though Vader was plenty powerful with the Dark Side, and didn’t need to resort to the acrobatic displays of his youth, his suit of armor and the apparatus keeping him alive within it greatly hindered his movements.

In one of the final moments of Rogue One, when the Death Star plans have been beamed to the Rebel fleet and downloaded onto a disk, Vader sets about trying to retrieve it before it can reach the hands of Princess Leia. He slices and dices his way through dozens of Rebel troops as they, one by one, try to pass the disk off to someone else before getting killed. In this sequence, it’s perhaps the most terrifying Vader has ever moved. He is agile, efficient, and swift moving. It’s a far cry from his cautious duel with Obi-Wan Kenobi some time later in A New Hope where only a few moves are exchanged. Having Vader display amazing technique in this scene made the duels that came after it far less impressive.