JWeinCom said:
I'm not interested in going back and forth on every point, so I'm just going to focus on this one, since it seems to best exemplify my disagreement with you. Unless I missed something blatant in the movie, this is just speculation, at which point, yes, it does become a plothole. When a certain established character or power somehow gains the ability to do something which they were unable to do before without a stated or easily inferred explanation as to why, it becomes a plothole." Luke gaining a new ability doesn't violate any rules. It's a logical extension of the rules. We have seen by this point three characters doing something incredibly similar to this, two of them were involved in training Luke, and at least two out of the three people have communed with Luke after his death. It isn't a plot hole any more than Luke suddenly being able to summon his light saber, Obi Wan being able to appear as a ghost, the Emperor busting out force lightning, Darth Vader using force choke for the first time, or any other instance of them showing off a new ability. We have a good sense of what the force can do, and if a character is doing something that is within this realm, we don't need a detailed explanation as to why. |
I want to focus on the bolded, because that is exactly the issue that I'm honing in on. You're right that, in most of these cases, there's no in-universe rule that's specifically violated. But I would content that, given what we know about the universe, these things should not be the case: They do not make sense considering what has been established in this universe previously.
Luke gaining a new ability is not a problem in and of itself. Where it becomes a problem is the "how" of this power being obtained. We have never seen any Jedi, or anyone to my knowledge, possess the ability to project a holographic image of themselves across the galaxy. So where did Luke learn how to do this? Did he just stumble upon it himself, and if so, why did it take some guy living like a homeless person on an abandoned rock to figure this out? The issue that makes it a plothole is the context of the universe that the movie (TLJ) operates within; given what we know about the Jedi in the past, it makes little sense that someone who swore off the Jedi would be the one to discover a technique over the thousands, if not millions, of Jedi that came before who had access to far better training.
The example of Obi-Wan turning into a ghost is actually quite useful in illustrating my point. When the force ghost concept was originally introduced in Episode V, it was not a plothole, because there was no context in previous Star Wars history to suggest that Jedi could not reanimate as a specter upon death. However, if the prequels had gone by and the entire concept of force ghosting was never shown or addressed, it would have become a plothole retroactively. We would have known that force users do not usually have this power, and yet both Obi-Wan and Yoda somehow gained an ability that no one else had previously. The discussion between Obi-Wan and Yoda at the end of Episode 3 prevents this from becoming a plothole, however, by explaining where the power came from, and in turn explaining why no other Jedi previously had access to it.
You're right that a movie doesn't have to explain "everything in detail," in that every single detail doesn't have to be elaborated on. But, when it comes to significant aspects of the story that don't seem to line up with previously established rules, those do have to be explained. Again, this all ties back to the concept of a plothole by absence of information that I discussed last time, that at least one group of professional storywriters considers to constitute a plothole.
