7 Movie Plots That Could Have Been Resolved In Five Minutes

4. Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope

star wars a new hope r2d2 escape pod
20th Century Fox

The Plot: At the outset of the first ever Star Wars movie, R2-D2 and C-3PO - the former carrying the Death Star plans - board an escape pod and are launched down to the surface of Tatooine, away from the clutches of Darth Vader.

From here, they encounter Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi, head to Mos Eisley, and eventually meet up with the Rebels, who use the Death Star plans to exploit a weakness in its exhaust port. Boom!

How It Could've Been Resolved Quickly: From the bad guys' perspective, the story of A New Hope could've been neatly wrapped up within the first few minutes of the movie, and they could have easily prevented the eventual destruction of the Death Star.

While R2 and 3PO are flying through space in the escape pod, they're actually spotted by a couple of Empire officers. "So blow up the pod!" you might think. Death Star plans destroyed, problem solved!

Well, scratch that, because these officers chose to do nothing, all because the pod didn't contain any life forms and they assumed it had short-circuited. But shouldn't they be on high alert? They know the Rebels have the plans, and oh look, there's an escape pod fleeing the scene! If there's even the slimmest possibility that the pod contains the plans, it has to be blown up.

Sure, they may have wanted to save energy or something, but that doesn't make any sense considering we see plenty of trigger-happy ships throughout the entire franchise. Just one tiny laser blast would have changed the course of the entire saga.

Contributor
Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!