7 Movie Plots That Could Have Been Resolved In Five Minutes
4. Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope
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.