Star Wars: 12 Stupid Decisions From The Prequels That Actively Ruin The Originals

11. Owen Isnt Anakins Brother

There's surprisingly few characters in the Original Trilogy who play a big part in the events leading up to Anakin's fall, and the one with the simplest backstory has to be Owen Lars. He's Luke's uncle and knew of Anakin's strife to the point where he'd try to shield his nephew from Obi-Wan; that's pretty much it. And yet the prequels manage to mess up both parts of that.

When he finally turns up in Attack Of The Clones, Owen is introduced as Anakin's step-brother and seems completely disinterested in the Jedi, and when Obi-Wan drops Luke off on his door-step he doesn't even have the decency to say "Hi."

The big sticker here isn't Luke calling Owen his Uncle - it's stupid that he actually isn't, but the name can be used in pretty general terms - but how the moisture farmer seems so uninterested in Anakin throughout his youthful appearances. The compassion Owen shows for Luke in A New Hope, particularly in reference to the fear of him following in his fathers footsteps, suggested he had a strong link with the future-Sith, which in the prequels amounts to little more than a very awkward dinner and an interrupted funeral. There didn't need to be whole movies spent on the relationship, just something in-keeping with how the character had been presented thus far.

Did Lucas genuinely just forget to include a brother to Anakin in The Phantom Menace and hastily throw in a lazily explained one into the sequel? It sounds too large an oversight to be true, but there's not really any other explanation for it.