Corrected entry: Just before Lord Vader appears the first time (on the boarded consular ship, through the breached door), there is a Stormtrooper checking another trooper apparently dead on the floor (he's lifting the dead one's head). Then Vader enters, and the Stormtrooper quickly straightens up, dropping the head. It turns out the "dead" Stormtrooper was actually alive, however, because he carefully lowers his own head to the floor. (00:04:30)
Corrected entry: In the Judland Wastes, right before Obi-Wan first appears, Luke is alerted to the presence of what turns out to be Tusken Raiders nearby and goes to investigate, instead of simply leaving with R2 and 3PO.
Correction: Luke has an insatiable appetite for adventure, it is well within his behavior to investigate the Sand People; he even took a rifle with him suggesting he was expecting to engage with them.
Corrected entry: When Obi Wan Kenobi drops Luke as a baby to his uncle he is a fairly young man. In episode 4 given that Luke is only 18 or 19, why does Ben Kenobi look like he's in his 60s or 70s? He couldn't have aged that much in 20 yrs.
Correction: It's slightly fudged but adds up OK. Ewan McGregor was 34 in Revenge of the Sith, but could easily be playing as slightly older, into his 40s. Alec Guinness was 63 in Star Wars, and Obi-Wan has been living a fairly hard life on the binary star planet of Tatooine - the sun damage alone would age him a bit.
Corrected entry: I'm not a specialist in audio equipment, but when the Jawas are transporting R2-D2, one of them has what I think is a microphone in his pocket.
Correction: Jawas are Junkers, meaning that he could be carrying just random junk.
Corrected entry: When Ben gives Luke a helmet for his light sabre practice, Luke is struck by a laser bolt by the ball, to which Ben replies "Stretch out with your feelings". At this point you can see Harrison Ford turn away and start laughing before the scene ends.
Corrected entry: When Ben makes the noise to distract the two stormtroopers just before he walks off you can see him look to his right. But what was there to look at apart from other crew and equipment?
Correction: He was making sure that nobody was watching him.
Corrected entry: If the Death Star disposes of garbage by crushing it in those giant compactors why is the red-eyed tentacled monster that attacks Luke still alive in there? How does it avoid being smashed up into pulp along with the trash?
Correction: The dianoga (which is sort of like an octopus with an eye on a stalk) leaves the compactor prior to the walls closing. You can hear a door opening prior to the creature releasing Luke.
Corrected entry: The soldiers inside the blockade runner hear the ship docking with the star destroyer before the two ships even come in contact.
Correction: What they're hearing is the effect of the tractor beam that the Star Destroyer's using to pull the blockade runner into its docking bay. Parts of the ship are flexing under the strain.
Corrected entry: When C-3PO says he speaks a cousin language to "Bacche", the uncle says "close enough". There is an expression, "Close only counts in Bocce". Bocce is Italian lawn bowling where you try to get a ball as close as possible to another.
Correction: That's not at all how the conversation goes. Lars asks if 3PO speaks Bocce, to which 3PO replies "It's like a second language to me". Lars then asks him to shut up and turns to the Jawa to finish the deal. At no point does anyone use the words "close enough".
Corrected entry: When the rebels are preparing to attack the Death Star, Luke is told that the exhaust port he must hit is only two meters wide. Meters? Isn't it a little odd that the world of "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away" uses "our" metric system? Especially considering that its units were (originally) based on the circumference of the Earth?
Correction: You have a problem with that and you don't think it's a little odd that they're all speaking English? As with any film of this type, things have been translated into terms that the audience will be able to understand. Standard cinematic practice; not a mistake.
Corrected entry: After the Millennium Falcon is brought on board the Death Star, Darth Vader orders the two tech people to scan the ship. They go on board and then are killed by Han and Chewie. Then Han calls down to the two storm troopers guarding the ship, and they too are killed when they come on board. There are now four dead bodies on the ship, but are never seen again or spoken of by the characters.
Correction: I don't think the fact that their bodies are never seen or spoken of afterward constitutes a plot hole. Their dead or unconscious bodies no longer serve any function to the plot, so it isn't necessary to show them or talk about them. They could have been hidden inside the smuggling compartments to prevent being seen by other Imperial staff, and then once our heroes made it to Yavin IV, the dead bodies would be disposed of, or if they were still alive, would be taken captive.
Corrected entry: In the scene where the rebels are in the briefing room for the attack on the Death Star, the guy explaining the attack says that they will need Proton Torpedos because the exhaust port is ray shielded. When Luke finally gets the torpedos in, there are not any ray shields. (01:40:35 - 01:57:00)
Correction: Just because they're not visible, it doesn't mean that they're not there. You'll note, if you pay attention, that shields in the Star Wars universe are invisible unless they're actually being fired upon, in which case their presence can be detected by the reaction of the laser blasts. Proton torpedoes just go straight through with being affected.
Corrected entry: Considering how expensive the Death Star was you would think that they would be able to afford decent chairs, during the first scene at the big table the back of Tarkin's chair wobbles like hell, especially when he first walks in and sits down. (00:36:00)
Correction: Not understanding something or giving your opinion of what you think should be done does not make it a mistake. There are several reasons that the chairs could wobble, including the fact that an object as large as the Death Star might be prone to being hit by space debris (meteors, etc.) and the chairs need to move a little in response.
Corrected entry: When Luke's uncle is next to the jawa transport telling Luke he can't go to Toshi's station with his mates, look in the background and you can see a line going through the background board and you can see a line on the floor where the board stands.
Correction: There is no 'background board'. This scene was shot outdoors in a real desert. The vertical line is the tall antenna of one of the rearmost robots, and the horizontal line is a rut in the dry desert floor. In my screen-shot, note the antenna ends below the transporter's overhang, and doesn't pass behind it as a 'background' would. No mistake here.
Corrected entry: Why does C-3PO, upon 'returning' to Tatooine, not recognize the place of his creation, or the Lars family moisture farm, where he HAD briefly visited in the first movie.
Correction: At the end of Episode III, Revenge of the Sith, Senator Bail Organa orders Captain Antilles to, "Have the protocol droid's memory erased.", referring to C-3PO. That's why many years later in Episode IV, A New Hope, C-3PO has no recollection of his surroundings or anyone he knew at that time.
Corrected entry: When the stormtroopers breaks into the Blockade Runner, the explosion leaves a lot of debris on the floor, but when Lord Vader arrives a little bit later, there is much less debris.
Correction: The debris would have been moved by all the personnel (rebel soldiers and stormtroopers) moving about. Also, there are a lot of dead bodies, these would cover up a lot of debris.
Correction: Also, since it is implied that the stormtroopers moved the bodies out of the middle of the hallway (since we see them lined up on the side rather than sprawled out in the middle), they probably also moved any debris that was in the hallway out of the way as well.
Corrected entry: Luke says, "Owen. This R2 unit has a bad motivator." The droid he's talking about is R5-D4 (source = starwars.com).
Corrected entry: There's no stars in the sky during many shots of the Death Star's hangar.
Correction: This is a matter of perspective since it is very bright in the hanger, it is quite logical that one could not see the stars from back inside the hanger.
Corrected entry: Luke's landspeeder changes sizes at least once. As he and Threepio are searching for R2, you can see that its about the size of, say, an El Camino or similar car from the '70s. But when the Tusken raiders are ransacking it, its barely as long as they are tall.
Correction: The speeder looks bigger when they are searching because of the camera angle and light, it is an optical illusion. They used the same model for all of the speeder shots, so it would be the same size for every shot.
Corrected entry: Special Edition mistake. For the SE release George Lucas added a deleted scene with Jaba the Hut and some bounty hunters looking for Han Solo and Chewbacca at the Millennium Falcon. Since Boba Fet had become such a popular character, he added him in too. The problem is the in the Star Wars Holiday Special (which aired November of 1978) Chewbacca meets Boba Fet for the first time with Luke Skywalker. Now it is true that George Lucas said that if he had the time and a sledge hammer he would smash ever copy of the Holiday Special, BUT it is still a part of the Star Wars Universe, and therefore still canonical.
Correction: Since only the movies are canon and The Holiday special aired on TV, any discrepancies are invalid.
Correction: People have been shown to take non-fatal shots throughout the franchise, including in this film. Also, that's the very purpose for wearing armor - to increase chances for surviving just such a hit. So there's no real reason why the man on the floor must be dead.