Star Wars / Tropes I to L

Go back to the main franchise page

Tropes A-D | Tropes E-H | Tropes I-L | Tropes M-R | Tropes S-Z

I-J

• Iconic Sequel Character:
  • The Empire Strikes Back introduced three major characters to the franchise in a flash: Emperor Palpatine (mentioned in the first film but unglimpsed), Master Yoda, and Lando Calrissian. Boba Fett also qualified in the original run until the Special Editions inserted him in A New Hope as a silent enforcer accompanying Jabba the Hutt.
  • Return of the Jedi introduced Mon Mothma, Admiral Ackbar, the Ewoks. It was also the first glimpse of Jabba the Hutt but as with Boba Fett, special editions inserted him in the first film.
  • The Phantom Menace introduces Qui-Gon Jinn, Darth Maul, Padmé Amidala, Jar-Jar Binks, Mace Windu, Shmi Skywalker, Nute Gunray.
  • Attack of the Clones has Jango Fett and Count Dooku, as well as the Kaminoans.
  • Revenge of the Sith gives us General Grievous, although most of it are returning characters from the earlier prequels and the OT.
  • The Force Awakens has Finn, Kylo Ren, Poe, Rey, Maz Kanata, Phasma, Snoke, Hux, BB-8, Lor San Tekka.
  • Rogue One gives us Jyn and Galen Erso, Director Krennic, Cassian, K-2S0, Chirrut, Baze, Bodhi Rook, Admiral Raddus.
  • The Last Jedi has Admiral Holdo, Paige and Rose Tico, the Thala-Siren.
  • Solo has Qi'ra, Dryden Vos, Tobias Beckett, Enfys Nest, L3-37.
• Iconic Sequel Song: John Williams' score contains many motifs and themes that are instantly recognizable due to their impact and appeared well after the initial entry in the franchise, but none more so than the "Imperial March," arguably the most famous villain theme in cinema history, which made its first appearance in The Empire Strikes Back, where it had been a sinister brassy triad in A New Hope.
• If You Can Read This: The prequels do this quite frequently...in an alien alphabet, called Aurebesh. If you transcribe each character for its Roman equivalent, it is just plain English. Some examples make sense in context (such as the screen of Anakin's Naboo Starfighter in Phantom Menace) but most are simply inside jokes made by the creators of the material.
• Illegal Religion: During the reign of the Galactic Empire, the Jedi were hunted down and driven to near-extinction by Imperial forces, their religion dwindling from universally recognized to often ridiculed as old superstition. Emperor Palpatine and his right hand Darth Vader were members of the evil Sith order, the ancient enemies of the Jedi.
• I'm Cold... So Cold...: Somewhat subverted in the radio play version of the second (or fifth) movie, The Empire Strikes Back, when Luke (still played by Mark Hamill) nearly freezes to death in the ice planet Hoth. As Han Solo finds him delirious in the snow, Luke moans about being cold, followed by "Warmer now," which causes a deeply concerned Han to yell "No, Luke, that means you're freezing!"
• Impossibly Cool Weapon: About half the weapons in the movies, but the lightsabers and the Death Stars especially.
• Impractically Fancy Outfit: Amidala's regal outfits, which are so expensive Obi-Wan suggests bargaining with them to buy parts for her ship's hyperdrive.
• Incest Subtext: Luke and Leia flirting and kissing has traces of this when you find out they're really brother and sister.
• Incompletely Trained: Many Padawan survivors of Order 66, such as Caleb Dume and Cal Kestis, had their Jedi training interrupted by the massacre of the Jedi.
• Inevitable Mutual Betrayal: In the expanded universe, it is strongly implied that Vader was planning to betray Palpatine, and that Palpatine was looking for a sufficiently talented replacement so that he could kill Vader off. For less personal reasons, every sith lord/apprentice pair also fits; Sith apprentices are expected to kill and supplant their masters, or die trying.
• Inexplicable Cultural Ties: Many proper names are English or Latin lexical words.
• Inexplicably Speaks Fluent Alien: Characters regularly being able to understand Chewbacca, even if they've just met him. No need to have known Chewy for years like Han and Lando.
  • Pretty much all characters in the Star Wars franchise. People seem to understand R2-D2's beeps; Han Solo understands Greedo, etc. Defied in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, when Jabba uses C-3PO as an interpreter, but this was explained elsewhere (in one of the comics or the novelization of the movie) as a pretense on Jabba's part; he could understand others just fine.
• Inhumanly Beautiful Race: The Diathim from the moons of Iego are known as "angels" and Anakin describes them as "the most beautiful creatures in the universe" (relaying stories he'd heard from spacers).
• In the Future, We Still Have Roombas: Several examples, including the little skittery mouse droid that Chewie growls at and the pit droids in The Phantom Menace.
• Insignificant Little Blue Planet: All the stories are set "a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away". Planet Earth has never even been mentioned.
• Invisible Means Undodgeable: The Force, to Muggles at least. Lightsabers and dodging skills can block all sorts of force powers, such as Force Lightning. The moment someone starts a Force Choke, though, it's over.
• Ironic Echo:
  • The scene where Vader has to choose between saving Luke or letting him die is a mirror of the scene with Mace in the Chancellor's office, and the consequences both large and small scale are also identical.
  • Also, Anakin killing count Dooku is echoed in Luke's defeat of Darth Vader.
  • Severed limbs are a recurring theme, and most of them are symbolic on some level.
• Irony: The way the creators were able to justify Darth Maul surviving The Phantom Menace was that Obi-Wan only cut off his legs, hence all vital organs were missed. The iconic shot of the two halves of Darth Maul's body falling apart as he fell down a shaft only existed because George Lucas wanted to make it plain that he hadn't survived the battle. Originally it was left vague as to what killed him, with the impression being that Obi-Wan's cut disemboweled him.
• It Sucks to Be the Chosen One: For both Anakin and Luke.
• I Will Tear Your Arms Off: According to Han, Wookiees have a tendency to do this when they lose at games.
• It's a Small World, After All: When characters visit a planet, they only go to a single city, outpost, etc. on that planet. Why does everything important in galactic history happen in such comparatively small areas? It must be the will of The Force.
• It's Personal with the Dragon: In the original trilogy, Palpatine may have been the Big Bad all along, but was barely on screen for most of it and only referred to. All the real emotional investment for Luke was with Vader.
• Jacob Marley Warning: Obi-Wan and Yoda to Luke before leaving to face Vader. Also, Vader himself is this to Luke when he realizes how closely Anakin's history mirrors his own.
• Jedi Mind Trick: Trope Namer. Has its own page.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
  • Han Solo starts off as this, where his only goal was to get money to pay off debt to Jabba. However, he undergoes a change of heart to wholeheartedly contributing to the Rebel Alliance.
  • Anakin Skywalker starts off as this, being reckless, arrogant and aggressive, but ultimately a good man who tries to do what's right. However, his Jerk side eventually began to take over, until he underwent a Face–Heel Turn.
• Join or Die: In The Empire Strikes Back, Vader tells the Emperor that this will be the choice he will give Luke. Vader instead gives Luke a We Can Rule Together. In Return of the Jedi, The Emperor makes the same offer to Luke.
• Jump Physics: A common feature of any fight involving the Jedi and/or the Sith. Especially useful since the standard architecture of the Star Wars galaxy features more Bottomless Pits and Floating Platforms than most video games.

K-L

• Kuleshov Effect: Lucas who was heavily inspired by Soviet Cinema and the many retcons and re-edits reinterpreted scenes in earlier films to give it added meaning via Rewatch Bonus. As noted by one critic:
  Neil Bahadur: "Lucas’s re-edits are a remarkable Kuleshovian act on not single shots but three whole films: each film’s primary function is altered...A New Hope, a wacky adventure movie that is little more than a playground for technology, becomes a family soap opera in microcosm: Vader, Luke and Leia all cross paths and enter conflict all unaware that they are of the same family. The Empire Strikes Back...takes on an immense pathos within Vader’s character—previously an abstract cipher/image of evil, we now see only a sad and pathetic man who only wants to see his son."
  • The most well known example is the reveal that Vader is Luke's father, when in A New Hope, Obi-Wan Kenobi had told Luke that they were two separate characters, and that Vader killed Anakin Skywalker. Lucas after writing the twist for The Empire Strikes Back, banked on Alec Guinness subtle performance where Obi-Wan visibly struggled to talk about Anakin, communicating both warmth and regret, which Guinness probably intended to communicate his character's grief at losing a war buddy, but after the retcon alluded to a deeper revelation, which in the process also made Obi-Wan a more complex character than the kindly Mentor Archetype of the first film. It also added new meaning to Obi-Wan and Vader's duel at the Death-Star.
  • After Lucas sold the franchise to Disney, the Anthology prequels, Rogue One and Solo also re-frame scenes in A New Hope.
    • At the end of Rogue One, Vader saw Princess Leia's ship detaching from the rebel ship he had boarded and massacred, seeing it enter hyperspace. At the start of A New Hope, when Vader boards her ship, Leia said she's on a diplomatic mission from Alderaan. Before, that scene came off as Leia acting as a spy and presenting a diplomatic cover, and Vader crossing a line in attacking an important politician. Now it comes across as Leia brazenly and audaciously bluffing at Vader as a way to insult him to buy time for the droids to escape, while Vader's original imperious reply^note "You are part of the Rebel Alliance and a traitor. Take her away!" carries an additional tinge of furious disbelief.
    • In A New Hope, when Han Solo first meets Obi-Wan, he boasts that his ship achieved "the Kessel run in 12 parsecs". The script had indicated that this was Han's Snake Oil Salesman-like boast and exaggeration and that Obi-Wan didn't believe it. Alec Guinness by means of Facial Dialogue indicates his own disbelief (namely a raised eyebrow and a slight smirk). Solo makes this scene into a literal boast where Han indeed achieves what he originally said he did, and as such the original scene now has Han come off as being more dishonest and untrustworthy than he really is, which ends up alluding to his eventual Neutral No Longer climactic rescue of Luke.
• Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: Star Wars provides the page quote for this trope. Compared to blasters, slugthrowers are easier to maintain, and have the added bonus of doing well against things that would normally deflect a plasma bolt. For example, while blaster shots will get repelled by a lightsaber, bullets will just pass right through.
• Laser Blade: The franchise is the codifier, and its laser-bladed lightsabers are the iconic weapons of the Jedi and the Sith. Lucas sometimes calls them "laser swords" in interviews and in fact uses this term in the original script; this carries to the prequel movies, where child Anakin explicitly calls a lightsaber a "laser sword" when he sees Qui-Gon for the first time and immediately recognizes the latter as a Jedi Knight.
  • A lightsaber is composed of a metal hilt that projects a three-foot colored beam of energy that serves as a blade, which can be switched on and off. The energy is provided by a "kyber crystal" stored in the hilt. Most Jedi blades are green or blue; other colors, such as purple, orange, yellow or white, are rare but appear on occasion. Sith lightsabers are always blood-red, because they corrupt their crystals with a Dark Side technique called "bleeding". They can cut through virtually any physical substance, even thick metal bulkheads, but bounce off of each other to enable swordfights; a few materials, such as a handful of rare metals or the hides of certain monsters, also resist their blades. George Lucas intended them to make Jedi more like a classic Knight Errant or samurai.
  • It's commonly believed even in-universe that only Force-sensitives can wield lightsabers, but this isn't strictly true. Force-sensitive reflexes do greatly help in wielding them safely, without cutting off one's own bodyparts while making rapid complex motions, however.
  • Because they are close-range weapons and can be used to block and reflect blaster fire, they are supposed to be seen as defensive weapons, showing that Jedi use force only to protect themselves. This characterization is pretty much abandoned with the Sith of the Dark Side, who use lightsabers just as readily.
  • Several characters have their own takes on the lightsaber:
    • Darth Maul has a special hilt that can project a blade from either end. Supplementary materials or looking closely at the hilt reveals it's just two regular sabers attached end-to-end.
    • Count Dooku and Asajj Ventress both use lightsabers with curved hilts in order to allow for more precise movements and flexibility during lightsaber combat in conjunction with the Makashi lightsaber form, which resembled traditional fencing (which Christopher Lee was a master of).
    • The Inquisitors use hilts that also project a blade from each end... and they spin, allowing for flight.
    • The Darksaber, introduced in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, is an ancient Mandalorian lightsaber that, on top of having a unique black blade, is shaped more like an actual saber (flat, pointed blade, handguard, etc.).
    • Ezra Bridger built a lightsaber with a stun blaster incorporated in its hilt. Until Darth Vader destroyed it.
    • Kylo Ren has a lightsaber with two horizontal blades jutting from the hilt, like a crossguard. This design was a necessity due to Kylo Ren only having a cracked kyber crystal, the energy of which became unstable. He displays the ability to jab the crossguards into his foes in a Blade Lock.
    • In The Rise of Skywalker, Rey's Sith doppelganger uses a double-bladed lightsaber with a hilt that has a hinge in the middle, allowing the weapon to be more easily concealed. This is actually the third time a lightsaber of this type has been shown, the first being with Pong Krell's pair in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and the second in an episode of Star Wars Rebels.
    • At the end of TRoS, Rey debuts a new yellow-bladed saber that she built from her old staff.
    • Ahsoka Tano wields two white-bladed sabers, one of which is a shorter shoto-style. The white blades come from formerly-corrupted kyber crystals that she took from a defeated Inquisitor and then purified.
    • Lightwhips are a variant where the blade is longer than usual and encased in a flexible energy shield, allowing it to be used as, well, a whip instead of a traditional blade. They're noted to be difficult to master properly, but useful in their own way — in part because, due to their rarity, few people truly know how to respond to their use in combat. They occur in both single- and multi-stranded versions.
  • Star Wars Legends material expands on the lightsabers' in-universe history. The earliest Force traditions used metal blades imbued with the power of the Force, which incidentally caused them to glow a variety of colors. True laser-bladed weapons came along later, derived by modifying projectile laser weapons, but only saw ceremonial use due to being impractical and difficult to make. The first combat lightsabers saw use during the ancient Jedi-Sith schism; this model, later known as the "protosaber", needed a constant energy intake to work and included a long cable connected to a power pack worn on the wielder's belt. The Sith were the first to figure out how to make power cells small enough to incorporate entirely in the saber's hilt; the Jedi adopted this technology after the first Sith-Jedi war.
  • Early concept art for the original movies has lightsabers as a much more widespread and mundane weapon — some concept art shows squads of common stormtroopers wielding them.
• Let's You and Him Fight: The bulk of Palpatine's plan. Take advantage of corruption in the Republic to drive the Separatists, leading to war when the Republic rejects their secession. The conflict weakens both sides and leads to war weariness, meaning they'll eventually be primed to accept a strong hand who can put an end to the conflict, especially if he promises an end to corruption as well.