The Force will be with you, but also a lot of disturbing scenes. The films and shows of the star wars The franchise primarily functions as inspirational, mythical entertainment, but there are more than a few scenes in these stories that are sure to make you feel uneasy.
A character could experience an unfortunate body change. A lizard can go up another character’s nose. A hero of the saga can embark on a series of child murders, and hands can be chopped off when you least expect it. Everything can happen. star wars don’t care if you become deranged.
Obi Wan Kenobi, now streaming on Disney+, could definitely give us some uncomfortable scenes at the end of the season. Before we get to that, here’s our list of the eight most disturbing moments from star wars, focusing only on movies and shows. If we included books, comics, and games (especially a few moments from the recent Star Wars: The High Republic initiative), this list would be much longer.
In the garbage shoot. Hit him.
1. Something alive here (Star Wars: A New Hope)
When Luke, Han, Leia, and Chewie escape in a trash compactor in the very first film, Han remarks on what “incredible smell” Leia discovered. Luke discovers something else. He wraps himself in the tentacles of the fetid Dianoga, and it’s disgusting.
This thing’s massive arms pull Luke under the sewers. The fact that he’s gone for a moment isn’t particularly troubling, nor is Luke’s struggle. The part that makes us really uncomfortable is the small eye of the Dianaga, which appears for a split second before retreating. Heroes don’t see that eye, but we do. It’s a gross appendage, it’s dripping with bile, and it’s convenient. It adds a hair-raising element to the whole scene and puts us on edge.
2. Undercover Jedi (Star Wars: The Clone Wars)
In Season 4 of the series, Obi-Wan Kenobi has a four-part arc that finds him faking his death and going undercover. He takes the form of bounty hunter Rako Hardeen, and he doesn’t just put on the guy’s costume. He gets a full conversion, and it’s absolutely awful. For starters, he shaves completely. Beard, head, everything. The sight of a fully shaved Obi-Wan in the animation is bad enough, but then the plastic surgery begins.
We inject her with needles and her whole appearance changes before our eyes. It looks disgusting, and Obi-Wan is visibly in pain. It’s an uncomfortable process, but Obi-Wan’s entire tenure in this form is just as uncomfortable, as some of us fear we can’t reverse the process. It’s an unrealistic fear, he doesn’t look like Rako Hardeen in Revenge of the Sith, but remains. Everything from the shave is rough. A typical week for Punching Bag Kenobi.
3. Command 66 (Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith)
You know the time is coming, you’ve known it for two and a half prequel movies. This does not soften the blow. Watching (almost) every Jedi you know get shot down is hard to watch. It should be.
If you watched Star Wars: The Clone Wars, the sequence is even busier. Some Jedi (Ki-Adi Mundi) won’t have tears. Others you’ve grown to love (Plo Koon), and you don’t want to see them go. Added to all this is the tragedy of the clones themselves, and if you are aware The Clone Wars’ tradition of their programming, so it’s really awful all around.
Let’s not forget, Anakin’s storming of the Jedi Temple is part of that purge, as is his murder of a room full of young people. We don’t see it, but Anakin holding out his lightsaber right after this kid says, “There’s too many, what are we going to do?” makes us uncomfortable, to say the least.
4. Luke’s vision (Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back)
Luke battles a ghost of Darth Vader on Dagobah before confronting the man/machine for real. The battle is brief, but it ends with Luke severing the head of Vader’s apparition in a hail of sparks.
It’s disturbing on its own, but the rolling head mask explodes and Luke stares at his own face inside. The message is clear to us, at least. Luke could potentially take the same path. He will face the dark side, and his fate could be the same as Vader’s. It’s not the revelation of the dark side that’s upsetting, it’s the way Mark Hamill’s face looks from the disembodied head. Something about the look, positioning, and empty shell of Vader’s helmet is truly creepy.
5. Boba’s Nose Lizard (Boba Fett’s Book)
We thought Brainworms season 2 of The Clone Wars were rude, but Boba Fett’s Book has taken the “creature up your nose” program to the next level. Chapter 2 of the series sees Boba in a flashback with a tribe of Tusken Raiders, and apparently his initiation involves a hallucinatory drug journey to find the perfect branch.
Do the Tuskens make Boba Fett do drugs? They don’t impose powder or pills on him, no. They take a little lizard out of a case and let it jump up his nose.
Boba continues his drug trip at the branch, and the whole thing is way more mind-blowing than what we’re used to in star wars. As we watch, we swear we can smell the supernatural lizard in our own noses, and it makes us squirm. Relief only comes when he returns with his branch and the lizard leaves him the same way he entered.
This is one of the weirdest sequences in live-action star wars and we love it, but the lizard in the nose gives it a very uncomfortable side effect.
6. Exegol (Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker)
Everything about this secret planet of the Sith Eternal causes unease. One of the first things we see in its depths is a hodgepodge of aborted Snoke clones in a jar. Let’s go for Fathier’s races.
Everything about the Palpatine clone keeping itself alive is a stomach ache, especially its brittle hands. The massive following of creepy sidekicks showing up here makes things so much worse, because who the hell are they? Where do they come from? Why are there so many? What are they singing? It sounds Sith-y and we don’t like it. Things look like they could burst into an alternate version of Eyes wide closed at any moment.
Extended lore (collected from source books) makes things much worse. The Sith Eternal have remained on this planet for many years and have grown in numbers with a lot (a lot) of procreation within their own ranks. There are plenty of dark side sexual escapades, with the entire planet turning out to be one giant key party.
Are you going to tell us there was no inbreeding when you have such a large crowd? Please. The thought of this endless dark side sexual capade sends shivers down our spines, and not because we’re prudes. Sexegol is a planet we would not like to visit.
7. Grievous Innards (Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith)
What exactly is inside General Grievous? It has a few biological components, but they are usually hidden by its metallic coatings. They are hidden until Obi-Wan exposes them near the end of the ongoing battle on Utapau.
Without a weapon in hand, Obi-Wan grabs two pieces of Grievous’ chest plate and pulls them apart. Inside, we see a shriveled heart that Grievous might as well have borrowed from the Grinch. There are other small bags of liquids and at least one nightmarish fuel bag. In a flash, we were no longer curious about the biological side of the General. It’s worse than the scene in season 1 of The Clone Wars where a droid removes Grievous’ face plate, as this episode cuts to commercial before we see anything. Here, we see everything.
Grievous lets out a high-pitched moan, and it just goes to show that he doesn’t like exposure either. The opening allows Obi-Wan to fire his blaster shot that kills that coughing asshole, so that’s a plus. Even so, anyone who sees the inside of General Grievous is worse off.
8. Off with the hand (Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back)
The whole duel between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader is uncomfortable to watch The Empire Strikes Back. Luke gets beaten up, and it’s not easy to watch our hero get smashed and bloodied for the second time in a movie. He’s severely outmatched, and Darth Vader has rarely been more gruesome than in these scenes.
There is also an emotional weight in the duel. Every swing, every shot, every bruise is loaded with sensations. Vader destroys him mentally and physically. The moment of major discomfort in the whole sequence comes when Vader disarms Luke by severing his hand. He’s broken it down enough, it’s time to wrap things up. He probably could have done it at the very beginning.
Story-wise, it not only makes us uncomfortable, it makes us recoil in terror. Sure, appendages were lost in the first movie and in this one, but our heroes weren’t involved. The hand-chopping effect itself, entirely practical, is all too real. We know it’s an effect, and we know it’s a movie. It is still very effective.
This moment alone was so uncomfortable that some of us (not to name names) couldn’t watch this movie when we were kids. When this happened and this scene was shown, a 3 year old could have freaked out the kriff. Without naming names.
Fortunately for this 3-year-old child, the Ewoks of Return of the Jedi were on their way.
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