There are more than a few plot holes in Attack of the Clones, but one glaring blunder stands above the rest as just being completely nonsensical.
The mistake appears during the climax of the second Star Wars prequel, the battle on Geonosis, as Anakin and Obi-Wan give chase to Count Dooku. A clone trooper is ordered to shoot down Dooku’s ship but claims to be out of rockets. However, during the same scene, rockets can quite clearly be seen on the gunship’s wing.
Clearly a continuity error, but there could be plenty of explanations as to why those rockets couldn’t be used. A few were quick to defend the scene with suggestions ranging from the trooper being inexperienced to the rockets not being loaded, so they couldn’t be fired, or even that the batteries were depleted.
“Are those rockets ready to fire? Because if they’re just stored there and aren’t loaded onto the rocket-launching equipment, the statement still stands. Dooku could be gone before they could get them loaded. I could have a box of bullets, but if those bullets are not in the gun, they’re no good as weapons.”
Even so, the gunships have lasers, surely they had something to fire at Count Dooku?
“Not to mention the bunch of laser cannons pointing right at him. Were those out of laser?”
Although some fans were quick to point out that the clones were secretly working for Palpatine at this time so maybe they wouldn’t want to kill Dooku who was also working for the future Emperor; thus ruining his plans.
“So you’re saying there might be a conspiracy to overtake the republic?”
“It’s a conspiracy. They were programmed not to take out Dooku. Besides, he could had force pushed away the rockets (although not the lasers in that situation).”
Now, George Lucas is a genius and it’s possible that he intentionally had the rockets there to foreshadow what was to come later, but even geniuses make mistakes. After all in this film alone, we have the Jedi decide that it’s a good idea to use a mysterious army who are all clones of a mercenary who is currently known to be working with the Sith. There are plenty of illogical and nonsensical parts in this film and so it wouldn’t really be a shock to learn that this was just something the filmmakers missed.
If that were really the case and the clone trooper was secretly trying to stop the two Jedi from killing Dooku, you’d think he would come up with a better lie than that. All it would take is for either Anakin or Obi-Wan to turn around and instantly see that it was a lie. Lucky for him, Anakin and Obi-Wan are obviously the most clueless Jedi in the galaxy.
