Good morning, John.

I was just watching a video of yours that you made a couple weeks ago and I noticed something that made me remember something.

So in this video, you pointed out that Willy had chewed the arm off of Chewbacca, and I remembered something somewhat strange about myself. I used to be a bit of a connoisseur of Star Wars hand removal. You know, hands getting chopped off in Star Wars movies.

And there are a lot of hands removed. In fact, there are characters in the Star Wars universe who only have two hands who have their hands chopped off three times. I mean, this has to be a metaphor for something.

Chewbacca was always supposed to be ripping people's arms out of their sockets, but he never actually did it. And he also managed to keep both of his hands throughout the entire series of movies. So, it was a big deal for me when I saw that Chewbacca had finally lost an arm.

Anyway, I've decided that for today's video I'm gonna walk you through every single Star Wars hand removal of a major character in the movies. There are more in minor battle scenes and of course if you go into the books, then you've got a lot more to deal with!

Now, unlike some Star Wars purists, I consider the prequels to be Star Wars movies. So, let us go chronologically.

The first Star Wars movie, The Phantom Menace - arguably the worst live action Star Wars movie ever - all hands stayed attached to bodies. Obviously, this is a bad movie.

Now, Attack of the Clones, that was a much better movie. And why? Well, it starts out with a hand removal. Jerk in a bar with a gun gets their hand chopped off by Obi-Wan Kenobi, something that will happen again later on. Don't mess with a Jedi!

Then, later comes the second hand removal of the Star Wars Trilogy. That, of Anakin Skywalker by Count Dooku.

Vwooom! 

A theme that you will start to recognize is that when someone cuts someone's hand off in Star Wars, there's a good chance that they're gonna get their hand chopped off too. And that's what happens in the beginning of Revenge of the Sith. Count Dooku, who has just recently cut off Anakin Skywalker's first hand, gets both of his hands chopped off shortly before being killed completely.

And this is when things really peak for Star Wars hand removal. Revenge of the Sith, very good movie, lots of hands getting chopped off. This is helped along by the fact that General Grievous has not two, but four hands! Unfortunately, and this always sorta made me angry, he only loses two of them. If you're gonna give somebody four hands, you might as well cut off all four.

Then the Sith come back to pay back the Jedi for cutting off all of those Sith hands. And Mace Windu gets his arm chopped off by Anakin Skywalker. It's worth noting that now Anakin Skywalker has chopped off three hands just in this one movie. And he's only had one hand cut off! So you probably know what's about to happen.

Anakin Skywalker goes all evil and Obi-Wan Kenobi has only one choice, which is to cut off both of his legs and yes, one of his hands. So now Anakin Skywalker only has one hand, and it's robotic!

Moving onto the actual Star Wars movies, the first one, A New Hope. C-3PO gets his arm yanked off by a Tuscan Raider. You don't see it happen, but you do see the arm laying there on the ground.

And then, Obi-Wan cuts off his second gun-wielding arm in a bar.

And now we must discuss Empire Strikes Back, which of course has the most famous hand removal probably in all of history!

But we can't talk about that until we recognize the giant snow beast who captured Luke Skywalker, hung him upside down in a cave, and then got his arm chopped off. Why did Luke do it? Why did he chop off that hand because you know now Luke's gonna get his hand chopped off.

And in one of the most memorable scenes in all of science fiction - possibly all of movie history - Luke Skywalker gets his hand chopped off. Luke Skywalker gets a bionic hand just like his dear old dad, and we move on to Return of the Jedi.

In which there is only one hand removal! Luke Skywalker gets his revenge and chops off Darth Vader's third hand. Oddly enough, if you also read the comic books and the books, Darth Vader has his hands chopped off no less than five times!

Luke looks down and realizes it's just a bunch of wires and then feels his own bionic hand! And they reconcile or something, whatever, more stuff happens. But no more hands get chopped off, so as far as I'm concerned, that's the end of the movie.

Being a Jedi sounds cool and all, but way too dangerous a line of work for me.

And now you know, your life is going to be so much better now that you have this information!

John, DFTBA.