It's December 17th and tomorrow marks the North American release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. (To describe this event as "eagerly awaited" would be redundant.)
A fortunate few have attended press screenings and midnight showings, whereas the rest of us have had to remain content with the trailers. Fortunately, the trailers have struck a good balance between revelation and suggestion - there have been broad hints, but very little in the way of specifics.
However, the visuals themselves are wonderful: crashed Imperial cruisers, battles with the next generation of stormtroopers, the Millennium Falcon in flight, epic aerial dogfights between the iconic ships from the original trilogy...wait, what?
Okay, let's assume that the time lapse in the Star Wars universe is congruent to the years gone by in the real world - in other words, Han Solo is about 40 years older* than he was during the events of the first film.
Compare the technology of 1914 with that of 1945, or 1945 to 1985: Sopwith Camels to Spitfires, Spitfires to F18s. War is one of the great drivers of technological development, and yet
the previews show what appears to be X-Wings locked in aerial combat with TIE
fighters.**
How odd that in four decades, nothing has changed! Even the despised prequels acknowledge that there was different technology in the days when Obi-Wan Kenobi was a young man, and yet, under the relentless lash of armed conflict, neither the Rebellion or the Empire (if that's still what the duelling polities call themselves, the trailers aren't explicit) has improved on their hardware? Other than through the introduction of plasma quillons for lightsabers?
How odd that in four decades, nothing has changed! Even the despised prequels acknowledge that there was different technology in the days when Obi-Wan Kenobi was a young man, and yet, under the relentless lash of armed conflict, neither the Rebellion or the Empire (if that's still what the duelling polities call themselves, the trailers aren't explicit) has improved on their hardware? Other than through the introduction of plasma quillons for lightsabers?
For that matter, I gather that C-3PO is in the new movie. My god, C-3PO was built by the young Anakin Skywalker - by the contemporary standards of The Force Awakens, he might as well be steam powered. Let's see, it's generally assumed that Darth Vader was 45 when he died...he built C-3PO when he was nine... Computers from 25 years ago are useless antiques in our world, how
would they be able to maintain a homemade 76 year old android?
- Sid
* And he certainly looks it in the previews. Nothing personal, Harrison.** This is odd all on its own. Generally civil wars are fought with more or less the same weapons on both sides, although not always - interestingly, the American Civil War supports both sides of this argument. How is it that the Rebellion has such completely different spaceships?
ReplyDeleteRegarding your comment about the different weapons of the opposing sides in a civil war, the book Insurrection by Weber and White has the TFN Rim Systems take advantage of a forward weapons R & D facility that had been designed to keep the enemies of a previous war at bay. This facility was unique. The distances within political entities that are Galactic in scope are so vast that they can't really comply with a universal standard for weapons systems.
Chris
Yes, the Rim systems take advantage of a single unique R & D facility to gain an edge in the conflict. Sadly, this is irrelevant.
ReplyDeleteIn Insurrection, the naval forces of the Terran Republic are made up entirely of Federation Fleet units whose crews have mutinied or which have been captured by the rebels - units which have almost entirely been manufactured by the Fleet shipyards at Jamieson Archipelago on Galloway's World. (Page 152: "...more than seventy percent of all our warships came from Galloway' World.")
Presumably the Fleet shipyards make pretty much the same versions of battleships, carriers, monitors, etc.? It would be very strange if they didn't In fact, they refer to various ship classes by name, which indicates standardized plans for construction. In other words, the rebel ships are exactly the same as the non-rebel ships, because they all come from the same navy.
Based on your argument, not only would the rebels in Star Wars have different ships, none of the Imperial starships would be the same either - no universal standards for Galactic political entities. Yet all the TIE fighters and Imperial battleships look exactly the same.
- Sid