Star Wars Trailer!

[Hot Pepsi]

That depends where in the prequels the action is though. Even in Episode I, the Queen's ship is as swish as you'd expect, the droid armies are function over form, the Gungan stuff is grungey, Tatooine is a dusty dump and Coruscant is mainly gleaming hallways of power. In Episode II, the seedy and industrial sides of Coruscant are there, while Naboo is idyllic and so on. Kamino is a bit overly clean for a lab setting, but is supposed to be high tech, and contrasts with the hive steel foundries of Geonosis.

The prequels tried to look less beaten up, at least on the planets in the core - Naboo and Coruscant - to show the contrast between those worlds and the outer rim, where most of the rest of the story happens. And, yeah, the CGI wasn't as good.

[Hot Pepsi]

Yes, twin boy and girl called Jacen and Jaden (you can tell these were written in the 90s!) and then another child they called Anakin. AFAICR Jacen went over to the dark side and fought Luke, then Anakin went over to the dark side too. I haven't read all those book and they were just nippers in the Zahn books.

Yeah, I don't think they should follow Legends (non-canon) books that have been around for 20 years because then there'd be no surprise. But George Lucas has said that the Force is supposed to create balance and one way it does that is to create twins. The whole "dyad in the force" would have made more sense if Rey was Ren's sister rather than the grandchild of Palpatine.

[Hot Pepsi]

And also spaceships that didn't need to look like aeroplanes or flying ocean liners in space because they didn't need to be streamlined. Although mumpo will be along to remind us that there is no way a TIE fighter could fly in an atmosphere without its wings just popping off and that the Millennium Falcon would definitely never have left the floor.

Star Wars (and Star Trek and most of this kind of sci fi) assumes they've figured out how to control gravity pretty easily, albeit probably with a super-efficient energy source. That could maybe explain - well, as far as these made-up things can be explained - both how hyperspace works and how they have repulser drives for both space ships just taking off straight up and floating things like speederbikes, etc.

Also, as in Star Trek, the whole ship could be falling apart and the artificial gravity, however that works, is still working. The artificial gravity is mentioned a few times in the animated shows but never in the films, I don't think.

Obviously, that's because until fairly recently, it was hard to show the characters floating around in space, although the concept art by Ralph McQuarrie suggests that was the original idea.

[elguapo4]

In Star Trek The Undiscovered Country, the assasins disabled the artificial gravity on the Klingon ship so that the guards would be helpless (the assasins wore magnetic boots). On a separate point, on Star Trek into darkness, Khan threatens the Enterprise into surrendering by targeting life support and killing the crew.I would have thought that life support would be the most protected part of the ship, not something that you could take out with one shot.

[Hot Pepsi]

In Star Trek The Undiscovered Country, the assasins disabled the artificial gravity on the Klingon ship so that the guards would be helpless (the assasins wore magnetic boots). On a separate point, on Star Trek into darkness, Khan threatens the Enterprise into surrendering by targeting life support and killing the crew.I would have thought that life support would be the most protected part of the ship, not something that you could take out with one shot.

That’s right! I was going to mention that scene but was in a hurry.

Yeah, that bit with Kahn is a bit flakey. But he’s supposed to be especially clever.
KHAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!

The Expanse, by contrast, deals with gravity in a much more realistic way. All the ships are like flying skyscrapers that great gravity by thrust. As a result, they don’t look cool. Space stations create it with spin. It is not clear that a space station built into an asteroid could work, however, because it would take a long time and a lot of energy to “spin it up” and absent some other impressive materials technology, it would probably fly apart if it were spun that way. But there may be a way to do it eventually.



It also occurs to me that Star Wars never really explains why they have so many manned spacecraft and why the Empire decided to go with impressed conscripts rather than droid soldiers. Obviously, manned ships are better for action and drama and the technology to CGI a droid army didn’t exist in 1977 like it did in 1997 (although I thought stormtroopers were robots when I first saw it). But it’s not explained in-universe, as far as I know.

But Battlestar Galactica explained this - convincingly I thought - by positing that anything controlled by networked computers would be easily hacked hijacked by the Cylons. And it would be hard to remotely control spacecraft over long distances because of the latency. Dune took this a step further and says that we will ditch all “thinking machines” in the future in favor of specially trained humans whose brains are altered by genetic engineering and The Spice. The machines can’t be trusted.

That not only fixes a dramatic and special effects problem. It also might be true. Cyber security is a huge concern as it is and I don’t see how it’s ever going to get better. I don’t know if we’ll face an AI enemy like Skynet or The Matrix or Tessier Ashpool, but I would feel safer if our weapons were not connected to the internet or capable of being hijacked remotely.

They also never explain why droids, while essentially sentient and often intelligent, have such low tech bodies. I think the answer should be that it makes them easier to fix. As long as R2D2 can manage to keep his brain protected (and maybe backed up somehwhere) he can survive getting hit by blasters in outer space repeatedly. Likewise, C3PO is blown up and put back together. A lifelike humanoid android or replicant couldn’t be fixed like that. They could just explain that somewhere.

[danielmak]

I have not read any of the books or comics. I have been movie only with Star Wars (and toys when I was a kid in the 1970s). I assume the authors and publishers received permission from Lucas's company since there would be no way to get away with something like that without permission. HP: you seem to be the main source of info about these things, but why haven't these stories from the publications been more central to screenwriting process. It seems as if the filmmakers just want to do their own thing. I assume a lot of that is about money: having to pay out to the publishers versus having an original screenplay that is owned by the studio.

[Hot Pepsi]

Until he sold Lucasfilm to Disney, Lucas’ approach was to license the characters to other authors but to always reserve the right to do something different in later films if he wanted to. And all the books and comics didn’t necessarily make sense together.

Besides, he didn’t really want to make sequels after he’d finished the prequels. He was ok letting Disney do it once they’d cut him a 10 figure check, of course.

Disney wanted to make more films and TV shows and wanted them to all tie together. The logic is that people are going to be more interested in a book or a comic or a show if it continues or explains a story they are already invested in. DC and Marvel figured this out in the 60s and 70s. But the idea of an “extended fictional universe” is very old (https://io9.gizmodo.com/a-brief-hist...ssover-5833704).

Disney didn’t want to just make movies or TV shows out of books, comics, and video games that had already been done. That would ruin the surprise and the stories from other mediums might not serve film or TV very well. There may have been an ownership/rights issue too, but I think Disney already got all the rights - or most of them - to all that stuff when they bought Lucasfilm. They might have had to pay more in royalties, but as far as I know, there wasn’t a situation like Disney has with Marvel where other studios still had the film rights to major characters. And a lot of those Legends novels are still in print, as far as I can tell, so they didn’t disown all that.

So they announced that pretty much everything other than the films would henceforth be “non-canon” and would be referred to as Star Wars Legends. They committed to making everything fit together hereafter and that would be called Canon. That even includes the TV shows, the comics, novels, video games and even stuff at Disney World/Disneyland.

(I’m not sure if The Clone Wars tv show started before or after Disney took over, but either way, that is now canon. However, the original Clone Wars cartoon miniseries on Cartoon Network, by the guy who did Samurai Jack and Dexters Laboratory, is now considered non-canon. (It’s very good. It’s on YouTube).)

But they’ve taken some stuff from the Legends material and put it in canon. The character Thrawn, for example, was the main villain in the decanonized novels Timothy Zahn wrote about the time after Return of the Jedi. So they adapted his character a bit and put him in the Rebels show. He may show up again in The Mandalorian or some other show or film.


There are other examples of that in pop culture. A lot of the stuff that became standard parts of Superman lore and in the comics were invented originally for the radio show.

Harley Quinn is probably the most popular Batman-related character, but she was invented for the animated show in the 90s and then later put in the comics (and films).

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Episode 1 demonstrates how easily a droid army can be disabled by an eight year old in a fighter. So then Palpatine goes with the clone stormtrooper idea which was the backstory of episode 2. I think the stormtroopers in episodes 4-6 are still all clones (Leia, upon meeting Luke: aren't you a little short to be a stormtrooper?). The clones are themselves proved fallible though, in episodes 4 to 6, which is why by the start of episode 7 we meet Fin, and realise the "First Order" have now taken to stealing children and training them from birth. It's one of the historical lines through the movies that does, actually, make narrative sense.

[danielmak]

Thanks for that summary, HP.

Episode 1 demonstrates how easily a droid army can be disabled by an eight year old in a fighter. So then Palpatine goes with the clone stormtrooper idea which was the backstory of episode 2. I think the stormtroopers in episodes 4-6 are still all clones (Leia, upon meeting Luke: aren't you a little short to be a stormtrooper?). The clones are themselves proved fallible though, in episodes 4 to 6, which is why by the start of episode 7 we meet Fin, and realise the "First Order" have now taken to stealing children and training them from birth. It's one of the historical lines through the movies that does, actually, make narrative sense.

I agree. This was the thing that bothered me about Blade Runner 2049. Wallace, the scientist, wants to make replicants that can reproduce because he can't keep up with the production demands of replicants. It's a bizarre plot twist that somehow a mass production system of replicants would be slower than one replicant reproducing at a time. But in Star Wars, the production line was, in theory, halted so an alternative was needed. There was no halting in Blade Runner 2049. Wallace could mass produce as much as he wanted.

[Hot Pepsi]

Episode 1 demonstrates how easily a droid army can be disabled by an eight year old in a fighter. So then Palpatine goes with the clone stormtrooper idea which was the backstory of episode 2. I think the stormtroopers in episodes 4-6 are still all clones (Leia, upon meeting Luke: aren't you a little short to be a stormtrooper?). The clones are themselves proved fallible though, in episodes 4 to 6, which is why by the start of episode 7 we meet Fin, and realise the "First Order" have now taken to stealing children and training them from birth. It's one of the historical lines through the movies that does, actually, make narrative sense.

Yeah, the droids aren’t very smart or durable, but it seems that the separatists found a way to make them in staggering quantities, which is why the Clone Army was necessary.

There is a line in The Clone Wars where one of the battle droids puts down another one saying “that’s an older model, run by a central control. We are autonomous.” And then they all say “roger, roger, roger, roger” the same way. It’s a little joke.

We never see a Stormtrooper take off their helmet until Fin does in The Force Awakens. I don’t know if Lucas imagined they were all clones when he made Star Wars or not. Perhaps it was an idea he was considering and didn’t want to commit either way.* The Clone Wars are mentioned in A New Hope, so I assume he’d thought about it.

I also imagine he didn’t want to humanize them at all. After all, it’s a movie mostly for kids, but it’s about a war with billions of casualties. He didn’t want us to feel for the bad guys, until the prequels, where that’s a bit more ambiguous.

I often thought that maybe they all wore helmets all the time because they were actually different humanoid races and the Empire wanted to suppress that individuality. Indeed, the Empire is clearly racist. No non-humans are ever shown in any command positions until Thrawn. I did notice, however, that the First Order has several female senior officers. The Empire didn’t, even at a time when the rebellion’s top leadership included Leia and Mon Mothma. So progress for the bad guys, I guess.

Several of the clones are characters in The Clone Wars and in Rebels. It turns out that some of them, at least, are capable of free thought and individuality. But they all have New Zealand accents.


*In one of the wikis, I read that they’ve tried to explain what stormtrooper armor is good for. Apparently, it can withstand a blaster shot such that the wearer is incapacitated, but not killed. That’s a clever way to explain how the stormtroopers always seem to get shot and taken down, but there’s never a river of blood around them.

[Hot Pepsi]

Thanks for that summary, HP.



I agree. This was the thing that bothered me about Blade Runner 2049. Wallace, the scientist, wants to make replicants that can reproduce because he can't keep up with the production demands of replicants. It's a bizarre plot twist that somehow a mass production system of replicants would be slower than one replicant reproducing at a time. But in Star Wars, the production line was, in theory, halted so an alternative was needed. There was no halting in Blade Runner 2049. Wallace could mass produce as much as he wanted.

If the replicants could be made in a vat and reproduce sexually and be made to usually give birth to multiples, he could really ramp up production.

[Patrick Thistle]

Several of the clones are characters in The Clone Wars and in Rebels. It turns out that some of them, at least, are capable of free thought and individuality. But they all have New Zealand accents.

See that annoys me. They are all clones of Jango Fett who had a Mandalorian (NZ) accent. But why would a clone have the same accent when it achieves maturity? Surely they would all develop their own accents influenced by their environment.

For the DVD release of Empire, Lucas dubbed a Jango Fett NZ accent over the original lines by Jeremy Bulloch so that Boba Fett sounded like Jango. Completely pointless as who knows what environment Boba was raised in after Jango was killed - his accent would have changed surely. (The DVD special edition of Empire was released after Episode II - in the cinema SE release, it was still Jeremy Bulloch's audio.)

[hobbes]

*In one of the wikis, I read that they’ve tried to explain what stormtrooper armor is good for. Apparently, it can withstand a blaster shot such that the wearer is incapacitated, but not killed. That’s a clever way to explain how the stormtroopers always seem to get shot and taken down, but there’s never a river of blood around them.

presumably as they’re energy weapons the wounds would be cauterised anyway?

[Hot Pepsi]

See that annoys me. They are all clones of Jango Fett who had a Mandalorian (NZ) accent. But why would a clone have the same accent when it achieves maturity? Surely they would all develop their own accents influenced by their environment.

For the DVD release of Empire, Lucas dubbed a Jango Fett NZ accent over the original lines by Jeremy Bulloch so that Boba Fett sounded like Jango. Completely pointless as who knows what environment Boba was raised in after Jango was killed - his accent would have changed surely. (The DVD special edition of Empire was released after Episode II - in the cinema SE release, it was still Jeremy Bulloch's audio.)

Because they spent their whole lives together. If that was the way the clones talked, they'd all talk like that. Or maybe the NZ accent is genetic somehow.

But it isn't consistent in the show, really. Boba Fett apperas as a kid in The Clone Wars, played by the same kid who played him in the films, Daniel Logan. He is, apparently, from New Zealand but lives in the US and sounds like more American. It would make sense that his accent got more Americanized because he was mostly raised by Aurra SIng, a brutal assassin with an American accent.
(this guy does a quick survey of the accents in Star Wars. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Xr8V54Aa1Q)

The accent of the other clone kids seems to vary a bit. But I think they wanted to create the idea that they all talk like that in the same way that all air force pilots and astronauts pick up a bit of a Texas accent.

In Legends, Boba Fett escapes the sarlacc and does all kinds of stuff and Lucas has said, I think, that he's still alive, but it remains to be seen. Maybe he'll appear in the Mandalorian. When asked about BF's potential resurrection, Filoni was noncommittal but in a never-say-never kind of way

[Hot Pepsi]

presumably as they’re energy weapons the wounds would be cauterised anyway?

That's possible. There is a detailed pseudo-scientific explanation of blasters somewhere. They aren't lasers, really. They shoot some kind of superhot gas or plasmaish stuff, but it has some mass to it because it seems to create and impact as well as burning. But you never see blaster fire igniting anything on fire or putting a big gaping hole through a stormtrooper either. Again, it's a story for kids about war so they have to make some compromises.

Assuming they have some kind of superefficient, powerful and durable battery technology, that might be lighter and provide more rounds than a gun with metal bullets. Certainly, you wouldn't want to shoot bullets inside a space ship if they could breach the hull.

Battlestar Galactica assumed that we won't use lasers or plasma guns in space battles. We'll have big, very fast machine guns and nuclear missles. In the Expanse, the main weapons are nuclear missles with machine guns used to shoot down those missles. There's also railgun technology. Obviously, in space, to blow a hole in a ship, you just need to get something very heavy moving very fast. No need to worry about aerodynamics or gravity.

[Eggchaser]

I like the Imperial Navy ships in Warhammer 40K. Mile long cathedrals running on tech that no one quite understands, crewed by people that are often born on the ships, bristling with guns that take hundreds of crew to load and fire because the Adeptus Mechanicus keeps the automated stuff for their own ships, which navigate the insane distances of space by taking a shortcut through Hell.

Completely derivative nonsense, but fun nonetheless.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Episode 1 demonstrates how easily a droid army can be disabled by an eight year old in a fighter. So then Palpatine goes with the clone stormtrooper idea which was the backstory of episode 2. I think the stormtroopers in episodes 4-6 are still all clones (Leia, upon meeting Luke: aren't you a little short to be a stormtrooper?). The clones are themselves proved fallible though, in episodes 4 to 6, which is why by the start of episode 7 we meet Fin, and realise the "First Order" have now taken to stealing children and training them from birth. It's one of the historical lines through the movies that does, actually, make narrative sense.

There are almost no clones left apparently by the time that the first star wars movies are set. Aside from most of them getting killed along the way. There's something about them aging at twice the normal rate, so they would be 60 years old by the time of the original movies. Apparently the reason given for things being swisher in the prequels is that the prequels are set at the end of thousands of years of relative peace and prosperity. the period of time between the prequels and original movies seemingly involves the nationalizing of basically everything and turning it all over to a war economy, which kind of fucks everything for everyone. Hence the lack of fancy ships. Also the lack of other job prospects made it much cheaper to hire ordinary people in enormous numbers rather than clones.

Now god knows when lucas came up with those ideas, and if he had thought about it before he made various movies, or whether or not he made it all up afterwards.

[Hot Pepsi]

Indeed. There don’t seem to be any new droids in the original trilogy. The all look a bit beat up, so probably a lot of the droid R&D and manufacturing had been converted to strictly military purposes.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

I think it has more to do with people fucking hating robots. That's even in the original movie. That guy who owns the bar gets super cranky. The other thing is that the empire is a super massive military state with huge numbers of unemployed people. The people who had the droids were from the sparsely populated edge of the empire, who were short on people, but long on factories.

[Hot Pepsi]

In the Mandalorian, he goes to the Mos Eisley Cantina and a droid is tending bar. Apparently, new management, new rules.

It’s suggested that a lot of people hate droids because military droids killed so many people.

There’s a book of short stories from the perspective of minor characters. One of them explains why the bartender didn’t like droids. But I haven’t read it yet.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

When is the mandalorian supposed to be set?

[Patrick Thistle]

Indeed. There don’t seem to be any new droids in the original trilogy. The all look a bit beat up, so probably a lot of the droid R&D and manufacturing had been converted to strictly military purposes.

Yes, the only shiny looking droids are on the Death Star. But in the rebel hangar the mechanic tells Luke his R2 unit looks "a bit beat up" and asks if he wants a replacement so presumably the Alliance had some somewhere.

[Hot Pepsi]

Every XWing has an R2 astromech. They’re not uncommon, but still very valuable.

[Patrick Thistle]

My point was more that they might have had a stock of slightly shinier ones.

[Hot Pepsi]

My point was more that they might have had a stock of slightly shinier ones.

Possibly. They do manage to get R2 looking as good as new after he was nearly destroyed in the battle of Yavin.