How do long distance communication work in the star wars universe? — Page 2

Sounds reasonable.

I think people are missing my initial point, and I think that’s my fault because I didn’t really know what it was.

I’m not interested in a technobabble explanation for how communications work, or even ways to reconcile what happens in Rogue One with what happened in the OT. I think the essential point is that the ease of access the rebels had to long distance real-time communications felt instinctively un-star warsy to me. It doesn’t automatically make Rogue One a bad film, and is actually quite fitting for the ‘War Movie’ vibe they were trying to achieve.

I just found it interesting that something so simple instantly struck me as odd, and that’s what led me to thinking more about how things were represented in the OT, and the more I think about it the more I think it’s because of an underlying subtlety of the OT. So a better question to pose would be:

‘In the OT does the Empire restrict access to and/or routinely monitor long distance communications?’

This would be quite in keeping with the totalitarian regimes that the Empire is modelled on, controlling the flow of information and restricting who can talk to who is a really good way of preventing like minded people from forming an effective resistance. It is never out-right stated that this is the case, but it’s obviously something that I had picked up on and I thought it interesting enough to discuss.

Edit: Fixed typo Rouge to Rogue.

DominicCobb said:

Yeah but what I mean is that SW is fantasy so I truly do not care if that’s the case in the real world.

Fantasy is a generic and vague word. The fantasy world of the OT had a very different feel than the fantasy world of the PT. And the Disney movies have a very different feel than both of them.

Part of what I like about the OT films is that, despite the space chases and lightsaber battles, the made-up creatures and worlds, the films still have a realness about them. They are films that take themselves seriously as films, without taking themselves too seriously. Some scenes in Return of the Jedi not-withstanding. If the Star Wars universe were a real non-fictional place, you could see the things happening there actually happening just like they do on-screen. The acting is convincing enough. The casting was convincing enough. The research that was done by the writers, the producers, the directors, the costume and set design people, was extensive. I keep coming back to the comparison between the trash compactor scene and the rathtar scene. In one, you have a real person drowning in a sewer on a real set, and the actor surfaces gasping for air, covered in garbage, just as he would if something like that had actually happened to him in real life. In the rathtar scene, you have fake CGI stuff going on, people getting their heads banged into hard metal walls at high velocity, and then getting up like nothing happened to them. There is the space battle at the end of the TFA where the rebel pilots just fly in and go pew-pew yipee-kaye we did it! Without much effort. And the scenes at the end of R1 where the camera lingers on bit players overacting. Contrast those to the land and space battle scenes in the OT where they actually feel like “real” military battles, albeit with really cool futuristic special effects. Star Wars as I always knew it was just completely different than this made-up Marvel comic-book universe crap that modern movies have become.

ATMachine said:

Someone with better photoshop skills than I needs to make a Rouge One poster.

Here you go.

Not rouge enough.

Alderaan said:

Not rouge enough.

How’s this?

I legitimately like it.

We need our color correction experts to chime in, but definitely much better!

Alderaan said:

We need our color correction experts to chime in

No we don’t.