DominicCobb said:
Absolutely baffles me. Technology is of exactly zero importance in Star Wars. It’s there, that’s it. The films are not about that at all. They are modern myths, and very clearly so. You cannot with a straight face tell me that Star Wars is more similar to Shelly and Verne than to Tolkein and Arthurian legends.I disagree with this statement. The original Star Wars trilogy was very much about technology. In fact the original Star Wars can be seen as a critique of the modern world, where technology supersedes spirituality punctuated by Motti´s remark “This space station is now the ultimate power in the universe!” This to me is one of the more interesting aspects of the first movie, namely that the Jedi and even Darth Vader himself are seen as relics of the past in a galaxy dominated by technology.
I’m not at all speaking for Dominic, so he should correct me if I’m off. I think he’s noting that technology doesn’t drive the story in-universe. Luke has a speeder because that’s how you get around, vaporators are how you get water, droids are the labor pool, space ships are how you travel from planet to planet, etc.
I had that in my original response as well, before I trimmed it. Technology, far superior to ours, is the world in which they live. The story at its roots is; old man enlists the help of a farm boy to go rescue the princess and fight the bad guys.
That story can be told in just about any timeline or setting.
I don’t agree. The entire concept of the Old Republic with its spiritual guardians tapping into a long forgotten energy field created by all living things vs an Empire with its technology wiping out the life of an entire planet in an instant is at the heart of the movie. It is one of its main themes. The destruction of the Death Star is the victory of spirituality over technology. The climax of the movie sees Luke reject a piece of technology in favour of trusting his instincts, and using the Force.
That doesn’t make it not fantasy though. Look at Lord of the Rings, and you have a very similar story. It’s not exactly technology, but the creation of the Uruk-hai and the One Ring is in direct contrast to the unfettered and unsophisticated lives of the hobbits. Vader is “more machine than man,” but that runs in parallel to his corruption by the dark side. In Lord of the Rings, the analog is Gollum, once a hobbit, transformed into a monster with the evil ‘tech’ of the One Ring.
The thing is, the tech in Star Wars is just a method of delivery. The movie isn’t really about the evils of tech, because all the good guys use tech too (even when Luke gets a robotic hand, there’s nothing about the tech specifically that relates to badness and the dark side, it just shows a parallel with his father). The Death Star represents inhumanity, the cold calculating Empire represents an un-empathetic world. The story is about selfishness vs. selflessness. Spirituality vs. technology only naturally flows out of the larger philosophical picture it’s painting. It’s more about connecting with and helping others, vs. doing nothing.