Originally posted by: Yoda Is Your Father
Yeah same here. Ducks are creatures and could theoretically evolve elsewhere in the universe, but the 1950s were a cultural thing. Earth Culture. It never should have been in there.

It's not quite a 1950s diner, although the crucial point is of course that it's close enough, so that the source of inspiration is a dead giveaway. This is an interesting point on the list of the many things that went wrong with the prequels. The PT, like the OT, is full of subtle analogies and parallels to the real world, but the notable difference is that where the OT artists took something familiar from several sources and then redesigned and extrapolated it into something that was just subconsciously familiar to the viewer at the time, the PT craftsmen too often simply made a few small tweaks, making it blatantly and intrusively obvious to everyone what had influenced their work and what the original starting point was.

A practical example of this is Yoda in the OT and the Nemodians in the PT. Yoda is a character which, both in character and appearance, appears to have been subtly inspired by the Asian culture of knowledge and wisdom as well as the great Western philosophers and then extrapolated in age into an over 800 year old sage of unparalleled wisdom. It worked great because the end result appeared refreshingly new (no pun intended) and everyone saw something slightly different in him, so lots of very different people were collectively able to recognize something familiar to them, something similar, and when he reveals his true identity to Luke, there is soon no doubt in anyone's mind about what sort of character he really is. He was just the perfect wizard and philosopher for this type of fairy tale.

Contrast this with the Nemodians in the PT, which were poorly designed and voiced, consequentially with the exact opposite result. Lots of people saw a strong controversial Asian connection immediately, but due to the nonsensical and cartoonish design of these characters, it was never really possible for people to agree in any way on what sort of cultural aspect they actually represented, if any at all. Accusations and arguments about derogatory cultural stereotypes and racism soon ensued, and little is known on whether the dust ever fully settled on that debate or whether it was silenced simply because the PT movies just got old pretty fast and everyone grew tired both them and the new characters really quickly. In the end though, nobody really cared.