Bocce_Linguist said:

Bingowings said:

In terms of space battles the one at the end of TPM looks WWI to ANH's WWII (colourful simple fighter craft /less colouful gritty fighter craft ).

The problem isn't so much in the design but it the writing.

Maybe it's not so much the specific look* of the fighter crafts but rather the execution of the battles that makes it hard for me to believe/accept that TPM is supposed to be 'before' SW/ANH.

*even taking into consideration your color analogy, there's still a problem, though: we should have at least seen Y-Wings in the PT, since during the OT days the film makers involved were saying that they looked so 'beat-up' because they were in fact older craft than the X-wings....

according to lucas in a 1987 starlog interview i have x-wings in the OT were old ships because the rebels were a small outfit fighting a gorilla war and they could not afford the newer state of the art ships like the twin ion engine ships used by the empires and he said in the PT films x-wings would be state of the art and the ships used by the republic.

Of course someone reminded george that all the collectors already had x-wings and they had been released multiple times already and that if they made a new ship thats another 30 million in sells from the toy side of things. he also went on to say in the sequel episodes in the 3rd trilogy that tie fighters would be the old ships used and there would be a newer state of the art craft