It’s not just having the ability to create the technology, though, it’s also the cultural need for the same tech: think of the Greeks, who knew pneumatics and mechanics and hydraulics, but didn’t use a lot of their theories–past some fun neat automata and whatnot–because of the abundance of slave labor. It’s easy to hypothesize a similar lack of care about instant communication in the Star Wars universe: everything’s maddeningly far away, there are tons of backwater planets that are lawless and not to be visited, there’s this Empire thingy that would likely combat free information and chillingly effect even the interest in knowledge, etc…
My personal belief is that everyone in the Star Wars universe is apolitical because they’re all waiting for a certain film to be released, a mythic story of heroes and villains set, um, somewhere other than where the Star Wars universe is set. You can hear the average Coruscantian grumble, “To hell with politics and trade wars and this First Order nonsense, G. G. Lensflare better not have f***ed up the new Space Battles movies. Those prequels ruined my childhood! That . . . and the false hopes so quickly crushed . . . after the Battle of Endor” (swelling music, spaceships fly off into space in the background, fade to black).
I’ve made this point elsewhere, but to me the Darth Vader of Episode IV is the most intriguing – he’s a rising star whose even less scrupulous than most (“only you could be so bold”), he’s got power, but limits (“Vader, release him!”), career Imperial Navy folks who resent him mightily (“Don’t try to frighten us with your sorcerer’s ways, Lord Vader”) despite his patronage with the Emperor and fear rather than respect him (“we shall redouble our efforts!”).
(Again, I’ve read none of the new canon but…) The imperial navy is so absurdly huge, they can toss mile-long ships to the garbage heap without any repurcusions based on Vader’s hunches. So, in the span of what – six years – Vader loses two death stars and his patron gets killed? I’m guessing the gears of the imperial military bureaucracy and going to hold him up as an example of everything that’s wrong with going against the system and folks coming up in that post-Endor empire are going to mighty careful about claiming patronage or allegiance to the obviously failed power of the Dark Side. Only room in the Empire for conventional evil, none of this supernatural stuff…
From what JJ Abrams has said, the new movies aren’t really dealing with the Empire or the old systems anymore. The way he describes it is (paraphrased): “Imagine if after World War II, the remaining Nazis decamped to Argentina and started trying to figure out how to finish what Hitler started but in a much less bureaucratic way.” They don’t even have the Sith anymore, with their ancient “there can be only two” rule. Who knows how badass they might be without limits?
By the way, if you like the Vader of Ep IV, which, yeah, totally, you should check out the new season of Rebels. It features a lot of Vader pre-Episode IV when he was just a balls-out terrifying badass. Voiced by James Earl Jones, no less.
The old (no longer canon) books had a handful of “Luke goes to the dark side” storylines… They were mostly meh.
Again, the new book gets into some of that stuff. It’s basically a handful of Imperial muckity mucks convening on a backwater world to decide the direction/power structure/etc of the empire, now that the Emperor is gone - and due to some fortunate coincidences, they get found out by the New Republic. One of the muckity mucks is a high level former Palpatine advisor, who is basically a cult follower of the Sith, with no actual Sith powers. It’s interesting stuff. And there’s a little bit of foreshadowing at the end, pointing towards our main villain (I presume) in the film.
Yeah, who saw that bit of stunt casting coming? When I saw him in Lincoln I was similarly amazed. I mean, Adam Driver strikes me as having half the range of Keanu Reeves. He’s swell in Girls, and is a similar tool in While We’re Young. Was he good in anything else? I kinda wanted to see J. Edgar but never did. Was he good in that?
Unfortunately, this makes me think “Star Wars” less than even the prequels. Not to say that it won’t be a good movie, but it’s about as far from the original 3 as Abrams’ “Star Trek” was away from TOS. This is not the way things were supposed to tuen out…Have they forgotten that episode 6 was titled “Return of the Jedi”? Not only are there NO Jedi, they are now only a myth. I’m sorry, but I would take any story from the expanded universe over this any day.
There is no Empire. It’s called “The First Order”. The Rebellion is now called “The Resistance”. The Jdei are now only a myth. They’ve thrown everything out the window.
To be clear, it’s called “…The Jedi”. Singular, as in, Luke Skywalker. He’s the only Jedi. And nobody said that 30 yrs after those movies there are “no Jedi”… it’s just still considered a myth by most people, just like the Jedi always have been. They’ve always been seen as a weird old fringe religion. Think of how many people have actually seen Jedi or Sith in action, and especially, how many people actually saw Luke doing his Jedi thing, or Vader using the Dark Side. Hardly any. It’s always been a weird myth, and it still is. Only now, the cynical Han is the one telling people about it.
I’m a big Star Wars dork, and this movie is everything I would’ve wanted to see as a 9 year old coming out of the theater after Return of the Jedi.
The First Order is what is born from the remains of the Empire, 30 years after Return of the Jedi (and incidentally, 30 years after the new book, which I was talking about, where the Empire is still struggling to figure out what they are, post-Emperor). As @nungesser says, they haven’t thrown anything out the window. Rewatch the old movies, you can see that even in those, your average person on your average planet doesn’t really believe that the Jedi/the force exist (Han calls it a “hokey religion”, for example). It’s just not really made that explicit, because we’re following the storyline of a Jedi and a Sith Lord.
