The Aesthetics Of Technology In ‘Star Wars’
Image Source: Hackernoon
There is lots of wonderful technology in the Star Wars universe. Lightsabers may be the most iconic, but they have lightspeed starships, droids, blasters, and even hovercraft. One of the interesting things about this technology is that, where we have similar capabilities, we almost always use it differently than they do in Star Wars. It’s a case of aesthetics over realism, and it’s part of what makes Star Wars so much fun.
Wheels are my favorite example. Have you ever noticed how few wheels there are in the galaxy far, far away? They obviously have the technology, but wheels can only be seen on astromech droids, mouse droids, and a handful of transport vehicles, and that’s about it. And with the droids, we don’t even see the wheels; in fact, it almost looks wrong whenever a wheeled transport vehicle appears on screen.
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The lack of wheels doesn’t make sense when you think about it. Just look at the power droids. They’re basically a box with two legs when they could easily have wheels. So slow and unstable. Here on Earth, any engineer worth his salt would look at it and laugh or cry. It’s begging for wheels. But not in Star Wars. In Star Wars, it blends in perfectly.
So, why the lack of wheels? It’s clearly not for technological reasons, so it must be for the aesthetic. Star Wars is a work of fiction. George Lucas had an image in his mind and created that vision. The relative scarcity of wheels is no accident; it does something important. It makes the world of Star Wars unusual, even alien, lending an exoticism to the world we visit.
Wheels lead naturally to another area where Star Wars deploys technology differently that we do: hovering. There is hovering technology everywhere you look in Star Wars. Droids hover, cars hover, ships hover, and even bikes hover. We have hovering technology here on Earth, but it’s not very common; mag-lev trains are one example, but it’s hard to find a second. Part of this may be because our hovercraft technology is not as advanced as Star Wars, though many of the hovering in Star Wars is impractical, but just like the lack of wheels, having everything hover helps immerse us in an alien world.
A third example of the differences between Star Wars technology and our own is with holograms. In Star Wars, almost all communication is done by hologram. Even wanted posters use a holographic image. Here on Earth, holograms are little more than parlor tricks, bringing celebrities back from the dead and things like that. For communication, we almost exclusively use printed text, voice calls, and screens. This may sound funny, but the reason for this difference isn’t that the holograms are a better mode of communication; it boils down to the fact that holograms are neat and visually interesting. Aesthetically, that makes Star Wars more entertaining.
Image Source: IGN SEA
A final example is the iconic lightsaber. Now we don’t have lightsaber technology here on Earth (yet), but one thing we spend a lot of time and effort developing and building is weapons. With these weapons, we would never make anything like a lightsaber. Lightsabers are exclusively close combat weapons, and almost everything we create is built for distance. There are plenty of distance weapons in Star Wars, so why would the Jedi choose to fight in close combat? As you can probably guess by now, the reasons are aesthetic, but not to make the world more alien; it’s because George Lucas was heavily influenced by Japanese samurai cinema. The lightsaber is a way of showing that influence.
With all the wonderful technology in Star Wars, almost none of it is there for practical or technological reasons. Being a work of art, the choices made in Star Wars are almost exclusively aesthetic. The tech is a means to an artistic end. It’s part of the world building, it’s part of the entertainment factor, and it’s a way for George Lucas to pay homage to the things he loves. Even though it’s not strictly practical, this viewer wouldn’t change a thing.
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SOURCES: Wookieepedia