The 50s, despite having a lot of bad stuff, had an awful lot of good stuff. I oughtta sic Flash Rogers on you.
You’re missing that the war presented in the prequels isn’t “real”, Palpatine is controlling both sides and the droids and clones are intentionally useless distraction level cannon fodder. They are only intended to grind down the Republic and Jedi and distract them.
Now I’ll admit this doesn’t explain the lack of basic war tactics, since both sides assume they are fighting an actual war.
But then again those useless droids killed a hell of a lot of Jedi in that arena.
EDIT:R2D2 and C3PO make perfect sense, C3 is a translator and diplomat bot/butler type. R2 is an astromech, designed to repair space ships in flight or be a removable flight computer.
You didn’t see the episode of TNG* where the dedicated repair droid refused to put itself at risk? :dubious:
*Yeah, yeah, I know: It ain’t Star Wars. But still…!
If only someone could tell George this in the 1990s like they could in the 1970s.
I don’t remember where this memory came from, but I have a recollection of hearing George Lucas describing one scene, where a ship was twirling around destroying droids in a humorful fashion and suchlike, and he stated outright that he wanted to make sure that every motion of the ship ended up destroying at least one droid. To, you know, REALLY up the physical comedy of the scene. Realism wasn’t anywhere near the top of his mind.
One explanation I’ve heard that I kinda like: the Trade Federation is basically a large multinational corporation. They have a shitload of money, but not much in the way of actual loyalty. (If, say, Toyota wanted to raise an army for some reason, how many people can you imagine volunteering?) In that case, a droid army make sense, in that you don’t have to worry about morality/conflicting loyalties, you can store them away when you don’t need them, and you’re not likely to be able to field a sizable number of living troops anyway.
Speaking of robot technology, Grievious has a bad ass spinning cyborg body of doom. If I was Vader I’d be crying foul. Couldn’t spring for the deluxe model, Palpy?
Grievious is not a force user, so no problem replacing as much of him with robotic parts as possible.
Anakin is a force user, and apparently the more you replace of his bio body the more he loses force power. So they tried to keep as much as possible, instead of just sticking his brain in a robot. Or another fan wank I’ve heard is Palpy fears Anakin will usurp him, as sith inevitably do. So he doesn’t want him to have the fancy shit.
Not only that this is why the clones exist too, the clone wars are very unpopular and if they had to use conscripts it would never get off the ground. Faceless clones that aren’t our loved ones? Oh hell go wild!
I don’t like the prequels really, but this point seems obvious that the whole war is a farce only designed to wear down the resources of the republic and seperatists so Palpy can then seize power and be unopposed. And it worked for almost two decades too, until the scrappy rebels managed to put together their rag tag fleet. And they only won because Palpy was arrogant and wanted Luke as his new sith apprentice.
That’s crazy talk!
Well, crazy after a properly-administered and correctly-prescribed dose of medication, but still!
The problem with the “Palpy fears Anakin” fan wank is that the prequels say Anakin built C3PO and a pod racer from spare parts scrounged/stolen as a six year old slave living in poverty. So… give him the machine shop in a Star Destroyer and see what he can do in a week.
The force user explanation makes more sense, except for… well, basically except for everything Yoda said on Dagobah. Also, except for resurrected Darth Maul in the Clone Wars cartoons, who replaced his whole lower body with Grievous-level tech and came out stronger than before.
The real explanation is that the original trilogy and the prequels are incompatible tech-wise. In the original, Vader was top-of-the-line tech - just compare him to every robot in the original series. Vader is nimble and dextrous compared to the few bipedal robots like C3PO and IG88. Most original-series robots have wheels and look like trash cans. There’s no reason to believe Vader isn’t the absolute best the Empire can do.
OK, but tech was better before the Empire took over, you argue? Then how come even R2D2 has been upgraded in the prequels? (For example, prequel R2 has jet rockets and can fly. ROTJ R2 has to roll off Jabba’s sand cruiser and be retrieved later by magnet.) And when robots with shields can be mass-produced by the separatists, why are we told that TIE fighters have no shields to save money?
There’s just no way to fan-wank it. George Lucas screwed up. He screwed up at such a fundamental level that I think it’s probably a good thing Disney saved it from him.
Fanwankery ahead!
In terms of droid value and usability, I think you have to take into account economic conditions throughout the Empire during episodes IV-VI.
Recall that, even though the political system was stagnant, during the prequels there was a bustling and thriving merchant class managing a strong capitalistic economic system that spanned a galaxy. That provides for space for a lot of wealth to be expended on droids and other technology to fill various roles.
However, a totalitarian economy doesn’t have the elbow room to allow for a large and independent merchant/financial class. Inevitably those people are going to start trying to go out on their own and doing things that challenge the Emperor. I’m just guessing here but I’m thinking that Palpatine would consider this a bad thing.
In the prequels it’s clear that Palpatine is using the merchant/financial class to acheive certain ends but he is not in any way truly a part of them. We also have no indication that he really has his head around the way they influence the flow of goods and wealth throughout the galaxy.
By the time of Episode IV the economy of the galaxy is likely stagnant just at the politics were in the prequels. That means a generally poorer overall population and much less wealth to be spent on droids. Hence the fact that droids are much rarer and valuable. Like 58 Chevy’s in Cuba, they’re a holdover from a past, wealthier age that has been supressed by political interference in the economy.
It’s also why all the private ships look all kicked around in episodes IV-VI. Only the ships involved in government work - the Imperial Fleet and the Alderaanian Blockade Runner - look like they’re been well-maintained.
Your quality of life will be so much better if you just pretend the prequels don’t exist and don’t exert any effort thinking about them
Why did Anakin build a protocol droid fluent in 6 million forms of communication to help his mom do housework
Because the dishwasher spoke 7 million and was ornery.
Right. Look at what happened in communist countries. Or what is happening in Venezuela right now. The military & top-level government officials manage to have cutting-edge technology, but for everyone else life stagnates, or in some cases even regresses.
What’s hard to understand about that? People in Star Wars can cross the galaxy in a day. Those 6 million languages are probably only a fraction of the number of languages that exist in the Star Wars galaxy. A major, cosmopolitan city would probably have a level of diversity that would make Hong Kong look like a redneck backwater town.
What’s hard to understand is how you could get by without a protocol droid.
It would make more sense for a tinkering pod racer to build an R2 unit, and a queen’s starship to have a protocol droid. It’s little things like this that can be fixed if the writers, you know, write a second draft.
I saw what you did there.
Also, Anakin didn’t have his own chip foundry out back. He was building his robot out of whatever spare parts he could scrounge. When he went looking for a language chip, the best one he found was the one with six million languages already on it.