We are currently watching Andor, and for whatever reason it struck me, if this all takes place a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, how did the humans get there?
Most SF I’ve encountered takes place in “the future.” But seeing as how humans have only existed for some 100,000 years, and have had steam power for 225 of those, I’m wondering how we got to a galaxy far far away a long time ago. Not to mention developing all that technology and culture once we got there.
I suppose that the movies might be filmed at some time in the remote future, such that the events shown were in the past at the time they were filmed, yet are in the future regarding today…
Or is it, instead, an extreme example of convergent evolution?
What little googling I did seems to just say this is unexplained. I’m not a big SF fan, but this strikes me as a pretty gaping plot hole.
Star Wars is pretty much the antithesis of any sort of science-based science fiction. It’s space fantasy: a fairy tale with laser swords, where they call magic “the Force.”
No, there is no canonical in-universe explanation of why the “humans” in a galaxy far, far away (and a long time ago, too!) look just like us.
To quote Harrison Ford, talking to Mark Hamill during the filming of the original film, “it’s not that kind of movie, kid.”
So they are classed as human, but humans of Coruscant and not of Earth. These humans of a different galaxy match to Terrans pretty closely but aren’t directly related.
Although human-like in appearance and manner, the humanoids of Star Wars are clearly not human. For that matter, the astrogrophy, biology, and even basic physics of the Star Wars universe is not like our own. It has been hypothesized that all of this occurred in a pocket universe perhaps formed by an instability during the expansion phase, or else a construct by survivors of the Great Contraction to produce elaborate dramatic entertainments, the broadcast of which were caught in a time vortex which captured and then released the, circa AD 1974 into the brain of one “George Lucas” who reimagined them in primitive form into the franchise we see today.
Having a recorded and civilized history reaching back far beyond the beginning of space travel,[4] their original homeworld forgotten, and early history of Humans was lost to their scientists in the depths of millennia. Whatever the original homeworld was, it was universally accepted that Humans evolved on one of the Core Worlds near the galaxy’s center. Humans were among the few sentient species in the galaxy whose homeworld was unknown, the Ryn, Yoda’s species and the Baragwins being some other examples. ~~~Wookieepedia
How is this specific to Star Wars? For simple matters of practicality, almost all filmed sci-fi, regardless of what the backstory purportedly is, either have humanoid aliens in a bunch of face paint and prosthetics and straight up unadorned humans and you’re meant to not think too hard about it.
Same as how aliens all speak English with contemporary, 20th/21st century accents and use slang and metaphors that are the exact same thing as us modern folks use (eg: in LOTR, the orcs say “looks like meat’s back on the menu”, implying the existence of orc restaurants with orc sit down service and orc waiters).
Curious, because what few sources I looked at seemed to say otherwise.
Another possibility is that homo sapiens arose in that distant galaxy, and then travelled to our earth, built the pyramids ;), seeded a population, and then left - takin gtheir technology with them (and creating a fossil/genetic record to confuse things.)
Like I said, I’m not a SF fan - and even less of a SW fan. (Just starting S2 or Andor, I’ve pretty much had my SW fill for the next 5-10 years!) In my ignorance, I had thought George Lucas was supposed to have been uber anal about creating complete histories and back stories.
What I thought made this worth asking was that most of the SF I’ve read/watched seems to take place in the future. As opposed to SW occurring a long time ago.
Watching Andor, I find it curious that the humans all speak with British accents. Even including an occasional Scot. Just seems a tad odd.
Yes and no. Yes, he created some backstories, but a lot of the voluminous detail about the characters and the setting was created by others. And, what Lucas did develop was largely around the story, and not any “science” – and almost undoubtedly not any attempt to rationalize or explain how the “human” characters in Star Wars were (or even could be) the same species of human as us.
Those few times when he did attempt to inject some pseudo-scientific explanations of things into the films (e.g., “midichlorians” in The Phantom Menace) were awful.
There was a cancelled book called Alien Exodus that would have made the original humans refugees from the THX1138 universe who travelled through a wormhole or something like that, to another galaxy in the past.
I think the problem is to try and read Star Wars as if it was Science Fiction, Star Wars is Fantasy, with SF trappings.
“A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away” tells you from the start that this is a fairy tale. (It took me an embarrassing amount of years to realize that it was an analogue of “A long time ago, in a kingdom far far away”
That’s why he had Leia kiss Luke multiple times. He had an entire storyline about incestuous inbreeding among the Skywalker clan enhancing their mastery of “The Force” detailed in a long passage of The Journey of the Whills that Obi-Wan Kenobi read aloud during the long journey to Alderaan to keep the Luke and the crew entertained but Marcia Lucas thankfully cut it for pacing and time. However, George RR Martin read a shooting script for Star Wars and thought it was a really good idea which he used for the Targaryens, who are basically the ‘Jedi’ of the Song of Ice and Fire series.
I find it interesting that the styles in the 5BBY-0BBY era are surprisingly close to the styles of late-1970s America. The haircuts, clothing, sideburns, computers, home furnishings, etc. I’m surprised the Galaxy didn’t get an influx of pastels and wicker furniture in the years post-empire.
The Star Wars movies don’t take place in our past. They’re the myths and legends of the civilization that grows out of the events we see in the movies - it’s meant to represent that, even a thousand years later, people still talk about Luke Skywalker and the fall of the Empire.
The whole universe is not meant to have any explicit connection to the real world. There may be an “Earth” somewhere in the setting, but it’s been lost for so long that nobody would even recognize it if they found it again.
Do you also find it odd when you’re watching a WWII movie, and the Nazis are speaking British-accented English with each other? Does it throw you when movies set in ancient Rome aren’t filmed entirely in Latin?