Almost every period of star wars history features its own unique and easy to identify starship designs… except for the last few decades. We take a look at one of the worst design trends in star wars.
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48 comments
I really hope someone important at Disney Star Wars saw your video. One of the reasons I fell in love with Star Wars was the vehicles: Land Speeder, AT-AT, X-wings, Y-wings, Slave I, Millenium Falcon etc. The prequels had excellent design sensibilities led by Doug Chiang, which made the poor direction and script tolerable since I enjoyed the movies as extended toy commercials with the Naboo Fighter, Sith Infiltrator, Grievous' ship, pod racers. But the sequels had tweaked X-wings, tie-fighters and really impractical Snow Speeders (I threw mine away because it's junk design – who could operate in an open vehicle with no protection from the cold and wind?). Solo's landspeeder was just a box with rounded edges! There was no 'wow I need a toy for that ship' feeling watching the Disney shows, not even the clunky Mandalorian ship. Hardly anyone on Youtube mentioned this aspect of deterioration of the franchise and I thought it was just me.
I think you have a point, but the Spitfire to the modern jet fighter is a big shift that was necessitated by the change in propulsion technology. If you look at, say, US military vehicles, we still have Vietnam era planes and helicopters in service today. An F/A22 Raptor doesn’t look that different from a Cold War F14 or F18; largely, from the change to jet propulsion to now, they haven’t had cataclysmic changes in design because they haven’t needed to make those changes. In my opinion, I feel like the technology designs change too much and too often just to sell new designs of toys. I feel like especially a ragtag group like the Rebels/Resistance would be using older designs because it’s what they can get their hands on. And for the Empire and First Order, it’s kind of like if it’s still working, why spend the money and manpower to make changes? I get what you’re saying and I don’t necessarily disagree, I just also see the other side of it.
I do think the resurgent is the best ship of the sequel era
This is what I was thinking watching season 3 of Star Trek Picard. I've watched 40-years of starship evolution but with Picard, while I certainly appreciate it, we now see Starfleet designers feeling nostalgia for the Original Series movie era! I love the 2270s era Constitution refit but how is that a design that fits the mission over 125-years later?
In defense of some of these things. Technology seems historically to go through periods of small incremental improvements and then huge leaps in ability and diversity of designs and then back to a period of homogenization in design as the best ideas are kept. Early military aircraft were often only relevant for 5-10 years. Now they are designs that last 30+ years. A modern super carrier is a 50 year long investment as opposed to the early Fleet carriers of WW2 that survived the war being scrappy less than 30 years after launch.
In the cases of military gear some designs are also so successful that they last far longer than intended (it is no a meme that the B-52 to last into the TNG period of Star Trek with constant upgrades) and some have very long production runs. There are orders enough for the F-16 to have a full 50 year production run it has been so successful. Cold war era gear first fielded in the 1960s is still relevant on the modern battlefield.
Then apply this to a higher technology galaxy wide nation state that between it's direct predecessors and successors last for thousands of years. That a highly successful design like the X-wing would last with only minor upgrades would last for decades would actually be no shock.
Sorry but the tie-fighter is distinctly function over form. The high republic ships you describe later in the video are the ones exhibiting form over function.
If you have issues with this, then you’re really not gonna like the new Star Trek ship design. Absolutely lazy.
First off, about your first car analogy, you are wrong. I 100% cared what my first car was and made sure that i got something i wanted and didnt just take a car just to have a car. Hence why i was 16 and had the fastest car in town with my 1st gen AWD Eagle Talon that had a built 4G63T pushing 300hp when i first got her and ended up with a smidge over 600hp by my senior year. Not to mention my 475hp Subaru Legacy 2.5GT that i daily drove most of the time then as well. Some of us didnt want some beat up old camry or corrola. I wanted freedom just like every other teen getting their license but i also wanted to have fun and look good doing it. But i also got my license as a teen wheb the West Coast Honda vs East Coast DSM (Eagle Talon, Mitsubishi Eclipse, Plymouth Laser) feud was in full swing. Let us not forget that the DUMBEST thing is slick, sleek and rounded space ship designs since there is absolutely ZERO air/atmosphere/ friction in space for any real aerodynamics to make sense lmfao.
7:43 the first spitfire came only 35 years after the first ever flight so obviously the looks of aircraft would change more during the very beginning of the industry. The car argument at the beginning also doesn’t hold up for the same reason. You can’t compare any earth tech advancement to the star wars universe because they’ve had the tech they are using for eons so technological advancement is incremental at that point. just like a horse drawn carriage today looks similar to a horse drawn carriages from 200 years ago because they’ve been around so long there isn’t much to improve on
This channel is slowly becoming one of My favorite places in the internet.
Never been a fan of the T70 I would have prefered to see a E Wing
I don't care what anyone thinks, I just prefer the Resistance designs over the old Rebellion designs.
I think what ends up happening is what happened in our world. 60’s had a rounder more bubble feel, then the 80’s there was more of a box feel. Get to the republic era there are more modern sleek designs some box and some round. After this we get people wanting more wants than need, people want that aggressive SUV style to now, everyone being a spreedsheet stat nerds where they innovate in the stats, but less of the style of ride.
Pretty confident that the Y-wing in the sequels are a purpose built single seat fighter with better speed and maneuverability than the alliance or republic models. I honestly love every rendition of the Y-wing, feels like the perfect representation of what strike fighters are in real life
This seems like a hot take, but IMHO the OT ships just fit in the universe much better. I never liked the design of the T-70 or any of the ST ships that just look like more of the same that we had (for nostalgia reasons, they did nothing to innovate the series unless advances in tech are really slow in the SWU)
In all fairness 50 years of design iteration can have relatively little change, the F-15 and B-52 are both 50+ yrs old, and the F-16 is getting up there too. These aircraft have seen similar changes to those x-wings, the fighters are on the e/f variants with a new variant coming out for the F-15, and the B-52 is in its h variant. The changes in variant were reflected in relatively small increments, amd most people probably couldnt tell apart the initial batch from those in modern service
Thing on your mic makes you sound weird
Not hating but apparently you do not realize how old a lot of military vehicle are. Or how a lot of them just get upgrades to existing platforms.
About cars… I mean, you can take any period and say that cars look the same. In 30-s cars had prominent fenders, long square hoods… 50-s gave cars big rear fins and long bodies, then in the following years the cars started to become more boxy, then more compact, then more egg-shaped, now cars becoming more boxy again, with more sharp edges.
Many of the sequel trilogy's designs, especially the T-70 were heavily influenced by Ralph McQuarrie's original concept art. Given that the entire sequel trilogy started out as an homage to the OT, using the original concept art for inspiration makes sense. Star Wars Rebels designers did the same thing when building out the Rebels team from Lothal. Zeb is nearly 1:1 of an original concept for Chewie.
Now, if Disney is going to set up a new golden era for Star Wars that happens after the Sequel Trilogy, then by all means they ought to take significant strides in ship design. The rub is that Star Wars has always had ties to American hot rod culture, so old ships in the SW universe tend to be used where rag-tag groups of rebels are formed. If anything, the First Order ought to have had a design aesthetic not yet seen before to visually signal their origins in the Unknown Regions. Yet, the First Order is just a revival of Palpatine's Galactic Empire, and thusly derivative.
I too pine for new design aesthetics in Star Wars and have been glad to see Mandalorian and Skeleton Crew realize that opportunity. Even the Mandalorian's fighters pulled from the cartoons have a fresh look in live action. The pirates are also an opportunity to see some creative designs and I think we might have caught some glimpses in the pirates' base in Skeleton Crew. I'll digress here, but I could write about this for hours.
I absolutly hate the "split in half" engine design of the sequels X-Wing, it's looks so dumb 😅
I don't like the general lack off evolution in the sequel's designs, but when I look at the only "new" idea they add into Star Wars (the slow magnetic bomber at the beggining of de 8th film), I'm thankfull they don't try to add any other new ideas 😂
"Temu X-Wing" is such a funny way of explaining why the T-80 looks bad, it absolutely nails it.
It's a complaint you wouldn't see from the average critic or casual fan but the lack of effort in sequel ships is an issue that really bugged me as a lifelong fan. The iconic designs of Star Wars matter, if artists/directors/executives, whoever is making these decisions, just fall back on old designs for nostalgia and merchandise's sake it just feels lazy.
I would have loved to see some new truly iconic Starfighters in the sequel trilogy, or at least some B-Wings making a proper appearance. Obviously those films have bigger problems though so weak art direction kinda ends up a footnote next to the glaring story mistakes.
Truly believe the matured E-wing should have been the Starfighter of the resistance
Your comparing earth technological evolution to the technological evolution of a galaxy that is FAR more developed than ours.
I think I would be correct in saying technology within the Star Wars galaxy has peaked for the most part. The curve of evolutions has leveled out.
Abundant resources and multi cultural trade has propelled the galaxy into a state of cultural amalgamation within tech. Little effort is given to innovation. Rather, priority is placed on what is most ‘efficient’.
There were two First Order ship designs which I think were interesting.
The AAL-1971/9.1 Troop Transport is ugly, but there is a sort of elegance to the ugliness. It does feel a lot like a new ship drawing on the utilitarian designs of the empire. The framing of them in The Force Awakens was a bit of an odd choice for the villains, however.
The Light Infantry Utility Vehicle… makes a very nice Lego set, probably one of my favorite of the sequel era. I was really disappointed when I saw the film that it had such a small presence (being the speeder the protagonists commandeered on Starkiller Base).
Disney is the reason there is no imagination in Star Wars anymore.
They haven't had a single great new idea when it comes to writing stories, so why would you think they have the people who could create anything new in relation to technology advancements in Star Wars.
Back in the days of the Expanded Universe, there were advancements in Star Wars technology's. Because the people working on Star Wars back then cared about the universe.
Not now, now Star Wars is just plain boring.
I think the stagnation of ship design makes sense in world and out of world. Out of world the story is retreading the Galactic Civil War. If it was good or bad right or wrong Disney wanted the Galactic Civil War again and that is what they made. The ships are so similar because they are meant to be the same or at least comparable. If we extend these ideas to the people in the story Id say there is a logic. The galaxy is at peace, for the most part. The New Republic has slashed the military budget significantly trying to show it is different to The Empire and its military industrial complex. The money isnt in defense, except for a few new capital ship designs The New Republic needs and A, X, and Y Wings the fighters that won the Galactic Civil War why wouldnt you want one? Plus old designs probably cost less since you need less R&D and factory lines dont need changing. I would say the New Order probably has the best reason to be using the old designs, and that is that they really are trying to re fight the Galactic Civil War. They are the people who looked at the fall of Germany in 44 and say, 'If the Maus had entered production earlier it would have won the war.' Ignoring logistics and manufacturing details. I think it could have even been interesting to have the New Order using all those designs in the movies and the Resistance using brand new designs to show the New Order being stuck in an ideological past and how it could affect them on the battlefield.
Im saying im glad this upload showed up in my feed. I havent been into Star Wars in ages, but that T8X Wing looks to cool to ignore. In fact, my Godzilla & Gundam figures looking kinda lonely lately. Where to pick up a t8x for myself? Hmmmmm?…
"Specially to Americans, they have a special connection to their vehicles" yes, and Europeans would know nothing about cars. I mean there's, Ferrari, Porche, Audi, BMW, Aston Martin, Alfa Romeo, Fiat, Maserati, Bentley, Bugatti, Jaguar, Land rover, rolls Royce, volvo, mini, skoda, lamborghini and volkswagen. But Americans have a special connection 🙃
Im lowk a fan of the space battleship yamato fighter designs
i think my least favorite trend in star wars is watching people that clearly don't even deserve the jobs that they have trying to claim that they are oppressed victims.
I've never bothered to dig that deeply into Star Wars Lore, but IIRC galactic civilization is supposed to have achieved space-faring status thousands of years before the films and then went into more or less stasis – 50 years is just a blink of an eye to galactic civilization. The economic, cultural, ideological, and scientific factors driving the extremely rapid technological change in Western society for the last 300 years just isn't present, for whatever reason. Perhaps the technological changes during the Bronze Age might be better analogies than those of the 20th century, at least in temporal terms…
As an aside, I think that Star Wars is an interesting case study for the strengths an weaknesses of crowdsourced worldbuilding – very wide and detailed on the surface (every character and prop has a backstory) but often wildly inconsistent (note how The Force went from being a esoteric belief known to only a very small handful of characters at the beginning of A New Hope to the something everyone understands).
Ok I see your point about the Sherman to Abram’s but the Abram’s has been around since the 70’s and 80’ssame along with F-16s F-18s F-15s. I see your point but you also have to look at ships the United States used World War I battleships all the way up into World War II wish they were considered obsolete and I could have used them even longer and continue to modify them if they wanted to in fact, they use some battleships his test platforms for new weapons, even after World War II
Pretty much everything in the sequels is just OT stuff with bolt on body kits. And its lazy. The difference between prequel and Original Trilogy is 20 years and a huge difference in ship design.
Bro's got his cumsock on the mic.
Thank you for making this video. It has been one of my major issues with newer star wars, not exploring new designs. In the original six films, we had brand new vehicle designs in every single movie.
I'm sorry, what did you mean by "first time police officer goes all the way with you"? Given what was 2 sentences earlier…
I think that the First Order using vehicles that are very similar to the Empire’s actually makes a lot of sense because they were trying to directly emulate the Empire, much like how Italian Fascists were trying to emulate the Roman Empire and adopted it’s aesthetics.
You are trying to find an in universe reason, to explain a real world corporate practice. It's about selling toys dude. The Disney era Ships have to be recognizable enough to sell to fans, but just different enough that they don't have to pay George royalties on each toy.
Good example a lot of Jeeps new designs are reflected in Ford and Chevy, though the technology is always slightly different they're trying to make carbon copies of 1 another.
To be fair to the creators at Lucasfilm, the advancements of the 20th century, and the 15th Century, are unprecedented.
Technologically, 1500 to 1850 saw only minor changes in ships, firearms, etc. But the changes of the Renaissance and 20th Century were much faster. For instance, a book published in 1991 presented futuristic technology, intended to be 20-50 years ahead of the real world. Which was ludicrously archaic technology by 2000, and was outdated by 1995.
Took you like 7 minutes to get to your point and honestly its a bad one. see how Cold War B-52s are still used today, with an upgrade in 2014. See how the F-18 Hornet was replaced by the F-18 Super Hornet, a superficially similar aircraft. Then there is the A-10, which is extremely outdated and no longer viable, but politics and public opinion have kept it in service because no one wants to pay for a replacement. If you are a reigning super power, and there is no rival force to threaten you, there is a motivation to keep the old things in service with slight upgrades instead of new designs. Especially when there are times when the Government does take a risk to design something new and it provides a lot of design experience but fails horribly, so they go back to the old designs. See the US navy experience with new frigates and Littoral ships, you can make a comparison to the New Republic and the E-WIng.
It's relatively minor, but one reason the T-85 looks so stupid is that he wings open wrong. The upper and lower wing on each side pivot around a point next to the fuselage. On an original trilogy T-65 X-Wing, and I believe also the sequel T-70, the wings are connected diagonally (top left/bottom right, top right/bottom left), and these assemblies pivot an axis running through the fuselage. The open wings truly make an X shape, where the T-85 looks more like… >-< that.
It is not obvious at first glance, but it immediatley feels off, and contributes to the design looking not just like a smoothed-over X-Wing, but like a bad copy.
9:07 "getting out of the tutorial zone" yes!
What I miss in most sci-fi is the open exploration that a personal spaceship should allow. Everybody always flies to a spaceport or an inhabited planet.
And what modern Star Wars is missing is the natural approach that pilots would have towards their assigned or personal spaceships: personalisation, modding, innovation.
Technology has stagnated in the Star Wars galaxy. I would have thought you'd realized that. It's very rare that there's a significant leap. I don't fully hate the new X-Wing, but it's also a very 90's design choice, inspired by the F-117. Make everything more angular. It's retro from our point of view.
Star Wars does have a lot of different starship designs, and because the entire galaxy is all one society, the many different species and cultures are the flesh of that universe, while we could say the many different design styles for technology are its bones!l
Dang this man fell off with all this anti imperial propaganda, starting to think he’s a dolphin lover now.
Great video, I agree wholeheartedly but I feel you didn't mention (or maybe just didn't call out directly) the real issue with all this.
Finding a lore accurate reason why the new ships seem bland in comparison to the old ones is impossible and unnecessary. The real problem is not with the Star Wars universe but the people in charge of establishing the cannon. If they DO care it shows, just as strongly as when they don't. The only ones who suffer are the ones who love the lore. So we don't have to retcon the reasons why it sucks now, it's not our fault. It can be fixed by getting people to work on new projects who actually give a shit.
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