TCW's End and the Worrisome iPhoneization of Star Wars

The below was an unfinished thought from when the cancellation of The Clone Wars was announced.  Now that Rebels is coming on soon and Episode VII well into production, in addition to my recent point that I like my sci-fi universes to be different from one another, I thought it good to dredge it up and finish it.

                                  

"TCW's end good for Star Wars?  Are you nuts?!?"

Bear with me for a minute, here.

I hate to even type the words given how much I like the show, but in some ways Star Wars: The Clone Wars was venturing into some waters that it didn't need to steer toward, perhaps even watering down the Star Wars brand in the process.  And so perhaps the end of the show is not the worst thing that could happen for Star Wars as a whole.

Now, don't take that the wrong way.   I absolutely adore The Clone Wars.   It simultaneously charted new territory in the canon Star Wars universe while also reining in a lot of the Star Wars bunk out there, thus bringing our understanding of that universe closer to the vision of Lucas, its creator.  

Consider that Star Wars constituted about 13 hours of material with the six films.  With the 98 minute feature film and, as of the end of the fifth season, 108 episodes averaging 22 minutes each, TCW fans got to enjoy an additional 41.2 hours of the Star Wars of George Lucas . . . TCW alone is thus more than three times more than all the films.  Within that span were remarkable revelations, such as can be found in the absolutely amazing (and still perplexing) Force-Wielders arc on Mortis, the survival of Maul, and a plethora of details on every aspect of the prosecution of the Clone Wars from both sides.

That said, what makes Star Wars unique is not simply lightsabers, but the whole feel of the universe.  You don't get Star Wars by adding lightsabers and the Force to Stargate.  Beyond merely being "lived-in", there were certain aesthetics. Just as Star Trek generally went out of its way to keep the "Starfleet-clean" look, so too did Star Wars have certain things in certain ways.  There was a certain clunkiness to designs, even clunky for the 70's and early 80's.

Case in point, the scanning crew guys who were ordered aboard the Falcon weren't carrying little scanners on their wrists or little flip-open Motorola Razr tricorders, they had a big huge box of stuff that took two of them to maneuver.  Han's portable scanner wasn't a pocket-size device, but instead a large boxy affair with enormous antennae.  And you knew it wasn't as good as R2... otherwise why would they drag him along for scanning even on unsuitable terrain?

It gave you a sense and feel of the universe to have this commonality of production design.  You can readily imagine other unseen parts of the universe just as surely as you can imagine the unseen parts of a steampunk universe or a Flash Gordon movie universe.  And sure, the real world doesn't work this way... we don't all drive around in overgrown iPhones (though the Scion box things come close).  But that's Hollywood logic and it works for Hollywood universes.

However, we were starting to see TCW drift away from that.  And the result would've been that Star Wars would've become a much more mundane ho-hum franchise, rather than keeping its unique character.

To be sure, there were outliers, such as the odd comlink blood test thing from The Phantom Menace based on a lady's razor, or even sleek designs from Naboo or Umbara.  But those last ones were unique 'alien' exceptions rather than the rule.

The most notable examples of TCW drifting away from other Star Wars works come from the nanodroid arc . . . over and above the nanodroids themselves (and really, who would've ever assumed there was any nanotechnology in Star Wars prior to that point?), there was the handheld nanodroid scanner, looking for all the world like it came straight out of Andrew Probert's pre-production designs for Star Trek: The Next Generation:

Sure, we can dismiss it as being a single-purpose device compared to Han's undoubtedly-more-capable apparatus, but that's still somewhat unnerving.  Then there was the unfortunate way that wrist comlinks suddenly started projecting holograms, making the big hand-sized circular things from earlier seasons seem silly.

Indeed, there were other examples of holography that were also peculiar, such as the holographic disguises and whatnot.  They didn't work especially well, sure, but if you have that sort of thing why would Jango and Bane ever have relied on shapeshifters?   Of course, the transformation of Obi-Wan into a criminal thug is similarly odd in that respect.

The general gist of what I'm going for here is simply to point out that some production designers seem to feel that they must bring a modern (or modern sci-fi) sensibility to universes that already came equipped with their own sensibility.   In other words, just because we are doing things a certain way now in modern technology (or just because other universes have spiffy looking sonic screwdriver gizmos) doesn't mean it is a good idea to be parroted.  

To my mind, then, it's best to follow the Star Wars precedents rather than try to "iPhoneize" Star Wars.  

                                   

So that was the post.  I mostly just cleaned it up and added the last paragraph.   

I don't have any reason to suspect that Ep7 or Rebels is going to be naughty in the context above, but given some of the leanings toward the end of TCW I would not be surprised.