ST Your favorite spacecraft in TFA

I think it's quite logical that what we see are evolutionary upgrades on existing designs. Under the circumstances presented, this makes way more sense than overhauling everything & having brand new, never seen before aircraft.

 

Indeed. We only have to look at the rate of advancement of our own ships, cars and jets etc, to make the argument that TFA establishes a coherent and realistic progression of technology since ROTJ. Now you (the Royal "you") can say that JJ just "wanted the old ships back" or , "Ok, but they still should be newer!", but it makes sense that we have the designs that we do, as TFA is still set during the lifetime of the OT heroes, just 30 years into their future. Anyway, I really like the new and evolved designs.

 

But on the good guy side, we only saw a very poorly-resourced splinter group - the Resistance. We didn't get a good look at the Resistance Fleet above Hosnian Prime before it was nuked. And on the FO side, we have a power that's still rising, and being as discreet as it can be in anticipation of its sneak super weapon attack. Plus, thirty years is simply not a long time. Most of our jets, ships and land vehicles here on Earth are simply updated versions of jets, ships and land vehicles from thirty years ago. To me, it feels like a more natural progression than the much quicker one we saw between AOTC, ROTS and the OT.

 

You can say that JJ just "Wanted the old ships back" because it's true. He just wanted the two most recognizable ships, X-Wings and TIE fighters. If were to really use the excuse that Star Wars just uses the same old ships with minor upgrades, then we should be seeing upgraded versions of what the state of the art fighters were at the end of Return of the Jedi. TIE Interceptors were the state of the art for the Empire, while the Rebel Alliance had only just developed the B-Wing and A-Wing late in the war. Through the original trilogy and the prequel trilogy there was a clear progression of technology, with various unique designs, and establishes that their rate of advancement is different from ours.

We can see how ships from the clone wars era evolved into ships from the rebellion era.

For example, we can look at the Alpha-3 Nimbus-class V-wing, one of the earliest fighters of the Star Wars saga...

and see how the design philosophy from that progressively branches to a pair of new designs, the Delta-7 Aethersprite...

and the Eta-2 Actis...


Moving into the rebellion era, we can see how the entire TIE line traces it roots back to the Nimbus and we can see how the TIE Fighter evolved through the Rebellion era, from the TIE|LN and TIE Advanced to the TIE Bomber and TIE Interceptor.


Also tracing its roots back to the Nimbus and Aethersprite is the RZ-1 A-Wing...



Let's take a look at another evolution of Starfighter design... the V-19 to the B-Wing...

...to the B-Wing



And finally, the ARC-170...

to the Z-95 (Clone wars version)...

to the T-65 X-Wing...



All of that Starfighter evolution takes place in a 25 year span. We see a clear progression from one design to the next, where design elements from earlier ships are incorporated into newer ships, but the result is that we still get a unique new design with every step but can trace its roots back to the beginning. In contrast to that... 30 years after all of this great design progression, we get this...

A TIE fighter with a different paint job...
...and an X-Wing which simply uses the engine design from one of the early, rejected McQuarrie designs for A New Hope.

 

My problem is that apart from the Jedi Starfighter, the various Naboo ships, and Maul's shuttle, most of those more "original" designs were way, way over-designed. Cluttered and busy in a way that Star Wars never was before. I mean, the Eta-2 Actis, for example, is just a mess. As are the Arc-170s - a criminally terrible design with far too much going on (see below). For that, I blame Ryan Church, for the most part. Lucas should have kept Chiang as lead concept guy for the whole trilogy.

 

Since half my images didn't work on the other post, I just whipped up this progression chart. It shows how starfighters clearly progress from the beginning of The Clone Wars until the end of the Rebellion, and then instead of following a logical progression, designs from 34 years prior are just reused with only minor cosmetic changes.

 

Thanks. Though I mostly see the PT-to-OT progression as a progression from bad designs to good designs.

Excepting the Jedi starfigher. That's a nice one.

 

Appreciate the thoroughness of your post. My point was though, that in our reality, in 30 years ship and fighter designs have fundamentally remained pretty constant, and not really evolved (IMO). Although if an aeronautics expert wants to take this on I'll get the popcorn! So with the prequels, based on this perspective, you might say that there is an inconsistency with how we understand the evolution of technology - i.e. going from the clone wars ship designs to the tie fighter designs seems like too much of a leap.

But of course, Star Wars doesn't have to stick to our reality. And I'm sure ppl either for or against TFA can build a case as to why the ship designs in TFA are logical, or illogical, based on what's happened in the GFFA over the past 30 years.

And yes, like Jabba, I find most of the prequel era ships to be a load of J. Arthur Rank.

 

Here's a simple chart on the evolution of jet planes from 1950-2007 (57 years, as opposed to the 32 years from ROTJ to TFA):



Generally, the same basic designs with slight tweaks. If a design ain't broke, people usually don't fix it.

That said, I think striving for simple, strong designs should be the goal of the concept artists going forward, not simply mimicking the progression of technology in the real world on Earth. But in that context, I think Lucas could have been more discerning with the new ships in AOTC and ROTS. Most of them were seriously ugly. And I'd rather have unoriginal designs than poor ones.

I mean, these are designs that should have been rejected at a very early stage in the process. Far too much going on, no coherence, no clear shape or form. I think they must have been approved very quickly and under pressure, or something, as otherwise I can't imagine why Lucas approved them, given how brilliant the OT (and, IMO, the TPM) ship designs were.

 

Han and Chewie in the MF.

 

And the Art of TFA has a number of "original" concepts that were rejected - they were similarly poorly designed and over complicated, as I think Chiang himself states.

Slightly random comment, but speaking of concept artists I do have a soft spot for Ian McCaig, regardless of how ppl feel about his Star Wars work. It goes right back to the old UK Fighting Fantasy books, and his work on stuff like City of Thieves!

 

Yup, and in the Art of TFA, the worst concepts, IMO, again come from Ryan Church (while Chiang's, and those of a few other excellent newcomers, were more prominent). Luckily, Abrams seems to have rejected most of Church's output. If he had been reined in for AOTC and ROTS, I think those films would have looked a lot better. As many may have noticed by now, he's my design nemesis. Absolutely the opposite aesthetic of what I appreciate in conceptual art for film - and, IMO, on the opposite end of the spectrum from McQuarrie. Simple shapes and coherence on McQuarrie's end, complicated shapes, clutter and incoherence on Church's end.

Should I say how I really feel about him?

 

Very well said. This is what I meant earlier but expressed better.

Let's keep in mind that here on Earth we have only very limited natural and economic resources to work with. At least natural resource-wise, that would be pretty much unlimited in the GFFA. So comparison to real-world vehicles works only to some extent.

 

That is an overly simplistic chart that does not paint an accurate picture. You're also cherry picking a specific point in our history where existing planes are still in their planned operational lifetime. I also don't see the part where the Russians suddenly went all the way back to the MiG-21 design and gave it a wicked new paint job and called it their new fighter jet, or where the Americans went back to a rejected F-104 design, again giving it a new paint job and calling it a new design. Anyhow, It doesn't matter what WE design here on earth, Star Wars is a fictional universe that has established that it works differently. They go through design changes that follow a clear progression and roll out new designs. The Force Awakens backpeddles on that, just like it backpeddles on the entire story of Star Wars, and simply goes directly to where it all began and reuses old designs instead of daring to be something new.

But since most of you are just skipping over the design evolution that I laid out and instead going straight to bashing the prequel designs, I'll just bow out of the conversation and let you talk about how much you hate the prequel designs, instead of discussing TFA designs.

 

Just to clarify, it was Jabba who originally posted the chart above, so he can give a more comprehensive response to you if he so desires. Two points though:

- The X- wing of TFA clearly isn't just a new "paint job", although it sticks to the overall design. Neither is the SE Tie, although the standard FO tie is closer to that description.

- It could be argued that the technological "progression" that Lucas retroactively established with the prequels was a poor one, (including mostly poor designs IMO), so the problem rests there, and not with TFA.

And finally, it's a bit rich to complain about "prequels bashing" when there has been countless, lazy bashing of TFA outside of the Hater's Cave. It's not easy to moderate all of this stuff however, and certainly there have been warnings issued and bans given. For my own part, in addition to my argument, I've made a few comments that stated that, IMO, I quite strongly disliked most of the prequels ship designs. That's it.

 

I went through the effort to show the actual progression of starship design through the entire Star Wars saga, and the replies I got were "Well I hate the prequel designs so I'm not going to acknowledge your point of view". Yeah I'm annoyed by that, and I'm doubly annoyed that you think my point of view is "lazy tfa bashing". I'm getting sick of the attitude that anyone who doesn't bow down and worship Abrams and The Force Awakens should be constantly treated with disdain.

Oh well, I'm sure a mod will be along any time now to ban me again.

 

No, I don't think your POV on this particular subject has been "lazy TFA bashing", but I would characterise prior comments by yourself and others as such. As you've admitted yourself, you did get banned for comments relating to TFA, so it seems the mods thought this as well.

Edit: and the counter argument to yours was that Lucas may have retrospectively made ship progression worse or "less realistic" given that I personally see a big design leap from a lot of prequels ships to OT ships. But this is based on a reading of technological progression based on our own reality, so the point can certainly be argued against.

 

Fine, you can take the prequel trilogy completely out of the equation and you still have a clear progression in technology in the original trilogy.

TIE Fighter -> TIE Advanced -> TIE Bomber -> TIE Interceptor.
Y-Wing -> B-Wing
X-Wing -> A-Wing

Instead of making an evolution of the state of the art fighters from Return of the Jedi, Abrams deliberately went with the X-Wing and TIE Fighter designs, giving them only minor cosmetic changes because THOSE are the fighters that nostalgic people will identify with. There was no effort to make an actual evolution in design, it was simply a "hey... hey you, do you remember how cool X-Wings and TIE Fighters were?" It's so easy to see that the decision was made by committee based on a checklist of "Star Wars Greatest Hits".

If you want to further compare this to the real world, then let's take a look at the fighter evolution that took place between the last two conflicts where aircraft dogfighting was an actual thing... Korea and Vietnam. In Korea we were still using many piston engine aircraft, and jets were in their infancy. We had some cool designs, like the F-2H Banshee and the F-86 Sabre in Korea, but we started out with the P-80 Shooting Star. The F-2H Banshee and F-86 Sabre were far superior to the P-80 in every way... they were faster, more maneuverable, had more firepower, and better range. But then in the peace time between Korea and Vietnam, we didn't just stop developing aircraft. We constantly went through new designs, testing them, rejecting some and moving forward with others. By the time Vietnam started, we were using F-4 Phantoms, A-6 Intruders, and A-1 Skyraiders (which were actually the last piston engine aircraft used by the US military, and its development began during WWII). While these were all fine aircraft, we never stopped designing new ones, pushing the performance limits of modern aircraft. If we had followed the design philosophy of The Force Awakens, when it came time to put new aircraft in the sky during the Gulf War... we would have just gone back to the P-80 Shooting Star and given it a paint job, instead of creating the A-10, F-15, F-16, and F-18.

 

Good post, but just using the T-70 alone as an example, canonically speaking it's noticeably faster and more powerful than the T-65. It's fundamentally the same situation with the FO fighters, (plus multiple upgrades) although if you want more details I'd have to direct you to the cross sections book. And with the good guys, it seems like the Republics "demilitarisation" hasn't exactly done wonders for investing in new ship designs or technology, although like I said everything has moved on quite a bit since the OT. I understand though that the real issue of course is more with the visual side of things.

 

I also never saw the new TIEs in the OT as evolutions during that time period. Simply assumed that there were different versions for different units and different purposes. Just as Vader and his special crew had their own TIE variants in the ANH trench run (and Kylo has his own shuttle as well).

Which reminds me. Why, in your chart, did you avoid inclusion of Kylo's shuttle as an evolution of the Lamda class Imperial shuttle? That's a good one and shows some consistency with the prequel evolution process. Add to that the Resistance transport, which seems to be a clear evolution from the B-wing.

Is there is a specific reason, related to the strengthening of your argument, for omitting those two examples of evolution from ROTJ to TFA?

Lastly, the reason prequel ship designs were brought up is that as you said, Star Wars should not be beholden to the evolutionary dynamics of military aircraft in Earth's modern era. In that context, design is most important. And I think there were some sloppy design choices made in AOTC and ROTS, though I think that was due to the sheer volume of new designs for those films. Became more of an assembly line, and when that happens, some shoddy work slips through.

In any event, I would love to see the Lamda class Imperial shuttle-to-Kylo's shuttle and B-wings-to-Resistance transport reflected in your evolution chart. That would give us a better picture of what TFA actually did in this space. Your current chart is artificially skewed towards making the point you want to make.

 

Meh. The A-wing isn't even the same KIND of fighter as the X-Wing. The A-wing is very fast and maneuverable, but it is clearly smaller and less well-armed than the X-wing. The A-Wing is basically the F-16 to the X-Wing's F-15. The T-70 is really an all new platform based on the design of the X-Wing.

Not to mention, X-Wings are coolest damned star fighter EVAH. YA HEAR ME!!?? EEEVVVAAAHHH!

 

What design choices do you think were 'sloppy'?

All of the designs and their evolution felt pretty natural to me.

 

Let me just do it myself.

Evolution from ROTJ to TFA:

Lamda Class Imperial Shuttle to Kylo Ren Shuttle:





B-Wing to Resistance Transport:





Looks like TFA did more of what you are calling for than you've presented, IronMant

 

I think alot of it is that JabbatheHumanBeing is not a fan of Ryan Church's designs. I have some sympathy with him there. I detest the design of the ARC-170. And I think the Eta-2 is a bit of a design mess too. I personally felt there was little continuity with earlier designs, but it didn't bother me THAT much. I admit I had hoped to see some explicit references to ships we'd see in the OT. I would have loved to see the Y-wing, and maybe a Z-95. We see them in TCW (in some form or another), but there was this break with the idea that the Rebellion began the fight with old Republic junk. But frankly, I completely over the PT designs. They are in the books, IMO. I loved the new X-Wings. The new TIEs were a bit "meh," but I gotta admit, it was cool seeing that design in action again. I do, however, hope we see something new from the FO in this next film, and some other ships to add to the Resistance's arsenal. I hope we keep SOME focus on starfighters. That was sorely missing from the PT, and I know I am not alone in really enjoying that aspect of Star Wars.

 

The evolutions make sense, logically (I suppose), but the designs they evolved from are...well...hideous from a design perspective. No coherent form, focus centers. Far too busy. "Convoluted" is the best word to describe them. This is the kind of stuff that's usually rejected early on by a good concept art director.

In ROTS, everything on here except for the one labeled "pk ship," which is a solid design.



Plus the ARCs.



The V-Wings:



From AOTC:









It's everywhere, so I won't go on. And in my estimation, it looks to me like Ryan Church was responsible for most of the bad designs. Not exactly sure what Lucas saw in him, as he previously had very good design instincts.