Apple LIGHTSABERS to feature in The Force Awakens Apple design supremo Jony Ive met Star Wars: The Force Awakens director at a dinner party and offered him some thoughts on lightsaber design that made it into the forthcoming flick. So says The New Yorker in a profile of Ive. The story says “Ive once sat next to J. J. Abrams at a boozy dinner party in New York, and made what …
I don't understand why you would make the light saber more primitive for films that take place AFTER all other events. If anything they should of done this in the pre-quels. Of course maybe it is just to reflect the idea that no matter how bad something is, it can always get worse (which would also reflect the franchise's new ownership).
Also, if all it takes is to have a drunken conversation with a stranger to get ideas booted into movies, Disney is about to have a slew of new drunk ass material for the future. J.J. Abrams and Ive's should slot a bottle of Bourbon for their next meet so we can finally see Luke puke all over Mickey (Or maybe they'll both just get "throated" by a giant worm).
Why is having a less "precise" light saber automatically a regression? Maybe keeping an exact beam wastes power, and a more 'analog' beam requires less recharging or otherwise makes them more powerful? I mean, one assumes light sabers must need some sort of charging to power them, unless they draw power directly from the force or something stupid like that :)
Even if these light sabers are a step back, perhaps all the destruction left in the wake of the rebel defeat of the Empire caused technology to take a bit of a step back. I imagine Germany and Japan's technology took a bit of a step back after the end of WW II for similar reasons. Or hell, maybe the guys who were the galaxy's leading experts in building light sabers died during the war, and some secrets died with them...
I "futurely" agree! However, light sabers do not require charging. To be honest, I've never read a reason, seen a reason, or heard a reason in any book, movie, or game that explains this. However, by the same examples, I have never seen a light saber used or operational by someone without the Force, so maybe it does draw from the Force? I did find this...
"The Forcesaber was a precursor created by the Rakata, which would eventually evolve into the lightsaber. Users were able to channel the dark side of the Force through black laboratory-grown crystals which would create the glowing energy blades."
"The first lightsabers came into being when the precursor Je'daii Order combined advanced offworld technology with a forging ritual, learning how to "freeze" a laser beam."
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Lightsaber
Not sure what to make of that being those paragraphs seem to conflict heavily on light saber engineering, and do not conclude to a definitive answer. Answers there is, how to find them we ask? ~~~~~~~
The quote was in Splinter of the Mind's Eye by Alan Dean Foster: "Leaning back, he regarded the mist silently as his father's ancient weapon sucked power"
Of course Splinter... is an Expanded Universe story and they're not necessarily considered to be part of the Canon...
Perhaps lightsabers are hybrid. Petrol engine and a battery. Igniting your lightsaber by pulling a cord could be the first thing a padewan learns in the the temple. Jedi dueling with the sound of lawnmowers would add a certain atmos that's currently missing. A '4d' version could have the heady smell of 2 stroke oil sprayed into the cimema. It's just as well I've never spoken to a pissed up JJ really.
Igniting your lightsaber by pulling a cord could be the first thing a padewan learns in the the temple
Man, I wish lightsabers were pull-start. One of the best things about the rather haphazard1 Pioneer anime El-Hazard: The Mysterious World (the original series; everything went down from there) was that one of the characters had a pull-start magic weapon.
This might have been an homage to Army of Darkness, which was released a few years earlier, and also features a pull-start hand-heldreplacement weapon. And in the same year we had Dead Alive, with an improvised pull-start weapon - the best thing Peter Jackson ever directed.
1Wait for it...
Actually Germany technology didn't take any step back - and a lot of it was poured into USA and URSS one. Japan technology did a step up after the war - when someone started to sell cameras to the US troops...
Sure, had they killed all those German scientists and technologists (and some, probably many - were compromised with the Nazis, even if they were clever people in their field) maybe the whole world would have took a huge step back.
I've only ever read a few star wards books, but I seem to recall "I, Jedi" had them charging their lightsabers.
German and Japanese technology actually improved after the war, courtesy of us bombing everything flat. Then the Americans made very generous loans and donations to allow them to rebuild with the latest technology. Sadly, as this same courtesy wasn't extended to their own citizens (or allies) this meant that after a decade our former enemies had a better tech base than the allies who won the war.
Still, better than what happened after WW1...
> Sadly, as this same courtesy wasn't extended to their own citizens (or allies) this meant that
> after a decade our former enemies had a better tech base than the allies who won the war.
This is an unfortunate myth: in fact Britain was the largest recipient of funds under The Marshall Plan. We just blew it all on post-imperial dreams instead of investing it in useful infrastructure.
> Still, better than what happened after WW1...
I find not disagreement with that sentiment, however.
Yep - well, WWII happened after WWI because many Germans felt they had been forced to capitulate by their failed leadership - Germany was by no means soundly defeated. Onerous terms and financial hardship proved a fertile breeding ground for the Fascist movement. WWIII didn't happen because the Axis powers (Germany / Japan ) were soundly beaten in WWII and then peace in Europe was bought through investment by the Americans largely with the money that the UK had just paid the USA for military aid. The UK never recovered its industrial strength and the best German scientific brains went (willingly) to the USA or were taken (forcibly) to the USSR - few if any really came to Britain (why would they Britain was on it knees). So WWII was really very, very good for the USA, it was propelled out of the depression by British money and got some sophisticated German brains for it's now impressive war-capacity manufacturing capability and never suffered any attacks to home soil.
German and Japanese technology actually improved after the war, courtesy of us bombing everything flat. Then the Americans made very generous loans and donations to allow them to rebuild with the latest technology.
This is beyond retarded and just proves a total misunderstanding of how an economy works, it's practically the picture-book-for-6-years-old view of the economy espoused by Keynesians.
1) If you "bomb everything flat" it's over. There isn't even the wherewithal to build the machines to build the machines to build the machines. It's called the capital base. The skillbase is gone too.
2) The "donations" you mention (aka "the Marshal Plan") mainly went to well-connected figures in Sweden and Greece, not germany.
3) It took about 30 years and the effects of post-war liberalization to get Germany anywhere near an acceptable industrial base. And there were still bombed-out areas, shitty roads, bad services, limited resources and underdeveloped regions.
4) US-based investors, meanwhile just could go on buying up everything, investing and expanding into Europe, and generally transforming most of the world into a dollar-dominated backwater. Of course the economic havoc of wartime and the subsequent "small wars" (not to mention the economic havoc of the preceding "New Deal") must have loped off a few hundred billion gold-based USD of lost revenue but hey, who is counting?
It took about 30 years and the effects of post-war liberalization to get Germany anywhere near an acceptable industrial base. etc. Holes in cities. etc.
Good. Doesn't make up for the rationing that went on for 10 years after VE Day in England or the big holes in Coventry, where I grew up, yea unto the early 60s or the war-caused power rationing that closed factories for hours every day so *England* couldn't get back up to speed at full, er, speed.
Dear recently post WWII Germany: That's what you get for being a bunch of gits.
>I don't understand why you would make the light saber more primitive for films that take place AFTER all other events.
Nor me, but hey, let's wait til we see the movie! There could be a dozen 'in-universe' explanations for the spitty look, ranging from a loss of knowledge (just as we lost the secrets of Damascus steel) to merely that the bad guy thought it looked cool!
Anyhows, didn't the spacecraft in episodes IV -VI look more primitive than the craft in I-III?
"didn't the spacecraft in episodes IV -VI look more primitive than the craft in I-III"
They did indeed - which IMO fits with the move from a decadent, peaceful republic where luxury and status were important to a civil war where just churning out relatively efficient fighting machines took precedence.
Of course that doesn't preclude good design and while they don't match the elegance of Spitfires, the x-wings and tie fighters are iconic in their way.
The 'secret' of Damascus steel wasn't lost as such; one explaination was the lack of supply of Indian steel from a particular region where the composition had a particular alloy mix not found elsewhere. As the sword makers didn't know why it worked they couldn't loose the secret. I imagine Sith or Jedi would know why their sabers work, not being that primitive in tech terms.
BTW, the 'lost wax' process was never actually 'lost'
"Why is having a less "precise" light saber automatically a regression?"
If you recall Obi-Wan Kenobi's conversation with the young Luke Skywalker in the original Star Wars:
"Your father's lightsaber. This is the weapon of a Jedi Knight. Not as clumsy or as random as a blaster. An elegant weapon... for a more civilized age."
I completely get the Sith having cruder versions, which is in line with having given themselves over to the 'dark side', but not the Jedi - this would be completely contrary to their character and morals.
A popular hypothesis is that the guy in the cloak with the fuzzy lightsaber is someone who has been in stasis/asleep/whatever for a very long time.
In that case is lightsaber would be an early example, perhaps built thousands of years before the era of the original movies.
He's certainly stumbling around like someone who just got out of bed...
As for why the lightsabres might get more spitty. Well, let me think... hmm three seconds later I came up with the idea that possibly it's because all the other Jedi/Sith are dead and the couple who are left lost the previously refined art of constructing lightsabres and are trying to work it out from the beginning again, hence the technology is messier. Obviously three seconds thinking is too difficult for you.
Also your comment re the "franchise's new ownership" marks you out as a fuckwit and shows your complete and total lack of knowledge re film history. Lets start with the basics. You do know Marvel films are Disney don't you? Probably. You do know Pulp Fiction is a Disney film, don't you? Probably not... What about Clerks? Sin City? Kill Bill? No??? Do any of them feature Mickey fucking Mouse? Well just fuck off and be stupid somewhere else then.
" As for why the lightsabres might get more spitty. Well, let me think... hmm three seconds later I came up with the idea that possibly it's because all the other Jedi/Sith are dead and the couple who are left lost the previously refined art of constructing lightsabres and are trying to work it out from the beginning again, hence the technology is messier. Obviously three seconds thinking is too difficult for you. "
If you'd thought three seconds more, you'd have remembered that Luke Skywalker's Return of the Jedi light saber was built by Luke himself, seemingly after the death of Yoda, so with no ancient Jedi blacksmiths left to pass on the knowledge. Luke's entire Jedi training appears to have consisted of a week with Kenobi and a few months with Yoda, so it can't have been that hard.
> I don't understand why you would make the light saber more primitive for films that take place AFTER all other events.
Well, I'd chalk that up as an acceptable deviation. A "reboot" if you will. Don't the old movies mention that lightsabers are an old weapon from a more civilized age? I mean, they seem to work much better than blasters in combat, right? Why would they have moved on from them?
I don't understand why you would make the light saber more primitive for films that take place AFTER all other events.
Obviously, lightsabers are now so ubiquitous with the clueless un-midiclorinated that they have become riddled with viruses, malware and trojans. These, and the active countermeasures the sabers now come with as standard, suck so much juice the actual blade gubbins are starved for power.
Luckily, in Episode 8, Apple save the day by inventing the iSaber which uses a different operating system that "can't get viruses".
Sadly, Apple turn out to be run by cruel and cynical Clonemasters who strictly limit the supply, and galactic civilization collapses as everyone spends all their time queuing outside the local SaberStore instead of running the galacti-banks or driving cabs or checking income tax returns for "errors".
In episode 9, amid the anarchic chaos, some unsung hero invents the FOSSsaber, and it looks like the galaxy is saved again. Unfortunately, everyone plus their space-dog forks the design and now the iQueuers are entertained by gangs of people screaming at each other about who has the only real SaberSystem and how everyone else is deluded and dumb.
This goes on until the long-ago galaxy in question is swallowed by the quasar at its center.
"I don't understand why you would make the light saber more primitive for films that take place AFTER all other events"
I read a heap of the books when I was younger, my favourite is still the Thrawn Trilogy, the expanded univers and even TOR is full of lore on lightsabers, however even a quick Google search of "lightsaber anatomy" shows they have a power source.
All the different crystals do is change the colour and sometimes the length.
I can't remember where I read it but it was explained that a lightsaber is an extension of it's owner, hence why there are so many customised versions, including curved hilts like the Emperor had in the last travesty they released and double sided ones like Darth Maul had.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_joDNOpeWWo
But Apple products are designed to be shiny and new...
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
