The Force Awakens, but the engineers are still sleep.

Woohoo! new Star Wars! I enjoyed every minute of it. Woohoo X-wings! Woohoo Han and Chewie! Woohoo Rey kicks absolute ass!

As a die hard fan, I loved every minute of it. This movie is 100% made for me. Right? Well. Maybe. Watching the movie, nothing seemed wrong, but reflecting afterwards, something started to nag. I do not mean the "it is the same story as A New Hope"-bandwagon. Which is true, but not my specialty to judge: Moviebob or Motherboard do that better than I could.

No, what really cought my, somewhat trained, eye is that the force may have awakened, but the engineers are still sound asleep. The resistance still flies X-wings. The empire has the same tie-fighters, star destroyers, and blasters as they did in "A New Hope". And that is supposed to be 30 years ago! How can C3PO still be a serviceable droid, when in 30 years, we have gone from landline phones to Siri on our iPhone? The world wide web did not exist 30 years ago. Nor did Tesla cars.

In 32 years we went from robot armies to cloned stormtrooper. 30 years later: still stormtroopers!

The Star Wars universe has spun for 30 years and the bad guys still use holograms for communication, stormtroopers with identical blasters and even Rens personal spaceship has the same folding wings as the emporors. This is weird, because if we look a further 32 years back, everything is different. In "The Phantom Menace" Queen Amidala flies in a sleek, chrome like jet. The preferred evil army of choice is one of farcicaly commical, but technically impressive, robots, flying in hover-tanks. Technologically speaking, a lot happened in the 32 years between "the Phantom Menace" and "a new Hope". Have the emprical engineers all been cast in carbonite? Or where they all killed in the attack on the second death star in "Return of the Jedi"?

Maybe I am overreacting. Cars may be going electric, but they are still cars: four wheels and an engine. I am still wearing jeans, just like my dad did 30 years ago. Science fiction usually overestimates technological progress, but underestimates social progress. Marthy MacFly came to our age to find hoverboards, yet Jennifer is still a woman at home. Count the number of atomic powered contraptions in the Jetsons. Now count the number of black people. Or gay people. so maybe the star wars universe is like ours: 30 years progres means the same lightsabers, same X-wings, but the Force now also calls to independent women¹!

If this trend continues, we are looking at two more movies with the same technology, but further progressed social and cultural sensitivities.

Woohoo lightsabers! Woohoo star destroyers! Woohoo prosthetic arms²! Woohoo trans-species aliens³! Woohoo hardcore droid on droid action? uhm...

¹who, incidentally, escaped every time on her own, before the bumbling male heroes came to rescue her, making her a perfect role-model. Not for girls, but for boys!
²Wanna bet?
³JarJar was actually a Kaminoan born in a Gungan body...