Did the Empire go through an economic breakdown?

in the PT, everything from the cities to the vehicles to the cruisers looked sleek and new. why then, does almost everything in the OT look old and decrepit? one theory I had was that there was a sort of dark age following the Empire takeover. but this is not true. for example: the Death Star. Planet destroying death rays didn't exist in the PT. so that leaves the explanation of an economic breakdown. idk.... anybody want to shed some light?

besides teh fact that the empire bullied and taxed everyone into poverty?

The Empire and the Wealthy or anyone associated with the Empire seemed to hog all of the resources. That is why so many things looks rugged and worn that doesn't belong to the Imperials.

ie: The Rebels looked like they had older out of date equipment, while the Empire had newer looking near mint vehicles.

there is no evidence taxing in OT. there is bullying, but only in the fact that there are stormtroopers everywhere.

I think it's set in one of the extra's on Ep I: in the PT it is all handmade, eye for detail, ... In the OT it's all mechanic, dark, worn out, ...

just to give good contrast... or at least he found a reason to explain why he can now use fancy computereffects

Plus, the Empire probably suppressed a lot of creative or progressive thinking. Anyone who could have come up with new technologies would not have had the outlets or the resources to do it.

or maybe the pt is supposed to represent times of prosperity, and the ot is supposed to represent times of sadness and poverty.

either way the imperial march when vader comes off of his ship is frickin awesome

THe decrepid look is great. But if tehre is anythiong to say about it, maybe the Empire kept all the money for themselves and in the golden days of the Republic wealth was shared more evenly.

Then again, who cares.

yea i finally realized what it was a year ago. a year or two ago, i realized that there were 2 reasons that the prequels didn't seem to flow with continueum into the OT. The ships and everything looks bran new in the PT, and the lightsabers are solid color, while in the pt, everything looks decrepid and old, excepting teh emperial's stuff, and the lightsabers flicker. They should have had the decrepid look and the flickering lightsabers for the pt.

I alwasy wonderd why Lucas abandoned his "used future" look for the PT. It makes no sense. Even during the PT a lot of stuff was in use for a long time. Why the pristine look? It goes against eveyrthing Lucas devised in the 70s (SW, THX 1138).

Originally posted by queeq
I alwasy wonderd why Lucas abandoned his "used future" look for the PT. It makes no sense. Even during the PT a lot of stuff was in use for a long time. Why the pristine look? It goes against eveyrthing Lucas devised in the 70s (SW, THX 1138).

No. The point alwsy was that eveything even in the future gets used. So it gets scratched, gets dirt on it etc. Even the pristine whiteness in THX 1138 had dirty wipes on walls and stuff. It made it look real, it was a whole concpet by Lucas to make Sci-fi grounded in reality.

another thing that Lucas did to preserve reality in his sci-fi movies was to make the alien names sound reasonable. "Jabba the Hutt" instead of "Xeglothorpe", for instance (Xeglothorpe was one I just made up, but you get my point.) at least GL kept the naming decent.

Yes, it had to be grounded in our reality. It has to look or feel at least a bit familiar. Not completely strange, so we can't identify with it.

That's one of the reasons why the movies were so popular. But that doesn't really answer my question. So you're saying that the PT was more sleek because GL could make it that way because of new technologies?

because george lucas shot his brains out after howard the duck, ok??

Originally posted by zhellblah
in the PT, everything from the cities to the vehicles to the cruisers looked sleek and new. why then, does almost everything in the OT look old and decrepit? one theory I had was that there was a sort of dark age following the Empire takeover. but this is not true. for example: the Death Star. Planet destroying death rays didn't exist in the PT. so that leaves the explanation of an economic breakdown. idk.... anybody want to shed some light?

OT=1976-1983 technology.

PT=1997-2005 technology.

Swing and a miss.

i like my explanation better.

Wow. YOU like YOUR explanation better?

Go figure.

yea. kinda strange how that works, isn't it?