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Just recently, I saw the latest in George Lucas' offerings in the STAR WARS movie cycle. For various reasons, I am not a big fan of these movies but understand the underlying story structure. What this discussion is about is the discrepancy between the approach Lucas' takes towards soldiery and the highly technical and immense military that seems to flood the screen.
I guess that this whole discussion comes out of my belief that you cannot at once have both a large and technologically advanced military and have the soldiers that make up that military dirt stupid. This condition seems to make up the core of Lucas' presentation of both the Empire's military and in EPISODE 1 the Trade Confederation's droid army. I suppose we have all watched the Empire getting its collective butt kicked in the first three movies while cheering on Luke Skywalker and his buddies. All the Stormtroopers dressed in those huge armored suits. All the officers dressed in pseudo - Nazi style uniforms. The Stormtroopers were portrayed as faceless machines of death with no conscious. The current offering is a huge robotic army portrayed as faceless machines of death with no consciousness. See the difference? I suppose what confuses me about all this is the way the robots answered some commander robot with "Roger, roger." Why on Earth would a robot communicating with radio signals need to TALK to another robot? More fundamentally, if these robots were being controlled by some off - Naboo spacecraft would you need a commander robot at all? The mind boggles. In addition, is George Lucas trying to tell us, the viewer, that those creatures controlling the Battle Droids are bone, dirt stupid? He must be for those characters to deploy an army right on top of the enemy. Looking at all the episodes, we see an Empire's army that doesn't have the wherewithal to fight off a bunch of small ape - like creatures but has the capability to invade and attack to Rebels and take their base. We see Stormtroopers that have all this immense firepower, but can't shot straight. We now have a huge robotic army with armor that deploys directly in front of the enemy and attacks in echelon. Moreover, I'm not even going to address the issue of airpower. Geez. The dichotomy that Lucas is offering us is one that is prevalent amongst many writing and producing in Hollywood. The military is portrayed as technologically adept, but bone, dirt stupid when it comes to implementing that technology in a meaningful way. In other words, no matter what technology you have on hand the guy with the bow and arrow is going to win. No matter what. Sorry, George, it does not work like that. Guys with bows and arrows are called targets with soldiers with modern infrared devices and small arms. While I am using STARS WARS here as an example, there are a plethora of movies using this methodology. Watch any Steven Seagall movie and you will see my point.
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