Star Wars universe does have lasers of all scales and power levels.
Yet literally no one uses them well on a personal scale.
The Jedi (and Sith for that matter) imbue it with a power of magical stone, and then…use it as a saber.
To balance this stupidity, stormtroopers, clones and droids all use slow, non-continuous energy blasters. With actual lasers, they could insta-kill any Jedi, but they cannot, because otherwise the movie wouldn’t exist.
star trek, and some other scifi genre captures it better, SW is more for children, it also magic-tech in it, so not really a true scifi.
It’s a Sci-fi space opera.
Literally. No point in it being hyper realistic
My dad likes to contend that Star Wars is a western. And he makes a compelling argument with how it indeed has all the tropes and hallmarks of a western.
Basically a mix of Westerns and Samurai flicks.
SW is for children is not a great take. It’s just not sci-fi, and shouldn’t be judged as such. It’s a space fantasy, and it leans into the camp and the suspension of disbelief. They use wings and aerodynamics in space. Destroyed ships “sink.” The good guys never get hit and the bad guys die in one shot. Now, the new movies were absolutely disappointing, but Star Wars was never sci-fi, at least not in the ways this discussion is defining the genre.
Not all star wars is the same. While I agree that it is space fantasy rather than sci-fi, some of it is more serious and well made than the rest. I have absolutely loved Andor, Rogue one and Solo, and the first and second series of the Mandalorian. It’s starwars with very limited force use.
While the space flight isn’t realistic, the wings aren’t really a problem. Look at the space shuttle… Real spacecraft with wings.
Oh, I wasn’t complaining about any of those things. I think they’re awesome. X-Wings and TIE fighters are definitely not using their S-foils for reentry gliding though. I’m a huge Star Wars fan. I think it requires a level of suspension of belief to engage in the storytelling, because it’s not supposed to be at all realistic. There is also plenty of Star Wars media that is definitely not for kids or fits closer into sci-fi, but even Andor, the most sci-fi of the Star Wars media I’ve watched, was definitely still leaning on its fantasy roots.
Indeed the X-wing “wings” are more supports to mount weapons on than they are airfoil. Tie fighters have a totally different approach to flight.
Andor is of course beholden to the fantasy world it is set in, it did convince me as a sound socio-political story. The fears and distrusts both of the rebels and the military/ intelligence services, the anti Ghorman propaganda, it’s awesome.
Andor was awesome. Considering that the fighters in Star Wars do aerodynamic flight and sound is not just added for effect but audible in universe, I’ve always subscribed to the head canon that in the Star Wars universe, space is a gas of some sort. We also see people in space that die of suffocation, not pressure shock. The name S-foils also implies a similar purpose to airfoils, but the canon isn’t even consistent on that. Some TIE models explicitly use their S-foils aerodynamically in atmosphere, but other ships are ambiguous.
George Lucas literally said himself it was for kids.
https://screenrant.com/star-wars-george-lucas-kids-movies/
I don’t think a defense of the most-hated parts of the prequels is a great argument. This comes across as George Lucas misreading his audience and trying to defend a product that missed the mark for most of his serious fans.