a new hope is world war 2 in space, down to the look of weapons, turrets on the millennium falcon and death star, and the name of the faceless bad guy army. and even after that, return of the jedi is the vietnam war in space. and even after that, the prequels are all about fascist america in space! you can have palpatine say something stupid and obviously evil and immediately cut to someone from the Bush administration saying literally the same thing.
The way starfighter combat works is definitely WW2. There’s some hand wavy explanations in-universe for why it works that way, but it clearly comes from WW2 fighter and bomber turret footage.
Politically, the empire is pretty clearly Nazi-coded, but I don’t think Lucas ever had more than a surface level understanding of fascism.
Sure, but it’s not about WW2 specifically in a way that would make Return about Vietnam instead like their comment implied. Anti-fascism in general, sure.
It’s both, people don’t draw inspiration from just one thing. It’s also Hidden Fortress, but that doesn’t make the WW2 elements any less relevant. Star Wars is about the fight against fascism and imperialism in many forms.
star wars is inherently a political franchise
Difference between analogies to real or fictional politics.
a new hope is world war 2 in space, down to the look of weapons, turrets on the millennium falcon and death star, and the name of the faceless bad guy army. and even after that, return of the jedi is the vietnam war in space. and even after that, the prequels are all about fascist america in space! you can have palpatine say something stupid and obviously evil and immediately cut to someone from the Bush administration saying literally the same thing.
The original trilogy is all about Vietnam, or guerilla resistance to imperialism in general, weird take to call a New Hope WW2 but you got the spirit.
The way starfighter combat works is definitely WW2. There’s some hand wavy explanations in-universe for why it works that way, but it clearly comes from WW2 fighter and bomber turret footage.
Politically, the empire is pretty clearly Nazi-coded, but I don’t think Lucas ever had more than a surface level understanding of fascism.
Sure, but it’s not about WW2 specifically in a way that would make Return about Vietnam instead like their comment implied. Anti-fascism in general, sure.
It’s both, people don’t draw inspiration from just one thing. It’s also Hidden Fortress, but that doesn’t make the WW2 elements any less relevant. Star Wars is about the fight against fascism and imperialism in many forms.