QUOTE (Lord Melkor @ Jun 25 2005, 07:11 PM)
And maybe they elect people from certain families? People can belief in Force, but not in society where they can elect a young queen. Weird.
No, logical and sensible. There are different kinds of fiction and not all are equally believable. I can accept the basic premise of, say, faster-than-light travel in Star Trek and other space operas (I'm not one of these hard SF fans that gets a fit of the vapours over anything not "plausible") because it is in the background, part of the texture of the story[1]. Feats of technology in space opera are part of the game. In Star Wars, the Force is, in a similar way, part of the texture of the story.
Making up impossible things about
people, however, is a different matter. Technology or magic may change but people remain about the same and so people who do stupid, unbelievable, or irrational things in fantasy or sci-fi are just as stupid, unbelievable, or irrational as they would be in any other story. What we see of Naboo's government is nonsensical and incompetent. (Come to think of it, is there a single competent character in the prequels? A single one? Even the bounty hunters are incompetent.) That is impossible to accept and all the handwaving about how it's just fantasy isn't going to change that. The Force is magic. Governing is practical and, considering how much of the prequels focus drearily on political machinations, Lucas should have handled it practically - or not tried in the first place.
1. But they ruin it in Star Trek: TNG by botching up some pseudo-scientific claptrap about it. The warp drive in original Trek just
is; aside from the occasional line about dilithium the warp drive is accepted just as another tool. TNG's pathetic attempts at explaining the impossible were clumsy, even comical. Just like Lucas's midichlorians, eh?