The story is fiction and children can understand, the message is environment is part of our lives, though we can't connect like them "primitive" we do know about the food chain, life cycle and are damaging our own world.

It is a movie and Star Wars is a commercialized movie with merchandise and fan club and to further ripping money from the the market, the story go backward.
In terms of spaceship design, look at 2001 space odyssey way back in 1968 and you won't believe that it was that old.