Well, the story is set a long time ago (in a galaxy far, far away).

You have to be careful with tech. There was a survey that revealed that none of what could be regarded as “the best directors” had made a movie in the last 20 years that was set in the modern era, and a big part of it was how disruptive smartphones are to storytelling. Steven Soderbergh has said they’re the single worst thing to happen for film-making.

So if you deliberately keep the level of tech vague and anachronistically retro, then you don’t come across the same problems (e.g. why are they meeting instead of calling? Why didn’t they just take a picture? Why don’t they just look it up, etc.)