ST The First Order in EP. IX and Beyond

I'm OK with the FO coming back after Episode IX in Episode X and beyond or even the RJ trilogy. But I would also prefer anything from the Unknown Regions or Rey and co. having adventures in Episodes X,XI and XII or RJ's trilogy or even Benoiff and Weiss's upcoming series battling threats like the Killiks and their fleet of Dartships from the Dark Nest trilogy or the Vaagari from Outbound Flight and Survivor's Quest and their fleet of warships. Or even the Chiss and their fleet of warships and Clawfighters then becoming allies fighting threats like the Killiks and/or the Vaagari or how about Nuso Esva and his eastern fleet of warships.

 

They might survive but they’ll be changed forever. Those who survive will all get perms.

 

I think aspects will survive but they'll be mostly irrelevant. A time jump could show a new Jedi Order is being trained, bringing everything back full circle.

 

Why perms? Why not buzz cuts?

Fro's! If you really want some '70's nostalgia in you Star Wars. White guys with Fro's.
Pull off your stormtrooper helmet and... FOOM. Hair explosion.

 

Comb the desert!!!

 

They won’t be in the RJ trilogy.

 

They will and they’ll create a Deaf Star because in space nobody can hear you scream.

 

I'm very partial to the idea of FO being almost a red herring in that IX won't come down to a Resistance vs. FO showdown like in ROTJ. I think it'd make for a much more interesting story if we see the FO fall apart internally as Finn maybe leads a stormtrooper rebellion and the galaxy at large rises up against them. Let's be real, the FO vs. Resistance conflict itself is one of the weaker aspects of this trilogy. This direction would also finally break the Empire vs. Rebels mold of this whole plotline and I think provide a better, more thematically appropriate ending for all 9 movies.

I think the setup is there in TLJ, as I think that movie introduces themes that call for a resolution beyond just a simple military victory in both the force/military plotlines.

 

Kylo will kill Hux, writes a book and surprises everyone:

 

Maybe the FO falls and is replaced by a bunch of oligarchs a la post-Soviet Russia?

 

Boris The Animal?

 

The biggest problem I have with the new films is that the First Order does not seem to make any sense, at least not from the film alone. How did they pay for all their stuff? How do they seem to have an unending supply of new super weapons, gigantic ships and men? After all it did seem like they were a pure military organisation, which was localised on a single one planet that got blown up in The Force Awakens.

After the additional catastrophic losses that The First order had to suffer in The Last Jedi, I would find it extremely implausible if it still posed a threat to the major worlds of the Republic, such as Corellia, Coruscant and the like. They may be able to crush the Resistance if they are so inclined, but the Resistance seems rather inconsecuential in the greater theme of things.

Therefore I was thinking that it might be better for the next film to just let The First Order implode. The explanation would go something like this: The only thing that kept The First Ordering was extremely sophisticated market manipulation, blended with well placed mind tricks and basically taking over formerly trustworthy personnel in the market scene of the Republic. The First Order was, in the essence, a pyramide scheme, which in fact might have paid off, if the First Order managed to take over the entire Republic, or at least its core world. Nobody realised (somehow) that the First Order was completely and utterly built on debt.

Since "The Last Jedi" covers only a very short time frame, a couple of days at most, there was no reaction to the loss of Starkiller Base, a lot of companies throughout the galaxy, including Sienar Fleet Systems and Kuat Drive Yards halted any project for The First Order. When Snoke died, who was the mastermind behind this giant pyramid scheme, it pretty much instly collapsed. From the point of view of these companies, The First Order was the biggest market bubble in galactic history. Kuat Drive Yards goes bankrupt within days.

The First Order itself, with a completely broken supply chain and the loss of its singular leader, breaks down into several factions again, is caught in in fighting over the scarce supplies and the survivors of this internal conflict succumb to forming pirate factions at the fringes of the galaxies.

Kylo Ren manages to escape the turmoil, leave for his father's home planet Corellia with a few select elite forces and, more importantly, a lot of money. There he manages, with the help of a few mind trick, to tell the story of his experiences as though he was in fact the hero of the story, that he infiltrated the First Order after staging a clash with Luke Skywalker and intentionally helping an agent of the resistance (namely Rey) to infiltrate the station, whilst continuing to act as an antogonist. He even admits killing his own father, Han Solo, with the explanation that Snoke had gotten through to Han and maniplulated the proud Corellian pilot, who was left to believe that his son has actually fallen to the dark side, to commence a suicide attack on him. Kylo Ren is therefore reverred as the greatest of all spies, who killed Snoke personally and orchestrated distractioins that allowed to destroy Starkiller Base. He's seen as a kind of new Luke Skywalker, a celebrity.

Kylo Ren does not engage into politics directly, nor is he interested in warfare, but like any Sith, he still wants power. He masters the art of manipulating public opinion. Nominally a wealthy, wide known playboy, founder of a School for Force Sensitives and supporter of many welfare programs, he controls the political class from the side lines. In public opinion he becomes virtually untouchable, anyone who would dare to depict the story differently than Kylo did would only brand themselves as a liar and traitor. His agents are regarded as a league of Super Heroes, who bring justice and thwart the corrupt. While he does use carefully placed mind tricks and coercion, the vast majority of his undertakings are in fact, not illegal, in part because law is changed to accomodate him.

Thus, whilst being an illustirious figure in the High Society of the core worlds, which bathes in fame and glamour, the galaxy transmutates into a police state under his feet, even though he rejects the notion of any desire for power or a public office and acts like a harmless playboy.

If those ideas could be communicated in a more condensed fashion, Star Wars might make a time skip of two to five years and start in this initial situation at the beginning of Episode IX... well, not literally this situation, but something comparable that will hopefully at least get rid of The First Order and introduce a new obstacle in its place.

 

The loss of Jakku?

But you make some interesting points.

 

I meant Starkiller Base.

 

Not only that but the folks on Canto Bright were paid good money for weapons. Good money that the FO apparently had. I guess it was due to old money in the Empire that never faded.

Another idea is piracy around the galaxy. Either way, yeah, it was never explained how this new entity could become so powerful if their funds were cut off.

 

Hm. Are you saying this to agree with me or contradict me? Just to make sure: That's the idea. An enormous amount of money was pushed around and some people very well get rich in the process. But it was just a giant pyrimad scheme, just like many people became ridiculously rich and then lost everything in the .com bubble. The First Order never created any revenue and, unlike the Empire, could neither tax the big industrial planets, nor take over their economy. The whole idea is playing on the idea of captialism, and how it can go wrong, which was introduced there.

 

I don't really see any issues here.

The First Order rose from the ashes of the Empire, it had access to the Unknown Regions as well. The whole galaxy demilitarized after the Empire was beaten, because there was no reason to keep such a large military around, and not nearly enough resources to finance it anyway. This means even the most powerful entity in the galaxy wasn't nearly as strong as during the war. The First Order then used Starkiller Base to wipe out the Republican fleet and the capital, which meant there was no sizeable military force left to oppose them. And what was remaining was largely scattered over the galaxy and left without leadership after the Republic had been wiped out.

This whole thing is basically taking a page out of actual history. All you need to do, is take a look at post WW1 history, and you see what is going on. You have a world / galaxy trying to come back to its feet after the carnage that was WW1 / the civil war between the Empire and the rebellion. Military spending is down, and everyone demobilized, because no one could afford to keep such a large army around, especially with the costs of rebuilding. In comes an even more fanatical group that tries to rebuild the old glory (Nazi Germany / The First Order), and no one is prepared to do anything about them, because they don't seen to be a large threat at that point and no one wants another war anyway. Said group starts a secret re-armament and prepares to destroy its enemies. They proceed to launch a quick strike that overwhelms their enemy (Fall of France, Britain retreats from the continent / the Republic and its fleet get destroyed).

The First Order doesn't have unlimited resources, nor does it need to, because the only military force that could harm them was destroyed by Starkiller Base. They don't have a giant unlimited army, they merely have the largest one still around.


It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to try what you are proposing. You don't just change the story right when the final episode begins. It weakens everything, and you aren't left with any time, nor a useful or consistent story to tell. You basically throw everything that happened out of the window, just to introduce a scenario in which the villain is still the villain. You accomplish absolutely nothing with that, but waste a lot of screen-time explaining this convoluted plot, leaving you with next to nothing to actually solve everything. And make no mistake, you would need to spend a ton of time explaining all that stuff, because no one would understand what is going on if you tried to explain it before release. The trilogy needs to be consistent in itself, you can't have a situation where you require an explanation outside of the movies. No one who would watch the movies in the future would understand it, because they wouldn't have that explanation.

If you wanted a different story, that would have been something that needed to happen right away. You don't try something like that when you have just one movie left. The idea of the manipulative character isn't quite bad, but it doesn't fit at all to the current situation, and seems more fitting for a superhero movie than a Star Wars movie anyway. In a way, Star Wars already had its supposedly benevolent popular figure-head who turns out to be an evil mastermind in the prequels. Doing that again would be a bit of a rehash.

 

I don't think your comparison with WW2 works. The Nazi party did not take over until 1933, and until then military in Germany was extremely limited. In 1933, when the Nazi party took over, the constraints from the Treaty of Versaille were gradually ignored, but the production was not backed up by past wealth, but by Germany's working economy. In the case of the First Order, however, said arms manufacturers exist outside of the First Order. Unlike Germany in 1930s, which had tax income and ceased to pay reparation, the First Order has no income.

While the First Order might have constituted a sufficient threat to blackmail the galaxy at the beginning of The Force Awakens, the loss of Starkiller base, lots of star destroyers and several superweapons that simply doesn't work anymore. They cannot hold the galaxy for ransom anymore. They have a few star destroyers left, but the galaxy is big and it doesn't seem plausible that they can take on one of the major worlds in the galaxy, who might, in turn, but somewhat upset with the First Order blowing up the Republic's core planet.

Thus, getting rid of The First Order in the third movie of a trilogy might be an unusual move - everything should be in place already - but at this point the First Order can't be taken seriously anymore, anyway. Fighting the First Order again seems pointless and if they show up unscathed with yet another super weapon, it will simply feel like they are respawning like enemies in an MMO, not bound by any constraints of internal logic.

Therefore I find that a bigger leap, two to five years, at the beginning of the film is warrented and a few unusual steps should be taken. It would still be about Wars, as the galaxy is torn by civil wars, as a result of the collapsing economy.

As for similarities between Kylo Ren and Sidious... well, in the suggested fashion Kylo Ren would not want another Empire, he would rather endorse democracy and play the public opinion, rather than being actually in charge. He does not really care about political power as much as Sidious, nor does he want revenge on the Jedi, he's driven by his narcissistic streak to be adored and admired. He wants the Galaxy to lay down at his feet for sure, but he doesn't need immediate political power to that end.

 

Having no Snoke back story causes a lot of problems.

 

List them.

 

A lot of these are fanboy complaints, not necessarily storytelling ones, and certainly not filmic ones. The only thing that I would have preferred is to have the political state of the Galaxy explained a bit more. It doesn't really matter, though. Even Snoke's back story, when looking at the film's themselves, isn't really essential. That's EU stuff.

 

Arguably the galaxy state and the history of Snoke, at least in so far as it is publicly known, are intertwined. Carefully put, I find it less than ideal that there was no explanation, but it's futile to worry about broken eggs at this point. This does have the advantage that J.J. Abrams can assume whatever he wants in his film and it won't lead to a contradiction.

 

How much do some of you hate movie series like Bond, Mission Impossible, F&F, etc?

 

Snoke is supposedly super rich, but I guess we will never have that officially confirmed now.

 

lmao your problems are explained in the Nu canon besides the books . The UR is huge. the FO took a lot of it over in the 30 years . we haven't heard anything about the state of the chiss in the ST. The FO coulda absorbed the chiss Ascendancy's power and wealth . not to mention how corrupt the new republic was