Saga Did TFA make the OT pointless?

No, the Death Star copy was saved for ROTJ, a film released six years after ANH. TFA was released thirty years later with the SKB at least a bit more original than a slightly bigger Death Star. However, I'm not going to defend SKB, as I feel a second Death Star was already pretty unoriginal, so another super weapon was not on my ST wish list.

TFA also started with a changed status quo: Luke has vanished looking for the first Jedi Temple, there's a New Republic, which is being threatened by an extremist group, and Han and Leia's son has joined the extremists.

 

Han is incredulous at the idea of the Empire blowing up Alderann since it would require "a thousand ships, with more fire power..." In other words the Death Star far outweighs whatever capacity the fleet has, and the Emperor has made the mistake of dispensing the conventional methods of control and order and substituting it with the Deat Star, which backfires.

Instead of areas of the galaxy being outwith Imperial control somewhat, it's instead "a dark time for the rebellion" where they've been chased from their rebel base and cannot find sanctuary due to the Imperial fleet. So the Imperial fleet was big enough to make almost the entire civilised galaxy a no go area, but not to control those areas, even though a Senate and later a Death Star was assumed to be necessary to maintain control.

After the Death star's destruction, and Tarkin too, there would have been encouragement for more systems to rebel, and not have to flee to hidden bases. Base planets can't be blown up in an instant so it makes it possible for the Alliance to defend from the fleet. This never happens though. Hoth takes the place of Yavin and the fleet takes the place of the Death Star and it's the exact same situation as near the end of ANH. It retconned the ending of ANH to simply buying the rebels a little bit of time.

 

DrDre wrote

Nazi Germany was the country secretly preparing to attack peaceful surrounding nations. In fact it were the Germans who coined the term super weapons or wunderwaffe:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wunderwaffe

It is the Germans that allready before WWII started developing the V-weapons, known in the original German as Vergeltungswaffen (reprisal weapons), designed for long-range strategic bombing, and it's the Germans who ultimately attacked surrounding sovereign nations, without provocation. There's your analogy.

BUT, that's already the analogy for the OT (WW II) and not WWI.

And the "Zeppelin raids" of WWI rather have characteristics of the Imperial Starfleet bombing a disloyal planet. In terms of the OT, the Death Star already is the ultimate "Wunder- or Vergeltungswaffe".

The difference between the endings of ANH and ROJ is of course this: In ANH Vader deliberately survived, so everybody in the audience (sitting behind the Fourth Wall) knew he could or would probably return in ESB with the Imperial Starfleet to drive the Alliance from Yavin IV (which is how the prologue of ESB starts).
There is no such ambiguity in the ending of ROJ.

 

ANH did that very well.

While there was no star fleet actually seen, there's that Vader's stardestroyer at the beginning of the movie and two more when Falcon escapes Tatooine. One fleet is also mentioned in the DS briefing room, so we can assume there's more then one.

Is the DS really needed? The Emperor dissolved the council, OK, and the question raised was, how will he keep control over systems? He'll appoint regional governors who'll have direct control over their territories. The DS will only keep them in line. Or, to put it more simply, fear of the DS will make those systems not to try anything.

With such a few things Lucas managed to explain everything and make the DS a great threat.

 

I think that's the point. Two senior Imperials agreed that the Rebellion was well equipped & dangerous, particularly to the "Star Fleet". It was presumed that what they were not a danger to was the DS. Which was also the reason for the Emperor's dissolution of the Senate. Bcs the new fear that the DS created would keep the systems in line. So in ANH a lot of importance was placed in that station. Then it's destroyed, yet in the next movie the Rebels look like a ragtag group that barely poses any danger at all. In the movie after that an even bigger & more powerful Death Star is operational. So does all of that make the celebration at the end of ANH "pointless?"

 

If the beginning of ESB is the "dark time" for the rebellion then so is the immediate aftermath of the Death Star destruction. The Imperials still have starfleet and the rebel base is discovered (unlike the beginning of ESB). So it's a far darker time than at the beginning of the next movie where the rebel base is hidden again.

 

I agree that ANH did it very well, better than TFA. However, the fact remains, that ANH ends with the rebels winning a huge victory over the Empire, who going by what has been said about the importance of the DS, appears to end with the Empire taking a huge hit, being on the ropes.

TESB of course defies expectations, and has our heroes in even more dire straits than in the previous film. While TFA is less effective in this respect, the net result is the same, what appears to be a fairly conclusive victory, turns out to be a temporary one with evil regrouping to fight another day.

In the case of TFA the victory of our heroes had been all the more crippling, and so it took three decades for the revamped Empire to again strike at the heart of the New Republic, rather than a few years as is the case with TESB.

 

People always act like ESB contradicts the roundtable discussion in ANH, but I don't see that being the case at all. The implication was never that the rebels had the immediate resources to singlehandedly destroy the imperial starfleet in some massive pitched battle. Rather, the concern stated by various officers throughout ANH is that the rebels ARE capable of winning tactical victories that will embolden local star systems to join them. That's what the death star was supposed to prevent. And that's exactly what we see happen in the next two movies. In ROTJ we see the rebellion has become far more diverse with various alien species like the Mon Calamari and their cruisers that go toe-to-toe with star destroyers. Even in ESB, we see for the first time that the rebels do have larger transports and frigates and not just the single fighter fleet we saw in ANH. And while the rebels do have to retreat in the face of the Imperial fleet, they put up a credible fight, disabling the destroyer and apparently escaping with most of their ships and transports. It's not like the base on Hoth had any great strategic importance -- if anything the rebel generals probably would prefer that they were the ones keeping the imperial starfleet busy while Mon Mothma and the rest of the alliance leadership rallied more star systems to their cause.

 

Don't agree.

What ANH established, both in the DS scene and early on, was that the Senate was still a factor.
It had less power than before sure but the Empire could not do what ever they wanted.
Leia makes this point, she said only Vader would be so bold to attack a diplomatic ship.
A fact supported by other imperial officers, who say that holding Leia is dangerous.

The rebel have gotten more and more support in the senate, growing more and more powerful.
Enough to be threat to the Star Fleet.

The Senate is the means the empire uses to maintain control, not the fleet.
The senate and it's bureaucracy is what keeps most systems calm, the semblance of democracy and influence.

Hence why the dissolving of said senate is such a big deal. Without it, the fleet can not keep control.
Without it, many more systems would rebel, both weakening the empire and also making the rebels stronger.
The DS was the key to prevent all that.
Fear of the DS would stop any systems from defying the emperor.
So that is why the emperor can get rid of the senate, he has the means to keep order.
So ANH pretty much sets up the situation that the DS is the very thing the empire has to keep order after the senate is gone. And without it destroyed, freedom will be restored to the galaxy.
Even the crawl says that.

But ESB ignores almost all this. Even with the DS gone, the empire has as much if not an even stronger grip over the galaxy. And the rebels are even weaker.
So the victory in ANH is made less important.

So if you object to TFA making the victory in RotJ hollow, then the same thing applies to ESB making the victory in ANH hollow.

TFA works less well than ESB and it glosses over far too much.
But that it pushes the reset button, ESB did that already so I don't mind it.

I could have used a bit more backstory and another DS was not the best choice.
I think SKB might have worked better as the tease for the next film.
Say Kylo flies away after his defeat and the last image in the film is him arriving at SKB and we see this big, ominous planet and cut to credits.

Bye for now.
The Guarding Dark

 

You mean, the senate represented last hint of possible democracy in the Empire and thus the systems made no problems? I doubt that. It's very clear from the movie that the Rebellion gained support in the senate so Palpy decided to end it. And as it's also last remnant of the Republic that overstayed it's welcome and served nothing.

As the movie revolves around stolen plans of that station and it's destruction, yes.

Unlike TFA, ANH very clearly depicts the situation. The Empire is in control of the galaxy, the Rebels won their first victory ever, the DS is something they must destroy in order not to bring doom to many innocent people and they did it. But the Empire's still there. Their celebration at the end of ANH is far from being pointless; they won their second victory and destroyed the Empire's most powerful weapon.

We actually never saw the consequences of the destruction of the DS. They obviously tightened the grip on the Rebels, but has the loss of the DS made more systems join the Rebellion?

The emergence of a new enemy is not the problem. The way that same enemy destroyed the Republic and what the Republic did to prevent that is the problem.

There were other solutions to the story, but the people behind TFA, after Lucas left, decided to go the easier path and ditch the Jedi and the Republic in order to get a story that tries to bring them back, just as the OT did.

 

The Republic has not been destroyed:

"Meanwhile, the First Order would ultimately destroy the New Republic's current capital on Hosnian Prime, seeking to end its unofficial support of the Resistance with a new superweapon dubbed Starkiller Base, which could fire a planet-shattering beam through hyperspace, and destroy an entire star system. With the destruction of the Republic's capital and a portion of its fleet, the First Order stood poised to destroy both the New Republic and the Resistance".

In effect the FO have done what the rebels did in ANH. They struck a hard blow at the heart of the Republic, severely weakening it, but the Republic still stands, and will thus fight a war against the FO, along side the Resistance.

 

Quite agreed, the ending of ANH only saw the destruction of just the DS and a high ranking officer, which the rebels celebrated. However, Vader still ecaped to fight another day and to represent the Empire was still a grave threat and looking for blood. The Imperial starfleet was still a great threat to the rebels who could not go toe to toe in a full battle with, which is why they only delayed them to retreat from Hoth. ROTJ is quite different, the rebels have grown and gained more allies. The ending of ROTJ not only saw another destruction of a Death Star, but the emperor, Vader, amiral Peitt, imperial big shots, etc were killed. The Imperial fleets flagship was also lost, likely with several other SDs, plus an entire legion of their best ground troops were lost. The imperial defeat in ROTJ is far far worse than the one they suffered in ANH and to compare the two is just silly. .

 

Yeah, for ESB to counteract ANH in the way that TFA does ROTJ, it would have to have started with the rebellion already having been wiped out off screen the way that Luke's new Jedi order and the New Republic fleet were wiped out offscreen in TFA. What I will say in TFA's favor is that there was a long time gap before it which does make these choices somewhat more understandable. But then that same time gap makes the slavish reuse of OT designs seem even more out of place.

 

Unless the neo-Imperials are fanatics who deliberately seek to emulate Imperial iconography & aesthetic. Much like neo-Nazis do even today.

Why wouldn't the combined fleets of a galaxy spanning Empire still be a great threat following RotJ? Aside from your own speculation, where is it confirmed in the movie that all Imperial forces suddenly disappeared? Why is it impossible for them to regroup somewhere? As was the story in the Zahn novels, which Lucas signed off on.

Then it's a good thing the galaxy enjoyed several decades of relative peace. The ST begins more than 30 years after RotJ. Which is around the duration of the entire PT & OT combined. Yet it still made sense to everyone including Lucas to feature a neo-Imperial faction in the ST. What is your fan-fiction alternative? Who would you have as the opposing enemy force in these movies? There's nothing easier than criticising. Somewhat more difficult to come up with a better alternative.

 

I don't think the re-use of ANH designs can be solely explained by the in-universe fanatacism of the FO. You don't see neo-nazis flying around in Messerschmitt 109's. Strangley enough, the space battle at the end of TFA is actually the only battle in the whole saga to be made up of nothing but ties and x-wings. Even in ANH there were the y-wings and Vader's unique fighter. Not that it impacts the story or anything, but it does speak to the mentality behind the creators of TFA. I think if the story had felt like less of a reboot it would be a lot easier to overlook the design re-use. Likewise if the visuals had felt fresh that might have made it easier to accept the story reset. Both at once didn't work very well, imo. Came across as too much of a retread. Where I will give TFA props is the design of SKB, which was actually pretty cool looking, even if I disagreed with the way it was used in the story.

 

Out of curiosity, where are these quotes from?

 

The wookipedia entry for the First Order.

 

I think we can all agree that basing a villain force off Nazi Germany was lazy and tired last century, let alone this one. Explore history that is less popular (or overshadowed). Instead we get: When in doubt, Nazi.

The original six were not two separate nations. It was a civil war. Have they even set up why the Nazi (I mean Imperial) sympathizers had a problem with the New Republic? Was inflation so out of control that they needed a wheelbarrow full of iPay phones to buy bread? Would not a simple military coup have been easier than a big boom event?

Maybe make it more based off the "civil" split in Islam where the heir became in question. Maybe the treaty created strange bedfellows. Lines were drawn by natural features (a planet), but the planet population was split. Perhaps even by more than two poles.

So it is still essentially a civil war. Instead, they took the game board mentality. Oh, you need to be the black checkers on this side of the board and you the red on that side of the board.

Maybe it is like early empires. The New Republic had to bring the tribes (planets) back under their banner. But maybe once they achieve this, instead of living in peace, they decide the Republic needs to expand. Eventually they butt heads with a civilization that finds fault with joining the New Republic and decides it must use force to stop the New Republic there and elsewhere. A New Republic peace (police) force is sent in and is slaughtered. Perhaps it is time to send in Luke's new Jedi. Luke is captured not because he can't overpower them, but chooses not to. Luke is tortured. Enter his protege, Ben Solo. Ben has always had issues with Luke's passive ways. He quickly takes the "Visigoths" down, but his means are questionable. Now there is a conflict within the Republic and the Jedi.

This would not undo the Ep. 6 ending, but would create a new drama.

This is why the PT premise was a good one. It wasn't just Palpatine coming from the outside trying to take the Republic by force. The galactic citizens never actually chose to go Imperial because "wouldn't that be cool". They just got caught up in it and didn't view the Empire as a different entity than the Republic. The choice was not to join, but if to leave.

So episodes 8 and 9 have quite the heavy lift to pull off the simple setup of episode 7. It is dangerously close to a sitcom mold now. Everything seemed back to normal the previous episode (trilogy), but what will they do this week (4 years). As long as it all gets back to normal, I can feel safe. In other words, the previous episodes become pointless other than to pass the time.

 

Because the New Republic was set up by rebels, terrorists/freedom fighters who decapitated the regime of the Republic which had been formed into an Empire in order to prevent wars like that begun by the TF and the Separatists. The Alliance was not about chasing the Imperials all over the galaxy until they were destroyed or totally surrendered. And they weren't about forcing everyone in the galaxy to swear loyalty to the new republic.


The leadership New Republic (which is neither the Empire or the Old Republic, but an entirely separate new federation) has no legitimacy in the eyes of those that loyally served both the Republic and the Empire.

 

The equivalent time period for that neo-Nazi army would be the 1970's. There were absolutely a lot of vehicles & aircraft that still looked quite similar. If you add the fanaticism element, you could easily have a new sect that deliberately tries to ape the Nazi regime in appearance, while upgrading the engineering & performance of its hardware. Exactly as the FO have done.

 

Where does it actually say this in the movie? The terrorist rhetoric seemed to be directed more toward the Resistance than the New Republic. The New Republic's crime was simply allowing the Resistance to exist (per Hux speech), but not terrorism itself.

I know there are neat discussions about the Rebels being one person's freedom fighter / another's terrorist, but it is more academic than serious. The Bloodline book seemed to be hinting more at the power of the Empire than it being an innocent government overrun by terrorists.

Is this all in the Aftermath books? That would explain a lot because I read the first half of book one before TFA came out. I had to stop because it wasn't a very enjoyable read. I tried the audiobook, but that was even worse.

Did you mean The New Republic instead of the Rebel Alliance? If so, that has absolutely no bearing on anything because we are talking about where the ST could have ventured, so it wouldn't be hindered by the current ST setup. The idea that a government that eventually brings its former members back into the restoration of its former government entity would eventually then look for a new task (expansion) is quite logical. Especially when the new leadership is removed by decades from the original leadership of the New Republic. And more importantly, would not undo the original saga ending.

Nor is the First Order, so by that measure, it too would have no legitimacy. So ....

The First Order really makes little sense. At least the FO Stormtroopers have an excuse (brainwashed since birth). What about the FO leaders? Were they being oppressed by the NR. Was the NR in shambles? If you knew the Empire was all about power through oppression and fear, then you wouldn't want that back simply because "it feels legitimate." (And again, by their own logic you've given, would be illegitimate itself).

Really seems all about the Resistance more than the Republic itself.

 

The previous six movies showed us this. Members of the Empire started fighting the Imperial forces in order change the system of government.

The super-weapon was directed at the New Republic. The existence of the Resistance gives them the excuse to attack the New Republic who are supposedly appeasing the FO, not supporting an outlaw paramilitary group trying to keep them in check.

I don't know about the books. But the formation of the Empire was officially made in the interest of "safety, security" in response to various emergencies. The FO are following that same line to justify its grab for power in the New Republic. Naturally, since they are neo-imperialists.


The Alliance was not about chasing the Imperials all over the galaxy until they were all destroyed or totally surrendered. And they weren't about forcing everyone in the galaxy to swear eternal loyalty to a new republic.

The original saga ended with Palpatine dead and the second death star destroyed, instead of the Alliance being wiped out as was planned by the Empire.

There is no reason to assume that all constituent members of the Empire should then accept the Alliance as the new regime, or agree with the reformation of a Republican senate. Hence the First Order existing first within (apparently) and then alongside the New Republic. Peacefully, for a time.

But we are talking about the FO's perspective and their motives for opposing the New Republic. Who says the FO are not legitimate? They are recognised and allowed to exist by the New Republic, in lieu of a total surrender and/or annihilation of every Imperial that the Alliance did not fight for and did not win. The Empire was totally legitimate (if you ignore the fact that Sidious engineered the Separatist movement and the war) . It was voted in to existence by an overwhelming majority of Republican systems.

The resistance exists due to the lack of political will, first to keep the FO systems within the New Republic, and also to do anything that might be seen as non-appeasement of the FO outwith the New Republic (apparently the FO was a faction within the new senate members for a time before seceding).

The Republic is mentioned four times to the resistance's one.

So Hux calls the New Republic on secretly supporting the resistance through some of its senate members still wishing to fight the imperialism. While at the same time existing peacefully with them. In other words he is saying they have the right to respond in force to the New Republic's tacit approval of the resistance's guerrilla warfare, and restore Imperial tyranny to ensure peace.

I don't know what you mean by it being all about the resistance. The resistance doesn't have territory or anything that the FO wants. If they weren't after the new republic first then they wouldn't have played their SKB hand and wouldn't have given their position away to the resistance by firing at the Hosnian system.

The resistance are the excuse that the FO are using to first cripple the New Republic and their fleet and then to carry out its ambitions of conquest. (It's kind of like the Gulf of Tonkin mixed with Pearl Harbour). The timing of the strike is actually due to the FO's failure to apprehend Luke Skywalker before the Resistance got their hands on the map of his location.

They are militarist and supremacists intent on being in charge of the galaxy. Why is it nonsensical that they would try to claw back what their predecessors, the galactic Empire had?

For the saga to have avoided being "hindered" by the situation in the ST, post Endor would have had to have seen either a complete and total surrender of every person in the galaxy who was not a member or a supporter of the Alliance, and their conversion to Republican democrats, or for the Alliance to continue fighting until every Imperial loyalist is either annihilated or captured and imprisoned indefinitely. A complete reversal to exactly where they galaxy was at the beginning of TPM.

 

What makes it weird though is we had already seen an evolution of the tie design in ROTJ with the interceptors, and in ESB with the bombers. Yet there are no descendants of those designs to be seen anywhere in TFA. Same goes with the resistance force, which has no a-wings or b-wings whatsoever. I mean, sure you can create explanations for all this but it does create something of a disconnect from ROTJ, where those newer designs were already about as common on both sides as the older models.

 

Why are they required to have appeared in TFA though? Am I supposed to feel that one movie is disconnected from the previous one because it doesn't present everything I've seen before and added to. If there's a specific reason for something being carried over into the next movie them fine. But it's not a prerequisite for them remaining connected.

 

But what's the specific reason that only basic X-wings and TIEs come back, not the newer ships? In ANH itself, the X and Y-wings are supposed to be old ex-imperial ships, which is supported by the PT showing earlier models of X-wing. The TIEs are clearly the imperial replacement ships, while the Rebels are forced to rely on out of date tech. To see ships that were implied to be out of date still being used 30 years later is just baffling to me. They haven't even changed the design at all, despite the fact that we saw design changes in both the 19 year PT-OT gap, and even in the 4 year ANH-ROTJ gap.

The main reason is just simple nostalgia for ANH, ignoring that the Rebels in even ANH had more ships than just X-wings.

Edit: Also I just think using X-wings and TIEs again is visually boring. In TPM there wasn't a single re-used design, everything was new. In TFA, the vast majority of ships used by the major factions are identical to ones used in ANH.