Solo Relationship between Empire and criminal gangs

What is this relationship meant to be?

Dryden is comfortable killing a Governor but can't ask for some coaxium and has to steal it?

The Empire provides slaves to the pykes on Kessel?

Seems confusing

 

And Moloch seems to be able to boss around the Imperials on Corellia.

Seems the Empire was every bit as corrupt as they claimed the Old Republic was.

Look at the customs officer at Coronet, very easy to bribe. And maybe she double-crossed the kids too.

 

I can't speak for Solo as I haven't seen it but there is a long history in the old canon of the Empire using criminal elements as a means of accomplishing objectives as well as Imperial officials getting into bed with criminal elements and then ending up over their head and having the tables turned where they were made to be subservient to the criminals.

 

The criminal factions weren’t challenging Imperial rule so the Empire has no issue. Imperial officials were very cutthroat when dealing with one another so they had no issue with betrayal and murder and backdoor deals.

The mines of Kessel were very remote so they made a perfect place to stash political prisoners and other people the Empire wanted to disappear. So the Pykes took the slaves and in return the Empire could pick through any outbound shipments.

So yes the Empire was corrupt but it really wasn’t trying to not be. They had control and the galaxy was under their thumb.

 

I don't think the Empire minded the criminal organizations as long as they didn't push things too far. In the Han Solo Trilogy, we did see the Empire move to strike down the Hutts at Nar Shadda, but only because things had gotten a little out of hand. Otherwise, the Empire was content to let them be.

Now, I do have a theory based on a comment that Dryden Vos made. Given what we know of Maul's Shadow Collective, and Vos's comment about a loose alliance with the Pykes, I can't help but wonder if Maul was trying to build his own empire to challenge Sidious one day, using the various syndicates as his troops/military. That's probably why Maul and Vos wanted the coaxium (besides its regular monetary value).

 

The Vulture review made a mention of this:

"Apart from the opening scenes, Solo doesn’t expend much effort on the Empire, but it shows a fairly sophisticated view of how fascism works below the surface. For all the Empire propaganda, which promises to spread “peace and prosperity” (on pain of death) through the galaxy, what fuels the galactic economy is the black market. This isn’t a small point. It’s a form of oppression that’s overseen by gangsters of various levels and tacitly permitted — it distracts the populace from larger injustices — by the totalitarian state."

http://www.vulture.com/2018/05/solo-a-star-wars-story-review.html

 

Right now we have no idea as to the relationship between Maul and Palpatine unless we accept that TCW and Rebels are canon (which I suspect is not entirely true considering this interview where Howard says his inclusion was a last minute addition). Furthermore, there is nothing in the animated shows referencing Crimson Dawn in particular, so I think we are operating in new territory with a new canon.

For now I'm interpreting Maul as the new Prince Xizor from Shadows of the Empire. Palpatine had a working relationship with him and allowed him to undermine Imperial operatives (even Vader) because he wanted his servants to be at each other's throats. I wouldn't be surprised if Maul and Vader are rivals in the new timeline, both working under Palpatine. One enforces the underworld through Crimson Dawn, the other hunts Jedi and puts down rebellions with the Stormtrooper Corps.

 

What on Urf are you talking about? TCW and Rebels are canon, and the Maul appearance is evidence of this.

 

Not sure how involved in the lore TC is, but the Empire has informally worked with criminal orgs throughout the entire franchise. I'm not sure it's ever confirmed in Solo that the guy Vos kills is an "imperial" governor.

 

Well officially yes, they are, but from the comments made by Ron Howard I get the sense that they didn't give a lot of thought to Maul's inclusion into Solo and don't have a plan for him going forward other than "he's back". My suspicion is that actually, they are not operating as though TCW and Rebels is canon and must be adhered to, but rather, "we'll cross that bridge when we get there". I think everything is on the table at this point, including a total retcon of the animated series.

 

The relationship between the Empire and these gangs, especially on a personal level, is one thing this movie made me very curious about. I'd be very interested in following this from the perspectives of Qi'ra and Enfys.

I find the idea (which may not be the backstory) that Enfys was always a criminal, interesting. I think she differs from both Saw and the Rebellion, even though her aims are on board with theirs (they all want similar end results I assume--they want freedom for the individual and for the dark and evil force that is the Empire to be stopped). I like the idea (which may not be the case) that Enfys is primarily a criminal (like a pirate of sorts) because it's a fresh take on a rebel. She's not like Mothma's (version of the) Rebellion in that she is willing to go to more extreme ends and she operates very much like a pirate. She's not like Saw either in that she doesn't seem to be this ends-justify-the-means sort of person exactly. She is an extremist in the sense that she is willing to kill good people or people who she has compassion for (I would imagine she knows the stakes for Beckett's team, she knows that it's not simply greed, but that in every job they take they are fighting for their lives because the price of failure is often death and no one is allowed out). And you could say this IS ends-justify-the-means, but it's not in the way it is for Saw who is damaged and broken because of his fight, and who is motivated by hate in many cases (Saw kind of tangos a bit with the dark side whereas Enfys doesn't seem to from my POV). Enfys in some ways reminds me of a more violent Jedi whereas I perceived Saw as a person whose good heart would not allow him to fall all the way to the dark side in a lasting way, but the dark side was taking its toll on him, and his way is very passionate and almost in a way reminiscent of the Sith (if he had been strong with the Force, I think he might have fallen to the dark side). So in short, Enfys is a new angle on a rebel/criminal. I see her as potentially a pirate-turned-rebel (or perhaps that's what her mother was?) because she fits in so well among the criminal gangs, it seems like that is the world that is native to her--one she has understood her entire life. Though Han and Qi'ra are no different except that they were street kids whereas Enfys has inherited a culture from her mother/people and it's those values she carries forward (she is primarily value-driven not primarily survival-driven as Han and Qi'ra are).

Qi'ra is of course the perfect character IMO to show an inside perspective of being near the top of one of these organizations and I think that Maul (if the character is done well) would lend an interesting perspective as well. He's not stranded on Malachor yet, so whatever ultimate "fall" he suffers that leads him there is in the future, but it's only about 10 years before ANH right? So Maul is probably either already disillusioned with "a great many things" or is finishing up becoming that way.

All of this has been leading me to wonder if a Fett movie might be more entertaining (if done well) than I might expect because Fett is a character who is familar with all the criminal groups and is also "native" to them in that his father was a criminal and raised him to basically become one as well. The criminal world is the world Fett kind of excels in even though it takes him a while to get his footing since he's only a kid. Hopefully if they did a Fett movie it would be with Daniel Logan playing a Fett in his early 30s. On IMDB he's listed for a Fett TV series, so I don't think LFL would go find someone else to play Fett.

But if Fett was done in the way Han and Lando were in Solo, I'd be pretty bored. Solo doesn't make its leads as interesting as its supporting characters (instead its leads are constant references to what we already know--all the things you know that you didn't need to know how it happened).

 

This topic is the topic that I wish would not inexorably drag me back to posting. It is a topic at the geometric center of why Han Han'd, and therefore why Kylo Ren Kylo Ren'd, and also why Jabba Jabba'd in the middle of an Empire at its peak in ROTJ, and also why Vader said no disintegrations, and also why Palpatine truthed to Amidala that the Republic was not what it once was. (It does not quite reach out to why Qui-Gon Hutted to Watto after Panaka had exposited that Hutts were gangsters, because there is definitely a geographical component to the geopolitics of the Outer Rim. Call me an idiot but I now see a thread of consequence between Owen Lars' principles in HOW he raised Luke to become what Luke became vis-a-vis the knowledge of HOW Anakin was raised in an environment tangential to organized crime. This is of course to be juxtaposed against how Han Solo did NOT have any kind of Owen Lars in his environmental makeup. (And therefore how that thread of consequence propagates forward to Kylo Ren.)

But also, it is Barely slightly to the side of the geometric center of why Disney thinks it has the oomph to pull the map of WW2 off of the OT, heave it up and over the interregnum, plop it back down upon ST, thereby dragging the frame of the map of WWI up and over the OT, and then finally expect OT fans to purchase that OT now is mapped to WWI. It was always mapped to OT, as they say in Oceania, Eastasia and Eurasia.

The elephant in the room wrt to mappings of WW2 versus WW1 to the OT is that the Nazis and fascism professed and acted to suppress organized criminal elements, only to implement organized criminal techniques. So where does the secondary reality of a criminal golden age fit best in GFFA, when Disney is manhandling the map of the twentieth century over its property? By linear comparison, the golden age of criminal underworld should peak during the interregnum between ROTJ and TFA, per Disney's repetitive insistence that we must naturally think of the interregnum as inevitable tiredness of conflict and inevitable shirking of vigilance and ultimate inevitable appeasement. (bull****). But here Disney is contorting by pulling that piece of the twentieth century and placing it before WWI. There is no very good analog. For some reason I cannot identify, this is not pissing me the hell off. I must have a Double Standard (TM) !

I am horrified and presently speechless by how across the board of SW content this topic cuts. So Lucas designed a cowboy who could draw first who rode grease lightning who smuggled. The go-to analog to smuggling is of course Maltese Falcon which is smuggling of art during WW2. I do not care what "spice" is used for. I know it was dumped; therefore it is commodity, therefore it was likely illegal. The closest analog to smuggling illicit substances in American history, that should inform the Han Solo Lucas originally constructed, would be the smuggling during Prohibition. I.e., organized crime of the Chicago variety, but ubiquitous. When we think of MF being chased by TIEs, it is a better match to think of shootouts with tommy guns between 30's Fords over alcohol than over art. (And NASCAR emerged from hot rodding required to smuggle moonshine.) Han as Smuggler is sourced in a combination of high, non-commodity, and low, commodity, smuggling.

Anyone think I'm seeing **** that ain't there, let me know.

 

1) I don't think Disney is turning the OT into WW1 and ST into WW2. If anything, the ST maps closely to our current political situation with the First Order bearing strong similarities to the alt-right -- a relatively young, extremist, fringe element funded by amoral rich folks that wasn't taken seriously by the mainstream only to prove that they were a dangerous force to be reckoned with.

2) Favreau's live-action series takes place a few years after ROTJ and may very well be about the criminal underworld. Nothing has been announced or leaked, but looking over his filmography and reading his unproduced-yet-acclaimed western, The Marshal of Revelation, I think it's a very good possibility.

 

1) Disney might be meta lampooning the alt right through the First Order. But the First Order are not analogue to the alt right. First Order are 'going to become' the analogue to WW2 Germany, inside the geopolitical framework of GFFA, after Disney's new canon that is distributed in ancillary merchandise diffuses sufficiently. E.g., Mothma's New Republic is under Disney now Chamberlain's appeasement England. Disney is altering the deal because under Lucas the Empire was best mapped to WW2 Germany. Gen X that internalized Lucas' representations have a road ahead to get on this new train. People that want to point out that Disney may very well have decent things to say about the world we see in 2018, by altering the deal, are free to speak up.

2) Sweet. I will do some looking into Favreau's live action series. Without knowing anything about it, my hope is that it has a focus on the seedy underbelly of Coruscant.

 

Certainly, it's not a one-to-one allegory (for one, the alt-right's political actions are being represented as the First Order's military actions), but I think the ST is picking and choosing historical inspirations for the new movies. I get that it's kind of muddled in the context of George's original ideas, but it also prevents it from being too boxed in story and theme-wise.

Speaking of political context, I didn't realize until recently the full power of ESB's twist (being born after it). "No, I am your father" was more than a great plot twist. It was George's realization that his father's generation was now the enemy. The brave war heroes who once stormed the beaches of Normandy and fought actual Nazis were now the ones standing in the way of civil rights and voting for Nixon. Anakin Skywalker, great hero of the Clone Wars, was now an agent of evil. Whether people realized it or not, the impact of that twist was as much political as it was narrative.

 

The chronology of the productions messes everything up. All three trilogies traffic rather specifically in WWII window dressing, but IU you have stuff broadly based on/critical of GWB and false flag wars in the PT, then 20 years later Nixon and Viet Nam... then thirty years after that, the 21c alt-right. It's never going to map consistently onto any IRL series of events. I don't see much of anything equating to WWI in the mix at any stage, though.

 

To the OP,

Speaking on behalf of all imprecise stormtroopers, we don't need their scum.

 

It was interesting to see the squid alien guy bossing around troopers, as much as the Empire can seen as Humans First, they still know that they have to keep a close relationship with some Criminal Scum if it keeps the population in line. But you end up with bona-finde aliens giving troopers marching orders which is probably crazy backwards to some of the core world imperials who would party on courscant. But both Vader and Sidious were known to work with the criminal slum elements because they know if you keep the bad guys happy, it'll keep the population in fear.

But this does lead to the larger question of "how is Maul running Crimson Dawn" because Sidious really doesn't like him but I'm going with since he was only implied and Vos said he had a boss and Maul only appears as a hologram, I'm guessing Maul running Crimson Dawn may only be known to top Lieutenants.