ST TFA - strikingly youthful?

Yes, there's that great moment when she's chewing her last bites of food and there's a childish smile as she thinks, 'Yep. I've got my AT-AT home, a decent income, my rebel doll, and helmet. Life is pretty good.' Which is exactly where Joseph Campbell says conflict is supposed to arise… Is that a droid needing rescue that I hear in the distance?

Hamill was 24 (playing 19), Ford 33 and Fisher 19 when it was shot.

 

So you are both right

 

I think it has something to do with the story they want to tell. Hux in particular was very young to be the commanding general of the entire FO. That's like a guy in his early 30's being chief of staff of the US Armed Forces.

I read it somewhere but I can't find that article again that yes, they purposely used young men as FO officers to indicate that these people don't really have a lot of field experience. Maybe it does have something to do with how Snoke operates -- preying on the young and impressionable. A lot like how modern religious extremists operate I guess.

 

I really like this reading a lot. I think, at its core, it stems from a disdain for weakness and a love of power, like with all (most) great villains. The old are weak. The Imperials of yesteryear were too weak to keep the Empire alive and intact. Now the young and strong have come to show them how it's done. Snoke gets a pass because he's powerful, and has the will to perhaps see the Empire reorganized and restored to its former glory. You see similar things happen with disenfranchised youth in the real world, spitting on the perceived failures of the preceding generation(s) while simultaneously rallying around a leader more than twice their age.

 

The Flight Commander in the docking bay was in his 50s. Look where his experience got him...

 

Well said. And I do think this was deliberate on JJ's and Kasdan's part.

 

The reason that I think this is that, aside from Snoke, ALL of the FO people seem to be this way. There's not a grey hair or beard to be found among them. By contrast, the Resistance is full of middle-aged to older characters (Han, Leia, Adm. Ackbar, the Asian officer who's name I cannot remember, sorry, etc).

And signs of Rey's youthfulness also include her acting like an adorable young fangirl around Han Solo (and seemingly wanting to win his approval) and being either on the verge of tears or flat-out crying in multiple scenes/situations.

 

The people working with the FO were almost certainly forcefully "recruited" from a young age (Finn explained the whole thing perfectly), and then symmetrically brainwashed to follow the doctrines of the Order. With the more capable and talented ones rising the ranks at a much faster speed than usual, notably General Hux and Kylo Ren - both of whom are youthful-looking people occupying very high positions in the FO.

At the same time, what Thrawn082 mentioned about Snoke is like what I posted in another thread - the Supreme Leader is one of the most senior surviving Empire officers after the events of ROTJ and gradually took it upon himself to reconstruct the Empire in another guise (becoming the FO we know today), even if what's left of the baddies openly embraced peace by signing the treaty with the New Republic.

 

There's one old guy, in the FO at least, at the docking bay. "Stop that fighter" he is killed pretty early on mind you.

 

These days people in their 30's are still considered pretty young. Odd that you'd throw in Isaac and Driver in the same sentence as nearly 90 Von Sydow and pushing 50 Del Toror and Dern. Poe and Kylo definitely are meant to be included in the 'young adult' category for these new Star Wars characters.

As for the larger topic there was a thread before that noted this, with some strong observations made about how it's historically easier for young people to be seduced into following radical ideologies. Many of the FO would have been too young, or perhaps not even born, to experience the true horror of living under the Empire. So it would be easier for them to be seduced by it's past glories, without the sting of actually living under the weight of it's boot.

I think it's a fitting contrast to the Resistance, led by the aging leaders, many of which were likely young spitfires during the rebellion:

 

Fashions are designed for everyone to look younger too. Thirty years ago I would never see someone wearing the same clothes as a teenager, looking like identical billboards from a mall store. A Clockwork Orange kind of foresaw this. Old ladies are wearing miniskirts and go-go boots.
In the past, younger adults in movies were more mature. I'm always amazed that Eddie Murphy was 23 in Beverly Hills Cop. Now, someone conveying everything he did would be in his late 30s at least.

 

Col.Kaplan, who chides a fellow officer for abandoning his post, is another oldie in the Order. And there's the woman who tracks Poe and Finn's hijacked Tie Fighter who looks to be in her 30's.

 

Yes, the Visual Dictionary says that Hux had ZERO field battle experience, and that he is a son of a high level Empire commmander.

 

It's quite telling that being in your 30's is considered being "old" by FO standards.

 

Other than Hux I didn't feel like the FO or TFA was particularly younger. Other than Obi-Wan all of the main characters in ANH were young (similar ages as Rey, Finn, and Poe). The villains are older, but the one officer who openly questions Vader on the Tantive IV didn't look any older than Hux. We didn't really know the age of Vader. the generals and admirals did seem older, but other than Hux we do not see anyone else of that rank in this movie from the FO. Most militaries are largely made up of people in the 20's and 30's. Those who are 40 and older are exceptions, and tend to be of high rank. We simply just didn't see very many high ranking officers in this movie.

 

Well, it will be interesting to see if this holds with the next movie. Weren't the Imperials in Heir to the Empire also a largely young and inexperienced lot? "In the old days - at the height of the Empire's power - it would have been inconceivable for a man as young as Tschel to serve as a bridge officer aboard a ship like the Chimaera. Now, in contrast, the Chimaera had no one aboard except young men and women."

It doesn't make them less intimidating for me. In the Warhammer universe there is a saying: A small mind is easily filled with faith. Younger people are more impressionable, more easily indoctrinated. During WW2, the Hitlerjugend were fierce soldiers, though not very tactically proficient. They frequently fought to the death (casualties among the Waffen SS were often higher than regular German army), and committed atrocities in the name of their cause without a second's thought. Fanaticism is pretty scary if you ask me.

 

I am in agreeance with those here that have been emphasizing Rey's naiivety and innocence. And I think this idea is part of why Rey is now my favorite SW character. She embodies this survivalist mentality (for obvious reasons), but also still in some ways acts like a little kid-somewhat less mature for her age. I love that contradiction in personality, it really adds richness and depth to her character.

I think the reason she is this way is mainly because, although she's had to quickly learn how to take care of herself from a physical standpoint, she hasn't been educated and hasn't had a chance to mature from an emotional and social standpoint, since during her teens (her most formative years personality-wise), she didn't have any mentors or parents to "show her how," or peers to interact with, as it were. Being in such an isolated and simple environment, she hasn't had that ability to grow in her experience, wisdom and knowledge of the galaxy (other than how to survive on a daily basis-which is really more based on instinct). So when we see her leave Jakku and she's so filled with wonder at all she's seeing, ("I never knew anyplace could be so green" or whatever her line was there) and the way she talks to people and uncertainty in how she handles herself in situations etc. It makes sense to me why she's like that.

I look forward to seeing how her personality develops over the next two episodes!

 

Perhaps Snoke is being lined up as the "Joseph Kony" of the SW universe with his child soldiers kidnapped from infanthood and raised to fight.

 

Old Kony is not very scary these days. He may not even be alive out there in the bush. Mostly, he serves as a boogie man for CAR, South Sudan and Uganda to extract resources from the West.

That's a typical fate for fanatics. People that have an inclination to those types of belief systems just don't organize well as they generally lack the patience and maturity necessary to oversee large, complex organizations. Daesh may be the best recent example of a fanatically led organization and they can't even field a credible army. Also, the SS is not necessarily a very good analogue to the First Order as the SS existed inside a larger, very efficient militarized state and not as a truly independent entity like the First Order is assumed to be.

Which leads to an interesting question: who built the Star Killer Base?

 

Not just who built it, how did that Base actually get built, in the first place? Drilling a hole that large will take more than just 30 years, unless the FO has some super-advanced machinery salvaged from what's left of the Death Star II and used for this purpose of digging the hole!

And back to topic, General Hux seems like a pretty young fellow to commandeer an FO fleet... I wonder what his older subordinates think, considering he's also the son of a former Empire commander - "Did our boss actually become General because of his father's reputation?!"


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Another Star Forge?

 

Well Hux doesn't seem like he's incompetent or anything. He takes out the entire NR government and fleet (or at least a huge chunk of them) with one shot (and it was his idea). Which by itself is more than Tarkin and Vader managed to accomplish in ANH. And he would've have succeeded in destroying the main Resistance base if certain characters hadn't resorted to desperate, reckless, borderline suicidal tactica (Han, Finn, Chewiem etc) combined with Kylo kind or messing things up (if only in hindsight).

And, unlike Tarkin, he wasn't arrogant/overconfident enough to not know when to get out of Dodge once things went south (basically live to fight another day).

 

I had no idea he was so young in BHC.

I still remember being floored that Carrie Fisher was still a teenager during the filming of ANH. And learning that Christopher Reeves and Margot Kidder were only 24 and 28 respectively during the filming of Richard Donner's Superman: The Movie.

If we're considering 30s "old" then this conversation is pretty much over. Hux, Kylo and Phasma, all played by actors in their 30s.

 

I was thinking of the kind of officers shown here (in spoilers for size):

Spoiler

They look 40s, 50s, 60s? I'm pretty sure they're not 30+ actors from an age of inferior healthcare!

 

the bad guys are young because they were indoctrinated from birth and the remaining old imperials died off.