ST The Last Jedi: Nihilism

Hi everyone, first post here. I love Star Wars and I am glad to be on a forum where I can talk about this stuff.

I wanted to talk about an aspect of the new film that really bugged me. Star Wars has always been this battle between good versus evil, but the film goes to great lengths to trivialise the conflict. Take General Hux in the opening segment where Po basically does a prank call on him. Its a bit like Bart ruffling the feathers of Principle Skinner. The problem for me is that this isn't a natural conversation. General Hux, in the previous film committed mass genocide and destroyed the New Republic. Hes ended a golden age of peace and did so for the most horrible reasons imaginable. Po should absolutely hate this man. Should probably want to violently kill him if he was in the same room. Making light of the conflict and situation means that Po is acting out of character and it sends out a weird message to the audience. Should a Nazi be portrayed as a pantomime villain for laughs? Does that break immersion? To me that's not satire, its showing a disinterest in any sort of moralising or attempt to engage with the themes being referenced.

Its a scene that really demonstrates a deep moral apathy in the film. Characters don't call the First Order evil. They don't say what will happen if the First Order wins. They don't use moral invective. They don't even particularly hate the First Order for the most part. They're simply fighting these guys in triangle ships. Its a war. Theres no claim to any sort of higher morality. Like I dunno, stress that they are democracy, that the First Order want to commit genocide, that they will murder every former rebel alliance member, that their hands are soaked in innocent blood. Either because they feel they don't need to stress this point, or because that would be too dark and wouldn't get any laughs. They want you to enjoy and be entertained by General Hux being a buffoon. So it doesn't make sense to equate him with Hitler and make our heroes hate him.

In fact the opposite is true for much of the film. Rey starts off a little angry at Kylo, but then completely sides with him as soon as she learns Luke considered killing him. As if one sob story suddenly excuses him of everything he has done. As if one mans ego is more important than his victims. You are saying that Rey cares more about Kylo Ren, than the people he has murdered? That is incredibly amoral.

On the casino planet, Rian Johnson belabours the evils of some capitalists selling weapons. Who cares? Its a trivial issue when you have legit Nazis running around. Rose mentions that the First Order mined her planet and bombed her people in passing when that should be the focus of the discussion. He then has the slicer character make the case that because they also sold weapons to the Resistance this blurs the line between good and bad. No it doesn't. If Boeing sells jets to the US army that is good. If it sells them to terrorists then its bad.

But possibly the worst case is when nobody in the entire galaxy steps up to fight the First Order. Really? Even though we know that there was a popular rebellion against the Empire in living memory? Even though most of those people are still alive? Are probably on a list and know that they are on a list and likely to get murdered? Even though the First Order is an illegitimate government that no sane person could support? Even though they want to exterminate or enslave every non human species? Really? That is an incredible statement of nihilism. Never mind that its an enormous plot hole for episode 9 since they can't just hand wave a new rebel fleet showing up.

Theres also the wider insinuation about the First Order. If you are saying that a particular kind of political organisation is powerful and indeed vastly more powerful than another organisation; then by definition you are implying that this structure is superior. The First Order is so powerful that it can effortlessly destroy and conquer the entire New Republic, the whole galaxy in a few days. It has all these powerful warships and is clearly big enough to tank what should be obscene losses despite only controlling a fraction of its territory then what exactly are you saying Rian? Are you saying that democracy is weak and doesn't work? You're equating fascism with power, technological superiority and military might. When in reality such societies have tended to stifle creativity, become technologically backwards and have bad military records. People seem to forget that the Germans lost both World Wars....

On a related point. The First Order loses Star Killer Base in the first film. Barely noticeable, doesn't set them back in any way. In the Last Jedi they lose their capital, a mega Star Destroyer and a fleet that's as big as the one used at Endor. Again, does not remotely change the situation. At this point I honestly don't see how the good guys can win. It seems that the First Order is clearly so vast and powerful that even when it suffers staggering losses it barely affects them. I mean what, is episode 9 going to end with Kylo, Hux and a hundred Star Destroyers getting destroyed but the First Order still doesn't get destroyed? Or perhaps they'll have another peace treaty with the Nazis like the Galactic Concordance. Because apparently after WW2 we decided to make a peace treaty and pardon all the Nazis instead of rounding them up on trial and hanging them. Clearly the precedent is well established in history. Which is more of a story group thing, but I find that a stunning statement? Can you imagine if we pardoned Nazi Germany and made a peace treaty with them? That's an outrageous notion.

 

A lot of this does I feel stem from the ST not really treating its setting very seriously compared to the original films. I mean yes the First Order are obvious Nazi stand ins but there cartoon Nazi's really devoid of the kind of weight the Empire holds.

The films do seem comically over obsessed with there lead characters to the degree the rest of the Resistance being wiped out doesn't seem to matter very much, the celebratory mood at the end of TLJ seems like some serious delusions of grandeur.

 

I agree with most of the points of your post.
As for the bolded part:
Sometimes killing them creates martyrs. After the American Civil War we didn't hang a single rebel except for the man behind the prison camp at Andersonville, and that was for war crimes of mistreatment of POWs. Everyone else, roughly 1,000 men appearing before tribunals for various war crimes, were acquitted or allowed to live. The North knew killing massive numbers of famous Confederate generals for treason would create a greater problem by martyring them and their cause.
And remember, the First Order is not the Empire. It is a revanchist organization that harkens back to the golden age of the Empire and wants to reconstitute it and restore it. But, it is largely composed of people who weren't even old enough to remember the events of the OT.

 

Yes but the Union defeated and absorbed the Confederacy. The Galactic Concordance allowed the Empire to maintain large portions of the Core Worlds and Inner Rim. It would be like if at the end of the Civil War the Union had defeated the Confederacy but allowed them to remain independent (ie win the Civil War) and only have to make minor concessions. Since its called the Galactic CIVIL WAR I always assumed that the rebels goal was to, you know, restore the Republic, which by definition meant that they considered the Empire a criminal and illegitimate regime. So I can't see why they would make a peace treaty with the Empire, especially one that allowed them to hold on to so much of the galaxy.

If General Lee had fled to Mexico and started raising an army then I am pretty sure they would have done something about it.... Even if the New Republic did not know about the First Order having weapons they knew it did exist. If you know that the Nazis are back, that's more than enough reason to attack them. "Oh you're an Imperial organisation. Founded by war criminals? Led by a dark side user? Well, those are all just causes for war..."

I don't think the analogy to the American Civil War works. The reason there was so little punitive action after the Civil War is that they wanted the nation to heal. White Southerners had, genuinely, rallied around a separatist flag in a popular movement. So to win them back into the fold they were as reconciliatory and magnanimous in victory as possible to avoid those issues. Also the war dead were overwhelmingly soldiers.

However the Galactic Civil War is a different beast entirely. The Empire was not a popular movement or nation. All of the atrocities were committed by a murderous state apparatus comparable to the Nazis. They committed horrific crimes against civilians including genocide and slavery. You have no reason to want or need to reconcile former Imperials. Given the clear parallels to the Nazis, why wouldn't the New Republic act similarly? In Germany we arrested and rounded up members of the Nazi Party. Trials were held. There was a policy of denazification and obviously the dissolution of the Third Reich. Most people would call that justice. If the Empire are Nazis in space, then they should have been dealt with in the same manner. Especially if the New Republic is militarily strong enough to do as it pleases to the Imperials.

 

Godwin’s Law triumphs again, although in this case it’s not so unreasonable. Neither TLJ nor TFA are really certain on how to portray the First Order, so all kinds of interpretations emerge. On the one hand it’s clear that the writers wanted them to serve the same narrative and aesthetic purpose as the OT Empire. But on the other hand, they’re lead by a Supreme Leader (whatever that is, it sounds more secular than an Emperor), they love unhinged political rallies complete with hundred foot tall red banners, and seem much more committed to wearing black all the time.

Also, a couple corrections: the German Empire of 1914 was not fascist in the traditional sense. It was more an authoritarian monarchy with the most influential members of court being the military class. And secondly, contrary to popular belief, executions were a relatively minor component of denazification after WW2. Only ten Nazis were convicted and hanged by the Nuremberg tribunals

 

No the Empire was dissolved. The remaining Imperial break away stated were bound by the Concordance.

 

That's correct. Even the opening crawl of TFA says, I'm paraphrasing here: up from the ashes of the Empire rises the First Order. The Empire in ashes doesn't seem to suggest they are kicking back at their imperial palaces drinking spiked blue milk. They had demilitarized too. They made plenty of concessions I would say. I think it is officially an remnant or something. Not sure what it is officially called but it is much smaller in size.

 

The FO aren't coded as Nazis, but curiously well-funded Neo-Nazis. In a way, it makes them somewhat pathetic, with their cosplay posturing and try-hard weapon designs. In another way, it actually makes them more dangerous. Palpatine, for all his destructive impulses, still had to run the galaxy; these guys can go blowing up whatever they want. They're terrorists, not a legitimate political body. If they actually do manage to institute a functioning government between TLJ and IX, I will be very surprised. And, in refutation to the OP, it makes them even more morally repugnant, because they saw the atrocities committed by the Empire and said "Yeah, let's bring that back, but with more badass-looking ships."

I found the continual whittling down of the Resistance personnel throughout the film to be gut-wrenching, and the scene on the Falcon to be depicting relief at survival and appreciation of friends and comrades for each other, not false confidence and the celebration of a victory. Your mileage obviously varies on that.

 

They are happy they did not also die. But they would also be sad.

 

Welcome to the board. We’ve had this discussion at least 10 times but I’ll attempt to summarize it a tenth time.

1) Poe is trying to boost morale of his troops in the opening scene. His transmission is heard by all of his squadron and he knows it. His goal is to embarrass Hux. Hux also knows his crew can hear him. He’s grandstanding to intimidate him. In political ad campaigns many polisci folks believe that turning your opponent into a joke is the surest way to erode trust in their leadership ability. Poe does hate this man and that’s why he seeks to erode the trust his crew has in him and embarrass him.

2) I couldn’t disagree more with your assertion that the film embraces nihilism. Did you not see the end of the film? Did you not see that indifference was used as antagonism to a certain extent? Let’s start with DJ. He’s clearly meant to represent what Finn could be if he chose to be indifferent. DJ represents Libertarianism right down the slogan. Live free. The ship they steal? Guess what it’s called? The Libertine. Libertarianism and indifferent capitalism are explored in TLJ because the concept deserves exploration. The film’s message is clear. If you are indifferent to the war YOU HAVE CHOSEN A SIDE. You chose the side most likely to win. A let the strongest thrive mentality favors the already rich and the already powerful and hurts anyone at the bottom with less to fight back or rise up. That’s the message.

The new canon novel THE LEGENDS OF LUKE SKYWALKER very clearly explains that Luke was transformed by his journey to a Force-sensitive race called the Lew’el who believed in pacifist non-interventionsim. You might see it as nihilism. He spent more than a month learning their ways and learning to spear fish. It had a tremendous impact on his perspective and is arguably the single biggest reason why he is in the mindset he is in at the start of TLJ beyond the obvious fallout of what happened with Ben Solo.

The end of your post is just more of the same criticism worthy of the complaints thread to be honest. Did the Empire seem particularly impacted by the loss of the Death Star following ANH? They struck back. This is an even more compressed time period. If this was chess The FO took out the Resistance’s Queen, bishops and rooks in one blow and the Resistance successfully took out the FO’s Queen, and a bishop. The chess match continued with the FO having the upper hand and they aimed to checkmate the King. They couldn’t do it and now a pawn (the Falcon with the remaining survivors) is on their way with an inspired public, and D’acy’s contact to turn their pawn into a Queen piece of new allies politically motivated to fight back a few days after processing all that happened and inspired by the news of Snoke’s death, the destruction of the Supremacy and the news of an old Jedi master returned and a new one has killed Snoke (which is the narrative Kylo Ren put out there).

You can’t see a path to victory? Think the odds are too stacked against the heroes? Welcome to the second act turning point of a trilogy and a story. Wait until you see the first trailer for IX. That path will become clear.

 

The heroes in TLJ clearly want to be good. The struggle they face is discovering how to be good.

I can hardly see how Poe making fun of Hux is nihilism. I thought it was clear that Poe was disgusted by him. YMMV, obviously. But really, do we see The Great Dictator as evidence that Chaplin was a nihilist? Not generally. Chaplin made fun of what he despised. So, should a Nazi be played as a pantomime villain for laughs? Who knows, but it's one way people express moral outrage IRL. That, to me, seems to be what Poe is doing, and of course moral outrage is incompatible with nihilism.

Rey's moral compass is informed by the stories she's heard about Luke's stunning victory over the Emperor and the redemption of Darth Vader. Luke is wise enough to know better: "this isn't going to go the way you think" but Rey in her idealism hopes to replicate the feat. It was certainly foolish, but nihilistic? That's a bizarre stretch. YMMV, of course.

TLJ, to me, explores the concept that being good isn't always easy. Even knowing how to be good isn't always easy. It does not push the idea that being good is unimportant. At least not to me, and I highly doubt that was the intended message.

 

I agree, it really doesn't help the suspension of disbelief to trivialise the Hux character as a space Nazi after the outrageous war crime committed in TFA.

Now, both Charlie Chaplin (The Great Dictator) in 1940 and Ernst Lubitsch (To Be or Not to Be) in 1942 featured Nazis (and their ideology) as the laughing stock in their satire films, but:
In his 1964 autobiography, Chaplin stated that he would not have made the film if he had known about the true extent of the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps at the time. IIRC Lubitsch made a similar statement.

So while we have two filmmakers satirizing evil characters but saying later they would not have done it had they known, we do have a Star Wars filmmaker that does "know" what the evil characters have done, yet doesn't feel that to be sufficient reason not to satirize them.

Surely you are aware of the Nuremberg trials? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Trials

"Ten prominent members of the political and military leadership of Nazi Germany were executed by hanging: Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Alfred Jodl, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Wilhelm Keitel, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Alfred Rosenberg, Fritz Sauckel, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, and Julius Streicher. Hermann Göring was also scheduled to be hanged on that day, but committed suicide using a potassium cyanide capsule the night before. Martin Bormann was also sentenced to death in absentia, but he committed suicide while attempting to escape Berlin on 2 May 1945."

And let's not forget that the US felt it needed Germany as as a wall against the increasing threat of Soviet communism.

 

The difference is Nazis were real people who killed real people. I don't think satirizing evil characters is nessisary a terrible thing when they are fictional. I mean all the while they aren't making lite of their crimes and are mocking the character as the fool and idiot they are then I don't really see that much of a problem.

I mean, this is a trope throughout alot of stories, so I don't think it's necessarily fair to single out JJ and Rian.

 

I have to say I can't agree with anything you wrote about the First Order. I have zero idea how you could possibly take what happens in the movie and somehow suggest that Rian Johnson wanted to show how democracy is weak and fascism good. Literally nothing in the movie even hints at that. On the contrary, the movie shows a villain who is completely out of control, and heroes who stand up to him, thus in turn inspiring the galaxy to fight back.

Seeing how you already mentioned WW2 and the Nazis, do you know what happened there?
The Nazis steamrolled most of Europe in short order, basically casting aside the balance of power. This is exactly what happens in the ST. A militaristic entity secretly rearmed for future conflict and then took out its major rival through a quick strike. The Nazis took down what was supposed to be the best military in the world in about six weeks of fighting. TFA and TLJ mirror that by having a super-weapon that took down the Republic and its fleet, the only thing that stood in the way of the FO. The First Order isn't some unimaginably powerful organisation, it merely benefits from the fact that the destruction of the Republican fleet left the galaxy virtually defenseless. When there is no one else who can fight, you don't need a lot of power to be in control. Nothing indicates that losing Starkiller base or part of its fleet isn't a huge blow, but again, if there is no one else around who can really fight (at that point!) even big losses don't matter much.

And no, there also isn't a plot hole for IX, as the movie explicitly states that the resistance still has allies in the outer rim. You have to remember that TLJ happened within days of TFA. The galaxy as a whole is in shock over the destruction of the Republic. It takes time to rally troops and ships, people weren't just sitting around in a big fleet at the outskirts of the galaxy to wait for something to happen. This also throws your point about no one fighting back right out of the window. We are days away from the destruction of the Republic, of course no one is ready to fight back at that point, just like no one was ready to fight back after France fell in WW2, instead the British fled back to their island and tried to buy time in the hope that the US would help out in the future (or Germany and the Soviets turning on each other).

How do you even get to a possible peace-treaty in IX?
There is zero reason to think such a thing would happen. Again, nothing in the movie supports such a view.

The existence of the First Order itself works just fine. It was a small remnant of the Empire, a group that could rearm in secret while the galaxy as a whole was disarming after such a huge conflict. Just like with the rise of the Nazis, there were people who recognized the danger, but no one was prepared to do something about it. Prior to WW2, no one could stomache another war, and when it became obvious that the Nazis wouldn't stop, Britain and France stalled to buy more time to rearm. The biggest difference being that the FO could move much more quickly, and then destroyed anyone capable of stopping them right away, leaving the rest of the galaxy scrambling. There is a reason why the Allies in WW2 opted to fight to the bitter end this time around. It was a lecture taken from WW1 and the rise of the Nazis. Back then the peace deal was so humiliating that it caused bitterness and hatred in Germany, while at the same time not being harsh enough to take the country out of the picture entirely. This whole process of taking down the enemy entirely regardless of what it will take, only developed because of the knowledge gained from past experiences. You can't apply the same standard to the SW-galaxy, because it never has experienced this kind of development. One cannot apply experiences created by human history to a fantasy galaxy.

While I'm not sure whether treating Hux like that was the best way, there also is nothing wrong with making fun of someone and treating him as the big bad evil at the same time either. The Nazis were feared, but they were also made fun of. You can't just assume that every person deals with things in the same way. Some might think that antagonizing someone who is in a position of power is a bad idea, others might think that this is exactly the right time to ridicule the other, to lift spirits. Further people might even think that making the other angry is the best way to go, because someone who is angry tends to lose his focus. What Poe did was perfectly in line with his character as seen in TFA. It obviously isn't something we had seen in Star Wars before, but that doesn't change that it fit to how his character was set up. I don't think it really needed to be there, but at the same time it shows the difference between the Empire and the First Order. The former is a militaristic society that follows order and acts mostly cold, calm and calculated. The latter is something pretending to be the Empire, with people in charge who act all tough. Raging lunatics who think that behaving like this is what their "heroes" were like. Somewhat similar to the German Empire and Nazi Germany, with the former being old-school military-leaders who came from families with a long tradition of serving in the military, while the latter was led by a bunch of upshots with very little military background (apart from Göring, who was a flying ace, but most definately not a high-ranking official). The Wehrmacht obviously consisted of a lot of old-school military leaders as well, but the very top of the state was driven by people with very little military experience.

 

The "morality" is also one of my big point of contention with TLJ. And, yes, some aspects do feel "nihilistic" :
The movie do show us the FO and Resistance fighting, but at no point does it establish how the FO is "BAD" or how the Resistance is "GOOD". Without watching TFA, you could hardly tell if one side is "good" and tthe other "bad".

The matter gets much worse when you look at how the movie treats both camps "personnifications" :
_ the "main FO guy" (Hux) spend the entire movie being mistreated and abused : had i not watched TFA, i could easily root for the guy ! Oh, and remember that one scene where he almost pulled his blaster on sleeping Kylo ? That was added at the actor's request ! (source)
When the guy playing Space-Hitler has to ask "Can i have a scene where i look, you know, actually evil ? Please ?", then you know something is wrong with the writer !

_ worse, the "main Resistance guy" (Poe) is depicted as a completely insensitive jerk, wasting the lives of his comrades without a single care ... and that's only his setup !
From there, he first send Finn to a certain death (refusing to give him propeer support just because he is too petty to fulfill his duty and report to his superior, also hiding critical military intel from her in the process).
He then proceed to lead a totally unjustified mutiny , in time of war, while facing the enemy and resulting hundreds of (good guys) casualties : a crime worthy of a death penalty !
Despite all that, and despite never expressing any kind of regrets for all the lives lost, and never making amends in any way, he is forgiven everything ... just becaue he's hot ?
"Go home, movie. You're drunk !"

This would already be ridiclous in a regular movie, but is even more jarring in SW. The seven previous movie have established a setting where :
"The good guys play nice with each other because that's what good guys do. And bad guys tend to betray each otther because that's evil"
Before TLJ, the only time a good guy attacked another one, he immeiately turned evil ! (Anakin vs Windu).
And now ? Suddenly our good guys completely undermine each other, pull lightsaber on each other, shoot each other, pull mutiny on each other...
WTF is happening here ?

 

When one side is being actively hunted by a remorseless enemy it's pretty clear who's the bad guys. Snoke, Hux and Kylo are a clearly villainous and immoral. I think the film establishes pretty clear who's bad.

 

The Nazis were made fun of during the 1930s and early 40s... until the Allies found the death camps. Suddenly, Adolf Hitler was no longer hilarious. Nazi jokes became distasteful and eventually, the Nazis themselves became a symbol of unflinching, horrifying evil that is never to be made a joke of. It took two decades for anyone to make fun of the Nazis again... in a play that was banking on the offensive nature of the Nazis. Many people such as Charlie Chaplin and Steven Spielberg stated that once they start truly looking into the horrors of Nazi Germany, they simply couldn't go back to make fun of them. Chaplin stated he would have made The Great Dictator while Spielberg retired the Nazis as the baddies in Indiana Jones.

The problem with Poe making a joke out of Hux is that for the audience, it undermines Hux as a credible villain. His ideology may be ridiculous, but his methods and bloodthirsty personality should be terrifying like any real Nazi. By making him into an incompetent joke in the film, we stop fearing the First Order even though they are destroying the Resistance slowly. And since we do not fear, we stop fearing concern for the Resistance's survival because the First Order comes across as incompetents and thus the only way for the Resistance to lose is to be even more incompetent than the First Order. And thus, we stop caring for both sides.

Hux should be frightening to us because he resembles a real-life supremacist who has real power to hurt others. He should be funny with his beliefs, and be scary in that he truly believes them to justify the means. And when you consider that nearly all of the First Order are either dead or become jokes, the tension of them winning is lost.

 

Yeah. If you watch how the film ends, it comes down very strongly against the fascists. I don't even know how you can seriously suggest otherwise?

 

This is war : both camps will try to destroy each other. That chase in itself doesn't appear inherently bad : just an act of war. But how does TLJ establish the FO in charge would be a bad thing* for the galaxy ?
When is it shown oppressing or killing civilians ?
When is it shown that the galaxy was better off during the Republic ?

*sure with Snoke at its head, it probably wouldn't be pretty. But he iis dead now. Is there any indication in TLJ that the fight is worth contining, now ?

Most of the "evilness" impression of the FO comes from TFA. But TLJ does not really put emphasis on that point, and even undercut it quite a bit :
_ most of the movie is spent trying to empathize with Supreme Leader Kylo, who "isn't that bad" and had a good reason to switch side.
_ Hux is mostly ridiculous, but RJ nearly forgot to show his evil nature,
_ no indications that the FO treats civilians badly,
_ the movie spent more time shaming war profiteers and "the 1%" rather than our "Space Nazis"...


PS : Raaaah ! Why can't we edit posts after 30 min on this site ?
Just realized i forgot one point in my previous Hux / Poe comparaison : Hux actually prefers pulling his starfighters back as soon as they are in danger, unlike a certain Resistance Captain...

 

The portrayal of the Nazis as buffoons didn't end with Chaplin:



(Concentration Camp Ehrhardt in Mel Brooks' To Be or Not to Be)

And you can run into it even in serious war films, like A Bridge too Far, where writer William Goldman portrays Field Marshal Walther Model as a vain and ridiculous figure not at all like what he was in reality. It was meant to show the fact that the Germans, as brutally efficient as they were, also had their share of idiots.

I don't have a problem with the depiction of Hux as a fool, as the movie also shows the efficient side of the First Order in the person of Capt. Cannady. One has to assume their military progress has been because of that experienced cadre; you cannot whip an army into shape with grandiose speeches. I can understand the disappointment as the expectation was he would be the trilogy's Tarkin, but perhaps the next episode will deliver just that sort of villain, especially as a way to stack the deck even more against the rebels.

 

For that matter do we see in TESB the Empire actually doing anything against civilians? Sure they seize Cloud City, but it's harbouring rebels, it would make sense for that to happen in such a situation.

Naturally we know the Empire is evil from ANH, which goes to show that these are meant to be watched in a certain order and not in isolation.

 

Sorry I was being sarcastic earlier. It seemed ridiculous to have a peace treaty with the Empire when after WW2 we dissolved Nazi Germany and the Nuremberg trials. The Empire was not Imperial Germany. It was an oppressive regime in which most people wanted to restore the Republic. Not the historically and internationally recognised state of the German people. By definition the Republic would never sign a peace treaty with the Empire. "Unconditional surrender" to quote FDR.

The ending shows us that only a handful of people in the galaxy are willing to fight the First Order. Remember, Leia says that they have allies, which implies they have the ability to fight but not the will. Not once is this qualified as "we don't have any capital ships". It's the will to fight that's being questioned. That is a problem for episode 9 because they say that nobody in the galaxy will fight the First Order. It is nihilism to say that if your country was invaded and your capital destroyed that an entire people would capitulate and roll over. So 11 people is not hopeful or optimistic.

The First Order loses a base larger than the Death Star and a fleet larger than the one used at Endor. It is not a Galactic Empire, aren't using clones and don't have a Star Forge. They really should not be able to replace their losses. In Return of the Jedi, it's a big deal when the Executor goes down and we see Star Destroyers go down because up until this point it hasn't happened. But they've made it clear the FO has limitless ships. So obviously
the conventional battle does not matter, they have limitless ships and they can tank any losses.

If you were to say that Communism could create a technologically advanced nation with a powerful military greater than any Western Democracy you would be accused of making propaganda. So how is it different to show a weak New Republic get crushed by a powerful fascist state? To have every citizen be so dissolutions with it that they stop calling themselves citizens of said democracy and accept the rule of a foreign power? Somebody compared this to France, but the comparison you should make is Britain. The British basically lost their army and yet that nation chose to fight on. The new trilogy makes it clear that the New Republic surrenders in the first days of the war as do, presumably all other Galactic powers such as the Mandalorians. Only a handful of exceptional people chose to fight. Look at Pearl Harbor. US loses whole fleet. Has these things called factories, has these things called conscripts and we all know how that went. But per the sequel trilogy only the Resistence is fighting the FO. That is nihilism. Even with the French, you had the Free French army under De Gaule. Not to mention the French Resistence. The historical precedent is quite clear on this. But at the end of the Last Jedi, the New Republic surrenders without a shot being fired. The Resistence is on its own and the First Order rules the galaxy.

Well if they've had a peace treaty with the Empire in canon then it seems reasonable to expect a similar outcome here. A little slap on the wrists and let by gones be bygones.

 

it isn't nihilistic.

 

Nihilism (/ˈnaɪ.ɪlɪzəm/ or /ˈniːɪlɪzəm/; from the Latin nihil, nothing) is a philosophical doctrine that suggests the lack of belief in one or more reputedly meaningful aspects of life. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism, which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value.[1] Moral nihilistsassert that there is no inherent morality, and that accepted moral values are abstractly contrived. Nihilism may also take epistemological, ontological, or metaphysical forms, meaning respectively that, in some aspect, knowledge is not possible, or reality does not actually

Let the past die, kill it if you have to... Kylo Ren

The Last Jedi and the Problem of Nihilism

It’s hard not to get the impression that Star Wars is saying progress is an illusion. Whether it was intentional or not, you can discern a message that any good we can accomplish is temporary at best, that war and fascism will never be defeated and that people who care will always be an insignificant minority. (TLJ twists the knife by giving us the character of DJ, an amoral thief who takes glee in pointing out that the Resistance gets their weapons from the same war profiteers who supply the First Order.) For a swashbuckling sci-fi adventure aimed at children, it has more than a passing flirtation with nihilism.
Read more at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightatheism/2018/01/last-jedi-problem-nihilism/#WqLEhkK8fpzZ4Mi7.99

The Last Jedi: Nihilism, Übermenschen, and a Rey of Hope

Philosophically, that’s what viewing The Last Jedi did to me, it crushed my childhood fantasies and my boyhood hero with one lightsaber toss. It took a narrative rooted in Eastern philosophy (such as the benevolence, optimism, and sense of destiny and connectedness inherent in Confucianism) and rewrote it into a nihilistic tale bereft of any significance. Yet, like Rey (the only bright spot in the film, besides the Porgs) I refuse to give in to the Dark Side. As the cliché goes, I’d watch Daisy Ridley’s Rey read the newspaper for two and half hours (and then I’d watch the Porgs use the newspaper to make a nest for their baby Porglings).

https://andphilosophy.com/2017/12/19/the-last-jedi-nihilism-ubermenschen-and-a-rey-of-hope/

The Last Jedi: A Hate Letter to Star Wars and its Fans (Analysis with SPOILErs
my analysis of the latest star wars movie, The Last Jedi, in which writer/director Rian Johnson tells a nihilistic story that attempts to deconstruct all elements of the star wars mythos and destroy the attachments of the audience to Star Wars' characters, themes, and mythos.

 

They didn't need to take over Cloud City : the city was already cooperative and already handed the Rebels to them. There was no justification for that occupation : they did so just because that's the nature of the Empire.
Worse they promised to let the city alone in exchange for their cooperation, only to go back on their words afterwards, and occupied the city anyway.

On another topic, the Empire showed absolutely no concern for their own men lives, wasting many of them needlessly while pursuing the Falcon.
Curiously, in TLJ, that's exactly Poe's attitude (you know, the supposedly "good guy"), while Hux recall his fighters when they are at risk...

Now, lets not forget : no movie should totally rely on it predecessor : this movie should be watchable by itself, evenif you only heard of TFA, or haven't watch it for several years.
Just because TFA already established some basis doesn't mean you don't have to reaffirm these points (even briefly). For example, you should never forget to make me hate Space-Hitler !