ST The Political Reset Button: How TFA Follows in ESB's Footsteps

It's damn bipolar thats what.

 

You sure? I swear the title says "Discussion of Batman Vs Supe-" oh wait...

 

That's the problem. Satipo and I definitively WON the thread, and now everyone's trying to figure out what to fight about next.

Let me suggest a more unifying topic: Pizza.

 

There is no winning or losing. It's opinions when it comes down to it, not facts or some game.

Unless it's podracing....I could go for some N64 play through of Podracing again....

 

I believe the contents of my last post make one thing abundantly clear: I was not being serious.

 

Same here. Thats why I put in the podracing joke...Or....Was I?

 

Pro Scoundrel asked

What is this thread even about anymore?

It claims that George Lucas pushed a "reset" button prior to the start of ESB and that everybody who doesn't grant Abrams the same kind of privilege is a hypocrite.

While I truly enjoyed the opportunity to examine the possible condition of the Empire and the Alliance between ANH and ESB, it has gotten to a point where I'll be blunt.

Outstanding claims require outstanding evidence and objectively it's not available. I have the tendency to give everybody the benefit of a doubt, and considering we do not have evidence to accuse George Lucas of having pushed a reset button, the discussion now gets stale. I provided plenty of counter-arguments in defense of Mr. Lucas (I mentioned the hints he provided both in the ANH novelization and his "Lucas Notes" prior to serious sequel considerations) which should not have been necessary to start with. Either you have solid evidence to make a case or you don't have it.

Samuel Vimes wrote

First, the bit about Alderaan being an intelligence gathering hub or the empire making use of it as a PR measure is not in the film so therefore not really relevant.

It's was provided by the creator itself (Lucas Notes) or his consent (ANH novelization) in 1977 weeks after ANH's premiere. So it's not like we couldn't know what he intended which is eventually what this all is about.

Second, it wasn't just the destruction of Alderaan, it was also the dissolving of the senate.
Which prompted Tagge to exclaim "That's IMPOSSIBLE, how will the Emperor maintain CONTROL.."

"The regional governors now have direct control over their territory". Obviously Taggi wasn't aware of that, yet, compelling Tarkin to clarify the issue.

Look at history and see how often revolutions and rebellion happens.
Many times people have risked their lives in order to fight what they view as an oppressive government. As did the rebels in SW.

Yes, revolutions and rebellions happen - and especially if people have no one else to turn to and have to take things into their own hands.

George Lucas acknowledged that in the PT. "Those who do not learn from history are bound to repeat it". Bail Organa and Mon Mothma had witnessed in the days of the Republic that it was almost impossible to unite all the different star systems for one common cause. Hence they founded the Alliance as proxy to solve this very essential problem in the GFFA.

Whether that's PT or not is irrelevant. It's from the same man who laid that foundation in the Summer of 1977 and then consequently illustrated the corresponding origins decades later. This is a remarkable and beautiful case of continuity.

We don't have all the details what happened after ANH but we have enough information from Lucas himself that he didn't push a reset button.

 

He LITERALLY pushed a reset button. That's what this whole debate has been about.

 

Satipo
If he "LITERALLY" pushed a reset button, TESB would have had George in the opening shot pressing a big button. C'mon now, you should know the difference between literal and figurative. You've watched TFA too often...

 

The ANH novel also makes it abundantly clear that Vader is not Luke's father and the Emperor is not a Sith and is actually not that powerful. And the same Lucas also put in the lines in the crawl about how the plans of the DS will restore freedom to the galaxy.

And what did Tarkin say directly after that?
"Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station."
So the key component of the regional governors having direct control is the fear of the DS. Remove that and the local systems will NOT keep in line. The film is quite clear here.
And Tarkin makes this point again with Leia when he says "Not after we demonstrate the power of this station." Which also had him not denying Leia's claim that with increased oppression, the more systems would rebel.
So both Tagge and Tarkin say the same thing really, the fleet alone can NOT keep order and prevent systems from rising up. Only the DS can do that.

Exactly my point and if the rebels are unable to act for the moment because they lost their base, others will not wait and instead act themselves.

[/QUOTE]

Except he did, which has been demonstrated in this thread several times.
The loss of the DS was presented as something major and probably crippling loss for the empire. It probably wouldn't fall instantly but this loss would be a major set back. But as far as ESB goes, it had zero impact on the empire and the rebels are even weaker than before.
The DS was said more than once to be the one thing that will keep control now that the senate is gone. Ergo it's removal would cause serious problems for the empire to keep control. But that somehow doesn't happen.

Bye for now.
Blackboard Monitor

 

If A New Hope had never gotten a sequel, we could probably safely assume that the Rebels would win the war eventually, but I think it's pretty simplistic to assume that the Death Star's destruction would end the war right then and there; the Imperial fleet is still at large, the Imperial capital, government, and political leaders are still in power, the Rebels are still at the disadvantage. No reset button was pushed because nothing was reset; there was nothing in the movie that suggested that the Imperials were putting their eggs into one basket. Yeah, everyone loves to cite the Death Star conference scene, but, ignoring that the characters are giving their best opinions -- and not even agreeing on them -- the scenes explains how the Empire is re-structuring itself. The Death Star itself is simply an additional weapon to use. Darth Vader himself points out that it's not the all-important device that you would think it is.

If it had been shown that the Empire was putting all its resources into this project and would fall apart without it -- e.g. the Empire was fragmenting and this was the last idea to unify them, yeah, it would be a reset button, suddenly popping up in Empire saying "Hey, guess what, we're still in charge!" A New Hope ends with the Empire still in power (albeit with a bloody nose) and Empire Strikes Back picks right up with that.

Along the same lines, that's why I don't think that Force Awakens is a true reset button or undos the original trilogy's ending. Yeah, it presents a scenario very much like original movies, but the original movies never showed the end of the war, and we're seeing here that, much like the World Wars, the conflict ended only to spark again years later.

Except he did, which has been demonstrated in this thread several times.
The loss of the DS was presented as something major and probably crippling loss for the empire. It probably wouldn't fall instantly but this loss would be a major set back. But as far as ESB goes, it had zero impact on the empire and the rebels are even weaker than before.
The DS was said more than once to be the one thing that will keep control now that the senate is gone. Ergo it's removal would cause serious problems for the empire to keep control. But that somehow doesn't happen.

Bye for now.
Blackboard Monitor[/quote]

The New Hope novelization isn't canonical under the Disney canon when it adds/contradicts the movie. Even under Legends, when it was fully canonical, a lot of this information was made apocryphal by other sources. It's also worth noting that most of the characters, when talking about the effects the Death Star will have, are speaking before anything has been implemented. In other words, they're predicting what will happen in the future; they just predicted wrong.

Destroying the Death Star isn't a death knell, it was just a Pearl Harbor attack; they may have scored a great hit on a major enemy installation, but the nation itself, and the resources and means to rebuild and retaliate, were still completely intact.

 

Assuming (in the case of a hypothetical standalone ANH) that the Death Star's destruction would spell the end of the Empire right there and then is not that much more simplistic than assuming the original ROTJ ending would end the war there and then. By that stage in ROTJ, we've seen just how strong the Empire is. We've already seen the Empire absorb the loss of a Death Star. Now granted, losing the Emperor AND Vader would be an absolute hammer blow. But I think the ideas presented in Aftermath and the new comics - that the Imperial remnants rallied soon after the initial euphoria, and a power struggle took place and the Imperial hardliners retreated into the Beyond in order to regroup, during which time the New Republic (initially) flourished before falling prey to the same complacency the last republic did under Valorum - all this seems much more plausible to me than the ROTJ happy ending, end of Empire switch. That ending is right for the end of 6 films, just as freedom being restored to the galaxy and medals all round (not you, Chewie, step back) is the right ending for a standalone ANH that might never have had a sequel greenlit. Both ESB and TFA (IMO) reset the story to pick things up again in a dramatically plausible and compelling way.

 

I think there's a semantic issue here relating to my use of the phrase "political reset button."

Let me put it this way instead: Both Lucas and Abrams interpreted the Rebel victories in ANH and ROTJ in such a way as to ensure a clear and unambiguous underdog vs. overdog dynamic in the subsequent film. They both narrowed the scope and scale of those victories - or at least, followed an interpretation of those victories that favored a scenario wherein the victories were less deeply impactful than one might have expected - in order to set up compelling stories.

In short, story is far more important than "lore logic." You fit the lore to the story you want to tell, not the other way around.

 

Okay, let's just forget about the ANH novelization (WebLurker - good points, but prior to 2014 the ANH novelization was also "George Lucas Canon" unless contradicting events in the actual film) and rely on the film.

So we have a high profile member of Alderaan's government in the Imperial Senate of Aldeaanian royal origin who is gathering vital information for the Alliance. Conclusion? Alderaan is supporting the Alliance with vital information.

Destruction of the Death Star

With the Death Star becoming operational and destroying planets suspected to support the Alliance, no star system would have dared to further support the Alliance because of fear of backtrace and lethal retaliation. The Alliance would have probably continued the fight until all its personnel had been killed or until it had depleted its resources. The inevitable outcome was the death of the Alliance.
(Of course, Tarkin didn't want to just settle with that. He wanted to destroy the hidden Rebel base to put a definite end to this rebellion)
Well, that turned out rather differently.

Setback of the Alliance

While the Alliance had destroyed the Death Star and scored its second and major victory over the Empire, it had lost its main resource of information (Alderaan) but kept it's base of operations to continue the fight and to receive practical support (Yavin IV). Unfortunately, it lost that base in the aftermath of ANH because Vader returned with the starfleet.

The Empire lost its WMD, the Alliance lost its most important supplier of information and its base of operations.

And the latter one was a direct result of events in ANH (Vader surviving and escaping, possibly undetected because of stealth capabilities of his special TIE fighter). No reset button but simple cause and effect.

 

Come on, you should have seen I was joking. Hence my use of the word LITERALLY to describe the pushing of a button that clearly does not exist. I was resetting the sequel to my earlier "we definitively won this argument 4 pages ago" post*.


*this was also a joke.

 

Pro Scoundrel

I know, I just couldn't resist summarizing the essence of this thread in plain English.

 

I will now summarize the essence of this thread in Vietnamese:

Tôi không biết cái quái gì đang xảy ra ở đây.

 

Can't say I disagree.

 

George: If Star Wars doesn't fly and is the only film, we need to end it as an assumption that the Rebellion is on a winning track and has virtually won. Death Star goes boom, Tarkin vaporized, big medal celebration for the heroes... but just in case, we need to have Vader spin off into space. The rebellion virtually successful, the Empire no longer able to intimidate, with an ambiguous open end to Vader.
Story Help Guy: But, if it is successful and we can continue? It seems like the Rebellion is on top. They have the momentum.
George: Oh, I already have that reset button ready. It shows even in the title if we get to make more films: "The Empire Strikes Back". Retaliation. The Rebel Alliance put back under pressure. The Death Star is gone but the full focus of the Empire will be hitting back in the wake of its destruction. Simple. And of course, Vader lives at the end of Star Wars. Things change. Momentum shifts.

 

That about sums it up.

 

Damn you, why did you revive this thread???

Keep it deeead!

 

Haha. I blame DD!

 

George: If the OT is the only trilogy, we need to end it as a clear assumption that the Rebellion wins back the galaxy. 2nd Death Star goes boom, Emperor and Vader vaporized, big celebration for the heroes and the galaxy... but just in case, we don't need to show all the Imperials surrendering and the New Republic being established. The rebellion successful, the Empire dealt a significant and likely fatal blow, with an ambiguous open end to what happens to the rest of the Empire and governance of the galaxy.
Story Help Guy: But, what if we continue? The Rebellion is clearly on top. The heart of the Empire is gone. They have the momentum.
Abrams: Oh, I already have that reset button ready. Victory for the Rebellion, defeat for the Empire, a few decades of peace under the New Republic, followed by retaliation by an Imperial remnant. The New Republic put under pressure. The Death Star is gone but a new successor to the Empire will be hitting back in the long wake of its destruction. Simple. Things change. Momentum shifts.

 

So many abbreviations . . .