ST Where was the Republic?

This is about Star Wars, as the movies themselves show the Republic government is a failure and in TFA fighting to restore it was ultimately a wasted effort.

 

I have the novelization on my Kindle now.

I can confirm that it was the Hosnian System that was destroyed. According to the novelization it was Republic command, which was located in the Hosnian System.

 

They were so afraid to conjure prequel flashbacks that they avoided any discussion of politics and government. We needed more exposition. Here's to hoping episode 8 answers some of these questions.

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Having seen the movie now, they make it abundantly clear that the First Order is about to destroy the Republic capital. For one, Hux freaking explains it to all his troops. He says this is the end of the Republic. Then after the planet is destroyed, Finn says, that's the Republic that's being destroyed.

So first Hux gives a long speech and then Finn explains it again.

I think the only way anyone missed this is if they were in the bathroom.

 

It actually makes great real-life sense. The Republic was a parlimentary system with a weak military and weak bonding links, most like the united nations rather than a single national government. The advent of the empire changed that and established a galaxy-wide militaristic government with a tight hand. The rebel alliance was not only fighting to end the empire, but to re-establish the lose system from before without taking account the instrinsic reasons why it fell in the first place. Therefore after the battle of Endor, the empire was finished as a single top-down structure, but probably fragmented into many parts, with the newly established New Republic probably not willing to continue the fight to the end. Therefore whe probably find free-systems subject to a weak intersystem government and systems subject to the remnants of the empire. New Republic was probably concentrating on rebuilding its own systems and the empire was probably concentrating on internal conflicts and reestablishing a hierarchy. Leaders of the old Rebel Alliance were probably discontent with this and formed the Resistance on systems that are still subject to imperial rule, backed logistically and politically by the Republic.

There is actually an interesting article on Foreign Policy magazine (written before the movie came out) that summons this political approach up pretty nicely...https://t.co/YH4gF73D2H

 

The Republic government wasn't perfect, but your statement fails to take in the context of the Sith actively working to undermine that government from within.

If a government falling means it's a failure, then the Empire is ineffective and dangerous too. The basic throughline isn't just "Light vs. Dark" It's "Freedom vs. Oppression." Better to have flawed and sometimes-difficult freedom than perfect, endlessly efficient tyranny.

 

I was going to say pretty much the same thing.

 

The Rebel Alliance in ROTJ, at arguably it's weakest, has the means and wherewithal to stage a succesful attack on the Death Star before it is functional (so they thought). However, in TFA, the Rebelian, at [what should be] it's strongest, having the backing of the government now, allows for the creation of not a death star, but a death planet.

Someone explain this.

 

It means that the First Order learned their lesson from the destruction of the Death Stars and tightened operational security. They realized that in order to avoid a repeat of what happened the first two times, they needed to maintain the rest of the galaxy in the dark about the very existence of Starkiller Base.

Remember that up until the moment the Hosnian System was obliterated, even the Resistance believed that the biggest issue they had to deal with at the moment was the race to find the location of Luke Skywalker. Starkiller Base caught everyone with their pants down.

It wasn't an issue of motive, means or wherewithal to attack Starkiller Base. The problem was opportunity. You can't make the decision to attack something you don't even suspect exists. To quote a very unsavory source, Starkiller Base was an unknown unknown.

 

Awesome. Thank you.

 

I think they really screwed the pooch with their handling of the New Republic. For several reasons.
First off, just in terms of the film they didn't explain any of the politics very well at all. Why is the New Republic ignoring the First Order and how much territory do these two sides cover? Simple questions that should have been answered. You sure knew where both sides stood in the OT: the Empire controlled everything and the Rebels hid on worlds within the Empire. Hell, this could even have been covered with one line in the opening crawl. Something like, "the remnants of the Empire have made peace with the New Republic from their battered hideouts on the edge of the galaxy." I'm assuming that's what's going on? That the First Order is an army that occupies a small part of the galaxy while the Republic rules the center? I don't honestly know. It's like how they destroyed a planet we'd never heard about until that moment using a weapon we didn't know existed. How are we supposed to care about that? I think they're trying so hard to avoid the complicated politics of the prequels that they're not able to articulate what's going on in a remotely understandable manner.

Secondly, by making the Republic corrupt as well as weak they're showing that it's basically just like the Republic that fell in ROTS. Meaning that this entire war can have no happy ending ever. Make them weak, make them naive, make them overly trusting, but making them all that and corrupt means that this cycle of wars is going to continue basically forever. Whatever happened to the optimistic outlook of the OT? And what's the Resistance's endgame now? The re-restoration of the Republic? It's also bizarre in that it means returning us to the complicated politics of the Republic that these guys so hated.

Thirdly, how on earth does destroying one planet destroy the Republic? I get that the government base is gone now, but that just means things will be chaotic and disorganized for a while. It primes them for invasion to be sure, but is that what the First Order is actually planning? I got the impression they just wanted them off their back? And are we really expected to believe that the entire navy was located in this one system? It doesn't make any sense. And that visual of the superweapon wiping out multiple worlds was a mistake that leads to inevitable confusion. Better to just have them blow up the star and make clear it's just one system. It's all been left so unclear.

All of this could have been cleared up in a line or two. Maybe not from Leia since we only meet her after Chandrila is destroyed, but earlier either from the First Order or from Poe.

 

Someone in the movie said that was the Hosnian system or it was Hosnian Prime, but the word was said about the planets that were blown up.
At first before that was revealed, I was thinking it was Coruscant, and thought that would be a fitting end to keeping the planet out of the new trilogy.
Someone earlier said it wouldn't make sense to move the capital, but why does a capital need to be on the major city-planet? If they were starting something new and the Empire would take a while to fully end after the Battle of Endor, it makes sense to establish that elsewhere.

 

Aftermath delves into this a bit. The Republic revoked emergency powers from the Chancellorship and cut its military by 90% in effort to prevent something on the scale of the Clone Wars or Galactic Civil War from ever happening again. They had good intentions but ultimately it was their undoing.

I am sure the reason we didn't learn more in the movie is that JJ Abrams wanted to stay out of politics being that it was one of the most criticized aspects of the prequels.

 

Dang, I wish it was Coruscant ..

 

I fully agree, that line would have at least fixed half the issue of understanding who sort of has the power at the moment. Maybe even add "The New Republic secretly funds the Resistance to attack First Order outposts, hoping to drive their enemy from the galaxy forever." It's a huge problem that we're left assuming what's going on because the filmmakers were too scared to mention politics that they left crucial information out of the story.
For instance, without an idea of the size of the first order, we can't tell how big a blow the loss of starkiller base is to their agenda. Also, we don't know why the Republic fleet isn't involved in attacking the first order.

 

I guess its not Coruscant...

 

I like this and believe this is the case. So, was Han smuggling in the First Order territory? I actually love that idea too!

 

It was the clone of Coruscant...

 

I avoided as many spoilers as possible before the movie and I found this all a bit confusing.
I assumed the First Order was in charge of the galaxy and the Resistance was... a resistance. They mentioned the New Republic in the film and it kind of stunned me for a second. The Resistance no longer made any sense. I assumed the New Republic would be resisting the return of a new Empire. Their reluctance to do so doesn't make a lot of sense.

When the Not-Empire blew up the Senate and the Republic fleet, I assumed it was Coruscant and I think a lot of others did too. Coruscant was so clearly the capital during the prequels and Hosnian Prime looked so similar to Coruscant. Though I thought it was very strange that these remote looking planets would be so close to the galactic core, I doubt that would cross the mind of anyone who had only seen the 6 films.

There really should have been more exposition. The movie was frustrating in that regard. It felt like they were too busy setting up spinoff movies and the EU to tell you what's going on. I groaned out loud when Maz practically turned to the audience and said, "That's a story for a spinoff movie!" Uuugghhh.

I think Rey should have never heard of the Resistance and someone should have brought her up to speed. She really needed to be the surrogate for the audience for this kind of thing.
Maybe before Rey met Leia, Maz could have told her about everything. Just a few lines. "After the Empire was defeated and the universe was weary of war, a pacifist New Republic rose to power. General Leia didn't think the New Republic was doing enough to stop the remnants of the Empire, now called the First Order. So she left the Republic and formed a small alliance of resistance fighters to do what the Republic won't." Or SOMETHING.

 

I was never under the impression the Empire ruled everything during the OT, just a large part of the known galaxy. Marvel's Star Wars title had Han Solo and Chewbacca visit a world with no Imperial presence (Aduba-3) in their first story post-ANH. And one of the first books that came out after Star Wars, Han Solo at Star's End, introduced the Corporate Sector Authority which was not in the Empire.

Finally, did we really know anything about Alderaan until it was destroyed? We didn't even get a glimpse of society on Alderaan. This is just another example of TFA paralleling ANH.

As for not knowing about the weapon, the first shot of Starkiller base, much like the Death Star, pretty much established it as a weapon. At least I didn't have any problem understanding it was a weapon of some sort.

 

I hope it was Coruscant that got blown up. That would be awesome. We need to have a full takeover by a NEW galactic empire!!

Once more the sith will rule the galaxy...,and we shall have ...peace

 

JJ sheds some light on the situation...
http://www.ign.com/videos/2015/12/1...ains-the-political-state-of-the-force-awakens

Honestly, I think they were so scared of reminding people of the PT that they avoided all mention of politics and government, to the disservice of the movie. We don't need to see them discussing trade embargoes, but this movie desperately needed context for the war between the Resistance and the First Order and the role of the New Republic in the Galaxy.

 

The only purpose of Alderaan was the show the power of the Death Star and the ruthlessness of the Empire. It wasn't supposed to be the capital or serve any additional purpose to the plot. Hosnian Prime is different since it was implied to be a very important location but it's never even named and nobody seems to care when it's gone. It's not really the same when the audience is trying to understand the political situation of the galaxy, especially when the series has always put such importance into that.

In ANH we knew there was an empire that controlled the galaxy and they silenced the Senate. We don't know about the senate but we assume it's the Empire stamping out opposition and silencing political discourse. And we know there is a rebellion against the evil empire. Cut and dry thanks to some quick exposition and effective visual storytelling.
It's not that clear in TFA.

The impression was clear that the Galactic Empire ruled everything in the OT. There were backwaters and places in the Outer Rim they didn't have interest in, just like in the prequels, but it was always very clear the Empire was the ruing government with no substantial opposition. Literally everything in all 3 films pointed to this

 

Sorry but its not Coruscant

Coruscant is still kicking thankfully.

 

Having watched the movie twice and just read through the novelisation, I think my hypothesis from a few months back still holds up. Essentially, after Endor, the galaxy rose up and demanded a return to democracy. With the Imperial leadership destroyed, the fleet in disarray and regional governors under siege from populations demanding their freedom, the Empire essentially collapsed and those with any authority whatsoever ultimately accepted the inevitable and facilitated the return to democracy, more than likely in exchange for immunity or at least leniency from the Alliance courts. Not every imperial was willing to accept this though and the Battle Of Jakku was the last stand of the Imperial holdouts. Those who escaped the battle retreated to the far reaches of the galaxy to regroup.

As time passed, these Imperials, under the command of Snoke, reorganised themselves into the First Order. Despite the protestations of people like Leia Organa, who wanted to see every world free of Imperial control, the Republic, not wanting another war, signed a peace treaty with the First Order. They existed as separate galactic factions. The existence of the First Order prompted the Republic to rebuild it's military for defensive purposes only, in case the First Order should strike but with no desire for pre-emptive action of their own. With no fear of a Republic attack, the First Order was free to build up it's military forces, taking decades to train new soldiers, build new ships and a new super weapon in secret, while maintaining public diplomatic ties to the Republic.

Certain events transpire that push Leia to the conclusion that the First Order can't simply be appeased or ignored. It is consumed by the Dark Side, led by a being with immense power, with a philosophy that stands contrary to the ideals of the Republic. While the Republic won't break the peace treaty with the First Order, they secretly support Leia's Resistance. The Resistance is officially a vigilante, maybe even terrorist group, one that will do what the Republic doesn't have the will to do - fight the First Order. Publicly, the Resistance is denounced by the Republic but it's all for the sake of appearances.