ST What do you think of the concept of the First Order?

Do you like the fact that the First Order came from the ashes of the defeated Empire or not?

I personally think it's an interesting concept, but got executed really bad by making the First Order basically a clone of the Empire.

They could've done different things with the First Order instead of it just being the Empire again.

 

To be fair to them, they have made the FO distinct from the Empire. The problem is that little of this info is present in the most high-profile area - the films.

Outside of that there has been:

• Poe Dameron comic - which if Marvel ever issue in OHC I'll look at - apparently did a fair bit on the difference between Empire and FO
• The Phasma book gave us perhaps one of the most detailed looks at the FO via the Cardinal plotline. Cardinal will also be in the upcoming Galaxy's Edge: Black Spire.
• The TLJ novel had a good amount of info on how the FO works and some history
• As did the Aftermath novels

But who's looking at all this stuff save for a niche audience of fandom?

The other problem is TROS won't feel bound by any of this, but it probably won't matter because of everything else the film has to do. It won't have time to go into details about the FO. It's all there, waiting to be used, but will it be?

 

Two movies in and I have absolutely no idea what The First Order is even meant to be. Are they the ruling force in the Galaxy? Are they as large as the Empire was, in numbers? Was Snoke the equivalent of the Emperor then?

They look like the Empire, but unlike the concept of the Galactic Empire, I have no inkling at all how the First Order relate to the GFFA.

 

Concept is OK, dislike the execution.

 

Cool idea terrible execution. The moment they created Starkiller base the entire concept of the FO jumped the shark really. While they have had time to try and explain it all in books and films like most of the ST the ideas are good but don't come together on screen

 

I kinda wish they fleshed out the First Order..

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Not a bad basic concept aside from being a bit unimaginative. But yeah, put me down for another execution is awful vote.

 

The problem is that JJ Abrams, Disney et al wanted to capitalise on the nostalgia factor with TFA, so obviously wanted a familiar type of story, with familiar tropes and imagery, which they accomplished probably too well and, as Pro Scoundrel says above, ended up with a very derivative and rather unoriginal movie.

The concept of new, even more dangerous faction(s) stepping in to try and fill the power vacuum of the collapsed Empire is a good one, and a contemporary theme given what has happened in the Middle East over the last decade. However, perhaps they could have played on this allegory even further by having the New Republic under constant threat from evil insurgent factions and uprisings across the Galaxy, which spread and become out of control, much like ISIS did for a time. Maybe then this would have been too much like the prequel trilogy, I don't know? Maybe this is what the First Order are actually supposed to represent? Again, I don't know. It isn't clear to me.

I think that this may have been a better starting point though than what we got, an "Empire Lite" to which nobody (certainly not me anyway) has any real idea how they came about or just what they actually are. If Kylo Ren in his ragged robes and beaten up helmet had been leading his Knights of Ren or a more rag tag bunch of fighters, maybe even old-Empire tech and armour, I think this may have been cooler, but The First Order look as well equipped as the Empire in its prime, so it is hard to determine just how big it is.

I know that people say "Well nobody knew what the Empire were back in 1977" and that is true to an extent, but the concept of a "Galactic Empire" isn't hard to follow, and there was no precedent to follow anyway unlike TFA, which is episode seven, following six prior installments. There isn't really any information or even a hint as to how The First Order fits into those previous stories in my opinion.

 

And what's wrong with that exactly? A more mature group of directors and writers would have taken a shot at combining the best of both prior trilogies, not opting to coast on mediocrity.

The problem with saying that no one knew what the Empire in 1977 is simple to figure out. For one, it's not 1977 anymore and the story is a lot bigger and has evolved over time.

 

Yet another Dark Side Warlord with Apprentice as heads of an Imperial Remnant that has been done to death since the 90's. Yawn.

 

Don't like it at all. Unimaginative and lazy to be honest. All the main FO characters I find one dimensional and no threat.

 

I was fine with the concept of an Imperial Remnant that, while not as large in scope as the Empire, makes up for it with lethality and tenacity--TFA, while having an Ultra Mega Death Star, still sort of reflected this with stormtroopers and TIE pilots being marginally less mook-y than in the OT.

TLJ began to dilute the original concept a bit more.

 

The concept is fine, but the execution, like so much of the ST, is below par.

I have a creative writing instructor who thinks the First Order shouldn't have been made up of young members, but something more like demented, gothic ex imperials.

I understand his POV, but the younger members of the First Order reflect the young people of today who have been lured into fascist beliefs.

Where it all falls apart is in no way exploring the issue. The ST is so intellectually bankrupt any decent idea almost always takes a shallow form.

That's JJ and Rian.

 

The on-the-nose resemblance would be more suitable to a comic relief minimal threat. Kind of like Dr. Evil's Mini-Me. Use Abrams' First Order, as unironically as he intends it to be taken, as a small, flashy, snappily dressed distraction away from a number of less flashy, less image conscious, more formidable, more legitimate, threats. The acute agony of the degree of resemblance to the Empire puts Abram's First Order into SpaceBalls territory. The viewer is asked to believe that someone dropped a thumb drive and some unauthorized miscreant unzipped Empire.tar.gz, out of which like Pandora's Box sprang a clown car of all the essential topologically identical hardware that you'll need to make your own Empire. Just add water. For people that are not invested in the world itself, and go to the movies to be distracted from their busy lives, a copy paste of Empire, by all Box Office reports, is perfectly fine. So Disney has no incentive to invest in world building for the screen. Disney can cash in left and right and the modern movie going public will oblige that minimal effort to provide a two hour distraction. The market has spoken.

Abrams' First Order does offer some range of interpretive possibilities. E.g., it could be used to reference Boko Harum. It has already, kind of, sort of, referenced proliferation of WMD technology to non state actors. But. There's very little application that leaps organically off the screen. People that need the First Order to mean something deep enough to justify the smash and grab have to do quadruple lutz. Whenever anyone defends this with the sententious seal clap that Disney's cinematic offering illustrates how "history repeats itself", what is actually being illustrated is that an apex predator corporation in a race for return on investment sought out a marketing formula to cash in maximally on nostalgia while also hooking a new crop of consumer. Science in motion. Assertions that Mon Mothma became Neville Chamberlain need to cement the analogy by demonstrating how, in any universe, Neville Chamberlain was ever Mon Mothma. They can't do it. QED. Neville Chamberlain had no deep discography of action in the 1914-1918 period. It's an equally futile effort to constantly refute this juggernaut fait accompli.

A great deal of spackle, caulking, goop, painted mural, flying buttress, Dr. Seuss stacking, and maybe some airlift by French balloon is going to eventually make this all look intentional. It will be collaboratively congealed over time into a myth. The fact that it was a externally executed smash and grab (witnessed by those who saw it) will eventually be smoothed over by various appearances and tales of inevitability. So when "The market has spoken", it might be enough to say, "Moore's Law has spoken," and the result is such as we see it.

The Empire / Rebellion dynamic could have been milked for further cash crop, without such acute visual pain of plagiarism, if they had brought in talent of the degree of Doug Chiang and Joe Johnston to overhaul bottom up the hardware and set appearances. IF they were constrained by UK tax rebate conditions to not alter the UK landscape in appreciable ways, I.e., NOT convert UK landscape into an alien landscape that was no longer *recognizable as *UK landscape (sorry to be tedious, check the UK tax rebate conditions yourself), then they could have at least converted hardware from a seed value of OT and maybe PT hardware ingredients into meaningfully transformed dishes for the ST. None of this gorilla AT-AT or red TIE event or Spaceball One Supremacy crap.

 

You think maybe if there was a sort of passage of time between TFA and TLJ they could have used that to explore the inner workings of the First Order?

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I personally hate it because I don't know what their ideology is. Granted, when this sequel trilogy is over, I imagine we will say we liked Episodes 7 and 9, whereas 8 was the bad one.

Granted, I will say that Snoke was one of the better aspects of Episode 8. I can buy that he is manipulating different members of the First Order. I think he's a bit too jovial and arrogant in that film, but Andy Serkis enjoying that performance makes the scenes interesting.

 

Your poll is bad.

 

All the criticisms about them being too simple, too indistinguishable from the the Empire in terms of ideology and organization are correct. The idea of an Imperial Remnant is good, but there needed to be some exposition to explain their continuity, and the New Republic's as well.

But they also needed a bit more aesthetic flair. The new TIE fighters should have been updated, as well as the Stormtrooper landing ships, which were boring. Kylo's shuttle is fine, and the new Star Destroyers are ok but you never get a good look at them. Their hats are dumb.

 

TFA Hux was set up to port some tactician Thrawn, Donitz or Rommel. But then TLJ Hux inexplicably took the fall as a Dark Helmet. Consider the hushed guarded tone Poe used when heralding Holdo. That sets up the Holdo character. In the last Hux versus Poe encounter, Hux shot him down (had him shot down). In TFA Hux was, as far as anyone could tell, an effective threat. He took ownership of and possibly fatherly pride in his work, and he had broad powers of discretion up to but not including the WMD. Going in to TLJ Poe should have retained some modicum of respect for what Hux was capable of. And TLJ Hux should have had some moments of upper hand. I've only seen it once but I do not recall Hux getting any scenes with upper hand.

 

Whilst Gleeson is a strong actor I personally felt he was badly miscast as Hux and the character never really had the gravitas needed to carry off that kind of role which I suspect was why he was taken in that direction in TLJ, basically made Snoke's plaything.

I think you could argue part of the issue is simply the nature of the films. I mean the originals were always more "frontier" stories showing us more western style account in less developed areas but they still gave us a strong sense of how the Empire functioned and its shear size.

The sequels even with SKB to me never really feel that way, the first order feels more like a small group after the good guys in a small area rather than a galaxy spanning organisation.

 

Not quite sure how anyone could watch TLJ and come away with the conclusion that Hux was somehow incompetent.

Yes, he gets made fun of by the enemy (plus getting a dressing down by Snoke), but the idea that Poe Dameron should somehow show respect to him when
a) he is a hot-shot pilot who thinks he can do anything (and this scene is supposed to show him as just that to set up whis character-arc) and
b) Poe's entire plan depended on buying time and keeping the enemy from doing what they are supposed to be doing, make it pretty clear that "showing respect" would have been the opposite of what would have made sense. There is a huge difference between respecting your enemy's skill when assessing the situation, and being respectful to him on the battlefield. the former is what you should do, the latter risks he moral of your own men. At that point in time, confusing Hux and ruining his pre-planned behaviour was the smart thing to do. In battle, you don't look for making the other character look good, you look for an advantage over the enemy, regardless of what you have to do to get there. Showing respect, or cowering in fear, would have been exactly what Hux wanted and expected.

Back to Hux: he was in fact shown to be a very capable tactician, albeit one who is way too much of a showboat for his own good (but that was already his style in TFA). He had an excellent plan, one that even Snoke recognized as such once he became aware of it. He set a trap that the resistance couldn't escape from, one that minimized the risk of own losses compared to a head-on battle. And even after the unexpected maneuver by Holdo - which no one could have expected because such a move would kill off the only real ship the resistance had - the FO was still in perfect position to wipe out the resistance, if only Kylo Ren had listened to Hux instead of losing his mind upon seeing Luke. So where exactly is this supposed lack of competence?

As for the First Order as a whole; seeing how they took a page right out of the history book, having an even more fanatical successor to the earlier Empire was a very good idea. The only real problem is that they failed to set up the political climate properly. This prevents the idea from realizing its full potential.