Comics A/V Sequel Trilogy/ Dark Empire parallels

So this is something that keeps bringing brought up on various threads and I thought I'd dedicate one to this topic...Parallels between the Dark Empire and the Sequel Trilogy.

Apart from LOTF (Which people bring up because of a fallen Solo/Skywalker child), I feel in a lot of ways Dark Empire is the basis for a lot of what the ST is about.

Empire restored (First Order)
Empire ruled by a dark side (Snoke/Kylo)
Republic the Rebellion again (Resistance)
Luke making decisions we wouldn't have expected (Luke gives up)
Very mythological and magical in it's storytelling (This one's more a me feeling but I'm gonna list it)

I might have missed some deeper connections and parallels but I wanna hear from everyone else. Do you think the ST takes a lot from the Dark Empire comics either intentionally or unintentionally, am I look way to deeply into things.

Discuss, i wanna know

 

Luke vs walkers





The outcome is different in Dark Empire from that in The Last Jedi, but the visuals have strong parallels.

 

Please stop reminding me of the epicness we could have had in TLJ, but didn't.

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Some parallels might be the early victories of the empire/first order, the visuals mentioned above, maybe the aesthetic somewhat and that is all I can think of.

 

Kylo and Luke have the similar looking "bandage" sleeves.





IDK.

It's just a little visual cue I immediately picked up on, always liked and hope is intentional.

Though maybe they're from somewhere in the OT and I just never noticed.

Also, as has been brought up several others before, the cuts to Canady in the TLJ opening were very reminiscent of this, in appearance:

 

Posted on mobile so I am not sure how the formatting looks:

The ships get bigger, featuring a flagship commanded by the big bad themselves.

The Supremacy and the Eclipse. Both are used in a similar vein by Palpatine--especially in Empire's End--and Snoke in The Last Jedi as a way to stay mobile and keep protected while doing their evil deeds.

The Eclipse:


The Supremacy:



Both the Dark Empire series and TFA features a hyperspace weapon capable of destroying anything anywhere in the Galaxy and both are used for similar purposes, not only to wipe out dissident forces and even the playing field but convince worlds to capitulate to the cause of the Dark Empire/First Order.

The Galaxy Gun:


Starkiller Base:


There is also Projection, which is a power the was introduced in Dark Empire and used in bith Legends and canon first by Luke Skywalker.

The defensive guns and the overall layout of the battle of New Alderaan are similar to that of the defensive guns and layout of the Battle of Crait:

New Alderaan:


Crait:



Ood Bnar and the Jedi Tree:



Both Ossus and the Jedi Tree also house a Jedi Library, though the one on Ach-To is downsized.

Vima/Maz:

Shrunk and seemingly ancient, both Vima and Maz gift a protagonist with a lightsaber.




There are more but I've blasted this post enough with pictures.

 

Might wana use spoiler tags due to the size of those images.

I can see where people are coming from. A Solo kid goes evil. A superweapon that can destroy planets across the galaxy. A really big ship.

But the thing is . . . these are the kind of ideas I think that anyone would come up with if they were asked to write a Star Wars sequel. Just as the author of Hunger Games had never heard of Battle Royale, I can easily believe that the creators had never even heard of LOTF or Dark Empire and just came up with some similar ideas. In fact, I believe in an interview JJ Abrams didn't know who Darth Plageus was, a guy who is actually named in the movies, so I can easily believe no one in production had read it.

This is especially the case when it comes to the Supremacy and Starkiller base. Just look at all the fanart and Ansel Hsiao art to see how popular an idea it is to give the Empire bigger and badder dreadnoughts. Starkiller base is really only similar to the Galaxy Gun in that it can hit targets across the galaxy, otherwise it's very different. (Built into a planet, uses energy from stars). One only need to look at Legends to see how often the the "give the Empire a new Superweapon" idea has been done. (or re-done).

Resurgent Empire and Resistance fighting them instead of a New Republic . . . that's not an influence from Dark Empire, that's writers being afraid to alter the status quo. (And DE wasn't even supposed to be that way seeing as how it was supposed to be right after ROTJ).

 

As I recall it was Kasdan who didn't know who Plagueis was, and JJ actually had to clarify for him. Kasdan's recently intimated that he hasn't watched the prequels at all, and his son Jon is responsible for prequel references in Solo. I don't think it's a reflection of what material JJ may or may not be familiar with, and I certainly wouldn't say no one on the production team has read Dark Empire. Even Lucas read it.

 

Yeah, sorry about the size of the pictures. If a mod can help me out I'd appreciate ir, as I cannot edit my post.

 

I stand corrected about Abrams. But I still think it likely that people in production haven't read it.

 

Why? Rian's obviously read it (I recall him citing it specifically), and obviously the Story Group has. I don't see why none of the production team (many of whom are, y'know, Star Wars fans) would have read it. Hell, the IX cast read up on the Poe Dameron comics on set recently, after Greg Grunberg was told his character had a wife in that series.

 

@TheAvengerButton

I've never made the Vima/Maz connection: also yeah....Didn't Luke get his old Lightsaber back in DE?

 

In terms of pure size, the Supremacy and the Eclipse are quite similar.



Both the flagship of the Dark Side Master of the Dark Side Skywalker. Both are destroyed in a very unique way.

 

The Supremacy, I would guess, probably weighs more - it's longest dimension is vastly bigger than the Eclipse's longest dimension, so IMO its volume is probably much higher:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Supremacy

If you folded the Supremacy in half, and turned it through 90 degrees, it would be some 30 km "long", 13 km "wide", and over 7 km "deep".

 

I'm almost sure Starkiller base was at least partially inspired by the Galaxy gun.

 

Pretty sure Mara Jade was still in possession of the blue lightsaber which she was given by Luke at the end of the Thrawn trilogy--unless you're referring to the green lightsaber, in which case he should have that already, right? Unless I have missed something.

 

Oh yeah that's right didn't Luuke Skywalker have it ?

 

He had it, but Luke gave it to her at the end of the Thrawn trilogy, and she still had it by the time of the Hand of Thrawn Duology. By the time Survivor's Quest rolled around, she has a new lightsaber.

 

Does anyone have a source for the oft-quoted story that Lucas either read Dark Empire or gave it to all of his employees for Christmas? In his Chronoradio interview, KJA tells the Christmas story but names Tales of the Jedi instead of DE. It made me wonder if the DE for Christmas thing was always a fandom myth.

 

I've read conflicting things about Lucas and DE-one he loved or at least highly liked it, and that he did not.

 

Back when Insider did the three-issue retrospective on Dark Empire in 2015, I think it does get mentioned in one of the issues - can't remember which one. Veitch does go into a lot of detail on the role Lucas had in developing DE, too.

Though of course by 2015 the "Lucas read DE" thing was very old news - I'm positive I've heard it mentioned at least since the late 90s. So where the original source of that story came from, I don't know.

 

I'll admit I'm mostly going by my assumptions. First is that the Legends Expanded Universe is vast and full of over 40 years of content and hundreds if not thousands of stories. So even if Dark Empire is hailed as one of the most notable EU works, if you picked any random EU work out of a hat I wouldn't assume for certain that it was read by the directors. Second is just in general how I've noticed Hollywood tends to treat the source material for adaptations, and that I'd think the director wouldn't want to be accused of being derivative.

Third is that I remember reading about how the Hammerhead was incorporated into Rouge One. It's not like the creators were especially fans of KOTOR or Rebels, they wanted to add some different ships to the battle and asked the Story Group for suggestions of what the Alliance might have in this era.. A similar thing happened with Battlefront II, the makers asked the Story Group for a small Imperial ship, and they suggested the Raider from the FFG X-wing games. The Storygroup heavily reads the EU, not neccesarily the creators. And 4th and finally, when you look at the stuff Filoni's worked on, and when you look Solo: A Star Wars Story, you can tell that the people involved have read the EU because there's so many references to the EU. don't see that same sort of thing in TFA or TLJ.

The IX cast reading up on a canon comic that is directly related to their characters is different from assuming they've read a 27 year old comic. However, if it's true that Rian has read it I may start seeing some of these "similarities" as more than just coincidence.

 

I went to the trouble of making a Venn Diagram, but it failed to upload to Imgur. Really the *only* similarity is that they both can destroy planets across the galaxy millions of miles away.

The Galaxy Gun is a 7,250 meter long space station that fires physical projectiles, "particle disintegrator warheads". It has nothing to do with stars, apparently no troop or fighter carrying capabilities, and is ultimately destroyed when a dreadnought crashes into it.

Starkiller base is built into a planet, is 660 kilometers long and fires energy beams. It gains it's planet killing capabilities by consuming a star, has garrisons of troops and TIE fighters, and is ultimately destroyed by a Death Star style attack run on a weak point.

Really it has more similarities to the StarForge (powered by stars) or the Suncrusher (destroys stars).

 

As I said it was partially inspired-Starkiller base is an amalmation of the Death Star, star forge, suncrusher(somewhat less than the others) and Galaxy gun.