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

just capturing this provocative revision for posterity
cheers

 

I don't love it. I like it, I guess.

 

Outside of the films? It absolutely has this. Just by going by the films? You'd never know it!

 

I'm curious, how did that play out?

 

Movie-goers only had what was on screen to go with and based solely on what was on screen, it's not a stretch for movie-goers to believe the Empire was defeated.

 

I suppose that's one of the effects of seeing ROTJ as your first movie, you know the Empire isn't going anywhere. Hmm, wonder if anyone here started with ESB?

We're talking of the same film though with that iconic opening sequence that shows just how big a Star Destroyer is, right? And in the same film, at least three are seen across multiple locations. Plus Lucas was paying homage to the 30s serials like Flash Gordon, you can see that with Vader escaping at the end too.

Still, I started with Jedi so maybe my perspective is too influenced by now.

Oh, it could work. Did this piece a while back:
http://eleven-thirtyeight.com/2019/04/why-darth-sidious-is-exactly-what-the-sequel-trilogy-needed/

 

I'm fully looking forward to a speech revealing the master plan. The on-screen origin of the First Order just screams super-villain speech lol.

 

You're a little younger than me it sounds like (I'm 42). I started with ANH when I was 3 or 4 thanks to theaters always bringing it back because it was free money for them lol.

 

It would have been so much more interesting if the Mandalorians (or another aggressive civilization we hadn’t yet seen) moved in Soviet-style to fight the New Republic in the ST. Instead we got...the imitation Empire. Just not that interesting.

 

Would have liked to see a splintered Empire like in the Legacy comics.
Or even the remaining Imperials forced to work with the New Republic and Jedi Order to fight a new foe.

 

Original assertion
A "Star Wars has a villain problem"
B "because"
C "ANH was written as a standalone"
D "and that resulted in"
E "Lucas basically rebooting the Empire in ESB and ROTJ"

In time sequence of asserted causality
C "ANH was written as a standalone"
D (therefore) "and that resulted in"
E "Lucas basically rebooting the Empire in ESB and ROTJ"
B (therefore) "because"
A "Star Wars has a villain problem"

 

What does it mean for anything that Vader got to say the line, "The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force."

Now, if Ben Kenobi got to say that line, the thread of inquiry opened up by that fascinating assertion would be cleanly terminated. Because in that configuration, his own protege would have accessed the power of the Force that made insignificant the ability to destroy a planet, and so the rhetorical power of that line and its interpretation would have been reserved to him. But it wasn't Ben that said that line. As far as what ingredients Lucas baked into the film, that line of inquiry remained unaddressed because it came from the villain, and the villain did not in this film get to have a final say on the topic. The viewer cannot know that the villain's assertion was resolved just because Luke destroyed the Death Star. What is the viewer supposed to do then when faced with the fact that Vader escapes Luke's use of the Force? Someone, that is not Luke, has access to a higher fate, at best, and/or at least access to a higher interpretation of the central magic that Ben introduces, that has not been resolved in this film. As it turns out in ESB, the Empire pursues a silver bullet that is not the technological silver bullet that it pursued in SW77. It pursues Luke. And forces greater than Vader back up Vader's quoted assertion in SW77. ESB answers a question or issue that was left on the table, that the villain who survived SW77 asserted inside of SW77 was of greater consequence than the threat that the surface plot of SW77 presented.

It is orthogonal that Vader was not Anakin in SW77. But I'd love to see anyone try to make it parallel.

 

I would've been up for the Mandalorians but it seems like a fair amount of star wars fans have had more than their fill of mandalorians.

I'm still in favor of the First Order as the villains. I've always felt like the clone wars never really ended and just transitioned into a shift of power. There's some quiet times in the conflict between the trilogies while the underdogs build themselves back up but ultimately the galaxy is still in varying states of turmoil. Think of it like 3rd world countries in a constant state of civil war. The person in charge changes but the fighting never stops. Rise of Skywalker should bring the complete end of the galactic civil war and bring peace to the galaxy.

 

I don't like them at all. I can't understand how the New Republic and the galaxy proper let them get so very powerful. It makes them and the main characters look stupid and ineffective. How did they acquire the resources that allowed them to build planet-size superweapons, 60-km wide flagships, dreadnoughts, and fleets of larger-sized Star Destroyers? Armies with even bigger walkers and huge "mini-Death Star tech" cannons? Without anyone taking notice? I can understand a galactic superpower like the Old Republic morphing into the Galactic Empire. I can't buy such a hugely powerful organisation as the First Order just forming itself in the Unknown Regions.

Plus, no matter how big their weapons, ships and armies are, I just can't take them seriously. Almost everything about them feels kinda fake. Captain Canady I liked, but he was immediately killed off. Snoke too could be developed into something interesting, but nope.

 

I actually really like the concept of the First Order. Just the execution I had issues with.

 

Also, I must add: Even if they destroy the First Order in IX, what's to stop another similar evil group from rising within a few years, in its place? Because, First Order's rise to power seems all to easy. It could easily happen again, with the "good guys" looking the other way. Just build a star-sized superweapon this time, no sweat.

 

How the FO got up and running:

• The Emperor establishes a network of secret R&D labs deep in the Unknown Regions
• At some point specialised Imperial Observatories are added
• Unless you have detailed maps, hyperspace in the UR is impassable - the Empire has these due to Thrawn
• The bulk of the remaining Imperial fleet, under Sloane's command, went to the UR at the end of the Aftermath trilogy
• FO bides its time in the UR, building up its forces
• At some point Brendol Hux takes control of the child soldier programme
  
• How it acquired the Starkiller is unknown, one fan theory has it as an Imperial project that the FO finished
• It carefully corrupts Senators in the New Republic
• Those Senators in turn direct intelligence operations away from the FO

So no, I don't think it is that easy to replicate this.

It's also been theorised that the FO isn't a traditional power with fixed assets, or the responsibilities of government. Instead they just have enough military power to overwhelm small local opposition. The evidence for this is the Starkiller strike at Hosnian Prime to take out the main fleet - they clearly believed that was the one adversary that could successfully oppose them.

One huge moral difficulty is, even if the galaxy wins and defeats the FO - what then? The galaxy showed the Empire mercy before, it went and became the even more brutal FO. Yet, if the galaxy reciprocates the FO's conduct upon it as far as it can, it risks effectively becoming the FO.

 

Maybe, but I'm operating on only the information present in the movies themselves(I have no idea who Brendol Hux is and I'm only vaguely aware of a character named Sloane). From just the movies, you'd think the FO is ready and powerful enough to invade all the major systems and the galaxy has no more hope left.

 

Going by the films alone you have.....

Zip! Nothin'. Nada.

It's a mess and that's being hugely charitable to it.

 

Just for the record, I'm not saying the information in the books don't count(I'm an EU fan, after all). It's just that, this time around I do not follow the spin-off media that's being published along with the development of the movies, so I know very little about what's going on with the larger picture, and frankly don't care enough to dive into all that. Not this time.