"The New Republic got wiped out so soon" was just dumb

[K. Jones]

In real life, it often takes 3-4 regime changes before they settle.

People seldom realize the American Revolution was abnormal in that aspect.

People also don't tend to realize that the American Revolution didn't happen in a few weeks. There were 10-15 years of serious unrest, militia arming, incompetent governance by British jokers, taxes and strife prior, blockades, politicking with other European powers, the hiring of mercenary fleets. Then the AR itself was nearly a TEN YEAR WAR. Then when it was over (1783, five years after the declaration) a lot of shakedown. Then a mere 30 years after that Britain struck back and tried to mess it up again in 1812 - the next generation trying to work a comeback for the previous one.

Strictly speaking, while the war was around 8 years, with the near-decade beforehand of problems and the near inevitability (The Boston Massacre was in '70, the Tea Party in '73, and it wasn't until '88 that the US Constitution was finally ratified. There were kids who were born when the Colony was already in pretty stern defiance of the Crown, who grew up and then fought in the open rebellion as young men, then were mature men (and women) when the Constitution finally got settled on ... then were old men when the War of 1812 struck back.

So like, long story short and history lesson over ... I guess we can almost look at the Sequel Trilogy like the War of 1812, or something like that. It doesn't, nor should it, equate 1:1 or anything like that. But the generational aspect of it, the resentment, bitterness, so on ... that's a thing we see in real life all the time through history. WWII wouldn't have happened if Germany hadn't been so crushed to the point of desperation and "will do anything to get back on top". And that's just in reference to Germany specifically.

My question, possibly the better question, is like ... okay, so a NEO EMPIRE rises up to take advantage of life not being sunshine and roses, using connections and sage arcane stuff here and there to put it together and have a revival and get a critical hit against the New Republic. Question ... where are the Mandos at this point? Or the Neutral Worlds? Or the Chiss? Or the Grisk?

[ChrisIII]

I think it's implied by Rey's dialogue to Luke and some of the non-film material that the First Order fleet was large enough to conquer most other Republic worlds, if not the whole galaxy (Hence the need for the Final Order fleet).

Snoke's fleet seen in TLJ was only a small part of the overall force, with the rest of the ships probably doing invading.

[SuperiorIronman]

People also don't tend to realize that the American Revolution didn't happen in a few weeks. There were 10-15 years of serious unrest, militia arming, incompetent governance by British jokers, taxes and strife prior, blockades, politicking with other European powers, the hiring of mercenary fleets. Then the AR itself was nearly a TEN YEAR WAR. Then when it was over (1783, five years after the declaration) a lot of shakedown. Then a mere 30 years after that Britain struck back and tried to mess it up again in 1812 - the next generation trying to work a comeback for the previous one.

Strictly speaking, while the war was around 8 years, with the near-decade beforehand of problems and the near inevitability (The Boston Massacre was in '70, the Tea Party in '73, and it wasn't until '88 that the US Constitution was finally ratified. There were kids who were born when the Colony was already in pretty stern defiance of the Crown, who grew up and then fought in the open rebellion as young men, then were mature men (and women) when the Constitution finally got settled on ... then were old men when the War of 1812 struck back.

So like, long story short and history lesson over ... I guess we can almost look at the Sequel Trilogy like the War of 1812, or something like that. It doesn't, nor should it, equate 1:1 or anything like that. But the generational aspect of it, the resentment, bitterness, so on ... that's a thing we see in real life all the time through history. WWII wouldn't have happened if Germany hadn't been so crushed to the point of desperation and "will do anything to get back on top". And that's just in reference to Germany specifically.

My question, possibly the better question, is like ... okay, so a NEO EMPIRE rises up to take advantage of life not being sunshine and roses, using connections and sage arcane stuff here and there to put it together and have a revival and get a critical hit against the New Republic. Question ... where are the Mandos at this point? Or the Neutral Worlds? Or the Chiss? Or the Grisk?

That's honestly an issue with the wider narrative overall since the trilogies just weren't planned around these things. The Mandalorian could've easily fought back against the Empire and they usually succeed honestly making you wonder how they ever lost. But since they didn't do anything in any of the three trilogies you just have to pretend they don't exist. As far as the films are concerned the Mandos, Chiss, or any number of Jedi survivors don't exist.

Now since everybody showed up to help the Resistance give the double tap to Palpatine I'm sure you could say some of them are among that fleet.

[PwrdOn]

People also don't tend to realize that the American Revolution didn't happen in a few weeks. There were 10-15 years of serious unrest, militia arming, incompetent governance by British jokers, taxes and strife prior, blockades, politicking with other European powers, the hiring of mercenary fleets. Then the AR itself was nearly a TEN YEAR WAR. Then when it was over (1783, five years after the declaration) a lot of shakedown. Then a mere 30 years after that Britain struck back and tried to mess it up again in 1812 - the next generation trying to work a comeback for the previous one.

Strictly speaking, while the war was around 8 years, with the near-decade beforehand of problems and the near inevitability (The Boston Massacre was in '70, the Tea Party in '73, and it wasn't until '88 that the US Constitution was finally ratified. There were kids who were born when the Colony was already in pretty stern defiance of the Crown, who grew up and then fought in the open rebellion as young men, then were mature men (and women) when the Constitution finally got settled on ... then were old men when the War of 1812 struck back.

So like, long story short and history lesson over ... I guess we can almost look at the Sequel Trilogy like the War of 1812, or something like that. It doesn't, nor should it, equate 1:1 or anything like that. But the generational aspect of it, the resentment, bitterness, so on ... that's a thing we see in real life all the time through history. WWII wouldn't have happened if Germany hadn't been so crushed to the point of desperation and "will do anything to get back on top". And that's just in reference to Germany specifically.

My question, possibly the better question, is like ... okay, so a NEO EMPIRE rises up to take advantage of life not being sunshine and roses, using connections and sage arcane stuff here and there to put it together and have a revival and get a critical hit against the New Republic. Question ... where are the Mandos at this point? Or the Neutral Worlds? Or the Chiss? Or the Grisk?

You can actually see parallels of this in a lot of real world situations where dictators have been overthrown, like for example in Iraq where the fall of Saddam and the subsequent purging of anyone associated with his regime left a weak and incompetent government that was easily overrun by ISIS forces, led in many instances by Saddam's former officers. When the Empire asserted its rule over its territories, it would have disarmed local forces and integrated the survivors into the Imperial army, eliminated or sidelined local leaders in favor of appointed governors, and generally ensured that the only way to hold any kind of power was to work within the Imperial administration. So with the Empire gone and the Republic unwilling to impose the same kind of heavy handed rule, they would likely have just retreated to the core worlds and allowed most of the galaxy to govern themselves. But because the Imperials would have purged any opposition forces long ago, there would have been practically no one else capable of actually running the new governments on all of these planets, so the choice would be either to install an inexperienced administration that would devolve into a failed state, or trust that the former Imperial governors had reformed and could keep the peace for the time being. And so when the First Order came along, most of the latter would have eagerly signed up, while the former would not have been able to offer much in the way of resistance.

[Slowpokeking]

The failure of the New Republic’s political apparatus isn’t really that abnormal an idea, or is the idea of the FO managing a near-crippling first strike with a super weapon.

The stupid part is the insistence across the entire ST that only the Resistance would mount up as an insurgency to it once SKB fired, and that the entirety of the New Republic’s navy was located in one place, just so they could replicate the Imperial vs Rebel theme of the OT, but in a less interesting way.

And that was a group project for that particular failure; it's arguably the one area where I’d say that Rian Johnson may have shown himself more conventional and repetitive than Johnson, rather Han trying to subvert things for shock value. I think he decided to try christening the Resistance “Rebellion” again because he thought the pretense of something different was a waste of time, similar to his decision to depict the FO’s military as strong enough and Galatcic Resistance weak enough that he could argue the entire GFFA would fall in a matter of weeks, which was insane.

Not that Abrams escapes this, mind you; it was his idea to have SKB fire on and “destroy” the New Republic and wipe out its main fleet. And he was the one leaning hard into those archetypes and imagery first. It’s just he also seemed to think that maybe TLJ went a bit too far, since he had TROS show the FO worried enough about logistics months later to be willing to take Palpatine’s deal, and eventually had the rest of the GFFA show up for the final fight... but that was too little, too late.

The key mistake of the ST with regards to the military conflict was trying to ape the OT set-up and not do anything different, even when logic would have dictated some differentiation.

There were about 30 years between the OT and ST, with the vast majority of the Galaxy outside of the FO’s control. Losing your government and your first-rate naval ships is a critical blow... but logistically and politically speaking, there should have still been a massive amount of manpower and lower-rate ships rising against the FO, and the FO should have had their logistical issues specified and used for dramatic effect earlier.

I mean, France was fighting pretty much everyone during the middle of the most chaotic part of its revolution, and that was including a Royalist insurgency. The ST would have benefitted much more from having the FO resisted by numerous factions in the New Republic remnant beside Leia’s own, and from having the FO have to maintain some of the TFA-depicted competence in taking them on.

The overall problem of the boring, uninspiring, and lore-wise depressing repetition is shared by everyone; I may accuse Johnson of being more banal and less imaginative than Abrams in his take on it, but I also think he was just struggling with the scale of the horrors in TFA in his film, and had a somewhat abstract and juvenile view of the “Wars” part of Star Wars, not too dissimilar from Abrams’s adolescent adrenaline junkie view.

I don't think the new Republic should be that dumb at all. Sure its army could be too slow to react in EP7 so they were not there, but then they should cover up.

[Slowpokeking]

I think the problem with the ST was that it never found quite the balance between pleasing old fans and carving something new, with one movie swinging one way and the other swinging the exact opposite way, leaving the third movie to pick up the pieces.

TLJ was never about craving new, it's all about picking at fans and destroy old tropes but failed to make anything really attractive.

[Slowpokeking]

We literally saw the Empire collapse as it lost its centralized Government body. This isn't like taking out DC, this is like America was obliterated and the global allies have to figure out what to do. It's not just a matter of a few politicians dying. It's that government is outright gone, a hefty chunk of millitary, resources, senators, representatives, and people (because in the real world people do live in the region) are now vaporized. The New Republic's system of government is gone leaving the other systems to fend for themselves. You can't just pull government out and expect everyone to just be fine let alone to find out they all got assassinated. You know how the atomic bombs got dropped and Japan had this fear of nuclear weapons ever since? That's what the Death Star or even Starkiller is. It's the inciting of fear and decimation of way of life unlike anybody could ever manage with an army.

Bad example, the Empire collapse because a HUGE chunk of ppl were not pleased with them, still it went through a war for that. Are you saying the New Republic were not liked by the majority of the ppl, even worse than the Empire?

[PwrdOn]

Bad example, the Empire collapse because a HUGE chunk of ppl were not pleased with them, still it went through a war for that. Are you saying the New Republic were not liked by the majority of the ppl, even worse than the Empire?

The formation of the New Republic wasn't like some opposition party taking over the government though, it was basically a ragtag bunch of guerilla fighters attempting to fill the huge power vacuum that opened up with the fall of the Empire. The Rebels didn't even manage to hold and govern a chunk of liberated territory, from what we saw in the original trilogy they only maintained hidden bases on a few remote worlds with no native population, and so they wouldn't have some cadre of administrators and bureaucrats ready to take over the governance of such a massive state. In this situation, they may default to simply letting most of the planets govern themselves with only a token presence from the still nascent Republic government, but this creates exactly the kind of problem that led to the downfall of the Old Republic - without a strong central government to keep everyone in line, the competing interests of all the parties involved will quickly devolve into lawlessness and chaos. If you just look at what happens in the real world, overthrowing dictators rarely ushers in an era of peace and prosperity, usually it just creates more conflict and instability.

[Slowpokeking]

The formation of the New Republic wasn't like some opposition party taking over the government though, it was basically a ragtag bunch of guerilla fighters attempting to fill the huge power vacuum that opened up with the fall of the Empire. The Rebels didn't even manage to hold and govern a chunk of liberated territory, from what we saw in the original trilogy they only maintained hidden bases on a few remote worlds with no native population, and so they wouldn't have some cadre of administrators and bureaucrats ready to take over the governance of such a massive state. In this situation, they may default to simply letting most of the planets govern themselves with only a token presence from the still nascent Republic government, but this creates exactly the kind of problem that led to the downfall of the Old Republic - without a strong central government to keep everyone in line, the competing interests of all the parties involved will quickly devolve into lawlessness and chaos. If you just look at what happens in the real world, overthrowing dictators rarely ushers in an era of peace and prosperity, usually it just creates more conflict and instability.

It's not, they are formed and backed by a big chunk of the senate, which are a few systems' rulers. They are mostly trying to restore the Republic. It's very stupid to imagine that they would fail to establish a stable order after so many years after becoming strong enough to defeat the Empire.

Also they only got a few bases because they didn't want the Empire to target their homeworlds. You can see all the important planets celebrate their victory.

[SuperiorIronman]

Trying to restore the Republic is a terrible idea though as the ineffectiveness of the Republic and complacency/dogma of the Jedi being what got it destroyed in the first place.

[ChrisIII]

Y'know I kind of wonder if maybe not having the Jedi might've caused part of the problem. The sequel trilogy and the associated Disney expanded universe stuff seems to state that apart from briefly training Leia Luke largely was a sort of Jedi Indiana Jones (For instance his search for Ochii with Lando, his acquiring the sacred texts, also perhaps his friendship with Lor Son Tekka etc.) and didn't really resolve to rebuild the Jedi until Leia asked him to train Ben after about a decade and a half or so.

[Slowpokeking]

Trying to restore the Republic is a terrible idea though as the ineffectiveness of the Republic and complacency/dogma of the Jedi being what got it destroyed in the first place.

The Empire was much worse so the redesigned Republic would be a fine replacement. The Rebels didn't have similar problem, they were efficient enough to cause a huge threat and take down the Empire.

Since the old Republic was ineffective, shouldn't they learn the lesson and make a strong government instead of being blown up by SK base?

[PwrdOn]

The Empire was much worse so the redesigned Republic would be a fine replacement. The Rebels didn't have similar problem, they were efficient enough to cause a huge threat and take down the Empire.

Since the old Republic was ineffective, shouldn't they learn the lesson and make a strong government instead of being blown up by SK base?

Well it's not so easy to just "make a strong government," and even if they had, wouldn't that just make the New Republic into a copy of the Empire? I understand that this is Star Wars and real world debates over the proper role of government have to take a backseat to the whole light vs. dark side conflict, but basic reason still has to prevail at some point. And all of this would have made pretty good story fodder, if not for the sequel films, at least for some EU stuff, but I guess Disney thought it was too boring to delve into in much detail.

[Slowpokeking]

Well it's not so easy to just "make a strong government," and even if they had, wouldn't that just make the New Republic into a copy of the Empire? I understand that this is Star Wars and real world debates over the proper role of government have to take a backseat to the whole light vs. dark side conflict, but basic reason still has to prevail at some point. And all of this would have made pretty good story fodder, if not for the sequel films, at least for some EU stuff, but I guess Disney thought it was too boring to delve into in much detail.

They already have a huge military that could cause serious threat to the Empire, forcing them to make another Death Star and finally beat the Empire. Along with a very strong lead to fight for decades.

I don't think it's the same with the Empire, it's like you can make strong nation like US and Britain without turning them into Nazi Germany or USSR. Even the old EU have something like that. Also a Galactic Republic being obliterated by SK base like that was not even about "strong" or "weak", it's about "is that Republic even a functional thing?"

[godisawesome]

LFL actually tried very hard to construct a story to justify the Empire collapsing one year after ROTJ, using a general uprising, multiple major campaigns, and even more cases of the Empire “self-destructing”, with Operation Cinder and Rax’s coup/deliberate attempts to destroy vast portions of the Imperial Fleet.

I just wish they’d been as imaginative and logistically self-aware when it came to the Galaxy after the Empire. I really don’t mind the idea of the Republic struggling to govern afterwards, or of being hugely less militarized and centralized than the Empire, since that’s a more intelligent and dramatic issue to have. What I hate is having the GFFA at large be so docile and apathetic that LFL clearly wanted the FO treated a de facto refunded Empire - that’s both boring and depressingly disappointing, not to mention aggravatingly small minded for the Galaxy.


I mean, how many hundreds-of-mil*******to-tens-of-billions of Galactic Civil War Veterans, Ex-Imperial Slaves, and victims of Imperial atrocities are still hanging around and likely still in positions of power? And they have no reaction to a resurgent Imperial state?

Not to mention it did not help to have TLJ make the First Order a giant collection of idiots compared to what they were in TFA.

The sum total impact of both was to take a vulnerable and not very imaginative situation from TFA, and make it twice as banal, boring, and apathetic. The Galaxy lacked both the desire and the basic intelligence to defeat a bunch of morons who couldn’t handle a small flotilla of fleeing ships without massive casualties.

TLJ was trying to deconstruct then reconstruct the Galactic conflict, but it really just made me wonder if the Galaxy deserved to be saved if it was so pathetic.