The "new republic collapsed in 2 days" really ruined ST setting

[Slowpokeking]

We can see most of the series/EU don't want to resolve around ST or post ST era because it's too stupid.

How did they even come up with such idea. Even the old republic had to take Palpatine decades to change to empire. Even the empire took the rebels years to finish off. The new republic simply died after a capital was blasted? And TLJ further nailed the coffin.

[Frontier]

They just had to replacate the OT setting as much as they possibly could even if it completely undermined everything the protagonists' achieved.

[ChrisIII]

Part of the issue was that the fleet was basically mothballed except for a small defense force. (Resistance fleet is largely made of decommissioned Republic ships, and was more of a semi-independent militia focused on the First Order)

The Empire lost it's core leadership but had enough fleet intact to hold out until Jakku-Gideon and others later are mainly warlords doing most of their own thing, with Hux's faction eventually becoming the First Order.

[Bruce Wayne]

We can see most of the series/EU don't want to resolve around ST or post ST era because it's too stupid.

How did they even come up with such idea. Even the old republic had to take Palpatine decades to change to empire. Even the empire took the rebels years to finish off. The new republic simply died after a capital was blasted? And TLJ further nailed the coffin.

If you examine the decision making for blowing up Hosnian Prime (HP), you'll find that originally that Abrams wanted to blow up Coruscant instead and HP was a compromise which makes sense since the visuals for HP is a very faithful reproduction of Coruscant from the PT.

I think from the pov of someone like Abrams who isn't knowledgeable about the lore that the decision to blow up Coruscant and the sudden collapse of the Republic kind of makes sense in that he probably thought the Republic was synonymous with Coruscant and thus destroying Courscant=no Republic if you are not terribly knowledgeable about the lore.

They just had to replacate the OT setting as much as they possibly could even if it completely undermined everything the protagonists' achieved.

I think this is a good observation.

If anything the Sequel Trilogy needed to sell that Han/Leia/Luke were failures and fuckups to sell Rey as a protagonst (who would finally defeat the First/Final Order and Kylo Ren and Palpatine). Han was a failure as a rebel, a father and husband. Luke failed as a Jedi, a mentor and a teacher. Leia failed as a general, a parent and a politician.

The decision to basically retcon the ending of the OT and ROTJ was to recenter the story conflict of SW between the Empire (now FO) vs Rebels (now the Resistanc) as compared to say how the prequels and novels were more the Jedi vs Sith (the Kotor comic, Legacy comic, LotF novels).

If they hadn't done this, the Disney Trilogy would probably had to figure out how to tell a story where the New Republic was still going strong with the heroes of the Rebellion backing it up with the Jedi slowly being revived under Luke. That was probably a much more daunting task that Disney and Abrams were probably not up to and werent interested in doing (since that was in the pitches Lucas sold to Disney).

[ChrisIII]

The Legacy comics did largely recycle bits of the Rebels Vs. Empire story, although with the twist that there was Empire was split between two factions.

Remember the Republic pretty much also fell in the NJO, with a new alliance formed in the later novels.


LOTF also largely stuck to a lot of OT and PT "Civil War" stuff.

So basically the franchise as a whole was already retreading familiar ground after trying the Jedi vs. Alien invaders stuff with the Vong and the Killik.

The heroes did have at least 25 years of general peace (apart from the skirmishes we've seen with Gideon, Thrawn etc).

It's only about five years before that things start to collapse in large part to Snoke/Palpatine and FO sympathizers starting to make their move. The resistance was formed in part because the Republic did not take the First Order seriously (although she did have several allies in the Republic government).

[Bruce Wayne]

The Legacy comics did largely recycle bits of the Rebels Vs. Empire story, although with the twist that there was Empire was split between two factions.

The Rebel side in Legacy was not the Fel Empire, but rather the military remnants of the Galactic Alliance and they were an after thought and wasn't even mentioned in the story bible and had to be slowly introduced in fill-in stories. The main thrust of Legacy was the conflict between Cade (Jedi) and Darth Krayt (the One Sith). It was very much a Jedi v Sith with the various factions of the Empire more to highlight how complicated the situation had become and to see how elements of the Empire were themselves slowly reforming to become more benevolent and how even the moffs weren't monolithic about collaborating with Krayt.

LOTF also largely stuck to a lot of OT and PT "Civil War" stuff.

Again the main arc was centered on Darth Cadeus/Jacen and his fall to the dark side and his death. It was much a Sith vs Jedi story more than a classical OT story especially given how much the political elements were an after thought. You can look at media like R1, Rebels and the various rebellion flavored short stories from the 90s to see how the Rebels vs Empire stories (which often times feature force users) were different from Jedi vs Sith themed stories like Legacy/LotF/Kotor. If anything I'd argue that Jedi vs Sith themed stories (including the prequels) usually emphasized the long cycle of struggle between the Jedi vs Sith.

[godisawesome]

The weird thing for me about this whole "the New Republic must fall and we must restart the OT conflict!" is:

A) Abrams actually comes off as one of the less obsessive about mimicking it (which is shocking considering he's still 100% behind the idea), and...

B) It's like the only thing that literally every major creator seems to agree on, with Filoni and Johnson being, if anything, even more invested in trying to make the New Republic an impotent non-factor.

LFL and its associates couldn't agree on anythign else about the ST: Abrams wanted Rey as the clear main character and Finn as the male lead with Kylo as the villain and an effective First Order, Johnson wanted the whole thing to be a Hipster Saturday Morning Cartoon based around Kylo as his Gary Stu Villainous Protagonist, and LFL couldn't give a damn about anything but making Kylo EVEN MORE of a Gary Stu and wanting him to be a/the hero. (Remember kids: Kylo is the blackhole at the center of the ST, not Rey.) But *EVERYONE wanted the New Republic gone and the Empire back fighting Rebels.

Abrams arguably started somewhat more nuanced than the others, since his First Order in TFA is a lean and hungry force still scared of the New Republic Navy and seriously harasser by the tiny Resistance, and thus dependent on Starkiller Base to actually begin their offensive, and are undermanned enough to find the Resistance strike force genuinely scary. TFA actually ends somewhat somberly regarding the situation, but suggests that the First Order is nowhere near dominating the Galaxy yet.

That's a functional situation, or at least a salvageable one.

Johnson then insists the First Order already reigns in the opening crawl of TLJ, immediately retcons the First Order Fleet in size while also retconning their intelligence and energy-level into a bloated, slow group of idiots (very much in a parody of the OT), shows a Galaxy with about as much emotional reaction to Hosnian Prime's destruction as Johnson himself has towards Kylo's crimes (read: none.) He then also has the Resistance reduced to twelve dudes and tries to have them outright re-christened Rebels in a misguided attempt to abuse nostalgia as Abrams does (say what you will about Abrams, but he's competent at exploiting nostlagia.) Johnson even commissioned that Bloodline book to try and retcon the size of the First Order into a large Galactic faction, while TFA's First Order was explicitly a hidden and small group in the Unknown Regions.

That's not functional, nor exciting.

Then TROS comes in and re-retcons the retcon so the First Order is again too small to conquer the Galaxy itself, even if the Resistance is still small... and basically sets about making a new "First Order from TFA" faction in the Sith Fleet and by replacing TLJ's version of Hux with a TFA!Hux-esque character in Pryde (literally every line Pryde has save one would fit perfectly with TFA Hux as well.) He then also shows that the Galaxy could rally to overwhelm the Sith forces with sheer numbers with the right motivation (lazily excused by Lando.)

That's still dysfunctional, but seems to work for some people.

Now you've got Filoni doing a generally competent if still painfully formulaic version of the "New Republic is toothless and stupid, and the heroes have to outfox the bureaucracy before the Empire gets too many dudes" situation. And I think the reason is pretty clear - it's the easy, lazy way to do a familiar formula without taking risks and without having to strain themselves by studying politics, culture, and stuff like that.

[Slowpokeking]

If you examine the decision making for blowing up Hosnian Prime (HP), you'll find that originally that Abrams wanted to blow up Coruscant instead and HP was a compromise which makes sense since the visuals for HP is a very faithful reproduction of Coruscant from the PT.

I think from the pov of someone like Abrams who isn't knowledgeable about the lore that the decision to blow up Coruscant and the sudden collapse of the Republic kind of makes sense in that he probably thought the Republic was synonymous with Coruscant and thus destroying Courscant=no Republic if you are not terribly knowledgeable about the lore.



I think this is a good observation.

If anything the Sequel Trilogy needed to sell that Han/Leia/Luke were failures and fuckups to sell Rey as a protagonst (who would finally defeat the First/Final Order and Kylo Ren and Palpatine). Han was a failure as a rebel, a father and husband. Luke failed as a Jedi, a mentor and a teacher. Leia failed as a general, a parent and a politician.

The decision to basically retcon the ending of the OT and ROTJ was to recenter the story conflict of SW between the Empire (now FO) vs Rebels (now the Resistanc) as compared to say how the prequels and novels were more the Jedi vs Sith (the Kotor comic, Legacy comic, LotF novels).

If they hadn't done this, the Disney Trilogy would probably had to figure out how to tell a story where the New Republic was still going strong with the heroes of the Rebellion backing it up with the Jedi slowly being revived under Luke. That was probably a much more daunting task that Disney and Abrams were probably not up to and werent interested in doing (since that was in the pitches Lucas sold to Disney).

To be fair, EP7 didn't make clear that the NR was dead, it was RJ who nailed the coffin.

The weird thing for me about this whole "the New Republic must fall and we must restart the OT conflict!" is:

A) Abrams actually comes off as one of the less obsessive about mimicking it (which is shocking considering he's still 100% behind the idea), and...

B) It's like the only thing that literally every major creator seems to agree on, with Filoni and Johnson being, if anything, even more invested in trying to make the New Republic an impotent non-factor.

LFL and its associates couldn't agree on anythign else about the ST: Abrams wanted Rey as the clear main character and Finn as the male lead with Kylo as the villain and an effective First Order, Johnson wanted the whole thing to be a Hipster Saturday Morning Cartoon based around Kylo as his Gary Stu Villainous Protagonist, and LFL couldn't give a damn about anything but making Kylo EVEN MORE of a Gary Stu and wanting him to be a/the hero. (Remember kids: Kylo is the blackhole at the center of the ST, not Rey.) But *EVERYONE wanted the New Republic gone and the Empire back fighting Rebels.

Abrams arguably started somewhat more nuanced than the others, since his First Order in TFA is a lean and hungry force still scared of the New Republic Navy and seriously harasser by the tiny Resistance, and thus dependent on Starkiller Base to actually begin their offensive, and are undermanned enough to find the Resistance strike force genuinely scary. TFA actually ends somewhat somberly regarding the situation, but suggests that the First Order is nowhere near dominating the Galaxy yet.

That's a functional situation, or at least a salvageable one.

Johnson then insists the First Order already reigns in the opening crawl of TLJ, immediately retcons the First Order Fleet in size while also retconning their intelligence and energy-level into a bloated, slow group of idiots (very much in a parody of the OT), shows a Galaxy with about as much emotional reaction to Hosnian Prime's destruction as Johnson himself has towards Kylo's crimes (read: none.) He then also has the Resistance reduced to twelve dudes and tries to have them outright re-christened Rebels in a misguided attempt to abuse nostalgia as Abrams does (say what you will about Abrams, but he's competent at exploiting nostlagia.) Johnson even commissioned that Bloodline book to try and retcon the size of the First Order into a large Galactic faction, while TFA's First Order was explicitly a hidden and small group in the Unknown Regions.

That's not functional, nor exciting.

Then TROS comes in and re-retcons the retcon so the First Order is again too small to conquer the Galaxy itself, even if the Resistance is still small... and basically sets about making a new "First Order from TFA" faction in the Sith Fleet and by replacing TLJ's version of Hux with a TFA!Hux-esque character in Pryde (literally every line Pryde has save one would fit perfectly with TFA Hux as well.) He then also shows that the Galaxy could rally to overwhelm the Sith forces with sheer numbers with the right motivation (lazily excused by Lando.)

That's still dysfunctional, but seems to work for some people.

Now you've got Filoni doing a generally competent if still painfully formulaic version of the "New Republic is toothless and stupid, and the heroes have to outfox the bureaucracy before the Empire gets too many dudes" situation. And I think the reason is pretty clear - it's the easy, lazy way to do a familiar formula without taking risks and without having to strain themselves by studying politics, culture, and stuff like that.

Yeah, it was mostly Rian Johnson's fault, TFA didn't start well but at least left room to explain.

[j9ac9k]

If anything the Sequel Trilogy needed to sell that Han/Leia/Luke were failures and fuckups to sell Rey as a protagonst (who would finally defeat the First/Final Order and Kylo Ren and Palpatine). Han was a failure as a rebel, a father and husband. Luke failed as a Jedi, a mentor and a teacher. Leia failed as a general, a parent and a politician.
..................................
If they hadn't done this, the Disney Trilogy would probably had to figure out how to tell a story where the New Republic was still going strong with the heroes of the Rebellion backing it up with the Jedi slowly being revived under Luke. That was probably a much more daunting task that Disney and Abrams were probably not up to and weren't interested in doing (since that was in the pitches Lucas sold to Disney).

Don't forget the original trilogy had to have the Republic as defunct and the Jedi as failures to set up Luke et al to be the heroes. They don't want the heroes to represent the establishment and maintain the status quo. When the Jedi were seen as doing so, it immediately made them problematic. They want SW to be about "rebels v. the establishment", regardless if it's Luke or Rey or Andor, etc. Even in Ahsoka, the "good guys" have to disobey the New Republic, which means the NR has to be shown as flawed.

SW has always been a fairy tale since it's opening "A Long Time Ago..." and fairy tales end with "Happily Ever After" but there are no stories about that - when they started telling new stories the "HEA" needed to be pushed back.

[ChrisIII]

The EU also at times got criticism for the same thing, with Dark Empire in particular cheapening Vader's sacrifice. Not only did it bring Palpatine back, it turned Luke to the dark side as well (although to be fair Luke's original intention was to do it to sabotage Palpatine's operation from the inside, but he got too wound up in it).


At least the SE didn't have Luke go to the dark side (unless you count maybe his attempt to kill Ben)-just made him kind of apathetic.

[godisawesome]

Don't forget the original trilogy had to have the Republic as defunct and the Jedi as failures to set up Luke et al to be the heroes. They don't want the heroes to represent the establishment and maintain the status quo. When the Jedi were seen as doing so, it immediately made them problematic. They want SW to be about "rebels v. the establishment", regardless if it's Luke or Rey or Andor, etc. Even in Ahsoka, the "good guys" have to disobey the New Republic, which means the NR has to be shown as flawed.

SW has always been a fairy tale since it's opening "A Long Time Ago..." and fairy tales end with "Happily Ever After" but there are no stories about that - when they started telling new stories the "HEA" needed to be pushed back.

The trick is that you can have the heroes still be underdogs and have to struggle WITHOUT always making the "good guy government" be objectively stupid or impotent - if anything, making it so that they're instead effective and heroic, but merely overwhelmed with issues, seems to have always been the better way to do it. You just have to make sure the villains are actually smartly written and formidable... and generally, the more lazily the Republic is played as failure, the more lazily written the villains will be as well. And half the time, it feels like the more formulaic writers can't even be as nuanced with the New Republic as Lucas was with an explicitly decaying Old Republic.

It's no coincidence that the films most apathetic and uninterested in the ideas of Galactic politics tend to showcase the most pathetic villains, or that as good as Ahsoka was, there was a noticeable moment where "Writing the New Republic as idiots" and "Giving Thrawn a painfully basic strategy that's all flash in presentation and no substance in actual cleverness" coincided.

[Slowpokeking]

Don't forget the original trilogy had to have the Republic as defunct and the Jedi as failures to set up Luke et al to be the heroes. They don't want the heroes to represent the establishment and maintain the status quo. When the Jedi were seen as doing so, it immediately made them problematic. They want SW to be about "rebels v. the establishment", regardless if it's Luke or Rey or Andor, etc. Even in Ahsoka, the "good guys" have to disobey the New Republic, which means the NR has to be shown as flawed.

SW has always been a fairy tale since it's opening "A Long Time Ago..." and fairy tales end with "Happily Ever After" but there are no stories about that - when they started telling new stories the "HEA" needed to be pushed back.

And it took Palpatine decades to do, even before the Death Star was completed, he still had to worry a bit about the senate.

[godisawesome]

I wonder if there might be some small but interesting split along “generational” lines when it comes to the dedication to the “formula” of always having the heroes be “rebels,” even if that requires subtly broadcasting an “anti-democratic” subtext to the stories.

Like… I feel like older Generation X fans (like the ST directors and Filoni) sometimes tend to not just fall more to the “The OT was better” side of fandom, but also maybe even to the “ANH was the best because it cracked the formula, and ROTJ wasn’t that good” side.

I’m just spitballing here, but as a Millenial who grew up with all three OT films, then the EU and PT, I sometimes feel like my generation is inclined to disregard the “perfected formula”/“fairy tale” idea of Star Wars in favor of a “character focus”/“multi-faceted saga” POV, as well as to just, in general, like the PT setting, with a larger Jedi Order and with a still mostly heroic Republic, and a generally more dedicated political message that’s pro-democracy.

Like… I’ve never really felt that Star Wars inherently benefitted more from the heroes being rebels all the damn time, and I definitely feel like some of modern LFL’s most high profile dudes seem to weirdly de-emphasize character work and re-emphasize homages and such - and that even Filoni, who’s tarted in the PT era, seems to have recently scaled back a lot of his more character-focused stuff in favor of formula.

[Frontier]

This suddenly reminds me of the politics episodes with Padme in the Clone Wars cartoons...

[Slowpokeking]

This suddenly reminds me of the politics episodes with Padme in the Clone Wars cartoons...

Even after RotS, Palpatine still spent a lot of effort to further strengthen his moff powerhouse and build the Death Star to hold the super power on his hand.

Only shortly during ANH, he was able to disband the senate and it still proved that the resistance force is strong among the galaxy.