Star Wars: The Force Awakens Discussion (HERE THERE BE SPOILERS)

[Reverend]

I think I much prefer the new version of events where the rebellion actually won and achieved peace for at least a generation before it all started to go tits up again. In the EU, it was just a never ending series of wars, disasters and upheavals. Seriously, I don't think they ever went more than two years without half the galaxy blowing up.

Oh and by far my favourite addition was Mas Amedda's reaction to finding himself in charge of Coruscant. He has no idea what he's supposed to do next and can't get away from it fast enough. I find it much more credible that Sidious constructed an Empire that was incapable of functioning without him than one that would instantly splinter into a dozen little juntas that would take decades to fully dismantle. It's just like a Sith to create a system that encourages all the underlings to focus on eating each other alive, thus preventing them from being a threat to Sidious's throne.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Yeah but you have to admit the prequels just lacked that something that made the originals so good. Especially that scene in Attack Of The Clones with 3P0 on that assembly line looked like it would have fitted straight into a QTE event in a video game.

 

[Skywalker]

I also prefer TFA's take on the First Order being sort of like the continuation of the Nazis who fled to South America after World War II over how the EU handled the Empire post-ROTJ.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

I also prefer TFA's take on the First Order being sort of like the continuation of the Nazis who fled to South America after World War II over how the EU handled the Empire post-ROTJ.

I didn't know they all fraked off to South America. Ran away did they?

 

[Skywalker]

I didn't know they all fraked off to South America. Ran away did they?

Not all of them, of course, and none in any significant numbers if I remember right, but yeah, some of them went into hiding after the war at different locations around the world, but especially to Argentina and other parts of South America.

 

[Reverend]

Yeah but you have to admit the prequels just lacked that something that made the originals so good. Especially that scene in Attack Of The Clones with 3P0 on that assembly line looked like it would have fitted straight into a QTE event in a video game.

IMO that "certain something" was Han Solo. Or rather the purpose that character type serves in this kind of story. Charm, wit and not taking the grim Jedi seriously.

Contrary to popular belief, I don't think Anakin was the most problematic from a characterisation POV. I think it was Padme.
However one thinks about the execution or the lack of chemistry or the painfully awkward dialogues, all of Anakin's character beats make sense. Padme's not so much. We're never shown exactly what it is she sees in him or how her character motivations inform what seems like blind stupidity.
I can theorise that she's as much as an emotionally immature basket case as him (at least in personal rather than professional matters) but that's more inferred than really established.
To clarify; she entered public service and then politics at a *very* young age. Like ridiculously "there's no way she's had a full education yet" young...unless the Naboo use those brain teaching machines they used on the Jango clones..? Possible I suppose, if a little 'THX 1138'.

We know of two former personal relationships:-
1) Palo who went on to become an artist (and was probably like 13 years old at the time!)
2) Clovis who seemed much older than her (by like a decade at least) and was clearly a jealous and possessive jerk. Hmm, I guess she just has a type?

It certainly seems like a recipe for an emotionally stunted "I can fix him!" type, if not a borderline masochist, but the movies give us so very little to go on, it easy to make several equally valid alternate arguments.

I also prefer TFA's take on the First Order being sort of like the continuation of the Nazis who fled to South America after World War II over how the EU handled the Empire post-ROTJ.

Yeah I like the notion that they're basically a cult, not the remnant of some imperial government that logically shouldn't exist anymore. One of the things the EU seemed to forget at times is that the "Imperials" weren't a separate culture unto themselves, they were many former worlds of the old Republic just like everyone else. An empire is more of an idea than anything and once an empire's hold on it's subjects are broken, that Empire essentially evaporates. All you have left is a leaderless military and a whole bunch of monuments and flags.
After Endor and then Jakku, only the truly hardcore would be left. Most everyone else that wasn't already dead would have deserted or surrendered by that point. So yeah, the Nazi party member comparison is quite apt in concept if not in fact (by which I mean Nazi war criminals didn't rebuild the Third Reich, just died of old age or got a friendly visit in the night from those chaps from Mossad.)

 

[Set Harth]

Or Magneto.