Alderaan was directly tied to a character that the audience had been made to care about. We feel more sympathy for Leia than for the inhabitants of the planet.
Kor
Do we need more backstory?
- Thread starter RoJoHen
- Start date
Alderaan was directly tied to a character that the audience had been made to care about. We feel more sympathy for Leia than for the inhabitants of the planet.
Kor
Ah yes, the Senate. That thing mentioned in one line during the first 10 minutes (the Senate will not stand for this! They shall be sympathetic to the Rebels) and is then disbanded forever.
Sound familiar?
It didn't become the remnants of the Republic until the prequels.
"The Imperial Senate will not sit still for this! When they hear you've attacked a diplomatic--"
TARKIN: The Imperial Senate will no longer be of any concern to us. I've just received word that the Emperor has dissolved the council permanently. The last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept away.
TAGGE: That's impossible! How will the Emperor maintain control without the bureaucracy?
TARKIN: The regional governors now have direct control over territories. Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station.
[What I heard as a kid: Blah blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah blah....]
Yeah, that's all I'm saying. I don't need a ten minute scene describing in exacting detail how the galaxy got to where it is by the time of TFA, but just a quick line about why there's a need for a Resistance to fight the First Order when the New Republic is a thing. I feel like the lack of detail was kind of an overreaction to the prequels' more political focus.
...kind of like how the overreaction by fandom to how "bad" the prequels were. Make no mistake, they're hardly good cinema, but the unreasonably outraged and ridiculous hatred spewed upon and in the name of those films is completely unhinged. Ditto the Star Trek Beyond trailer that dropped last week.
I vote "No" to the central question of the thread, but (and I am not directing this at you specifically Skywalker, but fandom in general) superfans blowing their snots over every little minute detail are the reason I drink.
I vote "No" to the central question of the thread, but (and I am not directing this at you specifically Skywalker, but fandom in general) superfans blowing their snots over every little minute detail are the reason I drink.
Oh don't worry, I know exactly what you're talking about. I feel like my complaint is a very minor one in the grand scheme of things (and the movie works just fine without it), but there are people out there who are going ballistic over way less egregious stuff.
This was pretty much to be expected though, I think. Whenever you're dealing with a major, long-lasting franchise with many devoted fans, like Star Wars or Star Trek, inevitably there will be an extremely annoying minority who will freak out over every little detail that doesn't sync up with how they think things should be.
My mistake
Ben's exposition dump during his introduction is also a little different to what people are asking for re. Galactic politics. He gives fairly in-depth explanations as to what the Jedi, lightsabers, and the Force are, because they're actually plot-important. But the Old Republic was just a thing that was around before the Empire, and The Clone Wars just were a thing that Anakin, Leia's father and Ben were involved in. They were...added flavour.
In the case of TFA, one could argue that the current balance of power in the Galaxy was plot-important enough to spell it out in slightly more detail. It was obviously confusing, based on the number of posts I've seen in various threads from people here who didn't understand it.
How? The First Order splintered from the post-Emperor Empire and grew alongside the New Republic. The Republic is supporting the Resistance against the The First Order. First Order blows the Republic up. Resistance is now The Rebel Alliance Mk II. That's not confusing, it's just vague on the finer details.
Somehow, I don't think us nitpicking it here makes anything 'obvious.' We're the sort of people who still get hung up about Amidala being an elected queen, bicker about whether the Stormtroopers are clones, and ponder if Leia is technically queen of the remaining Alderaanians. You don't see the people who are fine with it or don't care, because they don't go on the Internet to talk about the matter.
Somehow, I don't think us nitpicking it here makes anything 'obvious.' We're the sort of people who still get hung up about Amidala being an elected queen, bicker about whether the Stormtroopers are clones, and ponder if Leia is technically queen of the remaining Alderaanians. You don't see the people who are fine with it or don't care, because they don't go on the Internet to talk about the matter.
No, there've been a lot of posts from people who are asking why the Republic wasn't fighting and why there was still a "Rebellion". One such example is the original post in this thread:
Clearly they didn't spell it out clearly enough if saavy sci-fi/fantasy fans are confused by it.
Clearly they didn't spell it out clearly enough if saavy sci-fi/fantasy fans are confused by it.
Then maybe that's the problem, because what we're talking about isn't sci-fi or fantasy...it's politics, something sci-fi and fantasy fans could easily understand if they weren't preoccupied with midichlorians and the force, because the real world provides plenty of examples. You can literally infer everything you need to know about the previous 30 years. The fact that some people need it spelled out is those people's problem, not the fault of the filmmakers. They included what they needed to include.
RoJoHen looks like he does get it. He was just put out with the status quo seeming to not have changed.
I'd disagree with his interpretation (that nothing changed), but only in the technical sense. With the Empire, the Rebels were basically a coup against the reigning government. The Resistance is fighting another group that (apparently) started out on even footing with them. Though that power balance changed half-way through the movie to more...familiar Star Wars-ian territory.
I'd disagree with his interpretation (that nothing changed), but only in the technical sense. With the Empire, the Rebels were basically a coup against the reigning government. The Resistance is fighting another group that (apparently) started out on even footing with them. Though that power balance changed half-way through the movie to more...familiar Star Wars-ian territory.
Last edited:
+1 (Well minus the line about "It's your problem")
It's natural for moviegoers to have questions about a film once they have finished viewing it. That's not a "problem" it's just what happens. I tend to think that the ease with which those questions can be answered helps highlight the strength of the story. In Star Wars' case, I got almost all of my questions answered by doing a quick Google search. The information I found - had it been added to the film - would have slowed and/or weighed down the story or unnecessarily lengthened the film.
Not really. "Basketball is a peaceful planet."
Fisher did bemoan the scene herself, but then she does a lot of that.
Really, watching a group of people as they see the death of their whole world falling upon them engendered more of my sympathy. But then, an awful lot of such imagery in films now is grounded in the 9/11 context.
Yeah... it doesn't work that way. I spend a great deal of time listening and reading various news sources, studying history and government and world religion, and I have for a long time. Which means I know enough to know that I can't be shown some new situation and just infer important things about it. There are soooo many permutations and variations in these things. We didn't need a treatise on events in galactic history since ROTJ, but we needed enough that things weren't actively confusing - and we didn't get it.Admiral2 said:
5 brief lines of dialog, added here and there to the natural flow of things that were already said, could have resolved 5 of the 6 major issues I had with the film. And since the 6th one was totally based on EU butthurt, I don't think that's bad. I've decided to like the movie a lot - but I've also added that those 5 lines were actually spoken to my headcanon.
Last edited:
Yeah, I get everything that's happening. I'm not confused by anything. I think that, especially with so many familiar characters being involved, I was expecting to learn a little more about what they've been up to the last 30 years. I realize this new trilogy is meant to focus on the new people, so maybe that's why we weren't given tons of information about Han and Leia, and maybe the political situation of the galaxy really isn't that important, but I still feel like some vital information is missing.
I do think it's ultimately my expectations that have left me wanting. I guess I just figured that after 30 years, Han and Leia would be doing different things, and that maybe we would have been given a little more insight into what happened to the galaxy after ROTJ.
And maybe the information is there. I've only seen it once, and I often pick up a lot more when I watch something a second time.
Yeah... it doesn't work that way. I spend a great deal of time listening and reading various news sources, studying history and government and world religion, and I have for a long time. Which means I know enough to know that I can't be shown some new situation and just infer important things about it. There are soooo many permutations and variations in these things. We didn't need a treatise on events in galactic history since ROTJ, but we needed enough that things weren't actively confusing - and we didn't get it.
5 brief lines of dialog, added here and there to the natural flow of things that were already said, could have resolved 5 of the 6 major issues I had with the film. And since the 6th one was totally based on EU butthurt, I don't think that's bad. I've decided to like the movie a lot - but I've also added that those 5 lines were actually spoken to my headcanon.
I think you've mixed up your quotations.
