Jump to content

Star Wars: The Saga Continues


Gaston de Foix

Recommended Posts

37 minutes ago, argonak said:

I always assumed that Luke would have been a galactic sized hero.  There's no way the Rebellion wouldn't have put his face on every recruiting poster across the galaxy.  The farm boy who destroyed the Empire's greatest weapon with a single perfect shot. . . who has a better story than Luke?  He's a thousand times more important than any regular Medal of Honor winner or Admiral, and easily identifiable by the public as a hero.  The Force is also very important to the people of the Rebel Alliance (although I never understood why), so the fact that he's a Jedi would probably get some publicity as well later on.

That he and Vader took down the Emperor would probably be less well known, there's no independent verification and its almost so strange as to be unbelievable.   Luke's actions would probably stay in the less publicized or possibly secret records. 

The Battle of Endor would probably go down in history as a group effort of the entire Rebel Alliance, but Luke would still be a great hero though.  They'd list him as having been a part of the commando unit that took down the shields, and was captured briefly by the evil darth vader before then escaping during the destruction of the star.  That's still an awesome story!

If it was our world they'd have mad a bunch of movies about the heroes of the Rebel Alliance.

 

23 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

But that's the thing: we're given to understand the New Republic was even weaker than the old one. Assuming the Rebellion and the Senate did decide to put forward Luke for propaganda purposes (and assuming Luke was ok with that), the info still wouldn't have spread that far.
I'm not convinced the politicians of the New Republic would have wanted to give Luke too much clout and influence. Well-informed people would bear in mind that force-wielders can quickly turn into problems.
And anyway, we do have the movies. How many students did Luke have? IIRC a dozen or two? If Luke was this galactic super-celebrity, wouldn't his Temple be about as massive as the old one, with tons of other teachers (not necessarily force-wielders, there's a bit more to being a Jedi than the Force). But it wasn't. From the movies we get the feeling Luke's school was a small affair. Not that this was what I expected, or that I like that, but that's what we got...

Also, Watu and Anakin have heard of Jedi, but I didn't get the feeling Anakin knew about Yoda beforehand, even though Yoda would have been a super-celebrity by then, given his longevity... and looks. In other words, it's one thing to know about Jedi, or to hear rumors about their achievements. Knowing their name is already something else entirely. It's a big galaxy, and communication is rather primitive in the StarWars universe.

It's a bit nebulous about how wide-spread certain knowledge really is. For example, Rey knows about Luke, but more like a legend. But The Mandalorian takes place only about 5 years after Endor, so the names of war heroes may not have traveled to the outer regions. Also, in one of the books, I think one of the shitty Aftermath books (only read the first one) the New Republic went in a different direction than the Empire with its military. I think they created a small force that could go around and help planets, but otherwise left the individual systems to establish their own defensive measures. Therefore, there probably wouldn't be many recruitment campaigns and posters featuring the heroes of the Civil War. 

We also don't know how much more role Luke had in the war that didn't actually end with Endor.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

But that's the thing: we're given to understand the New Republic was even weaker than the old one. Assuming the Rebellion and the Senate did decide to put forward Luke for propaganda purposes (and assuming Luke was ok with that), the info still wouldn't have spread that far.
I'm not convinced the politicians of the New Republic would have wanted to give Luke too much clout and influence. Well-informed people would bear in mind that force-wielders can quickly turn into problems.
And anyway, we do have the movies. How many students did Luke have? IIRC a dozen or two? If Luke was this galactic super-celebrity, wouldn't his Temple be about as massive as the old one, with tons of other teachers (not necessarily force-wielders, there's a bit more to being a Jedi than the Force). But it wasn't. From the movies we get the feeling Luke's school was a small affair. Not that this was what I expected, or that I like that, but that's what we got...

Also, Watu and Anakin have heard of Jedi, but I didn't get the feeling Anakin knew about Yoda beforehand, even though Yoda would have been a super-celebrity by then, given his longevity... and looks. In other words, it's one thing to know about Jedi, or to hear rumors about their achievements. Knowing their name is already something else entirely. It's a big galaxy, and communication is rather primitive in the StarWars universe.

If you go looking for logic in the newer movies you're just going to get a headache.  They're not internally consistent, let alone consistent with the other two trilogies.

One of my biggest problems with TFA was "Why did anyone care about Luke?"  There was this huge push to go find Luke. . . as if one old man was going to be able to deal with the fleets of starships and empires.  The only way it made sense to me at the time was that Luke was some sort of galactic celebrity that everyone would rally behind and bring back order to the New Republic.  I assumed it would be like calling George Washington out of retirement (if he was still alive) during the war of 1812.  Instead we got. . . whatever it was.

I think the Jedi would be famous as cultural icons, not on an individual basis.  The Jedi Order wouldn't be a fan of that, and it doesn't serve their purposes anyway.  The Jedi gave up being in charge of the Republic long ago, and are just a monastic arm of peace keepers whose primary purpose was to watch out for Sith.  But the image of a superhero with magical powers and a laser sword would absolutely get talked about and spread throughout the galaxy.  I don't think a frontier junk dealer and a slave would have particularly high levels of knowledge.  If you'd ask some backwoods settlers in the western frontier, you'd be lucky if they knew who the King was, let alone who the PM or major ministers were, or the Generals and Admirals.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 minutes ago, argonak said:

The only way it made sense to me at the time was that Luke was some sort of galactic celebrity that everyone would rally behind and bring back order to the New Republic.

Luke was the Rebellion's hero, there's no doubt about that. This doesn't mean he was known throughout the galaxy. For all we know the rebels were largely overestimating his importance to begin with.

7 minutes ago, argonak said:

But the image of a superhero with magical powers and a laser sword would absolutely get talked about and spread throughout the galaxy.  I don't think a frontier junk dealer and a slave would have particularly high levels of knowledge.  If you'd ask some backwoods settlers in the western frontier, you'd be lucky if they knew who the King was, let alone who the PM or major ministers were, or the Generals and Admirals.

But Mando operates precisely on the "frontier," among "backwoods settlers" ... I'm not sure we disagree on anything here (?).

Regardless of one's opinion on how famous Luke was after Endor, there's absolutely no problem with small groups of Mandalorians operating on the galactic frontier not having heard of him.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, argonak said:

One of my biggest problems with TFA was "Why did anyone care about Luke?"  There was this huge push to go find Luke. . . as if one old man was going to be able to deal with the fleets of starships and empires. 

Rian Johnson?  Is that you?!!?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

49 minutes ago, Rhom said:

Rian Johnson?  Is that you?!!?

That is really hurtful.  I meant. . . why were people in the movie (other than Leia), so focused on finding him?  What was he supposed to do to help them with their problem, which was a rising fascist empire in the non-republic part of the galaxy.

What I got from TFA was that the New Republic had decided they didn't want to deal with the FO publicly, and so they'd had Leia put together a fleet of resistance fighters and go fight a proxy war against the FO.  This didn't seem to be working too well however, and somehow they hadn't found out about starkiller base.  Although how you hide something like THAT, I don't know.  But Poe is out there trying to find Luke, even though he's not family or friend.  I could get Han looking for Luke.  Or if Leia had Poe doing it on her authority because she wants her brother back.  But the only reason I could think of for the resistance to want Luke was for his use as a symbol to rally support to them.  

I was really excited to find out why Luke was so important in this new situation.  And. . . he wasn't.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

59 minutes ago, argonak said:

What I got from TFA was that the New Republic had decided they didn't want to deal with the FO publicly, and so they'd had Leia put together a fleet of resistance fighters and go fight a proxy war against the FO.  This didn't seem to be working too well however, and somehow they hadn't found out about starkiller base.  Although how you hide something like THAT, I don't know.  But Poe is out there trying to find Luke, even though he's not family or friend.  I could get Han looking for Luke.  Or if Leia had Poe doing it on her authority because she wants her brother back.  But the only reason I could think of for the resistance to want Luke was for his use as a symbol to rally support to them.  

Close, but not quite. Leia was a senator in the New Republic Senate for a time, but quit in frustration because the NR wasn't doing much to counter the growing threat of the First Order. There were even factions in the Senate sympathetic to the FO. She forms the Resistance, a group of like minded individuals, and that is why she is called a general. She does have some support in the Republic, and so she does have funds. Which is why the FO believes the Republic is secretly financing the Resistance. There is a deleted scene in TFA where Leia had sent her envoy to the Senate to plead her case about getting more support. The woman you see staring at the sky of Hosnian Prime as it becomes red is that envoy.

As to how Starkiller base was kept secret? I'm wondering more how the FO had the resources and time to make it happen.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, argonak said:

That is really hurtful. 

...

I was really excited to find out why Luke was so important in this new situation.  And. . . he wasn't.

Well, I was referring to the fact that Luke pretty much delivers that exact line in TLJ.  “What you think I’m going to show up with a laser sword and save the galaxy?”

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, argonak said:

That is really hurtful.  I meant. . . why were people in the movie (other than Leia), so focused on finding him?  What was he supposed to do to help them with their problem, which was a rising fascist empire in the non-republic part of the galaxy.

Because JJ needed him to not be in the movie and he didn't think much beyond that point.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I didn't read the info that Mando is given on the Jedi as coming from the "Republic/Empire/Rebellion" information channel, but rather the Mandalorian chain of information. The Jedi were ancient enemies of the Mandalorians and its from that point of view that Mando is expecting them to be enemies, not because its the propaganda from the Empire. As such I'd expect it to be completely disconnected from Luke and the Rebellion.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Durckad said:

Because JJ needed him to not be in the movie and he didn't think much beyond that point.

No, he needed a substitute for the Death Star plans in his New Hope remake, and came up with the map to Luke, but while the plans were the key to destroying the superweapon du jour, the map didn't have that plot function, and he failed to come up with an alternative role for it. It's just there, with meaningless inherited importance.

17 hours ago, Slurktan said:

Luke is known as being the one to blow up the first Death Star.  It's literally always been (Movies, comics, EU etc) how Vader finds out he has a son.

Vader finds out, yes. Most likely by investigating where Kenobi and the Falcon came from. But in ESB, Lando hasn't got a clue who "somebody called Skywalker" is or why Vader would be interested in him, and I'd expect him to be pretty well informed by the standards of the galaxy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Star Wars has always had this massive problem where vast numbers of people have never heard of the Jedi, or heard of them vaguely but as a myth, but just 19 years earlier there was a shit-ton of them fighting at the vanguard of a massive, galaxy-spanning war that lasted for several years. Which is a bit like us dismissing things that happened in 2001 as being myth and there being no easy way of checking up on them. It never made sense.

I understand never meeting a Jedi - there was supposedly less than 10,000 of them in a galaxy with many millions of inhabited planets and a population in quadrillions - but never having heard of them or thinking of them as a myth is weird. And the Mandalorians and Jedi had some significant history, as spelled out in The Clone Wars which had some of the same writers (!).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Star Wars has always had this massive problem where vast numbers of people have never heard of the Jedi, or heard of them vaguely but as a myth, but just 19 years earlier there was a shit-ton of them fighting at the vanguard of a massive, galaxy-spanning war that lasted for several years. Which is a bit like us dismissing things that happened in 2001 as being myth and there being no easy way of checking up on them. It never made sense.

If there's no "galactic" media that makes a lot of sense on the contrary, since information would mostly travel through word-of-mouth.

And even in places where there are some decent media, it's unclear how notorious the Jedi were supposed to be.
It's not clear to me that the Republic wanted to advertise the "religion of the Force," the Jedi's importance, or their role in the war. The Empire then probably worked to erase not just their existence from everyone's minds (painting them as treacherous priests or something), but also the existence of the Force itself (lest force-wielders become a threat, especially since Palps knew the Force could manufacture a counter-power and he wanted to control them through his inquisition).
Only the New Republic may have had an interest in restoring the "old religion," and even that is debatable. We know of the differences between Jedi, Sith, and greys. I'm not sure senators and other politicians could make that difference. And if they could, they might then be aware that Jedi can fall prey to the dark side. In other words, there's no reason to believe that people would trust Jedi that much in-universe. In fact, throughout the movies, series, comics and books, they often do not.
And who can blame them, given the story as we know it? I don't think I would trust a Jedi with that much. At least not spontaneously.

While we're at it, let's bear in mind that the movies trick us into knowing about Jedi powers, but in-universe Jedi did not like to show their powers, except when absolutely necessary. The war changed that, but the enemy was either droids or -toward the end- clones, meaning that few "citizens" would have directly witnessed the Jedi using their powers - or even their lightsabers.
In short, the trailer's description of Jedi as "sorcerers" is perfectly believable to me. That is indeed how a random person would think of the Jedi in-universe. And while the Armorer, being Mandalorian, probably knows more than she tells Mando in the trailer, why would she tell him too much, since she is sending Mando to befriend Jedi? Surely it's best if Mando isn't too wary of any Jedi he may meet?

Anyway, beyond the fan-debate here, it's simply cooler that way. Mando is sent on a quest with limited information... That way he'll underestimate Ahsoka when he meets her. I don't think we want Mando to know what Ahsoka is capable of, do we? Where would the fun be in that? ^_^

Link to comment
Share on other sites

17 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

-snip-

Started typing something to this effect but this is pretty much it, just way more detailed. If people aren’t particular aware of the Force after 14 years of being ruled by a Sith, then Palpatine must have suppressed this information. I can live with hand waving it that even when Jedis were the peace keepers, they were so thinly spread that the average joe might not have heard of them, or believe them to be a myth. Then Palps quashes what little knowledge there is of them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

36 minutes ago, DaveSumm said:

Started typing something to this effect but this is pretty much it, just way more detailed. If people aren’t particular aware of the Force after 14 years of being ruled by a Sith, then Palpatine must have suppressed this information. I can live with hand waving it that even when Jedis were the peace keepers, they were so thinly spread that the average joe might not have heard of them, or believe them to be a myth. Then Palps quashes what little knowledge there is of them.

The Empire is pretty clearly a fascist dictatorship that had held on to the trappings of the old republic for a while.  I think its a pretty easy assumption to say that the Emperor was against the broad dissemination of non-official information and probably had been filling the empire with propoganda for years.

I was always curious how much of the population bought the line that the Jedi tried to launch a coup and failed.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

f there's no "galactic" media that makes a lot of sense on the contrary, since information would mostly travel through word-of-mouth.

comical that there's no galactic internet, when they have communications that cross interstellar space in the same interval as a phone call across town.  the setting's technological development never made any sense.  the setting's 19th century capital ship doctrine and 20th century dogfighting each operate at visual range, whereas we don't really need visual range any longer in the 21st century.  i just watched an episode of resistance that featured the protagonists do something reckless under the cover of secrecy, essentially an expectation of privacy in public areas (that's the standard SW mission)--but we do not have that sort of privacy now, with cameras everywhere.  the empire and its analogues therefore appear to be considerably less oppressive in both civil enforcement and military power than the united states in the present moment.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That there is no overarching galactic media/internet kinda of makes sense, because if the Republic/Empire is truly made up of millions of planets and quadrillions of inhabitants, you could hardly comprehend, let alone need to know, what is happening in all the corners of Republic/Empire among millions of different cultures, races, and species.   I would expect only a tiny fraction of a percent of the population would become involved in interests beyond their home planet.

It would make sense for there to be more localized servers/internet and news for the general populace to learn about their local governments and issues among the few thousand closest planets as the local governments themselves would be largely automonous.     The decisions made by the Republic government or the Emperor would have little impact on most lives, unless your one planet out of millions got caught up in the Rebellion (sorry Alderaan)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

the galaxy acts like a metro polity at times, however--sidious drives along the turnpike from downtown to the suburb of mustafar quick enough to rescue young lord vader from the lava, say.  the commute from kamino to geonosis is sufficiently short to rescue young lord vader from the robots.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, sologdin said:

the empire and its analogues therefore appear to be considerably less oppressive in both civil enforcement and military power than the united states in the present moment.  

This is what happens when your top bureaucrat bases his strategy on an ancient religion and sorcerer's ways.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, sologdin said:

the setting's technological development never made any sense.

Well, StarWars was not exactly created as science-fiction. From Lucas:

Quote

“Well, I had a real problem because I was afraid that science-fiction buffs and everybody would say things like, “You know there’s no sound in outer space”. I just wanted to forget science. That would take care of itself. Stanley Kubrick made the ultimate science-fiction movie and it is going to be very hard for somebody to come along and make a better movie, as far as I’m concerned. I didn’t want to make a 2001, I wanted to make a space fantasy that was more in the genre of Edgar Rice Burroughs; that whole other end of space fantasy that was there before science took it over in the Fifties. Once the atomic bomb came, everybody got into monsters and science and what would happen with this and what would happen with that. I think speculative fiction is very valid but they forgot the fairy tales and the dragons and Tolkien and all the real heroes.”

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...