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Is Star War's "First Order" a massive narrative blunder?

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molnizzle said:
We're gonna get new Star Wars movies every year now with these new characters. Episodes 4-6 kind of are pointless now in the grand scheme of things. TFA was basically a reboot.

In any case, as has been mentioned already, there are novels that do a great job of setting the stage for the current state of the Star Wars galaxy. It's actually far more developed and interconnected than any other time pre-Disney. They just use the screen time to focus on what people want to see on the screen, which is smart. They're not repeating Lucas' mistakes with the prequels. Nerds like me are just gonna read the books anyway, I already fucking know the deal. lol
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Nope nope nope. I am I big star wars fan, but I don't want to have to be forced to read books to understand what is happening in the movie. That makes no sense to me. That is bad story telling. Not wanting to repeat Lucas mistakes sent them over the rail in the other direction. Now we have some movies with great ideas but terrible execution, and one with a lack of ideas but great execution. The force awakens really suffer because they expect people to read 8 other pieces of media.

And episode 4 to 6 should never be pointless. They are after all the whole reason star wars is what it is. The force awakens kind of shits on them story wise by dropping us in 30 years later and saying nothing mattered.

Instead it should complement and expand on the existing universe. like others have mentioned, episode 7 should have been more of the first orders rise to power, and showing how everytimg fits together here 30 years later. It's not an episode of a TV series, it's a movie. And it should be able to stand on its own, respect the rules of the universe it's in, and respect the story that it is continuing.
 
It's not very satisfying and it doesn't grow naturally out of the OT. It's too much of a convenient way to retell the same conceptual struggle of the first trilogy. None of the villains of TFO were believable or menacing to me. Like James Cameron said, these movies need something more original than what we got in TFA but the way it set up the rest of the series, I don't see them breaking out of it.

I preferred the way the EU handled it, with only the most capable Imperial commanders surviving and using their cunning to outmaneuver the Republic, and they really believe in something more than just the darkness.
 
Instead of being creative, they just rehashed everything and banked completely on everything being a complete nostalgia trip. I mean, it's a good movie for what it is, but from a narrative standpoint it is pretty awful.
 
rootbeerafloat said:
The narrative in TFA isn't that important. It just had to be serviceable enough to introduce some new characters and re-establish what Star Wars really is after Lucas fucked it all up with the prequels. It would be nice if they did something a little more intricate with it in VIII, though.
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If it doesn't happen with 8 I think there's a strong chance it never will.

I'm all in with the next film.
 
I'm just hoping TFA was some 1-off shit and they go in new directions with these next 2 movies. TFA really fell apart for me when I bought it on digital and I was able to see it outside of the theater spectacle. The first 1/3rd of the movie is great. But it's pretty much garbage once the legacy characters are introduced.
 
Goodstyle said:
I've been thinking about it, and I've realized that just about every major problem I had with TFA's narrative has been linked to the existence of the First Order. Basically, a carbon copy of the Empire except their political position is super unclear. The First Order is responsible for:

1. The existence of a 3rd Death Star.
2. A series of planets being destroyed that we don't care about and took so much of the tension out of the movie. The bad guys killed billions of people and scored a major victory against the Republic... and it's treated like nothing.
3. Hux and Phasma being empty, lame characters with unclear relationships to Snoke.
4. The generally recycled plotline of an evil "empire" looking for a droid.
5. The fact that a janitor knows the details of a super weapon, and the weakness to it is very similar to the old one.

And the worst of it all is that it doomed the next two movies into being yet another story where they have to take down another evil empire. It pigeonholed the franchise into a very similar place, and that completely sucks.

What the First Order should have been is a terrorist cell that is consisting of the Knights of Ren and a few mercenaries (Phasma could have been one of them) with Snoke pulling the strings. They could have been working in the shadows to destabilize the Republic and spark another civil war, and then seizing power in the chaos. It's different from before, and much like the old Star Wars, it's relevant to people's contemporary fears. What we got instead was just the villains of "A New Hope", but super vague and unclear for some reason.
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I don't see narrative problems with existence of First Order - it's quite possible than such organization would emerge after empire fallen.

All the problems with TFA come from the movie being a rehash of most iconic scenes in original trilogy with new actors.
 
Everything about the First Order so far has been a wet fart. They just wanted an excuse to have Stormtroopers in the film. The Rey/Finn/Kylo storyline is interesting, but I honestly don't even care what is done by Hux or Phasma or the Resistance.
 
MGrant said:
Everything about the First Order so far has been a wet fart. They just wanted an excuse to have Stormtroopers in the film. The Rey/Finn/Kylo storyline is interesting, but I honestly don't even care what is done by Hux or Phasma or the Resistance.
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I think they're setting up Phasma to be their "Boba Fett." Which I'm cool with tbh imho. IE, bounty hunter to track down Finn, etc.

Stealth edit: I think with TFA, there was a lot of long game setup that fans have been quick to bicker about: Phasma, Rey's lineage, The Knights of Ren...It's like...Chiiiiill....They got choo.
 
vaderise said:
The current state of the Galaxy, and why it's in this shape after Rebels victory has an explanation and it's rational, killing lots of arguements.
After the defeat of Empire in ROTJ, The New Republic is formed along with the new senate. Senate consists of two major parties: Publicists and Centrists. The problem is a huge chunk of Centrists are Empire sympathizers and the big players in Centrists party create conspiracies to empower The First Order. Eventually First Order becomes much stronger and Centrists depart from the Galactic Senate hence TFO becomes a prominent force in the Galaxy.
By that time Leia, seeing how ineffective the Galactic Senate is to all of the stuff happening around, leaves her position and forms the Resistance.
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It'd be great if some of this was, you know, in the movie.
 
Honestly the destruction of the New Republic in TFA will honestly be a huge black mark on an overwise great movie. So much potential squandered, and for what? To make the heroes the underdogs again? You can only have the heroes be the underdog so many times before it becomes trite.
 
Barkley's Justice said:
I think they're setting up Phasma to be their "Boba Fett." Which I'm cool with tbh imho. IE, bounty hunter to track down Finn, etc.

Stealth edit: I think with TFA, there was a lot of long game setup that fans have been quick to bicker about: Phasma, Rey's lineage, The Knights of Ren...It's like...Chiiiiill....They got choo.
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I hope she has something to do in episode viii that is more interesting than Boba Fett. Not a fan. I hope she kicks Finn's ass to add some merit to his apparent fear of her. But they're still introducing characters. Del Toro's character will need to be set up, we have to learn what Luke's been up to, lots of things. I hope they can pull it off.
 
MGrant said:
I hope she has something to do in episode viii that is more interesting than Boba Fett. Not a fan. I hope she kicks Finn's ass to add some merit to his apparent fear of her. But they're still introducing characters. Del Toro's character will need to be set up, we have to learn what Luke's been up to, lots of things. I hope they can pull it off.
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Finn... I am your mother *cuts his leg off*
 
I was willing to let many things slide with TFA because of the 'watchable and enjoyable Star Wars is back' but now that we have Rogue One many of the decisions they made in TFA seem more suspect.
 
Sheroking said:
It's not "yet another Empire", it's the same Empire just repackaged and after decades of rebuilding under a new leader.

Which I kind of like because the abject stupidity of Return of the Jedi really doesn't explain why the Empire would just go away because they blew up another space station and threw the old man down an elevator shaft. It would continue in some form.
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Eh, it's still a huge stretch that the First Order would be allowed to become this big. Sure, it's realistic that a huge, Galaxy spanning empire wouldn't just stop existing after the death of it's leader, but for the events of TFA to happen, the New Republic must've been totally ignorant. Why would they not strive to destroy every last remnant of the Imperials? Why would they just allow the First Order to grow as big as they have?

Look at actual empires in our world. Once they started spirallig, they didn't stop. No empire ever has been able to rebuild, simply because as soon as they were weak, everybody wanted a piece. Are we really supposed to believe that after the battle of Jakku everybody just kinda let the remnants of the Old Empire be? To the point of them being able to build a weapon several thousands times more powerful than thr Death Star?
 
Bloodlines book explained why the senate was so weak and Resistance had to be formed. Heck, it even described why a lot of republic members wanted some form of Empire to return [without Emperor on top of it].
 
Yeah I mean, it's so surreal that a group of people obsessed with an old dictatorship gain power and control.
Never happened in history, right?
 
DieH@rd said:
Bloodlines book explained why the senate was so weak and Resistance had to be formed. Heck, it even described why a lot of republic members wanted some form of Empire to return [without Emperor on top of it].
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Other media should really be taken out of consideration for this. 90% of the fanbase is never going to read those books and they were written after the movie. It's nice that they try to explain away some of the narrative inconsistencies and headscratchers in the films, but the only reason they had to do that is because the writers of the film couldn't be bothered to do it themselves.

Transmedia storytelling is a nice shield to hide behind, but it doesn't hide the fact that when you look at the films, the First Order makes zero logical sense.
 
i don't have a problem with the entire story being a foil for the OT.

the only problem i have with TFA is it feels like a children's movie, every single aspect of its creative production makes it feel like a children's movie.

the OT does not, and neither did RO [hence why i enjoyed RO so much more].
 
CloudWolf said:
Other media should really be taken out of consideration for this. 90% of the fanbase is never going to read those books and they were written after the movie. It's nice that they try to explain away some of the narrative inconsistencies and headscratchers in the films, but the only reason they had to do that is because the writers of the film couldn't be bothered to do it themselves.

Transmedia storytelling is a nice shield to hide behind, but it doesn't hide the fact that when you look at the films, the First Order makes zero logical sense.
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What exactly is illogical about it looking only at the films?

Let's remove all outside information. The Empire ruled the galaxy until it's emperor was killed and the Death Star 2 was destroyed. It is presumed to be a significant defeat, but the film does not specify whether is was the end of the Empire or simply a victory for the rebels beyond letting us know the rebels (and per the special editions, a lot of planets) were happy about it. Skip 30 years. New bad guys very similar to the Empire arose in the interim calling themselves The First Order and they have a new leader that wants to eliminate the Jedi. The former rebel alliance formed a republic with an associated "resistance" that battles The First Order.

Based on this information you can infer that the leader of the bad guys was killed and the bad guys rebranded. There is nothing strictly illogical about that. The movie does not have to explain every detail over 30 years as to WHY they weren't completely destroyed, it is enough to say that 30 years later remnants of the bad guys remain.
 
Vampirolol said:
Yeah I mean, it's so surreal that a group of people obsessed with an old dictatorship gain power and control.
Never happened in history, right?
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Except that's not what happened? If The First Order was some Empire-idolizing subgroup of the New Republic who gained influence and power and then violently broke free it would've been fine. However, that's not the case and it's strongly implied (or said, don't remember) that the First Order is the Empire reborn out of old Empire commanders.

And no, that actually never really happened in history. It would be like if after WW2 the Allies and the Soviets saw that some major nazi commanders were still alive and just shrugged and said "Well, who cares? Hitler is dead, surely Von Ribbentrop, Himmler, Göring, etc. wouldn't try again?"
 
I can't find the exact post, but someone (or more than one) people mentioned world building. And I kind of just realized that is an issue I had with TFA, but I could never put my finger on it.

Though, it seems like all of the movies have that vibe too me. The original trilogy had a pretty good constant world feel to them, and I guess at the end of ROTJ we thought "well all is right now, empire is done, the republic can rise again", but then TFA comes out and you feel like nothing has changed. We definitely should have had a better introduction into what is really going on.

At the same time, the world that the prequals made also didn't seem to sync with the OT. It was too flashy and complex. Too modern. I wish we would get a real feeling star wars movie that subtracts all the extra stuff and is just a space fantasy story with generic tropes.

I do like the IDEA of rouge one (I also in general like the movie), where it takes the set up for the original movie, and helps give context...but unfortunately I think TFA needs the same treatment already. But we do have 2 other movies and maybe the holes will be filled. After all, its like JJ to want to surround everything in mystery, but still, we spent 30 years thinking the good guys won. Better world book ends could have been set up in a few minutes of screen time if they wanted to.

They also made a mistake of cutting the Leia scene at the senate just so they could have dramatic onscreen entrance, which, I think would have still been dramatic considering who she meets up with. But having that scene in TFA would have at least helped. Would have also given some gravity to when you see starkiller base destroy the senate. If there problem was that the scene didn't flow, then it should have been a cue to them that the script was flawed and needed more world building.

With all said, i still like TFA.
 
The Empire was decisively crushed after the Battle of Jakku. What was left of it was forced into a cease fire that pretty much had them neutered. The fact that the First Order gained the power it did, and was able to build that super weapon in less than 30 years, speaks incredible volume of just how pathetic and incompetent the New Republic is.

How do you decisively crush your enemy, make them sign a cease fire, and then within thirty years be back to square one?

Also in one of the books, the Operator sets up a series of events that ends with all but one senior Imperial Officer left alive and/or not captured. That happens before the Battle of Jakku, so who the fuck set up the First Order if most of the Imperial head hunchos are dead?
 
Kylo Ren is gonna be the big plot hole that brings down this trilogy I have a big feeling.

The guy is around his late 20s or early 30s when he went all Dark Side. Why? I feel we are not gonna get a satisfactory answer.

Why the hell did they kill off all the Jedi too and leave Luke a hermit? Talk about a spit to the face. I didn't except 1000s of Jedi like the Old Republic but a 100 or so isn't out of the question for 30 years passing and Luke teaching some and they teaching others. I'm really baffled as to why they thought it was a good idea.

Then pretty much ruining the New Republic's military might with that dumb super weapon, wtf where they doing that they didn't detect that super weapon.

The "First Order" is really dumb and I hope for the sake of the franchise that episode 8 does a better job fleshing them out as villains.
 
Heshinsi said:
The Empire was decisively crushed after the Battle of Jakku. What was left of it was left of it was forced into a cease fire that pretty much had them neutered. The fact that the First Order gained the power it did, and was able to build that super weapon in less than 30 years, speaks incredible volume of just how pathetic and incompetent the New Republic is.

How do you decisively crush your enemy, make them sign a cease fire, and then within thirty years be back to square one?

Also in one of the books, the Operator sets up a series of events that ends with all but one senior Imperial Officer left alive and/or not captured. That happens before the Battle of Jakku, so who the fuck set up the First Order if most of the Imperial head hunchos are dead?
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Not a direct comparison and I still dislike the first order but Germany did it in less.
 
The movie looks good, the cast is great, but the world building in this movie is garbage. They were focused on "Member Death Star, Member this and this" that they totally messed up what the OT was about.
 
CloudWolf said:
Except that's not what happened? If The First Order was some Empire-idolizing subgroup of the New Republic who gained influence and power and then violently broke free it would've been fine. However, that's not the case and it's strongly implied (or said, don't remember) that the First Order is the Empire reborn out of old Empire commanders.

And no, that actually never really happened in history. It would be like if after WW2 the Allies and the Soviets saw that some major nazi commanders were still alive and just shrugged and said "Well, who cares? Hitler is dead, surely Von Ribbentrop, Himmler, Göring, etc. wouldn't try again?"
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If that's the case, then I guess it was done to explain the short time span. Makes the Republic feel incredibly dumb, yeah.
 
Vampirolol said:
If that's the case, then I guess it was done to explain the short time span. Makes the Republic feel incredibly dumb, yeah.
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As someone else pointed out, while not a perfect comparison, Germany going from WW1 to WW2 did something arguably similar in less time.

Not to mention we don't know how crippled the empire was at the time. Based on everything in the movie it seems clear that what remained of the empire simply took their asses to a different part of the galaxy that wasn't republic controlled.
 
Roc said:
Instead of being creative, they just rehashed everything and banked completely on everything being a complete nostalgia trip. I mean, it's a good movie for what it is, but from a narrative standpoint it is pretty awful.
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From the replies in this thread, they succeeded.. in a Holywood where everything is getting remade, and originality is shied upon, how can anyone have faith in the upcoming scripts/stories
 
Tektonic said:
From the replies in this thread, they succeeded..
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I've yet to see people claiming it's nothing but nostalgia actually counter points made about this stuff... I'm still waiting for the poster that claimed Luke should sense machinery and Jedi from across the galaxy despite episode 4, 5, and 6 all countering those points...

That combined with people that don't acknowledge dialogue in the movie makes this whole affair incredibly frustrating. It's like dealing with people that say there's no characterisation in mad max fury road because of the small amount of dialogue...
 
Everything about TFA's "world building" is a narrative blunder. Starkiller base is so bad that I still hope Episode 8 begins with little Ben waking up and realizing it was all a dream before he goes back and play with his Death Star toy.
 
RevenWolf said:
I've yet to see people claiming it's nothing but nostalgia actually counter points made about this stuff... I'm still waiting for the poster that claimed Luke should sense machinery and Jedi from across the galaxy despite episode 4, 5, and 6 all countering those points...

That combined with people that don't acknowledge dialogue in the movie makes this whole affair incredibly frustrating. It's like dealing with people that say there's no characterisation in mad max fury road because of the small amount of dialogue...
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Luke can sense all kinds of crazy shit and even besides that the Republic has hyperspace ships and god knows what other kinds of fantasy sci fi tech. If some "terrorists" can build a new Death Star, they can be found. It happened in the OT. Even if we presume they built it in the darkest recesses of space, they had to eventually move it closer to those planets they blew up, and those planets would have definitely noticed. Your defense is predicated on the republic being utterly incompetent in the most absurd ways imaginable, and the movie didn't explain how that came to be at all. I might not have a diploma in SW lore like you seem to be proud of having, but I've seen the movies. One succeeded in setup (ANH), one didn't (TFA).
 
Barzul said:
Seriously if there's another Death Star or similar design in the next one, I'm tempted to say I'm just gonna be done with the franchise. There's other more exciting forms of warfare in that universe I'm sure.
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Wait, wait, wait...

But what if this one... Can destroy galaxies!? Boom. Ante upped.
 
Chumley said:
Luke can sense all kinds of crazy shit and even besides that the Republic has hyperspace ships and god knows what other kinds of fantasy sci fi tech. If some "terrorists" can build a new Death Star, they can be found. It happened in the OT. I might not have a diploma in SW lore like you seem to be proud of having, but I've seen the movies. One succeeded in setup (ANH), one didn't (TFA).
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Oh boy let's count this out:

1: Luke can sense crazy shit: receipts please because last we saw him he couldn't sense a trap door under his ass. There is nothing in the OT to indicate he can sense doomsday weapons.

2: "they can be found"- my ass they can, no one new the death star existed until after it was complete. Not to mention the first order is operating in non republic/empire territory. Galaxies are huge, hiding a planet sized weapon amongst hundreds of thousands of planets is pretty damn easy.

Literally your points ignore facts from the OT that directly contradict you.

*edit since you added the weapon moving.

4: sun killer base moved they should have noticed

It fired across solar systems dude. The rebellion didn't see the death star coming until it was practically ONTOP of them.

Your arguments are predicated on ideas and abilities that have never existed in the movies.
 
Psychoward said:
Not a direct comparison and I still dislike the first order but Germany did it in less.
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Germany wasn't decisively defeated after the First World War. It would be like if after 30 years of the capture of Berlin, remenants of the Nazi party formed new Reich right underneath the noses of the allies. The allies would have to be insanely stupid for it to happen, and we're supposed to accept that the New Republic is that stupid.

RevenWolf said:
As someone else pointed out, while not a perfect comparison, Germany going from WW1 to WW2 did something arguably similar in less time.

Not to mention we don't know how crippled the empire was at the time. Based on everything in the movie it seems clear that what remained of the empire simply took their asses to a different part of the galaxy that wasn't republic controlled.
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But that's just it, we do know. All the new books are canon, and the empire got fucked two ways to Sunday between Episode VI and the Battle of Jakku. As I mentioned earlier, the Operator
intentionally set up the remaining Imperial commanders to be culled, except for Sloane.
 
I was actually shocked at how similar The First Order was to the old Empire and it actually kind of undermines a lot of the OT.

The Rebels went through so much effort to destroy the Empire only for a carbon copy to materialise 30 years later.

I much prefer the terrorist idea that the OP had.
 
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