Okay, but your perspective is apparently that "have agency and react accordingly to the internal logic of their traits and the setting" doesn't apply when they do something less than optimal, despite it being true to their character traits.
On a separate note, I saw a tweet saying that The Last Jedi is the best-selling Blu-Ray release of 2018 and I looked at into it and it's quite true. It's at just over 3 million copies sold, a solid 400k above the number 2 slot, Black Panther.
It's also amusing to note that there's articles from June claiming that the sales of The Last Jedi seem to be quite disappointing compared to previous Star Wars home video releases and it's unlikely that it'll ever reach the sales numbers of The Force Awakens, because so many people hate it.
The Force Awakens, at last count, was just under 6 million sales - that's total sales since it was released on Blu-Ray April 1, 2016. So catching up in sales is all but assured.
Okay, but your perspective is apparently that "have agency and react accordingly to the internal logic of their traits and the setting" doesn't apply when they do something less than optimal, despite it being true to their character traits.
Are you arguing that it makes sense for Finn to drag Rose all the way back to the base without being shown or discussed, it just happened and that makes it good writing? What part of not obliterating Finn and Rose is intrinsic to the First Order?
Or that Huxley pulling all the fighters back even though the Raddus is being wrecked by them, is consistent with how the First Order normally treats their fighters? He cares now for some reason, so it makes sense and is not bad writing?
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
Okay, but your perspective is apparently that "have agency and react accordingly to the internal logic of their traits and the setting" doesn't apply when they do something less than optimal, despite it being true to their character traits.
Are you arguing that it makes sense for Finn to drag Rose all the way back to the base without being shown or discussed, it just happened and that makes it good writing? What part of not obliterating Finn and Rose is intrinsic to the First Order?
In the film, Poe explicitly says that they're going to give them cover fire.
Or that Huxley pulling all the fighters back even though the Raddus is being wrecked by them, is consistent with how the First Order normally treats their fighters? He cares now for some reason, so it makes sense and is not bad writing?
Are you referring to when Huxtable tells Kylo Ren to pull back? Because we are shown that every other fighter flying alongside Ren is blown to smithereens by that point. You know, explicitly establishing that while the Resistance ships can't fight toe-to-toe with the First Order's capital ships, they are able to fend off fighter attacks.
The right choice is not the right choice only in hindsight.
Additionally it would have worked out in the end because that is how the force works, by saving what we love and not killing what we hate
woah slow down there trudeau. The story does not magically become internally consistent just because that's what makes the writers' hamfisted moral work at the end.
Poe made the right decision at the time and gave a perfectly valid reason for it, not only in hindsight.
No. That is how the force works. In every movie. The Jedi are ineffectual because they have locked themselves out of emotion. Everything turns to shit for the sith because they act out of hate and fear. Luke succeeds because he acts out of positive emotional reasoning.
Finn succeeds in saving Rey on the starkiller base because he wants to save her and not because he wants to destroy the base. Rey fails in turning Kylo because she doesn’t care about him but is rather acting out of rote.
That doesn’t matter with regards to this action though because the dice rolling snake eyes does not make betting on it a good idea. It was always the wrong bet
do you have a single fact to back that up? Rey failed to turn Kylo because he actually believes in something else, Luke won the battle with his anger before having his epiphany, there are plenty of alternative explanations for these sequences of events that aren't a painfully deterministic fairy tale framework. Explanations that allow characters agency beyond the purity of their intentions.
Besides like.. everything that happens in all of the movies? Reach out with your feelings Luke; not reach out with your ideology.
Luke won the battle with his anger but he did not win the fight with it... it’s kinda like.. the centerpiece of the 3 films that he does not win with his anger. Had he continued he would have lost. He realizes this immediately after cutting off Vader’s hand.
“Winning” in this context does not mean “the thing I want to have happen happens” but rather having good things happen in net. That doesn’t mean characters don’t have agency it just means that the force has agency as well... and it clearly does in all of the films.
And like... it’s Star Wars of course it has a fairy tale framework...
On reflection I have to concede that you are correct on that point and this is likely the intended reading of events in all the films, not just TLJ(except maybe Rogue One? not sure this applies to Jyn Erso). However it does not allow the writer to handwave the dreadnought's role. The Force nudges proton torpedoes into the right port and saves souls, it doesn't change the outcome of fleet battles.
How was Holdo's plan ever going to work, anyway? The transports slip to the planet surface, the fleet blows the Raddus out of space, and Kylo still senses his mom alive. Or, if Ben fails to notice through the force, there is Snoke, who's kinda hard to miss, seeing as how he's flying around in the biggest ship imaginable. Her whole plan was the equivalent of jumping out of your car into a cornfield to avoid 2 police helicopters. But for the sake of argument, let's say Ben and Snoke sense nothing because...whatever. There are still about 6 million assholes on all the assorted Star Destroyers. Even if we give each of them just a 1% just to think, huh, maybe they left the ship and landed on that planet, Holdo's jig is up 60 thousand times.
It's just...ugh, this is the plan the movie wanted me to believe was the *good* one. If only Poe hadn't gotten in the way, *this* would have gone off without a hitch.
It was shown that the First Order are ridiculously devoted to blindly following the chain of command.
The captain of the dreadnought knew he needed his fighter screen up as soon as they dropped out of hyperspace, because his ship is a juicy target for small, fast moving attackers and it doesn't have sufficient anti fighter capability to defend itself without a fighter screen. And once his AA is stripped by said fast mover(s), he's an even juicier target for a wing of slow moving bombers.
But he didn't launch his TIEs until directly ordered to do so.
If the captain of a ship isn't willing to step out of line to defend his life and his massively armed and expensive warship (by following what should be logical doctrine for an engagement of this kind) until he's given permission, what's the likelihood that some random storm trooper is going to speak up with a "Hey, that planet that was 5, 10 minutes away... any chance that it's habitable and they may have made their way to it using cloaked ships? Maybe we should go check that out, huh?".
The Dreadnought captain (Canady or something) was never ordered to launch his TIEs. The Huxster never actually gives him an order, he just screams "why aren't you blasting that puny ship!?" Canady explains the basics of turbolasers and then of his own accord says "We need to scramble our fighters, five bloody minutes ago!"
The lack-of-initiative explanation doesn't work for this guy anyway, because the Dreadnought captain and the Supremacy captain are both established in the background as Imperial Navy veterans, not First Order scrubs. This is kind of shown in how he's super impatient with his newbie crew and with Hux for not knowing basic shit.
I think the best way to reconcile that with Canady's failure to scramble earlier is that doing so would have been such a no-brainer in the old Imperial Navy that he expected his XO or someone else to issue the command automatically. Then Hux opens his mouth and Canady is suddenly reminded that he is surrounded by idiots.
e: I was really hoping that Hux is actually a competent ground forces commander who's out of his depth in space, but he doesn't get to do anything in the ground battle either
How was Holdo's plan ever going to work, anyway? The transports slip to the planet surface, the fleet blows the Raddus out of space, and Kylo still senses his mom alive. Or, if Ben fails to notice through the force, there is Snoke, who's kinda hard to miss, seeing as how he's flying around in the biggest ship imaginable. Her whole plan was the equivalent of jumping out of your car into a cornfield to avoid 2 police helicopters. But for the sake of argument, let's say Ben and Snoke sense nothing because...whatever. There are still about 6 million assholes on all the assorted Star Destroyers. Even if we give each of them just a 1% just to think, huh, maybe they left the ship and landed on that planet, Holdo's jig is up 60 thousand times.
It's just...ugh, this is the plan the movie wanted me to believe was the *good* one. If only Poe hadn't gotten in the way, *this* would have gone off without a hitch.
It was shown that the First Order are ridiculously devoted to blindly following the chain of command.
The captain of the dreadnought knew he needed his fighter screen up as soon as they dropped out of hyperspace, because his ship is a juicy target for small, fast moving attackers and it doesn't have sufficient anti fighter capability to defend itself without a fighter screen. And once his AA is stripped by said fast mover(s), he's an even juicier target for a wing of slow moving bombers.
But he didn't launch his TIEs until directly ordered to do so.
If the captain of a ship isn't willing to step out of line to defend his life and his massively armed and expensive warship (by following what should be logical doctrine for an engagement of this kind) until he's given permission, what's the likelihood that some random storm trooper is going to speak up with a "Hey, that planet that was 5, 10 minutes away... any chance that it's habitable and they may have made their way to it using cloaked ships? Maybe we should go check that out, huh?".
The Dreadnought captain (Canady or something) was never ordered to launch his TIEs. The Huxster never actually gives him an order, he just screams "why aren't you blasting that puny ship!?" Canady explains the basics of turbolasers and then of his own accord says "We need to scramble our fighters, five bloody minutes ago!"
The lack-of-initiative explanation doesn't work for this guy anyway, because the Dreadnought captain and the Supremacy captain are both established in the background as Imperial Navy veterans, not First Order scrubs. This is kind of shown in how he's super impatient with his newbie crew and with Hux for not knowing basic shit.
I think the best way to reconcile that with Canady's failure to scramble earlier is that doing so would have been such a no-brainer in the old Imperial Navy that he expected his XO or someone else to issue the command automatically. Then Hux opens his mouth and Canady is suddenly reminded that he is surrounded by idiots.
e: I was really hoping that Hux is actually a competent ground forces commander who's out of his depth in space, but he doesn't get to do anything in the ground battle either
Indeed, I took that scene to be on the level of him just assuming that OF COURSE everyone would be following good close space patrol doctrine and scrambling fighters immediately on warp exit. He should no more need to check that that had been done than he should need to check that someone had plugged in the turbolasers.
Are you referring to when Huxtable tells Kylo Ren to pull back? Because we are shown that every other fighter flying alongside Ren is blown to smithereens by that point. You know, explicitly establishing that while the Resistance ships can't fight toe-to-toe with the First Order's capital ships, they are able to fend off fighter attacks.
But... they totally failed to fend off those three fighters. It doesn't matter if the cruiser shot down two of them after losing its bridge and hangar (the hangar alone means those three TIEs have a positive KDR in terms of fighter losses)
What does "covering" the TIEs even mean? Were they somehow suppressing the cruiser's point defenses? Why not just send more fighters and pull Ren back?
Are you referring to when Huxtable tells Kylo Ren to pull back? Because we are shown that every other fighter flying alongside Ren is blown to smithereens by that point. You know, explicitly establishing that while the Resistance ships can't fight toe-to-toe with the First Order's capital ships, they are able to fend off fighter attacks.
But... they totally failed to fend off those three fighters. It doesn't matter if the cruiser shot down two of them after losing its bridge and hangar (the hangar alone means those three TIEs have a positive KDR in terms of fighter losses)
What does "covering" the TIEs even mean? Were they somehow suppressing the cruiser's point defenses? Why not just send more fighters and pull Ren back?
Because sending fighters out was never the plan - Kylo had gone out there on his own initiative because he was pissed off at the lecture Snoke had given him and wanted to be like "oh yeah check THIS out, I'm gonna KILL MY MOM."
EDIT: I think you're confused about "covering fire," that's a completely different scene I was talking about.
Are you referring to when Huxtable tells Kylo Ren to pull back? Because we are shown that every other fighter flying alongside Ren is blown to smithereens by that point. You know, explicitly establishing that while the Resistance ships can't fight toe-to-toe with the First Order's capital ships, they are able to fend off fighter attacks.
But... they totally failed to fend off those three fighters. It doesn't matter if the cruiser shot down two of them after losing its bridge and hangar (the hangar alone means those three TIEs have a positive KDR in terms of fighter losses)
What does "covering" the TIEs even mean? Were they somehow suppressing the cruiser's point defenses? Why not just send more fighters and pull Ren back?
Actually you can see the cruiser shoot down Kylo's wingman.
And to be clear I wasn't making an argument about Rose specifically, but rather trying to apply "real world" tactics in general to Star Wars. The plot dictates the tactics in SW, not the other way around.
What if, and I realize this is a pretty big reach, but what if nobody on either side of the war is particularly good at their jobs? I think it's interesting to think about all the plot-dictates-action pratfalls and unforced errors in the context of the First Order and Resistance being almost entirely (exceptions I guess for Poe's piloting skills and Kylo being Force-powered) just kinda ...unimaginative, petty (FO) or optimistic (R) borderline-competent folks with access to extremely advanced and powerful technology that lets them literally stride across and destroy whole worlds as they go about their ideological conflict.
I know this isn't "the real story" but as I say, I find it an interesting perspective from which to watch the ST and just ...I dunno. I've watched both films several times, and sometimes this is how I think about them, and it holds together pretty well and is definitely a different thing than watching them straight and trying to come up with reasons for everything.
What if, and I realize this is a pretty big reach, but what if nobody on either side of the war is particularly good at their jobs? I think it's interesting to think about all the plot-dictates-action pratfalls and unforced errors in the context of the First Order and Resistance being almost entirely (exceptions I guess for Poe's piloting skills and Kylo being Force-powered) just kinda ...unimaginative, petty (FO) or optimistic (R) borderline-competent folks with access to extremely advanced and powerful technology that lets them literally stride across and destroy whole worlds as they go about their ideological conflict.
I know this isn't "the real story" but as I say, I find it an interesting perspective from which to watch the ST and just ...I dunno. I've watched both films several times, and sometimes this is how I think about them, and it holds together pretty well and is definitely a different thing than watching them straight and trying to come up with reasons for everything.
It's probably pretty close to the real story as the major military story beats of the original trilogy were Rebels get captured* - Death Star plans stolen* - Rebel leader escapes* - Empire finds rebel base* - Death Star destroyed - Empire eliminates rebel base* - Rebel leader captured* - Rebel leader escapes* - Death Star rebuilt - Empire sabotages rebel sabotage* - Rebels sabotage empire sabotage of rebel sabotage* - Empire leader killed - Death Star destroyed.
* represents a failure of either side to guard intelligence assets resulting in losses independent of the military economy
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Quick weigh in on this: there's a fundamental difference in how the threat of the First Order is presented between TFA and TLJ. In the former, they're shown to be brutally efficient and individually competent: when they storm through that town in Jakku in the opening scene and later on in the market they're present in relatively small numbers but quickly overwhelm the heroes. Likewise one of the most telling differences is how Rey & Finn are hounded by two TIE Fighters in a protracted battle. Not a single TIE Fighter runs into an obstacle in TFA. Poe is still able to get in his hits, but even he's unable to make a difference without outside help. In TLJ the First Order is presented as a threat solely from their comically large numbers and their technology & equipment advantage. Individually they're bumbling, blow-hards completely lacking in initiative and agency outside of Kylo Ren. In a way the threat of the First Order in TLJ simply comes from the Resistance's inability to actually fight them as whenever they do fight they punch well above their weight.
I'd also like to point out that the scale of the conflict is weirder in TLJ: When the entirety of the First Order was on a relatively small base* and in a single large Star Destroyer, a Resistance "Fleet" that totaled about 24 T-70s and a handful of para-military personnel kinda makes sense (especially with the heavy backing of the New Republic). When the First Order is able to muster a Navy on-par with what the Galactic Empire had, it's a little less believable. Now there are some really heavy caveats here when I consider Starkiller base to simply be the surface structures and not the entire planet (an impossibly large scale project; even considering the progression form Death Star 2). And I'll admit it could be possible for the FO Navy to be some sort of shadow organization that the New Republic did not fully investigate. But again if that were the case then why didn't they use those assets in TFA? Where is the rest of the New Republic's Fleet: presumably a galactic military doesn't park all of their fleet in one system. These points that we keep bringing up aren't just pedantic whinings; they underpin what I believe TLJ sorely lacks which is realism.
And I get it; space wizards and laser swords aren't real. I get it in other movies too: ringwraiths and elves aren't real either. I'm not talking about realistic, I'm talking about realism in the sense that characters act in a believable way given their own knowledge and circumstances. This is why I continually brought up the tone in the previous thread. I expect if a movie wants me to take it seriously, i.e. it's not presenting itself as a comedy or light-hearted adventure romp etc., then I expect there to be a relatively high amount of realism.
Poe wipes out 8 ties in a single pass in TFA andsmacks down some stormtroopers while he's at it. The FO goes from handily in control of the situation to utter rout the instant opposition shows up. They do a bit better at Starkiller, but given the relative numbers it's about the same as TLJ. They win on Jakku, but every fight there is against either mostly defenseless villagers or two people who are caught entirely flat footed and just trying to GTFO.
I'm not sure what the objection about TIES crashing is? Same thing happened in Return of the Jedi.
You can't blame TFA for the resistance fleet being destroyed as that was also set up in TFA. Which never said the entire FO was on that base, and given we never see the leader of the FO in person the entire movie that would suggest it's not all there.
A lot of the issues with Holdo really have little to do with Holdo, but the nonsensical writing of the situation. She's just a focus of the ire because her plot point is unnecessary.
Why keep the secret at all? She never gives a reason for not telling anyone nor does the movie present one. It's just because she says so in order to manufacture drama.
It would have been much better for the movie if the First Order didn't have some silly tracking system and just remember that A New Hope exists and that the Millennium Falcon had a tracker on it. So in TLJ, a spy places a tracker on the Resistance ship, justifying secrecy, also cutting out that waste of time casino planet. Poe, Finn, and Rose would still have something to do. You can even add Benicio in some manner and we'll be wondering who is the spy between them. It justifies Holdo's secrecy, we don't have to write why only one of the First Order's ship's can track at a time (even though Finn says the other ships can if the main one is disabled).
However, what really sealed it for me not liking Holdo's character was how easily she forgave Poe after what he did. The entire movie, she's antagonistic to him and shows no reason to like, trust, or respect him. Later, Poe walks in and calls her a coward and a traitor in front of every single subordinate on the bridge, then he mutinies and holds Holdo at gun point. After all that is said and done, Holdo "likes" Poe despite that he insulted her, threatened her, and put the lives of every person on the ship in danger.
I'm sorry, but that's both poor character and plot writing for the sake of drama that wasn't needed.
The mere possibility that a tracker may have been placed on one of the ships, or that a spy of some sort may be sending the First Order their location, is more than enough to justify Holdo's secrecy. And those possibilities are so obvious they didn't even need to be explicitly spelled out on screen.
I dunno, if there's one thing that Star Wars has taught us, it's that counterintelligence is crap and will always fail
I'm leaving my agree on this post, but I was thinking about it and actually it's wrong.
Imperial counterintelligence succeeds spectacularly in ROTJ, they gave the Bothans false information (the Death Star is not yet operational) and deceived the Rebel fleet into accepting a decisive battle on Imperial terms.
Dongs Galore on
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
A lot of the issues with Holdo really have little to do with Holdo, but the nonsensical writing of the situation. She's just a focus of the ire because her plot point is unnecessary.
Why keep the secret at all? She never gives a reason for not telling anyone nor does the movie present one. It's just because she says so in order to manufacture drama.
It would have been much better for the movie if the First Order didn't have some silly tracking system and just remember that A New Hope exists and that the Millennium Falcon had a tracker on it. So in TLJ, a spy places a tracker on the Resistance ship, justifying secrecy, also cutting out that waste of time casino planet. Poe, Finn, and Rose would still have something to do. You can even add Benicio in some manner and we'll be wondering who is the spy between them. It justifies Holdo's secrecy, we don't have to write why only one of the First Order's ship's can track at a time (even though Finn says the other ships can if the main one is disabled).
However, what really sealed it for me not liking Holdo's character was how easily she forgave Poe after what he did. The entire movie, she's antagonistic to him and shows no reason to like, trust, or respect him. Later, Poe walks in and calls her a coward and a traitor in front of every single subordinate on the bridge, then he mutinies and holds Holdo at gun point. After all that is said and done, Holdo "likes" Poe despite that he insulted her, threatened her, and put the lives of every person on the ship in danger.
I'm sorry, but that's both poor character and plot writing for the sake of drama that wasn't needed.
The mere possibility that a tracker may have been placed on one of the ships, or that a spy of some sort may be sending the First Order their location, is more than enough to justify Holdo's secrecy. And those possibilities are so obvious they didn't even need to be explicitly spelled out on screen.
I dunno, if there's one thing that Star Wars has taught us, it's that counterintelligence is crap and will always fail
I'm leaving my agree on this post, but I was thinking about it and actually it's wrong.
Imperial counterintelligence succeeds spectacularly in ROTJ, they gave the Bothans false information (the Death Star is not yet operational) and deceived the Rebel fleet into accepting a decisive battle on Imperial terms.
The Imperials weren't exactly complete screw-ups in Rogue One either. They failed, but it was a near thing, and the entire plot against them was kicked off by a guy who'd spent 20+ years basically as a sleeper agent. Once that shuttle pilot went rogue the Imperials were all over things.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
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That_GuyI don't wanna be that guyRegistered Userregular
Quick weigh in on this: there's a fundamental difference in how the threat of the First Order is presented between TFA and TLJ. In the former, they're shown to be brutally efficient and individually competent: when they storm through that town in Jakku in the opening scene and later on in the market they're present in relatively small numbers but quickly overwhelm the heroes. Likewise one of the most telling differences is how Rey & Finn are hounded by two TIE Fighters in a protracted battle. Not a single TIE Fighter runs into an obstacle in TFA. Poe is still able to get in his hits, but even he's unable to make a difference without outside help. In TLJ the First Order is presented as a threat solely from their comically large numbers and their technology & equipment advantage. Individually they're bumbling, blow-hards completely lacking in initiative and agency outside of Kylo Ren. In a way the threat of the First Order in TLJ simply comes from the Resistance's inability to actually fight them as whenever they do fight they punch well above their weight.
I'd also like to point out that the scale of the conflict is weirder in TLJ: When the entirety of the First Order was on a relatively small base* and in a single large Star Destroyer, a Resistance "Fleet" that totaled about 24 T-70s and a handful of para-military personnel kinda makes sense (especially with the heavy backing of the New Republic). When the First Order is able to muster a Navy on-par with what the Galactic Empire had, it's a little less believable. Now there are some really heavy caveats here when I consider Starkiller base to simply be the surface structures and not the entire planet (an impossibly large scale project; even considering the progression form Death Star 2). And I'll admit it could be possible for the FO Navy to be some sort of shadow organization that the New Republic did not fully investigate. But again if that were the case then why didn't they use those assets in TFA? Where is the rest of the New Republic's Fleet: presumably a galactic military doesn't park all of their fleet in one system. These points that we keep bringing up aren't just pedantic whinings; they underpin what I believe TLJ sorely lacks which is realism.
And I get it; space wizards and laser swords aren't real. I get it in other movies too: ringwraiths and elves aren't real either. I'm not talking about realistic, I'm talking about realism in the sense that characters act in a believable way given their own knowledge and circumstances. This is why I continually brought up the tone in the previous thread. I expect if a movie wants me to take it seriously, i.e. it's not presenting itself as a comedy or light-hearted adventure romp etc., then I expect there to be a relatively high amount of realism.
The First Order was a lot bigger than we give them credit for. It's not stated on screen but the novels and tie-in material give us a lot of their back story. In the 20 or so years since the Battle of Jakku, the remnants of the imperial navy went off to the unknown regions. It's a largely unexplored part of the galaxy that a few series favorites (like Thawn) hail from. Snoke was also from there. There are few known hyperspace routes through the area. Even fewer planets have been explored. Most people who go to the unknown regions, don't come back. For that 20 years The First Order had been launching raids on poorly defended systems . They would storm in, murder all the men and women, and take the children away for indoctrination, leaving no one to tell anyone about the incident. Meanwhile droids worked tirelessly day and night to construct a fleet and a new super weapon. After 20 years they had an army and navy capage of going head to head with anything The Republic could throw at them. Most of it they didn't even need because, after the battle of Jakku The Republic largely dismantled its military. There had been no large scale thread for 20 years so everyone thought they were safe. Leia had fight to hold onto her personal army through the years but it was still limited to a few capital ships, a smattering of support craft and a bunch of fighter/bombers. By the time Starkiller base was online, there wasn't much resistance anyone could hope offer. In a single strike the entire republic leadership was wiped out. Crippled and unable to manage it's territory, the republic fell in days. By the time we pick up TLJ, the first order had won. The galaxy was there's for the taking. Any local resistance could be swept aside with ease. The only thorn in their side was Leia's person army. She had been losing badly ever since blowing up Starkiller base.
I think they are going for a WW1 WW2 sort of analogy. After WW1, the US and a lot of other countries went through a disarmament period and were largely unprepared for the outbreak of WW2.
I don't really get the disarmament thing, wasn't there also a cold war with the imperial remnant before the first order shows up?
The Battle of Jakku took place only a few years after RotJ. Between that battle and the events of TLJ, no one had heard a peep from any imperial remnants. There was no cold war because the republic thought it had won. No one was expecting germany The Empire to be a threat again.
To some extent, even if it's lazy, I do understand why the First Order is as powerful as it is.
In the old EU, the New Republic / Rebel Alliance, was able to decisively defeat the majority of the Empire's scattered forces, pushing them back all the way to the galaxy's edge where they remained for decades (and even then, they eventually retook the galaxy with the help of the One Sith). There was massive infighting and warlord-ism that only briefly ended when the clone Palpatine returned. After his final death, they were worse off than ever.
In the New Canon, the vast majority of the Empire's military machine was not destroyed. Rather the destruction of the Empire's leadership and a few key fleets threw the chain of command into chaos, but there wasn't the infighting and general collapse seen in the old EU. Rather, they chose to retreat and dig in. This started the "cold war" situation we see, and of course retreading old ground, the New Republic in the new canon was stupid enough to assume the Empire would actually honor its disarmament treaties. Mostly because politically, the new government was under huge pressure to appear as "un-military" as possible. Resulting in a UN type situation in which their power, was essentially just suggestions, and not mandates to the planets therein.
That stuff isn’t really shown in TFA and I have to wonder if JJ was working from that backstory or if it was created after his initial script. I like it less because it makes me question the realism of the setting and especially some of the decisions of the First Order.
I think they are going for a WW1 WW2 sort of analogy. After WW1, the US and a lot of other countries went through a disarmament period and were largely unprepared for the outbreak of WW2.
This is a bit outside the scope of the thread but your statement is largely untrue. All the world militaries, especially America’s, we’re going through a tremendous period of growth and modernization in the interim years. The downsizing was largely limited to low ranking enlisted personnel* that were meant to be immediately refilled via the draft.
A better example is actually post Cold War up through 2015 (I think) where despite being engaged in ongoing operations the US actually continued to downsize in total personnel and equipment. There’s a (thankfully unrealistic) speculative fiction book called Ghost Fleet that uses this as its background for WWIII that’s pretty interesting.
edit: My bad: it was low ranking personnel among both officers and enlisted. Source.
I don't really get the disarmament thing, wasn't there also a cold war with the imperial remnant before the first order shows up?
The Battle of Jakku took place only a few years after RotJ. Between that battle and the events of TLJ, no one had heard a peep from any imperial remnants. There was no cold war because the republic thought it had won. No one was expecting germany The Empire to be a threat again.
According to the wiki, the Cold War began after Jakku, and there were still Imperial successors besides the First Order around, but I admit I haven't read the sources it's citing
Even without any additional material, TFA never claims Starkiller base as anything other than a weapon platform. Supreme Leader Snoke was not even there. I think a reasonable viewer would assume most of the First Order are not concentrated on Starkiller.
As for Stormtrooper/Empire incompetance...that's been a running gag since the OT. Without Vaders occasional splashes of good decisions the Rebels are even more prepared to assault the second Death Star.
It’s something I liked particularly about TFA: it shows the FO to be a credible (though not unassailable) and competent threat. Empire did a similarly good job. ROTJ, well, not as much for the ground battle, but the space battle was pretty intense!
Even without any additional material, TFA never claims Starkiller base as anything other than a weapon platform. Supreme Leader Snoke was not even there. I think a reasonable viewer would assume most of the First Order are not concentrated on Starkiller.
As for Stormtrooper/Empire incompetance...that's been a running gag since the OT. Without Vaders occasional splashes of good decisions the Rebels are even more prepared to assault the second Death Star.
I think that is one logical assumption. Another is that Snoke is sequestered someplace safe and away from attention so as not to be as vulnerable. I'm sure there are a few reasonable explanations, not just a single one. But going along with your assumption what were these First Order forces busy doing? Why were they waiting to mobilize? Why weren't they present to defend Starkiller base, which I have to assume is an extremely valuable resource and worth defending. They obviously weren't too busy because they just warp in at the very beginning of TLJ. TFA does a poor job of showing exactly what state the galaxy is in, but it's not as pronounced because what is shown is still somewhat in the realm of believablity. I believe it's even worse in TLJ because the comic imbalance between the two forces implies a level of buffoonery so as to be unbelievable.
*snip*
The First Order was a lot bigger than we give them credit for... Meanwhile droids worked tirelessly day and night to construct a fleet and a new super weapon. After 20 years they had an army and navy capage of going head to head with anything The Republic could throw at them... Most of it they didn't even need because, after the battle of Jakku The Republic largely dismantled its military.
First off thanks for the backstory from the books. You'll have to tell me if they're good reads; I really enjoyed the whole Thrawn Trilogy, so if they're on par with that I'll consider picking up the audiobooks. Anyway this isn't to throw shade at you but rather expose the flaws in the backstory behind these movies. So did the First Order have droids working tirelessly to construct their fleet or did they buy it all from weapons dealers on Casino planet? If it's so well known that selling arms to the First Order will make you rich, then why was the Republic unconcerned and willing to be so vulnerable? My interpretation is that The Last Jedi opens up immediately following the attack, not days later which is why the Resistance is caught with their pants down. But it's a bit unclear when exactly all the various plot lines are happening.
Poe wipes out 8 ties in a single pass in TFA andsmacks down some stormtroopers while he's at it. The FO goes from handily in control of the situation to utter rout the instant opposition shows up. They do a bit better at Starkiller, but given the relative numbers it's about the same as TLJ. They win on Jakku, but every fight there is against either mostly defenseless villagers or two people who are caught entirely flat footed and just trying to GTFO.
I'm not sure what the objection about TIES crashing is? Same thing happened in Return of the Jedi.
You can't blame TFA for the resistance fleet being destroyed as that was also set up in TFA. Which never said the entire FO was on that base, and given we never see the leader of the FO in person the entire movie that would suggest it's not all there.
I think the scene that establishes Poe's flying ability is a bit gratuitous yes, but I also think it's well established that X-wings are a good match for at least 2x their number in TIE fighters (to my own nerdy glee this is supported in the X-Wing mini's game). Importantly in that scene the FO accomplishes their mission, or at least thinks they do, despite their heavy losses implying more than a bit of competence. Regardless they're no less competent because they lose to a better equipped and better trained force, e.g. a superior force. They're defeated by competency as opposed to TLJ where it's more of a race to the bottom between which side can better (?) mismanage their military forces. Similarly the objection to defeating a TIE fighter by shooting it down rather than having it haphazardly crash while in pursuit is that it shows the TIE to be an incompetent pilot.
Finally a quick follow up to my earlier comment about interwar period army if anyone is interested:
This is just because I'm a big history nerd when it comes to the study of war. Also I'm a military officer so this is somewhat job related. One of my favorite books about this time period is called Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers, and talks a lot about what lessons the Army took from WWI. To summarize their outcomes the Army looked at WWI as mostly a problem of mobilization. If they were able to keep a dedicated logistical and command core along with a larger regular standing army, come war time they'd have the support structure in place to rapidly mobilize conscripted troops. While tanks, airplanes, and chemical weapons were all new weapons during WWI their effect on the battlefield was very limited due to poor understanding of their value and inherent limitations. A few officers, famously George Patton and Billy Mitchell, advocated vigorously for their respective components. Luckily they saw success in the National Defense Act of 1920 which governed the Army through WWII until it was replaced by the National Security Act of 1947. Among other things the act increased the size of the regular standing army from it's pre-WWI size of roughly 100,000 to 500,000, as well as established the Army Air Corp. Because of this America was much better prepared to enter into WWII than it had been for WWI. That being said there were some very obvious deficiencies in their equipment & training.
To put a cap on this, I'd like to say that this doesn't mean that militaries as presented in movies should be infallible. There are plenty of great and historically accurate movies that show incompetence and failure, usually at the senior officer level. But in order to successfully convey that to the audience we must understand the context behind these mistakes. Otherwise without context it simply passes as abject buffoonery. And this is just one complaint I have with TLJ. But I think it's especially blatant as it's all in service to Poe's arc regarding military leadership. When you look at the story with any discernment and try to understand how Poe is supposed to become a good leader from the actions that take place it's all baffling.
It’s something I liked particularly about TFA: it shows the FO to be a credible (though not unassailable) and competent threat. Empire did a similarly good job. ROTJ, well, not as much for the ground battle, but the space battle was pretty intense!
In ESB, the Empire command officers would have ignored Hoth and let the Falcon get away. Vader made the decision to attack Hoth and Vader hired bounty hunters to track the Falcon to Cloud City.
Empire officers just do not do very well on their own.
It’s something I liked particularly about TFA: it shows the FO to be a credible (though not unassailable) and competent threat. Empire did a similarly good job. ROTJ, well, not as much for the ground battle, but the space battle was pretty intense!
In ESB, the Empire command officers would have ignored Hoth and let the Falcon get away. Vader made the decision to attack Hoth and Vader hired bounty hunters to track the Falcon to Cloud City.
Empire officers just do not do very well on their own.
A running theme in the original trilogy was how Vader's management was depleting the officer core of useful people. By the time of the first order if the officer core was not made up of morons i would be shocked. Smart people don't take positions where they might encounter a raging sith.
It’s something I liked particularly about TFA: it shows the FO to be a credible (though not unassailable) and competent threat. Empire did a similarly good job. ROTJ, well, not as much for the ground battle, but the space battle was pretty intense!
In ESB, the Empire command officers would have ignored Hoth and let the Falcon get away. Vader made the decision to attack Hoth and Vader hired bounty hunters to track the Falcon to Cloud City.
Empire officers just do not do very well on their own.
Sure. I took that to be more that those probes were inherently unreliable but Vadar's mastery of the Force allowed him clairvoyance enough to sense Luke's presence on Hoth, but you're right in they do show some signs of incompetence: especially nearly running into each other trying to capture the Falcon. And Vadar rightly hires the Bounty Hunters to get some higher competence help. Competence and incompetence aren't two sides of a coin: it's two ends of a scale and throughout Star Wars that scale tips in both directions. I just think it tips too far in incompetence throughout TLJ.
In Star Wars Rebels, at least the first two seasons, the Empire is pretty comically inept as well. But the tone of that show is much different too, so it doesn't bother me there. That being said when they want to raise the stakes in the show they correspondingly raise the competence level of the villains, which I think says something about providing the right amount of threat relative to how serious a tone you want to set.
To be fair to Vader, he was absolutely right about Hoth.
To be doubly right to Vader, he understood that the primary reason the Rebels defeated the Empire in ANH was because Luke was strong enough in the Force to achieve what he did. Countering that was a worthy goal, let alone bringing it into the Empire's fold.
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Darth Vader also uses his personal fighter command to scramble about a dozen TIE Fighters that inflict vicious losses on 30 Rebel ships (with the Death Star's own antiaircraft defenses anyway), and when he joins they almost completely wipe them out. That would be the aforementioned Grand Moff Tarkin grabbing the idiot ball, in such a manner that cost him his life, lost the massive battle station, and potentially lost them the war down the line (though at least he wasn't a coward doing it). I'd honestly find it believable if Tarkin, so unshakable in his belief in the Death Star's invulnerability, actually declined to deploy a huge counter-strike of fighters because he was already annoyed that he had to lose four of them (four of them! gasp!) in the whole scheme that brought them to Yavin. It doesn't make him any less stupid in that moment, it just is fun to speculate about people's need to preserve their own reputations.
On the other hand, Darth Vader also demonstrates ultra-incompetence of a different style when he executes Captain Needa for owning up to the Falcon escaping via an unexpected technique during an asteroid field pursuit also ordered by Vader and also very stupidly conducted. But then again, one could argue killing that the naval commander who owns up to what barely qualifies as a mistake even though he knows you, the fleet commander, is a giant murderous man-baby in an armored respirator prone to tantrums is exactly what said man-baby would do, because he blames the Empire for killing is pregnant senator girlfriend (also your fault). So it all works out, once we establish Darth Vader hates the Empire and is a terrible, wasteful fleet commander (with practical goals?).
It’s something I liked particularly about TFA: it shows the FO to be a credible (though not unassailable) and competent threat. Empire did a similarly good job. ROTJ, well, not as much for the ground battle, but the space battle was pretty intense!
In ESB, the Empire command officers would have ignored Hoth and let the Falcon get away. Vader made the decision to attack Hoth and Vader hired bounty hunters to track the Falcon to Cloud City.
Empire officers just do not do very well on their own.
A running theme in the original trilogy was how Vader's management was depleting the officer core of useful people. By the time of the first order if the officer core was not made up of morons i would be shocked. Smart people don't take positions where they might encounter a raging sith.
I don't know about the new films, but this was true in the old literature. By the time of Thrawn, there's absolutely a culture in the Empire's military that the knows the Sith are unstable, unreliable, untrustworthy, and equal parts dangerous fuck-ups as masterful geniuses, and concurrently, the military culture blamed them for "fucking everything up" (the Emperor, Vader, etc.), thereby scapegoating all Dark Jedi, Sith included presumably (as if the Empire's leaders cared about the distinction). C'Boath is the canary in the coal mine for this--in the books, the whole of Thrawn's command down to the sailors, air crews and infantry grunts knows he's a fucking insane lunatic, and that he's dark Jedi (two things he doesn't know himself), but Thrawn seems to know what he's doing, and he's got him on a leash (there's that overconfidence again...though it's hard to argue C'Boath was Thrawn's undoing really).
Granted, it doesn't stop it from happening completely. They still need to be stupid and keep losing, after all, or the setting doesn't work. Not until a few years later, when after the catastrophic defeats of Dark Empire there basically aren't enough Sith in shrinking Imperial Space to work an espresso machine. It's kind of funny that, eventually, the Empire was so reduced and defeated that pretty soon the Sith exclusively lived in the Republic's sphere of influence, and ceased to be an Imperial problem. By the time of the Hand of Thrawn duology (?), what's left of the Empire is glad to be rid of them (Pellaeon basically concludes that one bad Dark Jedi-led campaign would wiped out the entire military) and busy licking its own wounds.
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Vader also lost half his star destroyers in that asteroid field.
Vader is incredibly ruthless and pretty uncaring of the lives of his men, he only cares about results and lives through fear. He does, notably, capture various rebels, destroy their base and almost capture Skywalker; I'd call him at times too callous to be a competent leader but certainly a dangerous and cunning foe.
Vader also lost half his star destroyers in that asteroid field.
... huh?
Yah, no Star Destroyers were lost in chasing the Falcon. Several to a dozen TIEs onscreen. A couple destroyers almost hit each other yah, but it’s never stated they were lost. I assume they swapped some paint and that was it.
"Go down, kick ass, and set yourselves up as gods, that's our Prime Directive!"
Vader also lost half his star destroyers in that asteroid field.
... huh?
Yah, no Star Destroyers were lost in chasing the Falcon. Several to a dozen TIEs onscreen. A couple destroyers almost hit each other yah, but it’s never stated they were lost. I assume they swapped some paint and that was it.
Don't you see one of the captains die on screen? And given what happened to the Executor without a bridge, I assumed at least that one was a goner.
There’s a brief shot of the bridge being hit by a rock and then a cut to Vader talking to all the captains holograms, one of the captains startles and the feed is cut.
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That always looked more like "Oops, our communication array just got taken out" rather than "Oh god we just got asteroided to death".
I could be wrong though.
We see at least one ISD have its entire command tower--and not just some whimpy kamikaze A-Wing hitting the bridge, we're talking the entire superstructure--vanish in a matte-screen effect after getting pulverized by a planetesimal of some kind. Never mind its role as a command section, that represents a huge portion of the ship, tantamount to an aircraft carrier losing its entire island (the name for the bridge, ATC, and other facilities in that tower-shaped thing rising up from the deck). Old extended materials note that many Imperial ships are very modern and compartmentalized, to the point where the Imperial Navy's rescue crews sometimes find surviving crew in debris of a ship actually blown up (the Carrack cruiser's claim to fame, though it's actually an older design), so it's possible the tens of thousands of personnel not in the structure weren't immediately killed, and maybe even took emergency measures, but that ship is pretty much unquestionably a total military loss (which amounts to the same thing from that point of view).
Funny enough, there's apparently some message lag (the vanishing officer kind of loses his step, and then the signal cuts), or it was another ship getting it around the same time.
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It's also amusing to note that there's articles from June claiming that the sales of The Last Jedi seem to be quite disappointing compared to previous Star Wars home video releases and it's unlikely that it'll ever reach the sales numbers of The Force Awakens, because so many people hate it.
The Force Awakens, at last count, was just under 6 million sales - that's total sales since it was released on Blu-Ray April 1, 2016. So catching up in sales is all but assured.
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Are you arguing that it makes sense for Finn to drag Rose all the way back to the base without being shown or discussed, it just happened and that makes it good writing? What part of not obliterating Finn and Rose is intrinsic to the First Order?
Or that Huxley pulling all the fighters back even though the Raddus is being wrecked by them, is consistent with how the First Order normally treats their fighters? He cares now for some reason, so it makes sense and is not bad writing?
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In the film, Poe explicitly says that they're going to give them cover fire.
Are you referring to when Huxtable tells Kylo Ren to pull back? Because we are shown that every other fighter flying alongside Ren is blown to smithereens by that point. You know, explicitly establishing that while the Resistance ships can't fight toe-to-toe with the First Order's capital ships, they are able to fend off fighter attacks.
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On reflection I have to concede that you are correct on that point and this is likely the intended reading of events in all the films, not just TLJ(except maybe Rogue One? not sure this applies to Jyn Erso). However it does not allow the writer to handwave the dreadnought's role. The Force nudges proton torpedoes into the right port and saves souls, it doesn't change the outcome of fleet battles.
The lack-of-initiative explanation doesn't work for this guy anyway, because the Dreadnought captain and the Supremacy captain are both established in the background as Imperial Navy veterans, not First Order scrubs. This is kind of shown in how he's super impatient with his newbie crew and with Hux for not knowing basic shit.
I think the best way to reconcile that with Canady's failure to scramble earlier is that doing so would have been such a no-brainer in the old Imperial Navy that he expected his XO or someone else to issue the command automatically. Then Hux opens his mouth and Canady is suddenly reminded that he is surrounded by idiots.
e: I was really hoping that Hux is actually a competent ground forces commander who's out of his depth in space, but he doesn't get to do anything in the ground battle either
Indeed, I took that scene to be on the level of him just assuming that OF COURSE everyone would be following good close space patrol doctrine and scrambling fighters immediately on warp exit. He should no more need to check that that had been done than he should need to check that someone had plugged in the turbolasers.
What does "covering" the TIEs even mean? Were they somehow suppressing the cruiser's point defenses? Why not just send more fighters and pull Ren back?
Because sending fighters out was never the plan - Kylo had gone out there on his own initiative because he was pissed off at the lecture Snoke had given him and wanted to be like "oh yeah check THIS out, I'm gonna KILL MY MOM."
EDIT: I think you're confused about "covering fire," that's a completely different scene I was talking about.
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Actually you can see the cruiser shoot down Kylo's wingman.
And to be clear I wasn't making an argument about Rose specifically, but rather trying to apply "real world" tactics in general to Star Wars. The plot dictates the tactics in SW, not the other way around.
I know this isn't "the real story" but as I say, I find it an interesting perspective from which to watch the ST and just ...I dunno. I've watched both films several times, and sometimes this is how I think about them, and it holds together pretty well and is definitely a different thing than watching them straight and trying to come up with reasons for everything.
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It's probably pretty close to the real story as the major military story beats of the original trilogy were Rebels get captured* - Death Star plans stolen* - Rebel leader escapes* - Empire finds rebel base* - Death Star destroyed - Empire eliminates rebel base* - Rebel leader captured* - Rebel leader escapes* - Death Star rebuilt - Empire sabotages rebel sabotage* - Rebels sabotage empire sabotage of rebel sabotage* - Empire leader killed - Death Star destroyed.
* represents a failure of either side to guard intelligence assets resulting in losses independent of the military economy
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I'd also like to point out that the scale of the conflict is weirder in TLJ: When the entirety of the First Order was on a relatively small base* and in a single large Star Destroyer, a Resistance "Fleet" that totaled about 24 T-70s and a handful of para-military personnel kinda makes sense (especially with the heavy backing of the New Republic). When the First Order is able to muster a Navy on-par with what the Galactic Empire had, it's a little less believable. Now there are some really heavy caveats here when I consider Starkiller base to simply be the surface structures and not the entire planet (an impossibly large scale project; even considering the progression form Death Star 2). And I'll admit it could be possible for the FO Navy to be some sort of shadow organization that the New Republic did not fully investigate. But again if that were the case then why didn't they use those assets in TFA? Where is the rest of the New Republic's Fleet: presumably a galactic military doesn't park all of their fleet in one system. These points that we keep bringing up aren't just pedantic whinings; they underpin what I believe TLJ sorely lacks which is realism.
And I get it; space wizards and laser swords aren't real. I get it in other movies too: ringwraiths and elves aren't real either. I'm not talking about realistic, I'm talking about realism in the sense that characters act in a believable way given their own knowledge and circumstances. This is why I continually brought up the tone in the previous thread. I expect if a movie wants me to take it seriously, i.e. it's not presenting itself as a comedy or light-hearted adventure romp etc., then I expect there to be a relatively high amount of realism.
I'm not sure what the objection about TIES crashing is? Same thing happened in Return of the Jedi.
You can't blame TFA for the resistance fleet being destroyed as that was also set up in TFA. Which never said the entire FO was on that base, and given we never see the leader of the FO in person the entire movie that would suggest it's not all there.
I'm leaving my agree on this post, but I was thinking about it and actually it's wrong.
Imperial counterintelligence succeeds spectacularly in ROTJ, they gave the Bothans false information (the Death Star is not yet operational) and deceived the Rebel fleet into accepting a decisive battle on Imperial terms.
The Imperials weren't exactly complete screw-ups in Rogue One either. They failed, but it was a near thing, and the entire plot against them was kicked off by a guy who'd spent 20+ years basically as a sleeper agent. Once that shuttle pilot went rogue the Imperials were all over things.
The First Order was a lot bigger than we give them credit for. It's not stated on screen but the novels and tie-in material give us a lot of their back story. In the 20 or so years since the Battle of Jakku, the remnants of the imperial navy went off to the unknown regions. It's a largely unexplored part of the galaxy that a few series favorites (like Thawn) hail from. Snoke was also from there. There are few known hyperspace routes through the area. Even fewer planets have been explored. Most people who go to the unknown regions, don't come back. For that 20 years The First Order had been launching raids on poorly defended systems . They would storm in, murder all the men and women, and take the children away for indoctrination, leaving no one to tell anyone about the incident. Meanwhile droids worked tirelessly day and night to construct a fleet and a new super weapon. After 20 years they had an army and navy capage of going head to head with anything The Republic could throw at them. Most of it they didn't even need because, after the battle of Jakku The Republic largely dismantled its military. There had been no large scale thread for 20 years so everyone thought they were safe. Leia had fight to hold onto her personal army through the years but it was still limited to a few capital ships, a smattering of support craft and a bunch of fighter/bombers. By the time Starkiller base was online, there wasn't much resistance anyone could hope offer. In a single strike the entire republic leadership was wiped out. Crippled and unable to manage it's territory, the republic fell in days. By the time we pick up TLJ, the first order had won. The galaxy was there's for the taking. Any local resistance could be swept aside with ease. The only thorn in their side was Leia's person army. She had been losing badly ever since blowing up Starkiller base.
I think they are going for a WW1 WW2 sort of analogy. After WW1, the US and a lot of other countries went through a disarmament period and were largely unprepared for the outbreak of WW2.
The Battle of Jakku took place only a few years after RotJ. Between that battle and the events of TLJ, no one had heard a peep from any imperial remnants. There was no cold war because the republic thought it had won. No one was expecting germany The Empire to be a threat again.
In the old EU, the New Republic / Rebel Alliance, was able to decisively defeat the majority of the Empire's scattered forces, pushing them back all the way to the galaxy's edge where they remained for decades (and even then, they eventually retook the galaxy with the help of the One Sith). There was massive infighting and warlord-ism that only briefly ended when the clone Palpatine returned. After his final death, they were worse off than ever.
In the New Canon, the vast majority of the Empire's military machine was not destroyed. Rather the destruction of the Empire's leadership and a few key fleets threw the chain of command into chaos, but there wasn't the infighting and general collapse seen in the old EU. Rather, they chose to retreat and dig in. This started the "cold war" situation we see, and of course retreading old ground, the New Republic in the new canon was stupid enough to assume the Empire would actually honor its disarmament treaties. Mostly because politically, the new government was under huge pressure to appear as "un-military" as possible. Resulting in a UN type situation in which their power, was essentially just suggestions, and not mandates to the planets therein.
This is a bit outside the scope of the thread but your statement is largely untrue. All the world militaries, especially America’s, we’re going through a tremendous period of growth and modernization in the interim years. The downsizing was largely limited to low ranking enlisted personnel* that were meant to be immediately refilled via the draft.
A better example is actually post Cold War up through 2015 (I think) where despite being engaged in ongoing operations the US actually continued to downsize in total personnel and equipment. There’s a (thankfully unrealistic) speculative fiction book called Ghost Fleet that uses this as its background for WWIII that’s pretty interesting.
edit: My bad: it was low ranking personnel among both officers and enlisted. Source.
As for Stormtrooper/Empire incompetance...that's been a running gag since the OT. Without Vaders occasional splashes of good decisions the Rebels are even more prepared to assault the second Death Star.
I think that is one logical assumption. Another is that Snoke is sequestered someplace safe and away from attention so as not to be as vulnerable. I'm sure there are a few reasonable explanations, not just a single one. But going along with your assumption what were these First Order forces busy doing? Why were they waiting to mobilize? Why weren't they present to defend Starkiller base, which I have to assume is an extremely valuable resource and worth defending. They obviously weren't too busy because they just warp in at the very beginning of TLJ. TFA does a poor job of showing exactly what state the galaxy is in, but it's not as pronounced because what is shown is still somewhat in the realm of believablity. I believe it's even worse in TLJ because the comic imbalance between the two forces implies a level of buffoonery so as to be unbelievable.
First off thanks for the backstory from the books. You'll have to tell me if they're good reads; I really enjoyed the whole Thrawn Trilogy, so if they're on par with that I'll consider picking up the audiobooks. Anyway this isn't to throw shade at you but rather expose the flaws in the backstory behind these movies. So did the First Order have droids working tirelessly to construct their fleet or did they buy it all from weapons dealers on Casino planet? If it's so well known that selling arms to the First Order will make you rich, then why was the Republic unconcerned and willing to be so vulnerable? My interpretation is that The Last Jedi opens up immediately following the attack, not days later which is why the Resistance is caught with their pants down. But it's a bit unclear when exactly all the various plot lines are happening.
I think the scene that establishes Poe's flying ability is a bit gratuitous yes, but I also think it's well established that X-wings are a good match for at least 2x their number in TIE fighters (to my own nerdy glee this is supported in the X-Wing mini's game). Importantly in that scene the FO accomplishes their mission, or at least thinks they do, despite their heavy losses implying more than a bit of competence. Regardless they're no less competent because they lose to a better equipped and better trained force, e.g. a superior force. They're defeated by competency as opposed to TLJ where it's more of a race to the bottom between which side can better (?) mismanage their military forces. Similarly the objection to defeating a TIE fighter by shooting it down rather than having it haphazardly crash while in pursuit is that it shows the TIE to be an incompetent pilot.
Finally a quick follow up to my earlier comment about interwar period army if anyone is interested:
To put a cap on this, I'd like to say that this doesn't mean that militaries as presented in movies should be infallible. There are plenty of great and historically accurate movies that show incompetence and failure, usually at the senior officer level. But in order to successfully convey that to the audience we must understand the context behind these mistakes. Otherwise without context it simply passes as abject buffoonery. And this is just one complaint I have with TLJ. But I think it's especially blatant as it's all in service to Poe's arc regarding military leadership. When you look at the story with any discernment and try to understand how Poe is supposed to become a good leader from the actions that take place it's all baffling.
In ESB, the Empire command officers would have ignored Hoth and let the Falcon get away. Vader made the decision to attack Hoth and Vader hired bounty hunters to track the Falcon to Cloud City.
Empire officers just do not do very well on their own.
A running theme in the original trilogy was how Vader's management was depleting the officer core of useful people. By the time of the first order if the officer core was not made up of morons i would be shocked. Smart people don't take positions where they might encounter a raging sith.
Sure. I took that to be more that those probes were inherently unreliable but Vadar's mastery of the Force allowed him clairvoyance enough to sense Luke's presence on Hoth, but you're right in they do show some signs of incompetence: especially nearly running into each other trying to capture the Falcon. And Vadar rightly hires the Bounty Hunters to get some higher competence help. Competence and incompetence aren't two sides of a coin: it's two ends of a scale and throughout Star Wars that scale tips in both directions. I just think it tips too far in incompetence throughout TLJ.
In Star Wars Rebels, at least the first two seasons, the Empire is pretty comically inept as well. But the tone of that show is much different too, so it doesn't bother me there. That being said when they want to raise the stakes in the show they correspondingly raise the competence level of the villains, which I think says something about providing the right amount of threat relative to how serious a tone you want to set.
To be doubly right to Vader, he understood that the primary reason the Rebels defeated the Empire in ANH was because Luke was strong enough in the Force to achieve what he did. Countering that was a worthy goal, let alone bringing it into the Empire's fold.
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On the other hand, Darth Vader also demonstrates ultra-incompetence of a different style when he executes Captain Needa for owning up to the Falcon escaping via an unexpected technique during an asteroid field pursuit also ordered by Vader and also very stupidly conducted. But then again, one could argue killing that the naval commander who owns up to what barely qualifies as a mistake even though he knows you, the fleet commander, is a giant murderous man-baby in an armored respirator prone to tantrums is exactly what said man-baby would do, because he blames the Empire for killing is pregnant senator girlfriend (also your fault). So it all works out, once we establish Darth Vader hates the Empire and is a terrible, wasteful fleet commander (with practical goals?).
Sliding scale of competency versus...stupid.
I don't know about the new films, but this was true in the old literature. By the time of Thrawn, there's absolutely a culture in the Empire's military that the knows the Sith are unstable, unreliable, untrustworthy, and equal parts dangerous fuck-ups as masterful geniuses, and concurrently, the military culture blamed them for "fucking everything up" (the Emperor, Vader, etc.), thereby scapegoating all Dark Jedi, Sith included presumably (as if the Empire's leaders cared about the distinction). C'Boath is the canary in the coal mine for this--in the books, the whole of Thrawn's command down to the sailors, air crews and infantry grunts knows he's a fucking insane lunatic, and that he's dark Jedi (two things he doesn't know himself), but Thrawn seems to know what he's doing, and he's got him on a leash (there's that overconfidence again...though it's hard to argue C'Boath was Thrawn's undoing really).
Granted, it doesn't stop it from happening completely. They still need to be stupid and keep losing, after all, or the setting doesn't work. Not until a few years later, when after the catastrophic defeats of Dark Empire there basically aren't enough Sith in shrinking Imperial Space to work an espresso machine. It's kind of funny that, eventually, the Empire was so reduced and defeated that pretty soon the Sith exclusively lived in the Republic's sphere of influence, and ceased to be an Imperial problem. By the time of the Hand of Thrawn duology (?), what's left of the Empire is glad to be rid of them (Pellaeon basically concludes that one bad Dark Jedi-led campaign would wiped out the entire military) and busy licking its own wounds.
Yeah, that was pretty stupid unless one's objective was to lose half of one's fleet.
... huh?
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Yah, no Star Destroyers were lost in chasing the Falcon. Several to a dozen TIEs onscreen. A couple destroyers almost hit each other yah, but it’s never stated they were lost. I assume they swapped some paint and that was it.
Don't you see one of the captains die on screen? And given what happened to the Executor without a bridge, I assumed at least that one was a goner.
Edit: With video
There’s a brief shot of the bridge being hit by a rock and then a cut to Vader talking to all the captains holograms, one of the captains startles and the feed is cut.
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
I could be wrong though.
Funny enough, there's apparently some message lag (the vanishing officer kind of loses his step, and then the signal cuts), or it was another ship getting it around the same time.