To my mind, that question "What is the point of these since we know nobody in them is ever important because nobody ever mentions them" is partly the problem with fandom. The point of watching characters and their actions is that we care about those characters and their actions. They're not given meaning by shaking hands with Princess Leia or giving Mon Monthma a backrub. What was the point of Moff Tarkin in A New Hope, if he never turns up? It's that he's an enjoyable character to watch, full stop. If that's not there to begin with, then no degree of "Oh, but he went to school with Palpatine! She babysat Boba Fett!" will make a difference. The connections to the films can enhance our enjoyment of the characters, but if they are dependent on those connections we have a problem, as far as I'm concerned.
Well said.
I also think that it stems from the weirdly incessant need for the fans that there's some twist to how the characters are related to each other. The need that makes people think at the time, for whatever reason, that Palpatine and Sidious are different people, or that Snoke was actually Plagueius, or any number of other things. It's like there's this collective hunt for extra meaning and connection because it happened that one time when the Skywalker family was finally described.
Fueled, too, perhaps by the merchandising arm. Every barely-seen character has a backstory. Pants have backstories.
I've never seen the same thing in the other fandoms I engage in.
So the CinemaWins piece on Ep 3 makes a really good point about what's going on at the end there that the movie definitely fails to properly setup to the audience, but retrospectively makes everything about it so much better - the idea that Padme dies because Palpatine uses dark side force powers to save Anakin/Vader instead.
Wait, that's what happened? That's the official party line now? Like, I get the whole "No, Darth Vader's not an incompetent military blowhard, he actually hates the Empire because they killed his babymomma that time he drowned in lava." But I assumed it's because grieving people are normally subject to illogical and emotional conclusions in times of great hardship and/or personal injury, on top of Dark Jedi being stupid (and Anakin not being the sharpest lightsaber in the drawer to start with). Palpatine literally made a choice to save Vader instead of Padme, even though she'd already left with Obiwan? That he wasn't just making up an easy excuse when post-voicebox Vader asks him what happened to Padme? He wasn't just responsible for her death indirectly (his part in Darth Chokes-A-Lot's fall to the dark side), but directly via failure to render medical assistance?
It's just so...weird. I guess there are no such things as "incidental observer to death", even considering Palpatine never saw Amidala's body in the first place. Palpatine had to plan to arrive with his medical team after Padme had already, despite the whole "Huh, we better hurry, I sense my apprentice just got the shit knocked out of him."
If you take the scene between Anakin and Palpatine that's been posted above, I think you could read it as part of the whole plan. Dark side force powers are dark - you can't just grab a random sucker and drain them, it has to be someone you're emotionally close to - so you can transfer life force to people a target loves, or suck it away and give it to them.
Which, even - totally explains the Jedi Order having their whole "no relationships" thing. It would make total sense that it got laid down as religious observance as a check against dark side powers in force users (and, probably, the unnecessary expenditure of useful Jedi Warriors inevitably sacrificing themselves to save family members).
I honestly thought, at the time, Palpatine and Sidious were different people because my teenage brain thought, "Okay, so one is the most famous politician in the universe, and the other the mastermind behind the opposite side of the war. There's no way the whole galaxy is so stupid that they're actually the same person with shadows and a funny voice."
Almost 20 years later, the whole "Maybe Palpatine decided to imitate Darth Sidious as an homage when he went to the dark side," explanation isn't as convincing, but the situation that posed it still seems really stupid.
I'm okay with it. Most people havee never seen Sidious and most of those that did only through crappy hologram technology. Also I think it's even stated in the movies that he uses his dark side powers to obscure himself. I think Yoda has a few lines about how everything is clouded by the dark side.
I honestly thought, at the time, Palpatine and Sidious were different people because my teenage brain thought, "Okay, so one is the most famous politician in the universe, and the other the mastermind behind the opposite side of the war. There's no way the whole galaxy is so stupid that they're actually the same person with shadows and a funny voice."
Almost 20 years later, the whole "Maybe Palpatine decided to imitate Darth Sidious as an homage when he went to the dark side," explanation isn't as convincing, but the situation that posed it still seems really stupid.
Don't discount the stupidness of people when it comes to politics.
I honestly thought, at the time, Palpatine and Sidious were different people because my teenage brain thought, "Okay, so one is the most famous politician in the universe, and the other the mastermind behind the opposite side of the war. There's no way the whole galaxy is so stupid that they're actually the same person with shadows and a funny voice."
Almost 20 years later, the whole "Maybe Palpatine decided to imitate Darth Sidious as an homage when he went to the dark side," explanation isn't as convincing, but the situation that posed it still seems really stupid.
Don't discount the stupidness of people when it comes to politics.
Or faces or funny voices, apparently. To unwisely drag up the World War II analogies, it's like finding out Roosevelt and Hitler were the same person. They died a few weeks apart and you never saw either of them in the same room at the same time!
So the CinemaWins piece on Ep 3 makes a really good point about what's going on at the end there that the movie definitely fails to properly setup to the audience, but retrospectively makes everything about it so much better - the idea that Padme dies because Palpatine uses dark side force powers to save Anakin/Vader instead.
Wait, that's what happened? That's the official party line now? Like, I get the whole "No, Darth Vader's not an incompetent military blowhard, he actually hates the Empire because they killed his babymomma that time he drowned in lava." But I assumed it's because grieving people are normally subject to illogical and emotional conclusions in times of great hardship and/or personal injury, on top of Dark Jedi being stupid (and Anakin not being the sharpest lightsaber in the drawer to start with). Palpatine literally made a choice to save Vader instead of Padme, even though she'd already left with Obiwan? That he wasn't just making up an easy excuse when post-voicebox Vader asks him what happened to Padme? He wasn't just responsible for her death indirectly (his part in Darth Chokes-A-Lot's fall to the dark side), but directly via failure to render medical assistance?
It's just so...weird. I guess there are no such things as "incidental observer to death", even considering Palpatine never saw Amidala's body in the first place. Palpatine had to plan to arrive with his medical team after Padme had already, despite the whole "Huh, we better hurry, I sense my apprentice just got the shit knocked out of him."
If you take the scene between Anakin and Palpatine that's been posted above, I think you could read it as part of the whole plan. Dark side force powers are dark - you can't just grab a random sucker and drain them, it has to be someone you're emotionally close to - so you can transfer life force to people a target loves, or suck it away and give it to them.
Which, even - totally explains the Jedi Order having their whole "no relationships" thing. It would make total sense that it got laid down as religious observance as a check against dark side powers in force users (and, probably, the unnecessary expenditure of useful Jedi Warriors inevitably sacrificing themselves to save family members).
I kind of love it.
I guess. I remember discussing this character justification with a friend of mine (that Darth Vader isn't a bad military leader--or that he is, because he's deliberately undermining the Empire out of a grudge that takes precedence over his decide for power and glory), and my friend responded by laughing about Forth-Dimensional Star Wars chess.
Take that, and combine it with Palpatine being capable of deciding who lived--Vader on the military operating table dying of fourth-degree burns, or Amidala half-a-galaxy away dying in super-sad childbirth--at his leisure, apparently. This shit's fifth and sixth dimensional chess. As unconvincing as the whole "She died of a broken heart" thing is, I don't know if the solution was a "No, wait, she actually gave her life to Anakin all along!" retcon. Plus, you know, she might've wanted him to live even if she couldn't. And I never looked at Darth Vader and thought, "Oh yeah, there's no way the best robo-surgeons and military doctors in the galaxy could've saved this guy by sewing him into a walking life-support system for the rest of his life."
At least it's interesting to speculate about the reverse--what kind of abomination Amidala would've had to become to in order to...absorb...Vader's life? I suppose that was covered in Darths and Droids.
Synthesis on
0
Linespider5ALL HAIL KING KILLMONGERRegistered Userregular
edited August 2019
This talk of Sidious having to make a Sophie’s Choice between Anakin and Padme amidst the fires of Mustafar would be some really compelling shit, if it had actually gone down that way. It even makes my head spin a little.
Like, Padme should have been much closer to (Palpatine’s Civilian Name) than Anakin anyway. He was practically a surrogate father figure for her at first. Imagine him being on ‘their side’ with their minor deception of the Jedi for falling in love, and leveraging it into complicity for (Palpatine’s) full-scale deceptions of the Council.
Imagine if it had been Palpatine who had acted as officiator of the wedding rather than some random bearded mook.
She calls him Senator Palpatine way, way back in Episode 1. And she keeps calling him that afterwards. He uses it when he ascends to the chancellorship, and after becoming Emperor (a non-monarchial one anyway). "Palpatine" appears to be his actual, real name, whether he was born with it or not, because he uses it for his entire visible life. Sidious is a ritualistic pseudonym.
Mononyms are a thing, even in Star Wars, but apparently you have to be a Wookiee or a Sith Lord or something. Otherwise everyone gets all hung up on your "first name."
reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
edited August 2019
Palpatine's first name is Sheev.
edit: The story of Palpatine's name.
In the original extended canon, Palpatine had no first name. This was because he hated his family so much, he forsook his first name and simply went by his family name.
Then, I think after the Disney acquisition, someone decided that's dumb and his first name will be Sheev.
Like a shiv.
Because he'll shank you in the back.
reVerse on
0
Linespider5ALL HAIL KING KILLMONGERRegistered Userregular
I swear he’d had some other, incredibly unremarkable name in Episode One. Senator Mumblethorpe of Naboo. Something like that.
Palpatine as officiator to a secret marriage (or godfather to their..secret children) would've been interesting purely on the basis that he was probably not stupid enough to think he couldn't manipulate two wide-eyed kids instead of just one, especially if he knew both of them for their entire adult lives, and one of them particularly closely, and been ambitious enough to try to make them both his and thereby control one of the galaxy's most dangerous power couples and potentially their offspring.
Plus, you know, bad people are allowed to have fondness for others and even friendship too. I'm sure Augusto Pinochet had old friends when he was generalissimo. You just don't let them get in the way of your ambitiously ruthless schemes for power, or you end up like Julius Caesar (though considering how Palpatine died in ROTJ....).
In the original extended canon, Palpatine had no first name. This was because he hated his family so much, he forsook his first name and simply went by his family name.
Then, I think after the Disney acquisition, someone decided that's dumb and his first name will be Sheev.
Like a shiv.
Because he'll shank you in the back.
That's stupid.
Long ago, in the Imperial Sourcebook days, before Naboo and Gungans and 14-year-old elected-Queens, "Palpatine" was actually a dynastic family name of some vague repute, because like most self-declared autocrats and 100% of galactic Senators, Palpatine came from an aristocratic background, and because "Palpatine" is clearly a reference to the Palatine Hill, the home of Imperial power in Rome.
And no one cared about his given name, because lots of people don't use given names, or they hadn't been given them in the fiction.
That is less stupid.
Synthesis on
+10
Linespider5ALL HAIL KING KILLMONGERRegistered Userregular
I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me, but, if you’re a master manipulator pulling the strings to collapse the Republic and unveil your own personal tyranthood, along the way you’re probably also going to doing some good things as a means to an end. And if you end up with the galaxy’s most powerful couple under your sway, so much the better.
To my mind, that question "What is the point of these since we know nobody in them is ever important because nobody ever mentions them" is partly the problem with fandom. The point of watching characters and their actions is that we care about those characters and their actions. They're not given meaning by shaking hands with Princess Leia or giving Mon Monthma a backrub. What was the point of Moff Tarkin in A New Hope, if he never turns up? It's that he's an enjoyable character to watch, full stop. If that's not there to begin with, then no degree of "Oh, but he went to school with Palpatine! She babysat Boba Fett!" will make a difference. The connections to the films can enhance our enjoyment of the characters, but if they are dependent on those connections we have a problem, as far as I'm concerned.
Well said.
I also think that it stems from the weirdly incessant need for the fans that there's some twist to how the characters are related to each other. The need that makes people think at the time, for whatever reason, that Palpatine and Sidious are different people, or that Snoke was actually Plagueius, or any number of other things. It's like there's this collective hunt for extra meaning and connection because it happened that one time when the Skywalker family was finally described.
Fueled, too, perhaps by the merchandising arm. Every barely-seen character has a backstory. Pants have backstories.
I've never seen the same thing in the other fandoms I engage in.
So I'm actually in favor of things mattering less and the whole extended universe being less incesty.
I think my point is more specifically the Jedi, they have to be really removed from everything because otherwise they would have been a big deal. I don't understand how controversial this statement is, because we all know spoilers can really reduce enjoyment of something. I know going into it all the inquisitors have to be gone because otherwise you'd think they would have hunted down Luke.
Ahsoka should seek out Luke! She saw how shit broke bad with his dad and how powerful she was, you'd think she'd have a vested interest in seeing how he turns out. And she's the best example of my chief complaint, she literally falls into a time hole that opens on the other side of the OT. They were like "hmm, we can't justify her not getting involved, but we also don't want to kill her, what other option is there?"
I also don't see how phoenix were the og rebels that statement doesn't seem supportable. We know there are other cells and we know that our protagonists (aside from possibly Hera) have no idea how much larger the rest of the rebellion is because they're intentionally kept in the dark. Clearly Dodonna is off doing cool shit around Yavin because sure, they deliver some y-wings but where all those x-wings come from? They also don't come help at Yavin which is weird, and the movies tell us that Yavin was THE rebel base. You destroy it and you crush the rebellion.
But again, the rest of Phoenix squadron is fine and I have less beef with that aspect of the story. Splinter cells that don't know about each other does make a lot of sense. Like, they can be background bit players at Scarif or Endor (although again it's weird they weren't at Yavin or Hoth) and that's fun.
It's all these things that make them feel like an afterthought. Which to some extent is fine. It obviously was not planned for at the time of the original movies. I guess I just get annoyed at seeing the seams at which they were joined.
ChaosHat on
0
Zavianuniversal peace sounds better than forever warRegistered Userregular
edited August 2019
This scene is even creepier if you consider Palpatine knew the best way to manipulate little Anakin from the first time they met https://youtu.be/G3ZhdKW6gJo?t=216
All of his Episode I scenes are like that.
When he told Anakin at the end that he would be following the boy's career with great interest, my skin tried to crawl right off me.
To my mind, that question "What is the point of these since we know nobody in them is ever important because nobody ever mentions them" is partly the problem with fandom. The point of watching characters and their actions is that we care about those characters and their actions. They're not given meaning by shaking hands with Princess Leia or giving Mon Monthma a backrub. What was the point of Moff Tarkin in A New Hope, if he never turns up? It's that he's an enjoyable character to watch, full stop. If that's not there to begin with, then no degree of "Oh, but he went to school with Palpatine! She babysat Boba Fett!" will make a difference. The connections to the films can enhance our enjoyment of the characters, but if they are dependent on those connections we have a problem, as far as I'm concerned.
Well said.
I also think that it stems from the weirdly incessant need for the fans that there's some twist to how the characters are related to each other. The need that makes people think at the time, for whatever reason, that Palpatine and Sidious are different people, or that Snoke was actually Plagueius, or any number of other things. It's like there's this collective hunt for extra meaning and connection because it happened that one time when the Skywalker family was finally described.
Fueled, too, perhaps by the merchandising arm. Every barely-seen character has a backstory. Pants have backstories.
I've never seen the same thing in the other fandoms I engage in.
So I'm actually in favor of things mattering less and the whole extended universe being less incesty.
I think my point is more specifically the Jedi, they have to be really removed from everything because otherwise they would have been a big deal. I don't understand how controversial this statement is, because we all know spoilers can really reduce enjoyment of something. I know going into it all the inquisitors have to be gone because otherwise you'd think they would have hunted down Luke.
Ahsoka should seek out Luke! She saw how shit broke bad with his dad and how powerful she was, you'd think she'd have a vested interest in seeing how he turns out. And she's the best example of my chief complaint, she literally falls into a time hole that opens on the other side of the OT. They were like "hmm, we can't justify her not getting involved, but we also don't want to kill her, what other option is there?"
I also don't see how phoenix were the og rebels that statement doesn't seem supportable. We know there are other cells and we know that our protagonists (aside from possibly Hera) have no idea how much larger the rest of the rebellion is because they're intentionally kept in the dark. Clearly Dodonna is off doing cool shit around Yavin because sure, they deliver some y-wings but where all those x-wings come from? They also don't come help at Yavin which is weird, and the movies tell us that Yavin was THE rebel base. You destroy it and you crush the rebellion.
But again, the rest of Phoenix squadron is fine and I have less beef with that aspect of the story. Splinter cells that don't know about each other does make a lot of sense. Like, they can be background bit players at Scarif or Endor (although again it's weird they weren't at Yavin or Hoth) and that's fun.
It's all these things that make them feel like an afterthought. Which to some extent is fine. It obviously was not planned for at the time of the original movies. I guess I just get annoyed at seeing the seams at which they were joined.
But why do they have to be at yavin and hoth? Might be that such a large percentage of the rebellion and all their command staff are there. Galaxy is still large enough for the ghost crew to be somewhere else on missions or whatnot.
To my mind, that question "What is the point of these since we know nobody in them is ever important because nobody ever mentions them" is partly the problem with fandom. The point of watching characters and their actions is that we care about those characters and their actions. They're not given meaning by shaking hands with Princess Leia or giving Mon Monthma a backrub. What was the point of Moff Tarkin in A New Hope, if he never turns up? It's that he's an enjoyable character to watch, full stop. If that's not there to begin with, then no degree of "Oh, but he went to school with Palpatine! She babysat Boba Fett!" will make a difference. The connections to the films can enhance our enjoyment of the characters, but if they are dependent on those connections we have a problem, as far as I'm concerned.
Well said.
I also think that it stems from the weirdly incessant need for the fans that there's some twist to how the characters are related to each other. The need that makes people think at the time, for whatever reason, that Palpatine and Sidious are different people, or that Snoke was actually Plagueius, or any number of other things. It's like there's this collective hunt for extra meaning and connection because it happened that one time when the Skywalker family was finally described.
Fueled, too, perhaps by the merchandising arm. Every barely-seen character has a backstory. Pants have backstories.
I've never seen the same thing in the other fandoms I engage in.
So I'm actually in favor of things mattering less and the whole extended universe being less incesty.
I think my point is more specifically the Jedi, they have to be really removed from everything because otherwise they would have been a big deal. I don't understand how controversial this statement is, because we all know spoilers can really reduce enjoyment of something. I know going into it all the inquisitors have to be gone because otherwise you'd think they would have hunted down Luke.
Ahsoka should seek out Luke! She saw how shit broke bad with his dad and how powerful she was, you'd think she'd have a vested interest in seeing how he turns out. And she's the best example of my chief complaint, she literally falls into a time hole that opens on the other side of the OT. They were like "hmm, we can't justify her not getting involved, but we also don't want to kill her, what other option is there?"
I also don't see how phoenix were the og rebels that statement doesn't seem supportable. We know there are other cells and we know that our protagonists (aside from possibly Hera) have no idea how much larger the rest of the rebellion is because they're intentionally kept in the dark. Clearly Dodonna is off doing cool shit around Yavin because sure, they deliver some y-wings but where all those x-wings come from? They also don't come help at Yavin which is weird, and the movies tell us that Yavin was THE rebel base. You destroy it and you crush the rebellion.
But again, the rest of Phoenix squadron is fine and I have less beef with that aspect of the story. Splinter cells that don't know about each other does make a lot of sense. Like, they can be background bit players at Scarif or Endor (although again it's weird they weren't at Yavin or Hoth) and that's fun.
It's all these things that make them feel like an afterthought. Which to some extent is fine. It obviously was not planned for at the time of the original movies. I guess I just get annoyed at seeing the seams at which they were joined.
But why do they have to be at yavin and hoth? Might be that such a large percentage of the rebellion and all their command staff are there. Galaxy is still large enough for the ghost crew to be somewhere else on missions or whatnot.
The Ghost crew were at Yavin though. They probably just went off with the rest of the survivors of Scarif to repair the Ghost at a shipyard something. Remember they just went through a huge battle and A New Hope starts what later that same day.
And around the time of Hoth they are probably protecting Lothal.
+5
cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
To my mind, that question "What is the point of these since we know nobody in them is ever important because nobody ever mentions them" is partly the problem with fandom. The point of watching characters and their actions is that we care about those characters and their actions. They're not given meaning by shaking hands with Princess Leia or giving Mon Monthma a backrub. What was the point of Moff Tarkin in A New Hope, if he never turns up? It's that he's an enjoyable character to watch, full stop. If that's not there to begin with, then no degree of "Oh, but he went to school with Palpatine! She babysat Boba Fett!" will make a difference. The connections to the films can enhance our enjoyment of the characters, but if they are dependent on those connections we have a problem, as far as I'm concerned.
Well said.
I also think that it stems from the weirdly incessant need for the fans that there's some twist to how the characters are related to each other. The need that makes people think at the time, for whatever reason, that Palpatine and Sidious are different people, or that Snoke was actually Plagueius, or any number of other things. It's like there's this collective hunt for extra meaning and connection because it happened that one time when the Skywalker family was finally described.
Fueled, too, perhaps by the merchandising arm. Every barely-seen character has a backstory. Pants have backstories.
I've never seen the same thing in the other fandoms I engage in.
So I'm actually in favor of things mattering less and the whole extended universe being less incesty.
I think my point is more specifically the Jedi, they have to be really removed from everything because otherwise they would have been a big deal. I don't understand how controversial this statement is, because we all know spoilers can really reduce enjoyment of something. I know going into it all the inquisitors have to be gone because otherwise you'd think they would have hunted down Luke.
Ahsoka should seek out Luke! She saw how shit broke bad with his dad and how powerful she was, you'd think she'd have a vested interest in seeing how he turns out. And she's the best example of my chief complaint, she literally falls into a time hole that opens on the other side of the OT. They were like "hmm, we can't justify her not getting involved, but we also don't want to kill her, what other option is there?"
I also don't see how phoenix were the og rebels that statement doesn't seem supportable. We know there are other cells and we know that our protagonists (aside from possibly Hera) have no idea how much larger the rest of the rebellion is because they're intentionally kept in the dark. Clearly Dodonna is off doing cool shit around Yavin because sure, they deliver some y-wings but where all those x-wings come from? They also don't come help at Yavin which is weird, and the movies tell us that Yavin was THE rebel base. You destroy it and you crush the rebellion.
But again, the rest of Phoenix squadron is fine and I have less beef with that aspect of the story. Splinter cells that don't know about each other does make a lot of sense. Like, they can be background bit players at Scarif or Endor (although again it's weird they weren't at Yavin or Hoth) and that's fun.
It's all these things that make them feel like an afterthought. Which to some extent is fine. It obviously was not planned for at the time of the original movies. I guess I just get annoyed at seeing the seams at which they were joined.
But why do they have to be at yavin and hoth? Might be that such a large percentage of the rebellion and all their command staff are there. Galaxy is still large enough for the ghost crew to be somewhere else on missions or whatnot.
Because we are told that both of these events represent existential threats to the rebellion.
Bad exclusions: Copious hand waving about post-ROTJ balance of galactic power, the Knights of Ren, Maz Kanata’s conspicuously extraneous presence, etc.
None of those are necessary things to explain.
Well, sure. They don’t NEED to be explained, in and of themselves. But in the greater narrative context of TFA, I’d assert that those particular things don’t justify their absence/limited presence. Rather than opening the story up and strengthening the emphasis on what is there, it weakens the story, making it less than the sum of its parts.
Bad exclusions: Copious hand waving about post-ROTJ balance of galactic power, the Knights of Ren, Maz Kanata’s conspicuously extraneous presence, etc.
None of those are necessary things to explain.
Well, sure. They don’t NEED to be explained, in and of themselves. But in the greater narrative context of TFA, I’d assert that those particular things don’t justify their absence/limited presence. Rather than opening the story up and strengthening the emphasis on what is there, it weakens the story, making it less than the sum of its parts.
The opposite. The explanations are not important and forcing them prevents time being spent on things that matter. Not only that but giving them explanation reduces the power of the world building.
Did we need to know how Vader became Vader? Did we need to know how the republic fell? Please. If those things had been included in the OT the OT would have been shit.
+3
Linespider5ALL HAIL KING KILLMONGERRegistered Userregular
Bad exclusions: Copious hand waving about post-ROTJ balance of galactic power, the Knights of Ren, Maz Kanata’s conspicuously extraneous presence, etc.
None of those are necessary things to explain.
Well, sure. They don’t NEED to be explained, in and of themselves. But in the greater narrative context of TFA, I’d assert that those particular things don’t justify their absence/limited presence. Rather than opening the story up and strengthening the emphasis on what is there, it weakens the story, making it less than the sum of its parts.
The opposite. The explanations are not important and forcing them prevents time being spent on things that matter. Not only that but giving them explanation reduces the power of the world building.
Did we need to know how Vader became Vader? Did we need to know how the republic fell? Please. If those things had been included in the OT the OT would have been shit.
I gotta think on this awhile. I can’t say I disagree with what you’re countering with at all.
To my mind, that question "What is the point of these since we know nobody in them is ever important because nobody ever mentions them" is partly the problem with fandom. The point of watching characters and their actions is that we care about those characters and their actions. They're not given meaning by shaking hands with Princess Leia or giving Mon Monthma a backrub. What was the point of Moff Tarkin in A New Hope, if he never turns up? It's that he's an enjoyable character to watch, full stop. If that's not there to begin with, then no degree of "Oh, but he went to school with Palpatine! She babysat Boba Fett!" will make a difference. The connections to the films can enhance our enjoyment of the characters, but if they are dependent on those connections we have a problem, as far as I'm concerned.
Well said.
I also think that it stems from the weirdly incessant need for the fans that there's some twist to how the characters are related to each other. The need that makes people think at the time, for whatever reason, that Palpatine and Sidious are different people, or that Snoke was actually Plagueius, or any number of other things. It's like there's this collective hunt for extra meaning and connection because it happened that one time when the Skywalker family was finally described.
Fueled, too, perhaps by the merchandising arm. Every barely-seen character has a backstory. Pants have backstories.
I've never seen the same thing in the other fandoms I engage in.
Bad exclusions: Copious hand waving about post-ROTJ balance of galactic power, the Knights of Ren, Maz Kanata’s conspicuously extraneous presence, etc.
None of those are necessary things to explain.
Well, sure. They don’t NEED to be explained, in and of themselves. But in the greater narrative context of TFA, I’d assert that those particular things don’t justify their absence/limited presence. Rather than opening the story up and strengthening the emphasis on what is there, it weakens the story, making it less than the sum of its parts.
The opposite. The explanations are not important and forcing them prevents time being spent on things that matter. Not only that but giving them explanation reduces the power of the world building.
Did we need to know how Vader became Vader? Did we need to know how the republic fell? Please. If those things had been included in the OT the OT would have been shit.
What world building are you referring to? There's no world building beyond "it's nearly the same as 30-40 years ago, and we're only going to vaguely gesture at the Republic and Snoke as though that's enough."
At this point, the First Order is Cobra in space. They exist only to be a generic opposing force for the heroes to come up against. They have no reason for being outside of evil for evil's sake. No philosophy, no purpose. Nothing to distinguish them from the Empire, or to explain why they're a carbon copy. They're a narrative distraction.
What world building are you referring to? There's no world building beyond "it's nearly the same as 30-40 years ago, and we're only going to vaguely gesture at the Republic and Snoke as though that's enough."
At this point, the First Order is Cobra in space. They exist only to be a generic opposing force for the heroes to come up against. They have no reason for being outside of evil for evil's sake. No philosophy, no purpose. Nothing to distinguish them from the Empire, or to explain why they're a carbon copy. They're a narrative distraction.
The first order is far far more developed as a philosophical construction than the empire ever was. And every aspect of the empire that was developed in that manner was developed implicitly because of the way they dressed.
What world building are you referring to? There's no world building beyond "it's nearly the same as 30-40 years ago, and we're only going to vaguely gesture at the Republic and Snoke as though that's enough."
At this point, the First Order is Cobra in space. They exist only to be a generic opposing force for the heroes to come up against. They have no reason for being outside of evil for evil's sake. No philosophy, no purpose. Nothing to distinguish them from the Empire, or to explain why they're a carbon copy. They're a narrative distraction.
The first order is far far more developed as a philosophical construction than the empire ever was. And every aspect of the empire that was developed in that manner was developed implicitly because of the way they dressed.
I don't understand the first bit either.
What philosophical construction? They are a bunch of pissy people who want the Empire back.
What world building are you referring to? There's no world building beyond "it's nearly the same as 30-40 years ago, and we're only going to vaguely gesture at the Republic and Snoke as though that's enough."
At this point, the First Order is Cobra in space. They exist only to be a generic opposing force for the heroes to come up against. They have no reason for being outside of evil for evil's sake. No philosophy, no purpose. Nothing to distinguish them from the Empire, or to explain why they're a carbon copy. They're a narrative distraction.
The first order is far far more developed as a philosophical construction than the empire ever was. And every aspect of the empire that was developed in that manner was developed implicitly because of the way they dressed.
I don't understand the first bit either.
You'll have to explain it to me, then, because I'm not seeing it. Indeed, when given the chance to actually state why they fight in Hux's speech, the writers went with "because the Republic secretly supports the Resistance." At least Palpatine had the decency to give us some basic fascist rhetoric in the PT.
What world building are you referring to? There's no world building beyond "it's nearly the same as 30-40 years ago, and we're only going to vaguely gesture at the Republic and Snoke as though that's enough."
At this point, the First Order is Cobra in space. They exist only to be a generic opposing force for the heroes to come up against. They have no reason for being outside of evil for evil's sake. No philosophy, no purpose. Nothing to distinguish them from the Empire, or to explain why they're a carbon copy. They're a narrative distraction.
The first order is far far more developed as a philosophical construction than the empire ever was. And every aspect of the empire that was developed in that manner was developed implicitly because of the way they dressed.
I don't understand the first bit either.
What philosophical construction? They are a bunch of pissy people who want the Empire back.
How do you think fascism works? Hux might as well have said "They stabbed us in the back!" in his grand speech.
What world building are you referring to? There's no world building beyond "it's nearly the same as 30-40 years ago, and we're only going to vaguely gesture at the Republic and Snoke as though that's enough."
At this point, the First Order is Cobra in space. They exist only to be a generic opposing force for the heroes to come up against. They have no reason for being outside of evil for evil's sake. No philosophy, no purpose. Nothing to distinguish them from the Empire, or to explain why they're a carbon copy. They're a narrative distraction.
The first order is far far more developed as a philosophical construction than the empire ever was. And every aspect of the empire that was developed in that manner was developed implicitly because of the way they dressed.
I don't understand the first bit either.
What philosophical construction? They are a bunch of pissy people who want the Empire back.
How do you think fascism works? Hux might as well have said "They stabbed us in the back!" in his grand speech.
What world building are you referring to? There's no world building beyond "it's nearly the same as 30-40 years ago, and we're only going to vaguely gesture at the Republic and Snoke as though that's enough."
At this point, the First Order is Cobra in space. They exist only to be a generic opposing force for the heroes to come up against. They have no reason for being outside of evil for evil's sake. No philosophy, no purpose. Nothing to distinguish them from the Empire, or to explain why they're a carbon copy. They're a narrative distraction.
The first order is far far more developed as a philosophical construction than the empire ever was. And every aspect of the empire that was developed in that manner was developed implicitly because of the way they dressed.
I don't understand the first bit either.
What philosophical construction? They are a bunch of pissy people who want the Empire back.
There's been a lot written about Kylo, and by extension the First Order, being a stand-in for toxic masculinity and alt-right fascism. I can sort of buy it in regards to Kylo, but that's more because of TLJ than anything else... I'm not seeing any authorial intent on Abrams' behalf with it, and I'm willing to bet that it's largely ignored in RoS.
The thing is, the First Order isn't Kylo's creation. It's Snoke's. And he's as generic as you can get when it comes to a Star Wars villain. Moreover, Hux seems to be a glorified Starscream. He can give rousing wannabe Nazi rallies with 0 rhetorical content and likes trying to one-up Kylo. Beyond that, he has nothing.
And like I said a few pages ago, the First Order as a Nazi Germany analogue is utterly flawed. Nazi Germany was extreme nationalism, based on the desire to make Germany great again (sounds familiar) after it lost WWI and its economy imploded due to a combination of the harsh reparations mandated by the Treaty of Versailles and, later, the Great Depression. There is absolutely nothing even close to that with the First Order (is nationalism even a thing in space?).
What world building are you referring to? There's no world building beyond "it's nearly the same as 30-40 years ago, and we're only going to vaguely gesture at the Republic and Snoke as though that's enough."
At this point, the First Order is Cobra in space. They exist only to be a generic opposing force for the heroes to come up against. They have no reason for being outside of evil for evil's sake. No philosophy, no purpose. Nothing to distinguish them from the Empire, or to explain why they're a carbon copy. They're a narrative distraction.
The first order is far far more developed as a philosophical construction than the empire ever was. And every aspect of the empire that was developed in that manner was developed implicitly because of the way they dressed.
I don't understand the first bit either.
What philosophical construction? They are a bunch of pissy people who want the Empire back.
There's been a lot written about Kylo, and by extension the First Order, being a stand-in for toxic masculinity and alt-right fascism. I can sort of buy it in regards to Kylo, but that's more because of TLJ than anything else... I'm not seeing any authorial intent on Abrams' behalf with it, and I'm willing to bet that it's largely ignored in RoS.
The thing is, the First Order isn't Kylo's creation. It's Snoke's. And he's as generic as you can get when it comes to a Star Wars villain. Moreover, Hux seems to be a glorified Starscream. He can give rousing wannabe Nazi rallies with 0 rhetorical content and likes trying to one-up Kylo. Beyond that, he has nothing.
And like I said a few pages ago, the First Order as a Nazi Germany analogue is utterly flawed. Nazi Germany was extreme nationalism, based on the desire to make Germany great again (sounds familiar) after it lost WWI and its economy imploded due to a combination of the harsh reparations mandated by the Treaty of Versailles and, later, the Great Depression. There is absolutely nothing even close to that with the First Order (is nationalism even a thing in space?).
And the philosophical underpinnings of Nazi Germany are that they were superior. Better than everyone else. And that everyone else either had to be destroyed or subjugated for the world to have it's proper order.
You don't get that in the ST. The closest you get is Kylo Ren saying "Burn it all down and start over." But that's Kylo's principles not the First Orders.
I thought it was pretty clear the First Order was a stand in for supremacy movements by way of North Korea and ISIS methods of terrorism and mass indoctrination.
What world building are you referring to? There's no world building beyond "it's nearly the same as 30-40 years ago, and we're only going to vaguely gesture at the Republic and Snoke as though that's enough."
At this point, the First Order is Cobra in space. They exist only to be a generic opposing force for the heroes to come up against. They have no reason for being outside of evil for evil's sake. No philosophy, no purpose. Nothing to distinguish them from the Empire, or to explain why they're a carbon copy. They're a narrative distraction.
The first order is far far more developed as a philosophical construction than the empire ever was. And every aspect of the empire that was developed in that manner was developed implicitly because of the way they dressed.
I don't understand the first bit either.
What philosophical construction? They are a bunch of pissy people who want the Empire back.
There's been a lot written about Kylo, and by extension the First Order, being a stand-in for toxic masculinity and alt-right fascism. I can sort of buy it in regards to Kylo, but that's more because of TLJ than anything else... I'm not seeing any authorial intent on Abrams' behalf with it, and I'm willing to bet that it's largely ignored in RoS.
The thing is, the First Order isn't Kylo's creation. It's Snoke's. And he's as generic as you can get when it comes to a Star Wars villain. Moreover, Hux seems to be a glorified Starscream. He can give rousing wannabe Nazi rallies with 0 rhetorical content and likes trying to one-up Kylo. Beyond that, he has nothing.
And like I said a few pages ago, the First Order as a Nazi Germany analogue is utterly flawed. Nazi Germany was extreme nationalism, based on the desire to make Germany great again (sounds familiar) after it lost WWI and its economy imploded due to a combination of the harsh reparations mandated by the Treaty of Versailles and, later, the Great Depression. There is absolutely nothing even close to that with the First Order (is nationalism even a thing in space?).
And the philosophical underpinnings of Nazi Germany are that they were superior. Better than everyone else. And that everyone else either had to be destroyed or subjugated for the world to have it's proper order.
You don't get that in the ST. The closest you get is Kylo Ren saying "Burn it all down and start over." But that's Kylo's principles not the First Orders.
Shit, Kylo doesn't even think he's an übermensch. If he did, he wouldn't spend most of his free time worshipping Vader or pining for Rey to join him.
What world building are you referring to? There's no world building beyond "it's nearly the same as 30-40 years ago, and we're only going to vaguely gesture at the Republic and Snoke as though that's enough."
At this point, the First Order is Cobra in space. They exist only to be a generic opposing force for the heroes to come up against. They have no reason for being outside of evil for evil's sake. No philosophy, no purpose. Nothing to distinguish them from the Empire, or to explain why they're a carbon copy. They're a narrative distraction.
The first order is far far more developed as a philosophical construction than the empire ever was. And every aspect of the empire that was developed in that manner was developed implicitly because of the way they dressed.
I don't understand the first bit either.
You'll have to explain it to me, then, because I'm not seeing it. Indeed, when given the chance to actually state why they fight in Hux's speech, the writers went with "because the Republic secretly supports the Resistance." At least Palpatine had the decency to give us some basic fascist rhetoric in the PT.
Going purely by the movies, Palpatine doesn't even give us that (very much)--since you could count the actual national adherents to fascism during its height as a political philosophy on two hands, that's actually the period where its probably at its least nebulous. Before and after getting his faced barbecued, Palpatine publicly speaks on, in approximately order, the bureaucratic failings of the Republic (relating to though not explicitly due to corruption), its inability to deal with what he terms an existential threat (the Separatist threat), and after prevailing over said existential threat, what pattern of government the state ought to subscribe to going forward. In one of the rare demonstrations of thoughtfulness unique to the Prequel Trilogy, most of what Palpatine says, as Senator, Chancellor, and Emperor, is 1) politically uncontroversial and even popular and 2) generally rather vague. He's a good politician. And it's still more than the First Order ever says in regards to itself.
He doesn't talk about "the defense of the national peoples" (because there really isn't a Republican national peoples"), the threats out outside ideology (aside from "we want out", the Separatists don't have one--they don't represent the rallying cry of liberalism, Marxism, or any other anti-fascist ideologies), the spirit of Republican (and then Imperial) nationalism (that might come later, in something like Rebels), or the national myth (the Jedi are, ironically, the closest thing to that), the urgent threats faced by and need to protect the "Republican race" (this is a big deal breaker, especially considering Chancellor and then Emperor Palpatine visibly surrounds himself with alien high-officials, compared to an all-human Empire and derivative Rebellion we see twenty years later in A New Hope), or even a particular future of expansion of the state (the Republic has become the Empire, and...that's about it, though obviously reincorporation of the Separatist territories is a crucial agenda item). These are all what we consider, 80 years later, the basic criteria of Fascist politics implemented on the national stage. There's a reason we had a thousand years of vague republicanism, several centuries of constitutional monarchy, more than a century of liberal democracy, about seventy years of (mostly Marxist-Leninist) communism, and just under twenty years of (overwhelming European) fascism,
What the new Emperor does talk about, and this is important, is how he is central to all of this, and it doesn't go through anyone else. The assassination attempt by the Jedi, his leadership in the war, the permanency of his position in its transition from chancellor to emperor. This is necessary to fascism, but it's not really unique to it (basically, it's a point of commonality between autocratic dictatorship, particularly that of a rightist nature, and fascism more specifically). The prequel trilogy has three movies with Ian McDiarmid in them and, to their credit, they set all this up, starting with the Naboo crisis. And doubtlessly, two relevant TV series expand on this (especially Clone Wars I have to imagine, where he was a regular character and chancellor), but I'm only speaking to the movies for the comparison. This doesn't exclude fascism, it just means that what we have, in the movies, covers a really broad swath of 19th and 20th century rightist governance with a distinct colonial flavor to it.
The First Order has none of this. In the last two movies, the First Order hasn't even really articulated why it wants succeed the Galactic Empire beyond the implication of political nostalgia, much less what that would entail (are they going to replace the idiot Republic? Do they wish to exclude those worlds, seeing how they destroyed rather than conquered, and create an entirely new polity?), and we don't get a treatment of their national space (aside from maybe the Casino Planet, which is implicitly shown to be playing both sides of the conflict and predates the First Order). The single most political thing we ever see from them is a speech given by General "Mussolini without the Charisma or Policy Positions" Hux, which meets one of those above criteria--rallying against an external threat--and none of the others. There isn't a national people of the First Order, in fact, the aren't even people not in uniform (except on a casino planet?). there are no references to the opposing ideology of the Republic ("Being subversive douches" isn't an ideological accusation), there isn't any sort of national project or enterprise beyond defeating the Republic (which happened about 20 minutes after that speech). It's taking Palpatine's skeleton talking points and shaking all the bones out of them--which is understandable, given that there are only two films and the screenwriters pretty clearly don't care about an ideological motivation for the First Order in them, and have other priorities.
To return to the TV shows, there are supplementary materials that probably given the First Order something resembling a political will and guiding principles beyond "The Republic sucks and we're going to end them." But, of course, we also have two decades books (starting with late 80's, early 90's) that outline the ideology and ruling principle of the Galactic Empire (often in contradictory manners, because, well, it's fiction writing over many years), reaching a height with the Imperial Sourcebook (which flat out states what a lot of those guiding principles are, and specifically outlines the governing practices of the Empire in an interesting but probably excessive matter), and ending with "they replaced the Old Republic after decades of crisis". I'm pretty sure this is still way, way more than the First Order has gotten, even purposefully.
These three passages alone can probably given everything written on the First Order (including indirectly, focusing on the Knights of Ren) a run for their money. But it is technically obsolete, because Disney said so. Hence why I spent so much time harping on what we actually see Palpatine say in the three prequel films, which aren't.
Posts
Well said.
I also think that it stems from the weirdly incessant need for the fans that there's some twist to how the characters are related to each other. The need that makes people think at the time, for whatever reason, that Palpatine and Sidious are different people, or that Snoke was actually Plagueius, or any number of other things. It's like there's this collective hunt for extra meaning and connection because it happened that one time when the Skywalker family was finally described.
Fueled, too, perhaps by the merchandising arm. Every barely-seen character has a backstory. Pants have backstories.
I've never seen the same thing in the other fandoms I engage in.
If you take the scene between Anakin and Palpatine that's been posted above, I think you could read it as part of the whole plan. Dark side force powers are dark - you can't just grab a random sucker and drain them, it has to be someone you're emotionally close to - so you can transfer life force to people a target loves, or suck it away and give it to them.
Which, even - totally explains the Jedi Order having their whole "no relationships" thing. It would make total sense that it got laid down as religious observance as a check against dark side powers in force users (and, probably, the unnecessary expenditure of useful Jedi Warriors inevitably sacrificing themselves to save family members).
I kind of love it.
Almost 20 years later, the whole "Maybe Palpatine decided to imitate Darth Sidious as an homage when he went to the dark side," explanation isn't as convincing, but the situation that posed it still seems really stupid.
Don't discount the stupidness of people when it comes to politics.
Or faces or funny voices, apparently. To unwisely drag up the World War II analogies, it's like finding out Roosevelt and Hitler were the same person. They died a few weeks apart and you never saw either of them in the same room at the same time!
I guess. I remember discussing this character justification with a friend of mine (that Darth Vader isn't a bad military leader--or that he is, because he's deliberately undermining the Empire out of a grudge that takes precedence over his decide for power and glory), and my friend responded by laughing about Forth-Dimensional Star Wars chess.
Take that, and combine it with Palpatine being capable of deciding who lived--Vader on the military operating table dying of fourth-degree burns, or Amidala half-a-galaxy away dying in super-sad childbirth--at his leisure, apparently. This shit's fifth and sixth dimensional chess. As unconvincing as the whole "She died of a broken heart" thing is, I don't know if the solution was a "No, wait, she actually gave her life to Anakin all along!" retcon. Plus, you know, she might've wanted him to live even if she couldn't. And I never looked at Darth Vader and thought, "Oh yeah, there's no way the best robo-surgeons and military doctors in the galaxy could've saved this guy by sewing him into a walking life-support system for the rest of his life."
At least it's interesting to speculate about the reverse--what kind of abomination Amidala would've had to become to in order to...absorb...Vader's life? I suppose that was covered in Darths and Droids.
Like, Padme should have been much closer to (Palpatine’s Civilian Name) than Anakin anyway. He was practically a surrogate father figure for her at first. Imagine him being on ‘their side’ with their minor deception of the Jedi for falling in love, and leveraging it into complicity for (Palpatine’s) full-scale deceptions of the Council.
Imagine if it had been Palpatine who had acted as officiator of the wedding rather than some random bearded mook.
Sealing their fates under his auspices.
(edited for clarity)
Mononyms are a thing, even in Star Wars, but apparently you have to be a Wookiee or a Sith Lord or something. Otherwise everyone gets all hung up on your "first name."
Lucas needed a goddamn editor so bad.
edit: The story of Palpatine's name.
In the original extended canon, Palpatine had no first name. This was because he hated his family so much, he forsook his first name and simply went by his family name.
Then, I think after the Disney acquisition, someone decided that's dumb and his first name will be Sheev.
Like a shiv.
Because he'll shank you in the back.
Plus, you know, bad people are allowed to have fondness for others and even friendship too. I'm sure Augusto Pinochet had old friends when he was generalissimo. You just don't let them get in the way of your ambitiously ruthless schemes for power, or you end up like Julius Caesar (though considering how Palpatine died in ROTJ....).
That's stupid.
Long ago, in the Imperial Sourcebook days, before Naboo and Gungans and 14-year-old elected-Queens, "Palpatine" was actually a dynastic family name of some vague repute, because like most self-declared autocrats and 100% of galactic Senators, Palpatine came from an aristocratic background, and because "Palpatine" is clearly a reference to the Palatine Hill, the home of Imperial power in Rome.
And no one cared about his given name, because lots of people don't use given names, or they hadn't been given them in the fiction.
That is less stupid.
I love the idea of Godfather Palpatine.
Sure, for a Sith, it’s probably like a perpetual hate generator...but for the public, I don’t get it.
So I'm actually in favor of things mattering less and the whole extended universe being less incesty.
I think my point is more specifically the Jedi, they have to be really removed from everything because otherwise they would have been a big deal. I don't understand how controversial this statement is, because we all know spoilers can really reduce enjoyment of something. I know going into it all the inquisitors have to be gone because otherwise you'd think they would have hunted down Luke.
Ahsoka should seek out Luke! She saw how shit broke bad with his dad and how powerful she was, you'd think she'd have a vested interest in seeing how he turns out. And she's the best example of my chief complaint, she literally falls into a time hole that opens on the other side of the OT. They were like "hmm, we can't justify her not getting involved, but we also don't want to kill her, what other option is there?"
I also don't see how phoenix were the og rebels that statement doesn't seem supportable. We know there are other cells and we know that our protagonists (aside from possibly Hera) have no idea how much larger the rest of the rebellion is because they're intentionally kept in the dark. Clearly Dodonna is off doing cool shit around Yavin because sure, they deliver some y-wings but where all those x-wings come from? They also don't come help at Yavin which is weird, and the movies tell us that Yavin was THE rebel base. You destroy it and you crush the rebellion.
But again, the rest of Phoenix squadron is fine and I have less beef with that aspect of the story. Splinter cells that don't know about each other does make a lot of sense. Like, they can be background bit players at Scarif or Endor (although again it's weird they weren't at Yavin or Hoth) and that's fun.
It's all these things that make them feel like an afterthought. Which to some extent is fine. It obviously was not planned for at the time of the original movies. I guess I just get annoyed at seeing the seams at which they were joined.
When he told Anakin at the end that he would be following the boy's career with great interest, my skin tried to crawl right off me.
But why do they have to be at yavin and hoth? Might be that such a large percentage of the rebellion and all their command staff are there. Galaxy is still large enough for the ghost crew to be somewhere else on missions or whatnot.
The Ghost crew were at Yavin though. They probably just went off with the rest of the survivors of Scarif to repair the Ghost at a shipyard something. Remember they just went through a huge battle and A New Hope starts what later that same day.
And around the time of Hoth they are probably protecting Lothal.
BRING ME THEIR FLESH
Because we are told that both of these events represent existential threats to the rebellion.
None of those are necessary things to explain.
Well, sure. They don’t NEED to be explained, in and of themselves. But in the greater narrative context of TFA, I’d assert that those particular things don’t justify their absence/limited presence. Rather than opening the story up and strengthening the emphasis on what is there, it weakens the story, making it less than the sum of its parts.
The opposite. The explanations are not important and forcing them prevents time being spent on things that matter. Not only that but giving them explanation reduces the power of the world building.
Did we need to know how Vader became Vader? Did we need to know how the republic fell? Please. If those things had been included in the OT the OT would have been shit.
I gotta think on this awhile. I can’t say I disagree with what you’re countering with at all.
pruneface is my favourite character.
this is my new favourite character
What world building are you referring to? There's no world building beyond "it's nearly the same as 30-40 years ago, and we're only going to vaguely gesture at the Republic and Snoke as though that's enough."
At this point, the First Order is Cobra in space. They exist only to be a generic opposing force for the heroes to come up against. They have no reason for being outside of evil for evil's sake. No philosophy, no purpose. Nothing to distinguish them from the Empire, or to explain why they're a carbon copy. They're a narrative distraction.
The first order is far far more developed as a philosophical construction than the empire ever was. And every aspect of the empire that was developed in that manner was developed implicitly because of the way they dressed.
I don't understand the first bit either.
What philosophical construction? They are a bunch of pissy people who want the Empire back.
You'll have to explain it to me, then, because I'm not seeing it. Indeed, when given the chance to actually state why they fight in Hux's speech, the writers went with "because the Republic secretly supports the Resistance." At least Palpatine had the decency to give us some basic fascist rhetoric in the PT.
How do you think fascism works? Hux might as well have said "They stabbed us in the back!" in his grand speech.
That's still not a philosophical construct.
There's been a lot written about Kylo, and by extension the First Order, being a stand-in for toxic masculinity and alt-right fascism. I can sort of buy it in regards to Kylo, but that's more because of TLJ than anything else... I'm not seeing any authorial intent on Abrams' behalf with it, and I'm willing to bet that it's largely ignored in RoS.
The thing is, the First Order isn't Kylo's creation. It's Snoke's. And he's as generic as you can get when it comes to a Star Wars villain. Moreover, Hux seems to be a glorified Starscream. He can give rousing wannabe Nazi rallies with 0 rhetorical content and likes trying to one-up Kylo. Beyond that, he has nothing.
And like I said a few pages ago, the First Order as a Nazi Germany analogue is utterly flawed. Nazi Germany was extreme nationalism, based on the desire to make Germany great again (sounds familiar) after it lost WWI and its economy imploded due to a combination of the harsh reparations mandated by the Treaty of Versailles and, later, the Great Depression. There is absolutely nothing even close to that with the First Order (is nationalism even a thing in space?).
And the philosophical underpinnings of Nazi Germany are that they were superior. Better than everyone else. And that everyone else either had to be destroyed or subjugated for the world to have it's proper order.
You don't get that in the ST. The closest you get is Kylo Ren saying "Burn it all down and start over." But that's Kylo's principles not the First Orders.
Shit, Kylo doesn't even think he's an übermensch. If he did, he wouldn't spend most of his free time worshipping Vader or pining for Rey to join him.
Going purely by the movies, Palpatine doesn't even give us that (very much)--since you could count the actual national adherents to fascism during its height as a political philosophy on two hands, that's actually the period where its probably at its least nebulous. Before and after getting his faced barbecued, Palpatine publicly speaks on, in approximately order, the bureaucratic failings of the Republic (relating to though not explicitly due to corruption), its inability to deal with what he terms an existential threat (the Separatist threat), and after prevailing over said existential threat, what pattern of government the state ought to subscribe to going forward. In one of the rare demonstrations of thoughtfulness unique to the Prequel Trilogy, most of what Palpatine says, as Senator, Chancellor, and Emperor, is 1) politically uncontroversial and even popular and 2) generally rather vague. He's a good politician. And it's still more than the First Order ever says in regards to itself.
He doesn't talk about "the defense of the national peoples" (because there really isn't a Republican national peoples"), the threats out outside ideology (aside from "we want out", the Separatists don't have one--they don't represent the rallying cry of liberalism, Marxism, or any other anti-fascist ideologies), the spirit of Republican (and then Imperial) nationalism (that might come later, in something like Rebels), or the national myth (the Jedi are, ironically, the closest thing to that), the urgent threats faced by and need to protect the "Republican race" (this is a big deal breaker, especially considering Chancellor and then Emperor Palpatine visibly surrounds himself with alien high-officials, compared to an all-human Empire and derivative Rebellion we see twenty years later in A New Hope), or even a particular future of expansion of the state (the Republic has become the Empire, and...that's about it, though obviously reincorporation of the Separatist territories is a crucial agenda item). These are all what we consider, 80 years later, the basic criteria of Fascist politics implemented on the national stage. There's a reason we had a thousand years of vague republicanism, several centuries of constitutional monarchy, more than a century of liberal democracy, about seventy years of (mostly Marxist-Leninist) communism, and just under twenty years of (overwhelming European) fascism,
What the new Emperor does talk about, and this is important, is how he is central to all of this, and it doesn't go through anyone else. The assassination attempt by the Jedi, his leadership in the war, the permanency of his position in its transition from chancellor to emperor. This is necessary to fascism, but it's not really unique to it (basically, it's a point of commonality between autocratic dictatorship, particularly that of a rightist nature, and fascism more specifically). The prequel trilogy has three movies with Ian McDiarmid in them and, to their credit, they set all this up, starting with the Naboo crisis. And doubtlessly, two relevant TV series expand on this (especially Clone Wars I have to imagine, where he was a regular character and chancellor), but I'm only speaking to the movies for the comparison. This doesn't exclude fascism, it just means that what we have, in the movies, covers a really broad swath of 19th and 20th century rightist governance with a distinct colonial flavor to it.
The First Order has none of this. In the last two movies, the First Order hasn't even really articulated why it wants succeed the Galactic Empire beyond the implication of political nostalgia, much less what that would entail (are they going to replace the idiot Republic? Do they wish to exclude those worlds, seeing how they destroyed rather than conquered, and create an entirely new polity?), and we don't get a treatment of their national space (aside from maybe the Casino Planet, which is implicitly shown to be playing both sides of the conflict and predates the First Order). The single most political thing we ever see from them is a speech given by General "Mussolini without the Charisma or Policy Positions" Hux, which meets one of those above criteria--rallying against an external threat--and none of the others. There isn't a national people of the First Order, in fact, the aren't even people not in uniform (except on a casino planet?). there are no references to the opposing ideology of the Republic ("Being subversive douches" isn't an ideological accusation), there isn't any sort of national project or enterprise beyond defeating the Republic (which happened about 20 minutes after that speech). It's taking Palpatine's skeleton talking points and shaking all the bones out of them--which is understandable, given that there are only two films and the screenwriters pretty clearly don't care about an ideological motivation for the First Order in them, and have other priorities.
To return to the TV shows, there are supplementary materials that probably given the First Order something resembling a political will and guiding principles beyond "The Republic sucks and we're going to end them." But, of course, we also have two decades books (starting with late 80's, early 90's) that outline the ideology and ruling principle of the Galactic Empire (often in contradictory manners, because, well, it's fiction writing over many years), reaching a height with the Imperial Sourcebook (which flat out states what a lot of those guiding principles are, and specifically outlines the governing practices of the Empire in an interesting but probably excessive matter), and ending with "they replaced the Old Republic after decades of crisis". I'm pretty sure this is still way, way more than the First Order has gotten, even purposefully.
These three passages alone can probably given everything written on the First Order (including indirectly, focusing on the Knights of Ren) a run for their money. But it is technically obsolete, because Disney said so. Hence why I spent so much time harping on what we actually see Palpatine say in the three prequel films, which aren't.
Or speciesist