On top of this, get rid of Snoke and have Thrawn lead the First Order. He forces Imperial holdouts to join him or be destroyed. He’s smart enough to use Empire loyalists in the New Republic to dismiss his threat until he’s strong enough to go on the attack.
I know they’re building to this in Ashoka, but it should have been this way from the start.
On top of this, get rid of Snoke and have Thrawn lead the First Order.
One of the things that made the Thrawn trilogy work was the way it played out the inevitable decay of the old Empire, even with a brilliant strategist at its helm. The rot went too deep and the ideology that drove the Imperial movement couldn’t hold it together. Militarism wasn’t enough to keep the imperial regions united, while the New Republic offered allure that couldn’t be easily rebutted.
The movies couldn’t conceptualize this imperial decay or recognize the New Republic as a powerful political force drawing the fractured galactic planets together again. They had to reset the state of the setting to “Bad Guys Strong, because Big Lasers and Ships” while the Republicans were once again weak, scattered, and on the run.
I might say you could salvage Snoke (as a reskin of Joruus C’baoth) and Sloane and Hux and Kylo Ren, cast within this desperate grasping to Retvrn To Tradition. Then rename “The First Order” as “The Last Command”, implying they follow the last words of the now-dead Emperor Palpatine. And you can even lean in to the ghost of Palpatine and the echoes of fascism that do provide some lingering cohesiveness to the dying Imperial movement.
But these climactic space battles that are decided by One Brave Starfighter Defeating The Big Imperial Machine aren’t able to resonate in the final series, because they don’t answer the question of what comes next. At some point, the New Republic needs to be a thing we care about and the conflict needs to move away from “How do we beat the Empire?” and into a “How do we make the New Republic do better than the Old One?”
I really liked Andor because of the way it humanized the Empire. Demystifying the bad guys and rendering them as an enormous social network fallible human agents didn’t leave me rooting for them. But it did give me an idea of why someone would want to be an imperial agent.
Andor is probably the only truly “balanced” or nuanced piece of media to come from Disney Star Wars. The rest of it (especially Ahsoka) makes it so the New Republic are actual jackasses with their heads buried in the sand.
Well, the whole Ashoka arc is about a woman who quits being a Jedi because she realizes why the Jedi suck, then kinda comes back around again much later on in life.
I have some love for the first two seasons of Mandalorian, given the way it treats Empire/Rebellion. But I agree, modern SW just turned the Republic into the New Mooks.
On top of this, get rid of Snoke and have Thrawn lead the First Order. He forces Imperial holdouts to join him or be destroyed. He’s smart enough to use Empire loyalists in the New Republic to dismiss his threat until he’s strong enough to go on the attack.
I know they’re building to this in Ashoka, but it should have been this way from the start.
One of the things that made the Thrawn trilogy work was the way it played out the inevitable decay of the old Empire, even with a brilliant strategist at its helm. The rot went too deep and the ideology that drove the Imperial movement couldn’t hold it together. Militarism wasn’t enough to keep the imperial regions united, while the New Republic offered allure that couldn’t be easily rebutted.
The movies couldn’t conceptualize this imperial decay or recognize the New Republic as a powerful political force drawing the fractured galactic planets together again. They had to reset the state of the setting to “Bad Guys Strong, because Big Lasers and Ships” while the Republicans were once again weak, scattered, and on the run.
I might say you could salvage Snoke (as a reskin of Joruus C’baoth) and Sloane and Hux and Kylo Ren, cast within this desperate grasping to Retvrn To Tradition. Then rename “The First Order” as “The Last Command”, implying they follow the last words of the now-dead Emperor Palpatine. And you can even lean in to the ghost of Palpatine and the echoes of fascism that do provide some lingering cohesiveness to the dying Imperial movement.
But these climactic space battles that are decided by One Brave Starfighter Defeating The Big Imperial Machine aren’t able to resonate in the final series, because they don’t answer the question of what comes next. At some point, the New Republic needs to be a thing we care about and the conflict needs to move away from “How do we beat the Empire?” and into a “How do we make the New Republic do better than the Old One?”
I’m actually so mad this didn’t happen, this sounds great.
Dude, the new shows and everything are actually making me root for the bad guys. The new New Republic is such dogshit at literally everything.
I really liked Andor because of the way it humanized the Empire. Demystifying the bad guys and rendering them as an enormous social network fallible human agents didn’t leave me rooting for them. But it did give me an idea of why someone would want to be an imperial agent.
Andor is probably the only truly “balanced” or nuanced piece of media to come from Disney Star Wars. The rest of it (especially Ahsoka) makes it so the New Republic are actual jackasses with their heads buried in the sand.
Well, the whole Ashoka arc is about a woman who quits being a Jedi because she realizes why the Jedi suck, then kinda comes back around again much later on in life.
I have some love for the first two seasons of Mandalorian, given the way it treats Empire/Rebellion. But I agree, modern SW just turned the Republic into the New Mooks.
As mine was a light rewrite I don’t find Snoke significant enough/having enough screentime to warrant replacing with Thrawn
He would have to be the overarching villain whose defeat is the climax of events