HUMOR How is the First Order different from Palpatine's Sith Empire?

Yeah, it seems we are being told that there are differences rather than being shown any.
"The First Order are an improvement upon the Empire..."
Not sure I even saw that to be honest. Just looked like a copy with a few more shouty officers.

This is why I would've much preferred to see a different approach with the ST. Have the remnants of the Empire be a small band of terrorists, backed by a Sith-loving cult with a nihilist ideology. Right now we just have a re-run of the OT bad guys with Palpatine-lite in charge and a cosplay Vader.

 

How dare you OP!

Snoke is a totally brand new villain with fresh, original ideas for taking over the galaxy...



Sorry, what I meant to say was that Snoke essentially remade the Empire, remade the Death Star, remade the Sith and remade Darth Vader. At this point in the story, Snoke is nothing more than a rehashed, more decrepit Emperor, following a near identical plan and appearing out the back arse of nowhere, with convenient timing, to drag out the Skywalker saga.

I'm looking forward to when Snoke completes the construction of Starkiller Base II, before his Skywalker apprentice betrays him by throwing him down a shaft. Only then will his mission to fully rehash the Emperor be complete.

 

They're a reformation of the Empire. JJ described their thinking like this (I'm paraphrasing).

Imagine that after Hitler died some of his remaining generals got together and retreated with what forces they could muster to Australia. They stayed there for decades training and growing their ranks, preparing to return bigger and badder than before as the Fourth Reich.

The Empire doesn't have a number in the title so they just went with a new name, The First Order. They found a new leader to replace the Emporer (Star Wars Hitler), and have returned under a new banner to re-establish their glory.

 

So yeah, they're exactly the same then but just not as good?
And even if the idea is that the FO are better than the Empire, the films don't show that. The FO are defeated just as easily. And they had the advantage of knowing the Empire's mistakes!

And as for Palpatine-lite, Snoke...
Well, who thinks that a Hitler wannabe would ever be as menacing or impactful as the real thing?
But if we discovered that Hitler once had a master who taught him everything he knew and in his spare time created a demi-God and cheated death - well, then we'd have a villain befitting a sequel trilogy.

When I watched The Force Awakens I was, and continue to be, massively disappointed. I was bored to be frank.
The conclusion I come to is that there was very little that was original. The FO being identical to the Empire was a big part of that.
It's unbelievable to me that after 30 years, hundreds of millions of dollars and some of the world's best creatives the best they could come up with was ripping off Lucas' first Star Wars film.

 

i'm going to go out on a limb and defend these poor slobs #buti'mtotallylazysodon'texpectthistobegood

yes, they are "reorganized" Imperials. so they have a lot of the same aesthetics and weaknesses.
here's what i think is different:

• they are a young organization. the Empire was crusty and fusty. the FO has verve.
  
• they acknowledge the weaknesses and failures of the Empire and intend to learn from them (except where concerns planet-killing weaponry, perhaps).
  
• their politics are Centrist, which i do think is different from what guided the Galactic Empire (don't ask me for the nuances, i'd bore myself).
• their structure/organization seems much different (more appearances of autonomy while less actual autonomy).
  
• Snoke is not an Emperor. is Supreme Leader actually all that different? i think so. this isn't an organization run on bowing and scraping and fear.
  
• Kylo Ren has Darth Vader's aesthetic, but he's hardly Darth Vader. he gets moderate respect and the only person who's afraid of him is Mitaka.
  
• We don't know 100% for sure whether the FO is xenophobic (probably a safe bet, but their Supreme Leader isn't human, so....)
• the Empire played down and even disdained the Force as a part of their power. the FO has no such qualms harnessing it.

so yes, they are a little bit like Argentinian Nazis rising from the ashes, but i think they are deliberately doing some things differently (like dispensing with the New Republic entirely rather than politically weaseling into power). their youth, aggression, and fanaticism make them--to my mind--hungrier and more dangerous.

so i don't think they are less powerful than the Empire in terms of potential, even if they are the small faction taking power from the larger rule at the moment.

they lost Starkiller in TFA (to which Snoke didn't seem all that concerned), but they destroyed the Galactic seat of government.
i actually think that puts them ahead at the moment.

 

They look the same. They act the same. They f**k up the same. They want the same things.
We can point to little differences but essentially they are a mighty military regime, lead by a decrepit old evil doer and a fallen Jedi henchman. They want to destroy the resistance/rebels and the Jedi and rule the galaxy.

I can't really look beyond that or the odd little nuanced differences that aren't truly shown on screen but that we discover within debates and in sources beyond the movies. It would've been far more interesting to have had a different antagonist group. A small band of hard-line surviving Imperials (who were loyal to Palpatine) mixed in with a Sith death-cult that wants to wreak havoc (parallel with Daesh for example) and put an end to what Skywalker achieved. The old evil Empire vs the Rebellion worked well in the 70's and it mirrored society and the politics of the time. This is just a rehash of that. And it's boring because it's pretty clear how it will all end.

 

I've never considered the First Order as a copy of the Galactic Empire, for me they are completely independent and different.

Maybe some will hate me for this but I like the FO much more than the Empire.
The Empire was run by old men who clinged to outdated ideals. The people of the First Order are younger and more agile, furthermore the FO is more effective, ruthless and scarier than the Empire. Just look at the FO Stormtrooper, they can actually hit something. Generally speaking, the bad guys of the ST are more frightening than Vader and Palpatine (and I'm a massive fan of them).

But we should probably wait for EPVIII and IX to rate the FO.

Just my two cents.


@FN-3263827, I completely agree with you.
The First Order got the potential to be the most powerful and badass organisation in the whole SW saga. FO FTW!!!

 

Completely different?

Such as destroying the Jedi and the Rebels...oh wait...

Yet get defeated in exactly the same way...

How is it more effective? They haven't managed to get control of the galaxy yet and along side that have had their super weapon destroyed like their predecessors. I'd also say they are far from scarier. Their was a real cold authority to the Empire. The FO are a bunch of shouty people in their 30's who run scared of a cosplay Vader.

To suggest that CGI Snoke and cosplay Vader, Ren Ben, come close to Darth Vader and Palpatine is absurd!

Well, let me give you back 5 cents change.

 

Don't take everything too literally, @master_shaitan. It's just for fun.

The Jedi are already destroyed in TFA and the FO wants to destroy the Republic not the Resistance (but now the FO has to because the Resistance is getting in the way). Additionally, we really don't know the final goals, especially Snoke's goal.

The wise supreme leader would disagree with you.

The FO is just starting its rise to power. Rome wasn't built in a day.

Okay, Snoke hasn't been that great yet but only time can tell his true potential. I thought people had finally realized that Kylo Ren is nothing like Vader, apparently not.

"Tell that to Kanjiklub."

 

I will do what I must.

Snoke: "We will crush the Resistance, once and for all"

+

Snoke: "If Skywalker returns, the new Jedi will rise".

Both got blown up by X-Wings that flew down a trench before finding their targets.

You proclaimed them more effective etc. I was simply pointing out that there is literally no evidence for this.

You mean apart from being a former Skywalker and Jedi who turned to the Dark Side, wears a mask and uses a red saber and serves a decrepit old tyrant who wants to destroy the Jedi?

 

Sure, if you take Kylo Ren as a character at face value - if anything, I'd argue that he was meant to look the part as Darth Vader's successor, only for us to realize halfway through the movie that we'll be getting something else instead. Once he took off the mask, the charade was done. He was no longer this menacing dark Skywalker and former Jedi - he was just a confused boy who was "torn apart" by the conflicting pull of his heritage. Anakin had no heritage. He built his own. There was no burden resting on his shoulders but the prophecy of the Chosen One and his forbidden love for Padme.

As a whole, I think the First Order has potential to go beyond its Imperial shell, as long as Rian Johnson and Colin Trevorrow decide to take them there. Whilst there are definite similarities between the two, I'd say the key difference between the FO and the Empire is that the First Order are the underdogs this time around, simply because you have this grand Republic already present in the background against which they're rebelling against.

Then you have the Resistance, the double underdogs representing Republic extremists. We still don't know the full consequences of the destruction of Hosnian Prime and just how big a blow for the New Republic this was, but you do have to admit that it would be a waste to not show the interesting political backdrop that would arise from the aftermath of The Force Awakens.

I cannot comment on Snoke yet. He just didn't have enough of a presence in TFA to discern much about his character - the movie would have been the same without his appearance.

 

I dare say there is. The FO has rid this galaxy of five times more rebelscum and villainy than the New Order ever has. The first shot destroyed the seat of the New Republic government and most of its armada and four other planets. They shifted the balance of power in just one day.

edit. off topic @Lord of the Rens nice avatar

 

Totally!
Even if the Starkiller Base has been destroyed, the FO destroyed an entire system before and killed all those who ruled the galaxy. We also can assume that the FO is more powerful than what we saw in the movie because Snoke asked Hux to bring Kylo to him, which imply that they have one (or more) base(s) that are maybe not Resurgent-class Star Destroyers (which are 3 km long) but an other planet.
After all, they are located in the Unknown Regions...

 

You just reminded me of this:

 

Why do I get the feeling this is going to become the Cantina's "First Order Did Nothing Wrong" thread?

...not that there's anything INHERENTLY WRONG with such a thing!

In fact, I hear Hosnian Prime is quite lovely this time of year!



Quite lovely indeed.