What's kind of funny about the Canon NR is that they're an Adaptational Wimp and and Adaptational Badass simultaneously. They are indeed weaker and less competent than their Legends counterpart... but they also crushed the Empire far more easily, maintained the peace for longer, and by this point in the Legends timeline they'd already been squashed by the Yuuzhan Vong and replaced with the even-more-inept Galactic Alliance.
edited 28th Sep '16 10:43:52 AM by HamburgerTime
Well, with Thrawn back in the canon, one can view him as most likely dying during the Rebels era, so never reorganizing the Remnant into a formidable force later on able to seek peace under more favorable terms. And without external threats, the Republic itself is quick to devolve into infighting. So, the Republic is indeed an adaptational wimp, but the post-Palpatine Empire is even more so.
It seems like Mon Mothma was the biggest proponent for a weaker central state to prevent another dictatorial rise, not realizing her own lopsided influence in the New Republic's leadership was compensating for the inherent weakness of the government.
Seriously. If it weren't for her neutering the military the New Republic wouldn't be as vulnerable as it is now.
I just hope that maybe the next movie could start with Leia making a return to wherever they put the capital now that Hosnian Prime went kablooey, finding the New Republic still deadlocked, and saying "A few hundred people and two squadrons of X-wings are the only things that stood between you and annihilation. FIX IT. NOW."
I'm sure the New Republic will earn its happy ending.
In some ways the constant cycle of warfare and light vs. dark makes sense, though, because how often in real life to massive systems of governments get open-and-shut happy endings? Conflict continues - it can't be eradicated entirely. That goes even for a single city, let alone a galaxy-spanning Republic caught in the midst of the battle between two supernatural ideologies.
"We'll take the next chance, and the next, until we win, or the chances are spent."![[awesome]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/minis/award_star_gold_3.png "[awesome]"){kind=small}
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
I doubt they'll be any more politics in the ST.
A) We know that the First Order spent at least a few years in the Unknown Regions building up its armies, and for all intents and purposes is Galactic Empire 2.0 (as far as I'm aware).
B) Thrawn has been recanonized; however, The Thrawn Trilogy, his original debut, is not...yet.
C) We know that a lot of the Empire's old officers laid the foundations for the First Order, or were at least involved in its founding.
Who's to say Thrawn didn't survive to the time of TFA in this timeline? I'm probably wrong, of course, but I can't help but wonder....
Queen of Good Things, Honest
- Holland: What's the big plan, Angel? Destroy the Senior Partners, smash Wolfram and Hart once and for all?
- Angel: Something like that.
- Holland: Now tell me just what you imagine that would accomplish? In the end, I mean.
- Angel: It'll BE the end.
- Holland: Well, the end of YOU, certainly. But I meant in a larger sense.
- Angel: In the larger sense, I don't give a crap.
- Holland: Now, I don't think that's true. You got the tiniest bit of "give a crap" left. Otherwise, you wouldn't be going on this kamikaze mission.
- ...
- Angel: You're not going to win.
- Holland: Well, of course not. We have no intention of doing anything as prosaic as 'winning'. ... For us, there is no fight which is why winning doesn't enter into it. We go on, no matter what. Our firm has always been here in one form or another. The Inquisition. The Khmer Rouge. We were there when the very first cave man clubbed his neighbor. See, we're in the hearts and minds of every single living being and that, friend, is what's making things so difficult for you. See, the world doesn't work in spite of evil, Angel. It works with us. It works because of us.
- ...
- Angel: This isn't—
- Holland: Well, you know it is. You know that better than anyone. Things you've seen, things you've...well, done. You see, if there wasn't evil in every single one of them out there, why, they wouldn't be people. They'd all be angels.
- Angel drops his weapon and slowly shuffles away, defeated
- Holland: Have a nice day.
Couple of possibilities: in the EU timeline, Thrawn came in after Endor, and took his time putting together a plan and consolidating most of the Empire's remaining resources while they were still a major power. In the canon timeline, the Empire gets run through a wood chipper at Jakku only a year after Endor, and it is indicated that event knocked the fight out of most the survivors. If, instead of returning to find a mostly intact empire on the back foot but still powerful, Thrawn found the current state of things after Jakku; he may well have made a different plan. Instead of consolidating openly, he might have let the remnants get ground down by the New Republic while he cherry picked the best of the survivors and snapped up as many important resources as possibly before clearing out into the void. In the unknown regions, wild space in the outer rim, or in the virtually inaccessible deep core, he could create whatever he envisioned while presumed dead.
edited 28th Sep '16 1:28:52 PM by ViperMagnum357
Jolee Bindo agrees.
(Hey, I got a medal!)
But in some ways, Maz Kanata herself echoes this sentiment. When she's telling Han he's "been running away from this fight for too long," Rey asks what fight. And Maz responds, "the only fight." The battle that's been raging since the beginning of history.
By its very nature, the Dark Side can never be defeated or eradicated. Oh, you can wipe out the Sith, you can slaughter their followers and reduce their temples to rubble...but the Dark Side remains, because the Dark Side is within you. It's within everyone. How many times in galactic history have the Jedi triumphantly declared ultimate victory over the Dark Side, only for one of their own number to fall to the temptation of power and control, thereby starting the whole cycle over again? The Dark Side isn't a faction or an organization that can be ruined or disbanded. The Dark Side is an idea. And ideas don't die.
And by the same token - the Light Side can also never be defeated. Just as it's impossible to eradicate the evil within everyone's soul, so too is it impossible to eradicate the good. Perhaps it can be done on an individual scale - but not on a galactic one. You can never stop people from doing bad things, and you can never stop people from doing good things. It's a war without beginning or end. Yeah, the cosmic scales can tip one way or the other for a few centuries - but then they just swing right back the other way.
You might call it...the balance of the Force. (dramatic music)
(Also, what Jolee said.)
edited 28th Sep '16 1:47:12 PM by RBluefish
"We'll take the next chance, and the next, until we win, or the chances are spent."
Would that it were so simple.
We're not talking about evil being destroyed though — evil can exist, but I'd rather civilization face it, not a bunch of scrabbling rebels. I simply can't relate to La Résistance anymore. In real life, resistance groups are typically just terrorists.
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
Civilization does face it, and half the time civilization gets is hind end kicked from one side of the galaxy to the other, and after that point underground rebel groups are their only means of resistance. And sometimes, as is currently the case, the galaxy is mired in a massive political quagmire that prevents direct intervention, so they content themselves with funding resistance groups under the table.
Especially when here, evil had previously been perceived as little more than a ragtag band of wannabe dictators rattling their sabres impotently from the border regions of the galaxy. Then Hosnian Prime happened, and now open galactic war is pretty much inevitable. So the cycle of conflict is about to begin again.
"We'll take the next chance, and the next, until we win, or the chances are spent."
Yes, in real life, resistance movements are frequently Evil Versus Evil at best. But why must a science fantasy series be just like real life?
And unlike the Rebellion, the Resistance isn't opposed to the legit Galactic order. If anything, the First Order are more of a resistance in the real-life sense than the Resistance is. 
edited 28th Sep '16 2:08:47 PM by HamburgerTime
Would that it were so simple.
It's hard to find Leia sympathetic at all when she was a member of a Dixiecrat-esque Space States' Rights party, then decided to form a militia. Leia Organa, redneck heroine. Was Bloodline written as Libertarian propaganda?
edited 28th Sep '16 2:47:27 PM by CrimsonZephyr
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
You just don't stop.
Would that it were so simple.
All I'm saying is that Leia's canon political career post-ROTJ is filled with Unfortunate Implications. She spent her life as being party of the "do-nothing government is good!" party which let injustice go unpunished all over the Galaxy for decades, and then wants the Republic to do something after decades of facilitating its decline? Leia can't make up her damned mind. I bet she still thinks "guys, the Populists were right because I was a Populist and I was right. Central government is bad, except when I need it!"
Actually, scratch that, Leia is simply a political cypher — she takes up whichever political position, for narrative reasons, is the "correct one."
In Aftermath, she's a militarist, in Bloodline, she's against centralization, and in TFA, she's for centralization, but it's only when she's for any of these positions that they can be considered by the story to be "good."
edited 28th Sep '16 2:50:33 PM by CrimsonZephyr
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
Really, this whole trope, the thing where the legal authorities are too inept, corrupt and/or evil to get anything done and the only people you can trust are a small group of unelected, unaccountable rebels/vigilantes/aliens/wizards/whatever who are Just Plain Better Than Everyone Else is everywhere in sci-fi and fantasy. Star Wars, Harry Potter, Hunger Games, superhero comics, etc. etc. etc. Does it have Unfortunate Implications? Maybe some, but I wouldn't attribute it to any sort of malice or agenda on the part of the individual writers, it's just a genre convention. Albeit one I admittedly would like to see subverted once in a while.
edited 28th Sep '16 2:51:06 PM by HamburgerTime
Would that it were so simple.
Well, stories are cultural currency, and when what we tell each other in narrative is that supermen and "the almighty individual" are better than institutions, experts, and the vox populi, is it any wonder that democracy is in a state of stagnation? Is it any surprise that Trump is where he is? Life imitates art and art imitates life, simultaneously. Most old stories were written in times of kings and warlords — the focus on individuals reflected the times. It's troubling when stories made in democracies, with the alleged theme that democracy is good, routinely show democracies as being pathetic, corrupt, and weak. What exactly are these heroes fighting for if everything they accomplish will be undone by the ungrateful and indolent masses?
So, yeah, it kind of does have to be Unfortunate Implications. And as for me, personally, I identify more with the Beleaguered Bureaucrat than I ever will with the Action Hero, so I'm more sensitive to the inherent fascism of all of society's ills needing a savior for their redress.
edited 28th Sep '16 2:58:49 PM by CrimsonZephyr
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
You would despise Marvel Comics.
Really, I think this trope is more a form of Deus Exit Machina than anything else. Central authorities by dint of being central authorities are, well, really really powerful, and having someone on your side who can just drop a nuke on Bad Guy HQ ten minutes intro the movie doesn't allow for much conflict.
edited 28th Sep '16 3:06:03 PM by HamburgerTime
Would that it were so simple.
I like the odd Captain America story, but on the whole, I'm rather ambivalent towards most superhero fare.
Then scale down. Focus on espionage, covert conflict, proxy wars. We should have had the opportunity to savor the Republic's triumph, not have it be a sick man of the Galaxy ready to be killed off right at the moment we finally get a glimpse of it. They don't need to be immediately proactive, but writing off an entire democratic republic as being uniformly corrupt and stupid just sounds like anti-democratic propaganda. Plus, I'm sick of every fictional war following the dramatic structure of a high school textbook on World War II.
edited 28th Sep '16 3:10:41 PM by CrimsonZephyr
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
So what does everyone think about superweapons, Canon, Legends, or whatever? Are they genuinely scary? Goofy? Narmy? And wha'ts everyone's favorite?
I love how the Articles of Confederation included a clause allowing for the annexation of Canada. It says a lot about the US.