Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens

Perhaps it's because the Imperial officers have a strong tendency to be British, but I always viewed that series of lines regarding the Senate as something along the lines of the governments of the 13 Colonies prior and during the American Revolution - while the British/Imperials maintained an omnipresent degree of control through military forces based in the colonies/galaxy, the state governments/Imperial Senate still served as the primary means of representation (and hence the "No taxation" quote in Real Life) and communication between the colonists/systems and the British/Imperial government in Coruscant/London. Punishing or meddling upon the activities of the Senate/states would thus lead to the local citizenry under them to become suspicious of the intentions of their colonial/galactic overlords far away.

Sorry, but transportation and communication alone won't make a viable Galactic-wide superstate. As it is, we can't even form a viable PLANET-wide superstate, nor should we. You get that many voices together under one yoke (and that's the only way to get most of us together at all, even the good people) and you're bound to see everything come flying off the handle in one way or another. A Galactic-wide superstate? Not ever happening in real life. The best bet is just to keep people apart without them having to ever worry that someone else's concerns might become their nightmares.

Or maybe go the way of Star Trek and just have it in the form of a Federation. The planets are left to their own device for the most part but there's also Federal laws that in some cases supersede them.

Eh, even that's too much, really. The U.S. creaks under its own weight (granted, it was BUILT to creak so our country would come apart when stupid shit happened. The Founding Fathers who actually got their words into place were anti-government to start with, and only did enough work to get some mobility out of this bloated carcass we call a nation). When you think of that Galaxy Far Far Away the numbers just bog down the mind.

We're not even there yet on a global superstate.

Indeed. The UN is ignored for the most part; it's NATO that's got all the power and that's not even a supranational body, it's a military alliance.

Communications and transportation are the minimum requirements for a viable state, of course. Legitimate authority is the ever-sticky question: how many governments in the modern day have totally legitimate authority over the territories they claim to be theirs? Not even accounting for countries were large chunks are in active rebellion, but just countries where what goes down in the capital really has no bearing on daily life in a certain province or more.

The solution is a strong network with local governments. Totalitarian systems work by subsuming local government and making them an organ of the center, but the issue is that has to be carefully orchestrated or it very easily looks hollow. Most systems work by farming out legitimacy to local people who have local credibility; the great empires worked that way, and federal systems work that way as well. Star Trek's Federation and Star Wars' Galactic Republic were like that. The Empire sort of worked that way as well via the Senate, until they stopped because they believed they had the ultimate weapon with which you could force compliance.

On Earth right now the pendulum is swinging back towards smaller states, but i think it will swing the other way again as technology changes. The one-earth government is far from impossible.

So, rewatched a couple of scenes from the original trilogy. Somehow, Hayden and Mark had similar speaking patterns in the movies. Coincidence, but a curious one.

Well, George Lucas.

Where he goes, coincidence follows.

I call it luck.

There is no such thing as luck or coincidence, there is only the Force.

"The are no accidents" [Master Oogway]

The casting director could have done that on purpose, with the patterns. Plus the writers could have worded things similarly to play it up.

Nah, the actors just talk that way IRL. Actually, most actors who played in the movies talked with their normal voices (only faster, more intense).

When I mentioned the casting director, I meant that the director might actually have paid attention to those speaking patterns and selected for them when Hayden was cast. Little bonus things like that are sometimes planned in movies.

People often wonder why Leia starts with a British accent during the first half of A New Hope though. She drops it in the chaos of the escape from the Death Star and never resumes using it again in the trilogy.

Probably b/c she's talking to Tarkin, who's an Evil Brit.

That's easy to Hand Wave. She did it to blend in with the Imperial establishment as long as she was (officially) part of it. Then dropped the act.

I often wonder why that one guy mispronounces her name.

@people up above

British accent = high speak, mode of speaking when you're politicing with piloticians.

What you're talking about is one type of British accent.

I wonder how this movie will go about having Sith without screwing up the overarching story about the chosen one bringing balance to the force by destroying the Sith (or if it will just ignore that). Also, how Sith managed to reemerge after the Darth Bane line of Sith ended with the deaths of Darths Sidious and Vader.

Since Darth Maul isn't canonically dead right now, they could totally have him be the surprise Sith master.

edited 1st Jul '15 6:47:58 PM by Cruherrx

I'm actually curious whether they'll use the term sith for the darksiders in the new movies at all. They weren't called that in the original trilogy as far as I remember. Kylo Ren won't be using a "Darth" title as far as we know either.

And it'll inevitably lead to flame wars over whether or not he counts as a sith.

Clinging to just the old movies for Star Wars does a disservice to the lore.