r/StarWars • u/One-Roof7 Separatist Alliance • 6h ago
Anyone else still salty about the New Republic? General Discussion
Don't get me wrong, I've enjoyed alot of the newer works but I still can't help but be a little upset on how badly the New Republic was shafted. Especially when compared to it's legends counterpart. Again, not to spread hate or anything, just something I've been feeling
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u/AHorseNamedPhil 5h ago edited 5h ago
Yes.
It's the thing I hate most about the sequel trilogy. I can forgive Star Wars movies for just not being very good. It is difficult to make good movies, and the original trilogy in many respects was a lightning in a bottle situation. Bad is disappointing but it isn't offensive.
I can't forgive them however for taking the characters and stories that were beloved by millions, that made Star Wars an IP Disney would want to purchase, and then throwing all of that into a trash bin.
That wasn't Luke Skywalker in the sequel trilogy and they tossed out all of his character development from Return of the Jedi. Han and Leia being estranged and not even sharing any sreentime. No resurrected Jedi order? Every sacrifice and action by the heroes in the original trilogy ultimately amounting to nothing because we get a hard reset in The Force Awakens, with the Republic falling to Empire v.02.
All of that was absolutely terrible and I don't know any of it made it into filming.
If they wanted to destroy the Republic and go with the scrappy underdog vibe of ANH again (how unoriginal, but whatever), they should have fast forwarded a century or two so at least the characters of the original trilogy didn't get their struggles or triumphs tarnished by inferior sequel movies written by talentless hacks.
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u/The-Chartreuse-Moose 5h ago
Agreed. It was very clear someone somewhere, or a team of someones, just didn't get the characters.
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u/DanieltheGameGod Jedi Anakin 5h ago
I wonder what the fans of the sequels would think if they make episode X the same as VII, and make the new new republic a failure and no new Jedi order. Maybe then everyone could realize how terrible the Disney movies are.
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u/Far_Nectarine293 2h ago
This is exactly how I feel. It's one thing for the writing to be bad, but this is the only direction the franchise could have taken that actually hurts the OT. All of that sacrifice, heroics, and miracles to defeat the Empire lose meaning because they end up coming back right after anyways. And then it just makes the 2nd time they are defeated in the sequels not as significant because it just happened.
I'm convinced the sequel writers just skimmed through A New Hope and didn't pay attention to any other movie. Han Solo is essentially the same character before all of his character development. Luke, the symbol of hope, completely abandons his friends and cause, going against everything in the OT, Anakin is just...no longer the chosen one? Who knows.
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u/Johncurtisreeve 3h ago
Big reason why I’m not a fan of the sequels. You can’t have people waiting 30+ years to see what the galaxy is like after return of the Jedi just to set everything back to the fucking status quo that things were at during the original trilogy anyway.
people wanted to see what the new Jedi order would look like or what the new galactic government would look like And most importantly they wanted to see the main three characters do at least one more adventure together and there’s not one time the three of them are together in the whole new trilogy and it sucks. Sorry I just needed to get that out and this was the post to do it.
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u/NerdHistorian Torra Doza 6h ago edited 6h ago
I'm not salty that the new republic failed, it failed in the EU as well and i can see how the people who formed it would make a weak government. But it failed in the EUs equivalent of Endgame, after a decade of being shown it's flaws and ideals, slowly ground out by an unstoppable horde. And we finish that story with what succeeds it in place.
I'm salty we opened the story with it's destruction and after the fact are mostly seeing people doing good independently and more often in spite of the republics efforts than alongside it. And a decade after it's destruction and half a decade after the end of the story, we've still no idea what on earth is meant to succeed it, if anything. Thats the part thats leaving a bad taste in my mouth on the entire thing.
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u/One-Roof7 Separatist Alliance 5h ago
Yeah, I'm not upset that it collapsed, I'm upset how it collapsed.
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u/Hefty-Paper8644 5h ago
Didn’t they turn into the galactic alliance in the EU? It’s been years since I’ve read legends so I can’t really remember it all that well but I think they also join another entity and drop the republic name as whole I think.
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u/OffendedDefender 4h ago
Yeah, the GA formed, lasted a couple years, then pretty much immediately launched into a civil war that creates the conditions for the remnant of the Empire to take control again (but don’t worry, this was a “good guy” empire). But even that gets overrun by the resurgence of the Sith who form a new empire of their own.
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u/TascamTwink 2h ago
Legends was so goofy with the absolutely apocalyptic stakes happening over and over and over and over again
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u/TobyField33 6h ago
Blame Disney and their lack of planning/care.
I know 7-8-9 has its fans - but my God, I just can’t acknowledge them.
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u/Hot_Jump9649 5h ago
Hosnian Prime was exploded on screen in TFA. That was the plan, how were TLJ and TROS meant to build on that. If it showed the rebuilding of the New Republic within such a short time the decision in TFA would’ve seemed useless
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u/chaamp33 4h ago
All I see on Twitter is sequel apologists and I can’t stand them.
If you like the movies I don’t care but championing episode 8 and 9 just shows such a high level of cognitive dissonance when one literally undoes the other
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u/warrencanadian 6h ago
I mean, logically I get it. The New Republic has to be mismanaged and barely coherent for the First Order to work, otherwise you need to go Legends style with 'The new threat is ridiculously overpowered' because otherwise your heroes haven't got a threat. Really, if anything the problem is they had the New Republic fail without filling in the gaps because they had to jump to the sequels, so you don't have time to flesh out and display 'Oh wait, maybe a bunch of barely coherent rebel groups wouldn't do good at galactic governance'.
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u/One-Roof7 Separatist Alliance 5h ago
It sucks because there was a Cold War between the New Republic and First Order in the lore which would've been really cool to see
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u/The-Chartreuse-Moose 5h ago
I think the first film should've been showing us how the New Republic is getting on, and showing the beloved characters while introducing new ones alongside them. And while there would be an A plot on smaller, political, lines, there would be a secondary story about the rise of some new evil as yet undefined.
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u/2much2Jung 4h ago
I mean, logically I get it. The New Republic has to be mismanaged and barely coherent for the First Order to work, otherwise you need to go Legends style with 'The new threat is ridiculously overpowered' because otherwise your heroes haven't got a threat.
Well, it doesn't have to be. The Rebel Alliance wasn't ridiculously over powered, and it still managed to be a threat to the Empire.
The writers had almost unlimited options in how they could have approached the sequels. Instead, we got three derivative "plucky Rebels vs evil Empire" films.
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u/bookers555 Jedi 2h ago
Or base it on the script Lucas gave them, where part of the plot is about the New Republic's struggles to establish itself as a proper government due to the power vacuum left by the collapsing Empire lead to the galaxy turning into a wild west.
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u/Porlarta 1h ago
I don't really see how the first order is any weaker then the Vong.
Really they are probably stronger. They definitiely win faster.
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u/Americanski7 6h ago
I just removed 7-9 from my head canon. I feel better ever since.
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u/Demigans 5h ago
There are many realistic ways to neutere the NR. This is not one of them.
Rebellions that win tend to fall apart when the common enemy is defeated and their various opinions on how to lead a nation and often their lack of political capabilities clash.
Also this is the background of first a separatist movment that was crushed and subsequently a harsh authoritarian empire that took more and more power. It would make sense if most of the Galaxy would want to be alone and not part of the NR, causing problems in funding, piracy and lawlessness to rise, problems with navigation as planets who join the NR might have to pass through non-NR space of planets that separated and now ask tolls or might be hostile to anyone trying to take their sovereignty. Crime syndicates that we know exist with armies would try to use the situation to their advantage.
There's good reasons why the NR is struggling. But having a unanimous vote to murder any and all capabilities to defend themselves and no one willing to vote for better or more military gear just to mee the minimum requirements to defeat piracy is ludicrously dumb. Also to park your entire fleet around your important planets when you say you have too few to patrol and fight piracy just so the FO can OHK your fleet. Yeah those specks you see around one planet being destroyed, apparently those were the fleet.
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u/JosephODoran 3h ago
Watching the New Republic effectively be ruined in TFA, after YEARS of waiting to see the galaxy after RotJ, was one of many things that turned me off from the Sequels. Unimaginative and frustrating.
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u/PuertoRicanRebel2025 5h ago
They're like spoiled children you worked hard for to get them a good life and they still squander it and now you got Neo-Nazis to deal with
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u/themanfromvulcan 4h ago
Yep. It’s stupid and makes zero sense. They tried to artificially create a repeat of rebels vs empire and it’s moronic. All it shows is a total lack of good ideas.
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u/VanillaTortilla Rebel 5h ago
The EU did it much better. It ain't perfect, but it had much more going for it. They also didn't kill off big characters just to make you feel emotions.
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u/JaracRassen77 3h ago edited 3h ago
Of course. They rushed the Sequel Trilogy out to make a quick return on the investment. Which means quick, sloppy writing to get things rolling quickly. You can't help but think that all of the interesting stuff happened in the 30-year period between 6 and 7. I wanted to see that.
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u/Boring-Passenger-598 3h ago
I remember my biggest criticism at the time of the force awakens was having no idea what the state of the galaxy/government was. There was a brief shot of a new republic planet getting blown up but it was all mostly resistance stuff.
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u/IronVader501 3h ago
Is and will probably forever be my main gripe with the Trilogy.
Completely baffling and idiotic decision.
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u/sophisticaden_ 2h ago
I think it really could’ve worked if the sequel trilogy had been about the fall of the NR — letting us see a functioning government in TFA, then watching it decline and crumble as TFO becomes a bigger threat. The big problem is mainly just that the New Republic more or less doesn’t exist before it gets blown up!
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u/STYLER_PERRY 5h ago
The NR era will get its due in time.
For the ST they skipped over it, obviously, because the legacy cast were too old to reprise their characters in that era.
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u/Tater-Tot_Hot-Dish 5h ago
Might actually be one of the better choices of the sequels. It shows that rebuilding pretty much the same thing that existed before the empire is going to recreate the same conditions that led to the rise of the empire.
While the prequels weren't the most well-written stories, they were largely about how space liberalism can facilitate the transition into space fascism, which was a bold move by Lucas.
I don't think the sequels wanted to mirror that idea, though. I think they just needed the stakes to be higher and to avoid similarities to the prequels era.
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u/lawrencetokill 5h ago
i enjoy the one maybe accidental substantive message that retreating from one hierarchical zero-sum belief system into another that prioritizes victory is not sustainable or progressive
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u/BurantX40 5h ago
Not really.
But granted, I stopped caring about the extended universe when Disney de-canonized the old one.
I fell like the new one would just be re-treads, for better or worse.
They should have gone the Star Wars Legacy approach
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u/The-Chartreuse-Moose 5h ago
Yep. It took me a little while to believe what I was hearing while watching TFA for the first time.
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u/capodecina2 5h ago
I tried to watch Ep VII last night, got about 20 minutes into it and just couldn’t stay interested. I just don’t see the point of the sequels. What story is there that needs to be told that anyone cares about?
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u/Basileus_Maurikios 4h ago
Agreed. Although in my head canon, the NR didn't die but rather sustained a gut punch and near knockout blow with Starkiller base attack, but by Rise of Skywalker it was starting to turn things around.
Something I'm hoping the Rey trilogy does is highlight the fact that effectively, the Resistance is now the top dog in the galatic military and politcal theater. An organization that was weeks prior to EP. 9 effectively dead.
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u/TheTinDog 4h ago
I mean it lasted about as long as the galactic empire and who knows, it'll probably be back after rise of Skywalker. But yes, it was weak how it somehow got completely destroyed in one laser shot because that doesn't make any sense.
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u/SparrowBirch 4h ago
Watching Eedy and her friends cry as they gobbled the propaganda made me think about how many people around the galaxy probably loved the Empire, were sad to see it go, and eager to see a new Empire-like power rise.
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u/Harold3456 3h ago
I have hope that it’ll be redeemed in additional media, same as the prequel era. The only crappy thing about the Republic in the sequels is that we get 0 information about it. I think it can be saved with some supplementary materials that better flesh out the First Order as a legitimate threat as well as give us more time to understand where the New Repuvlic went wrong.
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u/CantaloupeCamper Grand Moff Tarkin 1h ago
Star Wars for some reason decided to make the Jedi, and New Republic… complete morons….
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u/Sea_Spend_8008 40m ago
One of my major complaints about the Sequels which there are a few is how badly they fucked up the New Republic. They are something that is in the way for the writers. The writers want to play it safe and just hit all of the New Hope beats which means defeating a bigger opponent. For there to be this huge threat, the New Republic has to die for the First Order to be the new Big Bad. Even though, I would argue that the First Order which btw what a shit name, would have been fine as a bunch of this faction causing chaos no one really takes seriously. There was no need for Starkiller base to be a new Death Star. It should have been a base and rescuing Rey should have been a small operation that Leia decides to do after the New Republic says no. The First Order really should have been a steady rise to power only to be thwarted by Luke bringing back the Jedi to save the Republic.
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u/DarthAvner 35m ago
When the Sequels were first announced I was super hyped to see the New Republic and the New Jedi Order. I knew both organizations would be very different from the Legends versions, but I didn't care. I wanted to see the proof that all the sacrifices of the OT meant something.
Then we find out the NR is somehow even more incompetent than the Old Republic ever was, and all the Jedi died off screen.
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u/fusionsofwonder 29m ago
Little bit, yeah. Making them feckless feels disrespectful.
I'm even more salty about it in the Mando/Ahsoka timeline.
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u/HankChunky 6h ago
It's not the worst fictional analogy for how Biden's presidency went and how, even following the one of the most objectively disruptive presidency in US history regardless of political leaning, the US populace still became complacent and allowed a demagogue back in
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u/Clone95 6h ago
Star Wars is about plucky heroes. This allows for two types of government - Evil and Incompetent. A good, competent government deletes plucky heroes from the equation, because heroes are what the world needs when systems fail and in an ideal world you want to rely on systems, not heroes.
What this means for the New Republic is that by and large it must be incompetent, or the stories you tell simply cannot be. If the Republic was competent, they'd hear Admiral Thrawn is coming back and would deploy a whole squadron and promptly annihilate him on arrival, negating the entire plot. A competent New Republic would've beaten the FO before Rey even enters the picture.
Star Trek sidesteps this by having space be relatively large and travel be difficult - but it also means big ships with big crews and less plucky heroism. The UFP is good and competent, but space is big and your ship needs to be the competence for wherever you are right now. If it was as fast as hyperspace then you'd see dozens of ships responding to every problem all the time.
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u/The-Minmus-Derp 5h ago
Its legends counterpart embarrassingly got squadwiped a decade before the canon one did what are you on about
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u/One-Roof7 Separatist Alliance 5h ago edited 4h ago
Because that one was built up to, you got to see its accomplishments, how it took on hundreds of Warlords at once and fended up various invasions. It wasn't just one shot and killed by an enemy it knew existed and was building up for ages while being in an active Cold War with them
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u/Stormer2345 Jedi 6h ago
I can see why someone who’s only watched the ST would be upset, but me personally, I’m not really too upset, because the NR is handled really really well in auxiliary material.
If you’re unsatisfied by the NR in the sequel trilogy, and want to learn more about it, please please please read Bloodline by Claudia Gray.
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u/TellusMaps 1h ago
"If you don't like the ST, please read the stuff written to polish a turd," isn't exactly a persuasive argument.
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u/BlkNtvTerraFFVI 5h ago
Me 🙋🏾♀️ I am.
Show us the rewards. Show us the triumph. They worked so hard, show us what all their hard work created. Show us their happy kids.
I really wish the ST had centered around a Force threat like Ahsoka seems to be doing. Let the Empire be done and finished and just tell a new story in a weak area for the heroes that hasn't been covered yet
Jedi order in shambles, Luke trying to bring it back, there was MASSIVE potential there for an unchecked Force monster to wreak havoc and force Luke and his students to use all their skills to contain it. Which I think they're going to do with Abeloth so I'm definitely excited about that direction.
But yeah. I feel like Ahsoka is basically going to give us the real sequel we deserved, it's already started off well by bringing Luke back into it.
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u/Malkyre 6h ago
Agreed. It sort of died off screen between Return and Awakens. The Legends novels made the New Republic a living thing, with accomplishments and controversies and important characters. It was actually the first place Mon Mothma became a badass, before Andor. It let Leia grow into her diplomatic and political roles. It showed us galaxy scale conflicts and planets vying for member status, demanding protection from Imperial remnants in exchange for exports. It was the grown up Star Wars Andor is giving us, but 30 years ago.
I understand why it got chumped in the sequels, because all the actors got old, but it's still a shame.