All the more reason to ignore the prequels. Star Wars politics prior to that were as simple and direct as a shot from a good blaster.
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Trying to figure out if all this might be consistent with thisâŚ
This article makes the argument that the destruction of Alderaan by the Death Star was retaliation in kind for the destruction of the Death Star later in the movie.
Um.
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Bravo.
It is particularly amazing to see all the people miss the point of the piece in the last lines and go straight to arguing âcanonâ 
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I would question that âStar Wars tells one story (the fall and rise of Anakin Skywalker) really wellâŚâ; a tragic romance requires actors capable of generating some sort of on screen chemistry. Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman have the emotional range of an asthmatic with a peashooter. I think that the alternative story, of a spoiled teenager acting out a strop, is equally under developed. 
are coming from factories somewhere
âThe rebels donât seem to be using the three planets we hear of to create stuff, so obviously theyâre lyingâ
The galaxy is big. Without even going into the EU, there are probably many, many, many planets helping out the Rebel Alliance. Even just 1% of the worlds in the galaxy is still a huge number.
And you still think this was a coincidence?
#Wake up, banthple!
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Oh, I donât know - the comparison between spoiled bratty teenager Anakin and spoiled bratty teenager Luke is moderately interesting - they are given similar choices, but Lukeâs temptation isnât nearly as complex so it was probably easier for him to reject; his father-figure was Owen, not Palpatine after all. (And yes, Iâm one of those who is interested by the idea that the new film might be exploring Lukeâs temptation in more detail - it feels as though this would be a logical development.)
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Definitely. âRelax Nerds, itâs just a storyâ is a muuuuch better conversation starter. /s
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Yeah, pretty much the whole of Star Wars made far more sense to me if you imagine it as happening on a single planet rather than on the absurd galactic scale that it is shown as being. It even makes the âsingle biomeâ planets a little more comprehensible if they are merely âthe desert regionâ or âthe arctic regionâ, and some sort of nuclear missile destroying a city is a lot more credible than a planet-busting laser gunâŚ
Vaderâs mentor chose to live within flying distance of Vaderâs son in order to keep an eye on him for a number of reasons, probably including assessing if the kid could be used as a counter to Vader when he grew up and preparing to nip a problem in the bud if the kid didnât fall too far from the fatherâs tree. [The metaphorâs a little clumsy, but whatever.]
Vaderâs daughter was raised by one of the friends and allies of Vaderâs mentor. Said friend was one of the key voices involved in the creation of the Rebel Alliance. I would not be at all surprised if that friend told her that if anything went south she should try to get to Vaderâs mentor for help without mentioning that he was Vaderâs mentor. In fact, looking at Wookieepediaâs entry for Bail Organa, he ordered Leia to go to Vaderâs mentor to try to recruit him for the Rebellion.
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[quote=âScurra, post:5, topic:68935, full:trueâ]
Yes, thatâs exactly it. Star Wars tells one story (the fall and rise of Anakin Skywalker) really well - and, as noted in the article, it has multiple interpretative approaches. [/quote]
That is baloney. First off the prequels did a HORRIBLE job at telling Vaderâs story. He wasnât a sympathetic character that we could root for his ultimate redemption. He was a complete dick with as much emotion as lima bean. His âturnâ was ridiculous and completely unbelievable. Remember RotJ when they tried to turn Luke? They wanted him to harness his hate, do something he would regret, taint his soul. RotS basically had a confused person who was fearful for no real reason some how turn his back on his peers because some guy made some vague promise of maybe not letting his wife die in child birth (vs, you know, consulting a space doctor).
Itâs shit.
Well someone has never played the role playing game. Absolutely it is a rich universe to get lost in in an RPG. I played the West End games and they did a hell of a job. You could run whole campaigns away from Empire. The Empire was only one aspect. We ended up making basically a Special Ops group whose base was a captured Star Destroyer painted black with the red Rebellion symbol on the bottom. The galaxy is huge and you could play it a like cyberpunk adventure, Indiana Jones searching an ancient Sith ruin, combat centered, dealing with pirates and gangsters etc.
No - it is the idiot writers that make it ânarrow but deepâ. The galaxy is huge. There is no reason for one band of rebels to even bump into one of the established characters. There is no reason they would EVER set foot on the same planet in one of the films (other than perhaps Corsecant). Like on the Indiana Jones Chronicles, Indy couldnât do anything with out running into someone famous. Out of toilet paper? Teddy Roosevelt hands him a roll.
And while I like Star Trek, I canât believe you are suggesting it some how has a better range of stories. That is horse shit. While there is some variety and some very notably great stories, there is also a lot of formulaic crap. You canât take 3 main movies and 3 prequels and say that the Star Trek universe is some how larger. They have hundreds of TV shows. Of course we are going to see MORE and WIDER - because they told those stories. Star Wars Rebels is a great example of expanding the Star Wars tale. And they are just one small band among a huge rebellion. And there are areas where no one is even fighting over that, they are fighting over smuggling spice and shit.
Hell Star Trek is a universe where conflict makes no fucking sense even. âWait, we have machines that can literally make anything I want at the will of a voice command - and what now are we fighting over?â The Borg made sense as bad guys, but all the other wars with the Klingons, Cardassians, Romulans, etc. I am like - wait - what? They have access to resources that we canât even fathom and have only explored a portion of the galaxy. Why would they fight over anything?
Star Wars has the variety where you can see some worlds are back waters, and others are near utopias. And unlike Star Trek where the average âalienâ is humans with bumps on their heads, they really do mix it up with all sorts of life forms.
Anyway - rambling. TL;DR - Youâre wrong.
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Of course many settings can be reimagined with the âwhat if theyâre really evil,â premiseâŚWinnie the Pooh for exampleâŚ
âyou always carry your gun just in caseâ
If you donât want âtheir kindâ moving into your neighborhood, you can kidnap their children and maybe theyâll go away.
Nailing body parts to your front door send the proper message that you donât want to be bothered.
Just show up around dinner timeâŚtheyâll feed you if they know whatâs good for them.
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No love in your âFurther Readingâ for Star Wars On Trial, edited by David Brin and Matthew Stover?
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I can enjoy it well enough for what it is, but in the sci-fi scheme of things, I think Star Wars is not smart enough to be truly nerdy. Most people seem to live in dumb fantasy already anyway. Iâll even watch Undersea Kingdom if I am bored, but have no delusions that it is very good.
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who said that Han was smuggling drugs?
I couldnât help myself. Iâve always heard Han described as a smuggler, but very little about what he actually smuggled (Iâd assume because âsmugglingâ sounds cool, but getting into details of drugs, or weapons, or people/slaves, get less cool very fast). In any case, the first place that I could find that has any mention of something tangible was starwars.wikia.com and Glitterstim. According to that wiki, Glitterstim is âquite addictiveâcasual use could quickly lead to full-blown addictionâ and âExcessive use, however, degenerated the nerves in the brain, resulting in loss of sight, twitching, nervousness, and paranoiaâ.
Conclusion: Han Solo⌠drug smuggler. 
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But just like a lot of things about the rebels, this all depends on just how oppressive the empire was. Under a sufficiently oppressive and capricious empire, toasters, TV sets, and all manner of things, if prohibited on certain planets under unfair sanctions would be considered smuggling. Heck, even bringing acetaminophen to a small spanish-speaking island fringe planet can be considered smuggling.
This is the root of the problem with judging the rebel alliance. Any band of rebels or freedom fighters, when judged purely on their actions within a narrow scope of context, can easily be framed as terrorists. Thereâs always confusion as to which is which, and reporters and governments (and in this case âdocumentaryâ filmmakers) are the ones to hash it out. Painting the Empire as more benevolent than the rebels because they were orderly in their occupation is to erase whatever evils would have had to have been performed in order to establish that order. An orderly colonizer is one who has been ruthlessly efficient in their colonizing. Asymmetric warfare, on the other hand. And questioning whether the old republic was âthe sameâ as The Empire, or even worse, is to ignore the weight the people put in self-determination. The Empire, as weâve learned, is rarely âGreeted as Liberatorsâ
And judging Leiaâs merits as a political and military leader by taking heavily into account the way in which she dealt with a complicated emotional situationâŚGloria Steinem would like a wordâŚ
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ok, i didnât know about the Glitterstim thing. i was thinking of just the stuff in the movies, and iâm pretty sure they never indicated WHAT he was smuggling. i always assumed it was weapons or something.
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Fair enough. We can agree to disagree. 
I certainly donât disagree with you over the fundamentally absurdity of replicators in the Star Trek universe though - it was one of the weirder decisions that was made early on that created much difficulty later, including the need to invent something that couldnât be replicated!
I didnât claim that the Star Trek universe made more sense than the Star Wars universe, merely that it evolved into something that had a different sort of scope and intent. Lucas deliberately chose to make his second set of films a prequel series because he only wanted to tell that one story - he wasnât interested in making the tapestry any broader than it already was. Star Trek has continually been forced to expand its own universe simply because itâs a show that was based on the concept of exploration; Star Wars is almost the antithesis of that - hence my comment above about it plausibly all taking place on one planet!
(In passing, yes, I have played (and run) the West End game; Iâve also played (and run) the FASA and Decipher incarnations of the Trek game. I found both systems to be excellent; it just happened that I never found a good entry point to a Star Wars game that felt as though we were in that Universe whereas I was never short of options for a Trek game. That may have coloured my opinions.)
