Okay, so at the end of Return of the Jedi, but only in the Special Edition, we get to see celebrations on Imperial-occupied worlds like Naboo and even Coruscant, commemorating the destruction of the Death Star, defeat of the Imperial Military, and deaths of the Emperor and Darth Vader. On Naboo, they had a Gungan shout “Wesa free!”, and on Coruscant, they even had fireworks.
So, what, did the entire imperial government collapse when the Death Star blew up? Surely there were people on those planets that were still part of the imperial government. Did the Empire completely collapse at that moment?
The canonical answer is “no”. As I understand it, the Rebel Alliance and the Empire continued to battle until the Empire was defeated at the Battle of Jakku (of which the detritus Rey can be found scavanging through in The Force Awakens). I believe sometime after that, the Republic was reinstated as the official political entity running the Galaxy.
The Galaxy being a big place, the leaderless Imperial military largely fragmented after the Battle of Endor into factions with various Admirals and Moffs (governors) assuming control of garrisons, ships, and other assets and becoming local warlords or Imperial remnants with varying degrees of legitimacy. Admiral Thrawn or Moff Gideon in The Mandalorean for example.
A bigger question might who set up those massive celebrations with fireworks and everything and when?
The TV shows are covering this transitional period. Like any overthrowing of a Government, it’s a contentious transference of power and responsibilities that will take time. Worth celebrating, though, and it does give rebellious factions that had hitherto hidden themselves the courage to emerge and get some much needed shit done.
From what we’ve seen of the postwar Republic in Mandalorian, they seem to have immediately fallen victim to the same crippling bureaucracy and aristocratic complacency that allowed Palpatine to take over in the first place. They had Moff Gideon handed to them on a silver platter and decided to transport him in a lone unarmed and unshielded shuttlecraft with no escorts, and didn’t even bother looking for the shuttle when it never showed up like it was supposed to. They decommissioned the entire fleet, put a couple of X-wing pilots in charge of patrolling multiple star systems, had sleeper agents working within their Operation Paperclip equivalent and were completely unaware, and ignored Leia’s calls to do anything about the First Order until it was too late and Starkiller Base had already decapitated the government.
The citizens of the galaxy stockpile fireworks to set off at any excuse. For those that don’t have a stockpile, there are small fireworks stands in virtually every parking lot. It is kind of like living here in South Carolina.
What I find a bit frustrating about the new films is we never really get a sense of what the First Order is and how they fit with the politics of the Galaxy. From the first 6 films, it’s plain that that first the Republic, then the Empire is the government for the entire galaxy, with individual systems having various degrees of political autonomy and degrees of allegiance. Furthermore, it’s evident that the Galaxy has too many systems with too much diversity of ideology for any central government to effectively rule. The Republic was corrupt and inept and the Empire attempted to rule through fear (ergo “Death Star” superweapons).
The First Order though, The audience has no clue who these people are, where they are from or why they are so powerful. They’re not just Imperial Remnants with old star destroyers and legacy stormtrooper garrisons. They have modern ships and vehicles and armor which means they must have some sort of industrial base. The First Order is presented as cartoonishly tyrannical and evil but there was plenty of opportunity to present some rationale why a significant number of planets might actually be pretty unhappy with the New Republic and support the First Order.
And finally, the Death Star program was a pretty complex 30 year initiative that spanned the events like half a dozen films. Yet somehow the First Order hollowed out a planet to build an even bigger superweapon with no one noticing or giving a shit? Meanwhile someone was cloning Palpatines and cranking out modified planet-killing star destroyers by the thousands on Exegol? Where did they get the shipbuilding facilities and manpower to build and crew those things, again, without anyone noticing?
I just think there could have been this much more interesting backstory of a fragmented Galaxy 30 years after the fall of the Empire instead of a cartoon army of badguys.
But far fewer people would pay to see that movie (the first one would bomb, so there wouldn’t be more). Doing it this way is both a lot easier and a lot more profitable. Safer to just re-tell the original story over and over, with slightly different characters and without a logical backstory, because really, what Star Wars watcher cares about backstories? Every Star Wars movie since the first one has just been a money grab (and sometimes an ego trip).
Every character in every Star Wars movie that appeared on screen for more than 1/3 of a second has an extensive written backstory (and “forestory”). Star Wars fandom is almost defined by elaborate backstories.
A single example that is the rule, not the exception:
To be fair, the same can be said of the Empire if all you have to go by is the original trilogy. How long has it been around? How did it come to power? What’s the Emperor’s name? The movies don’t answer these questions.
The story we get in the sequels and the expanded universe is a solid enough answer, especially as addressed in TLJ - the Republic, both before and after the war, is a weak central government, and for all its high talk about democracy, the people who really hold the power in the Galaxy are the nobility, the megacorps, and the Hutt crime syndicates, all of whom don’t really care who signs their checks as long as they keep coming. The entire reason Palpatine was able to worm his way into power was by exposing the flaws in the Republic - first their inability to prevent the Trade Federation from imposing its will on a sovereign planet, and later its failure to prevent a civil war or to keep the Jedi and Sith under control - and promised a stronger and safer alternative.
Note that I said “Star Wars watcher” not “fan.” I wonder what the ratio is of actual fans, as defined as those who know and care about those backstories, to those who paid to watch any of the new movies one time. Or to those who have watched one of them on TV without paying since they came out.
I couldn’t tell you if I have seen any of that one or not. The summary in IMDB kind of makes my point, I think.
The Star Wars saga continues as new heroes and galactic legends go on an epic adventure, unlocking mysteries of the Force and shocking revelations of the past.
It’s not so much that we need to know the entire details and backstory of the Empire. But in the first few minutes of Star Wars we learn a couple of things:
There are two warring factions
One of them is clearly better armed with more powerful ships
The smaller ship is pretty nice, is manned by uniformed crew and security personal, and is ferrying a “Princess” on some sort of diplomatic mission. This implies they aren’t pirates or terrorists or some sort of criminal enterprise (we see what that looks like a bit later on Mos Eisley).
Our hero Luke lives on some backwater and is eager to join whatever this conflict is all about.
We don’t know all the details, but we figure out pretty quick that the Galaxy is embroiled in some sort of civil war against a brutal and tyrannical government.
In contrast, The Force Awakens with Poe Dameron skulking around some backwater village collecting some Mcguffin and casually mentioning General Princess Leia before the First Order drops Kylo Ren and a bunch of stormtroopers 2.0 on them. The thing is, we already have like 30 years of backstory and Galactic History that ended with the collapse of the Empire. So who the fuck are these new guys? How did they become so powerful in 30 years? They couldn’t just “invade” the Galaxy. Enough planets would have to be like “fuck the New Republic” to go back to something that resembles the old Empire. But why?
The First Order is how I understood the Empire at 5 years old when I first saw Star Wars, having no concept of the larger politics. “Bad guys” like a James Bond villain living in his secret lair with his army ninjas. Or like COBRA’s “secret army” of uniformed soldiers and tanks aircraft painted in COBRA livery and giant “adventure set” bases that was somehow such a threat to the entire world that only the relatively small GI Joe team could stop them (as opposed to the entire military might of NATO).
IOW, cartoon villains designed to sell action figures.
The celebrations were not all happening simultaneously. While I prefer the Yub Nub music (it sounds more Star Wars and flows into the end credits music better), the celebrations were one of the best changes the Special Editions made.
They do, though: It’s during the events of the first movie that Grand Mof Tarkin tells us that the Emperor has formally dissolved the Senate. And really, that one line tells us a lot: There used to be a Senate, and hence a Republic, but now there’s not, but the transition was recent enough that it’s only just now that the Emperor is open about seizing full power.