star wars again

[fox]

Oh okay also.

Apparently the two biggest plot gaps people are concerned about are these:
1. Why is there a Resistance when the good guys won the war and are the legit government now? What are they resisting?
2. If Finn worked in sanitation, why was he a shock trooper in the first sequence?

I've got nothing for #2 and I find I don't actually care that much. I assume everyone does the same basic training and is qualified as a generalist and then has particular assigned tasks when there are tasks to assign. In this case, once all the civil-engineering stuff on the planet-weapon thing were done, I could see someone going Okay, now you're all transferred over to Cannon Fodder group. Handwave. Don't mind.

As for #1, they're specifically not called a rebellion, so I have no problem with it. I have no problem with the idea that the New Republic is a failed state and even the official government-sponsored military arm of that state is having to move about carefully and in some degree of secret. Himself said he didn't get a Vichy government vibe off the First Order (me: "That whole Nuremberg Rallies scene didn't say These Guys Are Nazis to you?"; him: "They're not the occupying force yet."), but I'm fine with the idea that the legitimate government is nowhere near as strong as the baddies and the Resistance is La Résistance. Or with the idea that here in our world we could have called Afghan army battalions "resistance fighters" in the late 1990s when they were resisting the Taliban. That sort of thing. Doesn't bother me at all.

First Order of what, now, that's a legit question that I don't know the answer to.

Comments

[ellen_fremedon]

1.) tree_and_leaf proposed a good explanation at kate_nepveu's journal:

I think that what's happened is that the territory covered by the Empire was not completely liberated - part of it was, which formed the new republic, but in other places the Empire did not fall, or perhaps some of the provincial governors were competent and kept their regions together, leading to the rump-Empire reforming under the First Order. "The resistance" would be the Republic-sympathetic movement in First Order controlled space, who are being covertly but not openly supported by the Republic, presumably because the Republic isn't strong enough to take on the First Order directly - it felt like a cold war situation the First Order was about to make hot.