So the ending of Return of the Jedi meant nothing?

That would have required imagination and daring, words I would never in a million years associate with anything helmed by Abrams.

What could have been powerful, IMO, is if the Rebellion, having defeated the Empire, became a force in the galaxy every bit as corrupt and ruthless as their former foe ever was. But, again, balls and creativity would be required for that.

Instead, Disney and Abrams made just about the safest, most pleasant nostalgia-fest (a la "Stranger Things") audiences yearning for their youths could ever hope for ... it's the rest of us, largely immune to the charms of childhood (at least when it comes at the expense of doing something different), who are shit of luck.

History is a redundancy...it all means everything...until it don't mean shit...and then you die🎳🏄🏻☠

Even the much-beloved "sequel books" went pretty much in the same direction, and the Empire continued chugging along after ROTJ.

This story is at least more like Neo-Nazis, people who are loyalists and trying to maintain what they worked toward, but under a new banner.

It's a pretty basic "organized entity" consequence that happens all the time in the real world: The Empire was huge, and simply removing the core leadership does not guarantee that the entire organization will fall.

I had my own Ep.7 concept from years ago called "Remnants of the Empire" which started on an even more direct link to the OT: Various Imperial bases throughout the galaxy still remained, sometimes unaware that the Great War had ended.

Here's an example in the real world of something similar: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-25772192

Yes, more subtlety could have been employed, like splintered Imperial remnants that are at war with each other as much as with the Republic... Similar to a cartel being split into multiple feuding cartels after the capture or death of a leader.

It all still reminds me of Terminator 2, though -- Just do something bigger with the same basic story. Otherwise you're liable to rock the boat.

Star Wars has never been about true originality, not from the beginning. It's about big space battles and magic powers and laser swords, peppered with enjoyable characters and caricatures.

I do hope Snoke turns out to be interesting.

Only a misogynist would object to recycling Episode IV's story.

Man. You folk just love smelling your own farts in other people's company, don't you?

I was around when ROTJ was first released. I was a kid but a bright one, and this is what I thought of the ending when it was brand new:

"Yay, the Sith aren't in charge any more and Luke's going to be a Jedi and Leia and Han are in love and the Rebels are going to try to build a new government. But overthrowing a bad government doesn't mean the new rulers will be much better, and trying to start over is going to mean years of boring politics and other stuff that isn't the stuff of movies, and guys like Han don't mean happily ever after."

Really, glorious victories and kissing as the camera fades out doesn't mean everything will be great after that, not in any kind of realistic universe.

In terms of what happened in ROTJ, the Empire had its head cut off and a portion of its defence force was destroyed, along with a major weapon project. Over three decades, something grew out of its remnants Seems entirely feasible as to what that was by the time the events of TFA came about.

I didn't mind the soft reboot angle. But I think it would have been cool if they had reversed things and made TFA about Ren's journey to freeing the dark side. In this scenario, the rebellion would have been the power in the galaxy, the first order would be the minority rebels and it could have been Driver and Von Sydow's characters in the Luke and Knobi roles only their missions would have been about re-establishing the Sith as the power in the galaxy. It would have been a nice mix up to see the journey from the other perspective.