After getting and watching Force Awakens again...

[Paragon Fury]

I still have to ask; why is the New Galactic Republic not actively fighting the First Order in the new trilogy? The GR is a legitimate government, and its not like the First Order is a rival government; they're clearly a terrorist organization with a bank account and they even act like they acknowledge it.

Yet the NGR limits their fight to a small, barely organized "Resistance" movement? Why the fuck isn't the actual Navy assisting; why doesn't the Resistance appear to have ACTUAL ships, not just small craft?

What the hell guys?

(Also, I have sadface because my new avatar won't appear)

 

[Zontar]

It's never stated on screen, like with pretty much everything the story needed like explaining why Rey was a classic Mary Sue despite explicitly being a starving scavenger.

My theory is that the First Order and the other Imperial Remnant are collectively stronger then the Galactic Republic, so the logic is that they have half the galaxy free and can't hope to get the other half so if they give the remnants a single enemy, so letting them be decided by their own politics means at least there is peace in the galaxy and freedom in half of it. Which wouldn't be unprecedented given the Galactic Empire and Republic spend a decade at peace between their decades long first and second Sith wars.

 

[tippy2k2]

I had actually assumed The First Order was still the dominant force (or a broken piece of The Empire, which itself is the dominant force even if The First Order is just a small part of it).

The death of the heads of The Empire wouldn't kill the empire the same way that if the president of the United States went down, America wouldn't implode on itself. Or at least that was my assumption watching the movie.

 

[Saelune]

Because Episode IV had rebels fighting an evil Empire. Regardless if you liked the movie or not, it was just a remake of Episode IV to a near shot for shot level.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

To me it's a glaring plot hole. Episode VII did a very poor job at justifying the Rebel/Empire continuum, whatever they're called now.

 

[Frankster]

Well I can answer at least one of your questions: the New Republic did some sort of treaty where they dismantled/scrapped most of their fleet and what ships they had left was guarding their most important worlds, which happened to be the ones the Starkiller base blew up, aka they destroyed most of the New Republic fleet.

This is how it was explained to me anyhows, and I can't say it makes any more sense to my eyes.

 

[DefunctTheory]

The First Order is the gutted remains of the Empire. As such, they still are a complete governmental body, with fleets, an Army, and governed planets. The Republic is basically the planets that were able to split off from the Empire, and sold their active resistance away for peace.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

The movie did fuck-all to explain what's going on; the novelization fills in the gaps.

The Empire still exists, nominally. They signed a peace accords (comparable to the Treaty of Versailles in scope and intent) with the Republic after the Battle of Jakku which broke the Empire's back, militarily. The remnants of the Imperial military fled into the Unknown Regions and formed the First Order. The First Order rebuilt on the Empire's dime (in secret), and then went forth to fuck couches and drink milkshakes.

Because lol, politics, the Republic won't step in out of fear of violating the treaty. Also, the dumbasses demilitarized. The galactic politicians who aren't morons started funding the Resistance on the sly. Which basically makes the whole shebang a proxy war between Republic and Empire. Well, made, being in the movie the First Order gets right to eliminating that moron gap.

Kind of makes the First Order the good guys, if you ask me. They Darwinated an entire star system.

 

[ThatOtherGirl]

This isn't fully explained in the movie because politics are boring, but it is a very small leap to understand what is going on. After Jedi there was a massive power vacuum. The rebellion was small, it is doubtful that they could grab hold of the entire galaxy. So they setup shop in one corner. Other factions setup shop elsewhere, including factions based on the remnants of the empire. The First Order is likely the most powerful of these factions.

These factions developed into nations. The Republic is only one such nation, and a small one at that compared to the former Empire. The First Order is another one of these nations, or something like it. Until the events of TFA they likely operated solely within their borders or no mans land. The Republic knew they were a problem but moving in and taking care of them would make them the aggressors which would for some reason be politically bad. I can think of several off the top of my head, like their citizens are unwilling to go to war on speculation for example. You can't just start a war because you don't like people and you think they are up to no good.

So whatever the case, the Republic is unwilling to start an open war. So they secretly funded a terrorist organization (the resistance) to fuck with The First Order within The First Orders territory.

 

[Yuuki]

like explaining why Rey was a classic Mary Sue despite explicitly being a starving scavenger.

Obviously it's due to midichlo-*gets hit by a brick* OK JEEZ SORRY, I'll step outside now

 

[madwarper]

The death of the heads of The Empire wouldn't kill the empire the same way that if the president of the United States went down, America wouldn't implode on itself.

Of course, it wouldn't. Merely killing the president doesn't destroy our Death Star. They'd have to do both, then we could all get massages.

Spoiler

OT: I'm pretty sure it's only to keep it from seeming that the good guys have the full weight of the Galactic Republic raining down on the rag-tag First Order.

 

[Dolly]

Umm, where are you getting the idea that the First Order are a terrorist organization? They're a legitimate, recognized government that holds sovereignty over its own territory. It was my understanding that everything that you're calling terrorism was them operating within their own territory or, at least, in contested territory.

But they do look like a terrorist organization for us, who watch this film. However, I agree that they are a legitimate government only wanting to conquer more territories.

 

[Veylon]

This movie really needed some kind of in-universe cliff's notes explain-everything scene to get us up to speed. I mean, we spend time with several people who have the whole story in the same room with several people who have no clue and this doesn't happen? In retrospect it's baffling that some kind of question-and-answer sequence didn't go down.

If nothing else, throw up a map so that the people trying to guess where Luke is have an excuse to point at various places and mention what's been going on lately.

I don't normally complain about this sort of thing, but this movie was really short on exposition.

 

[DefunctTheory]

Umm, where are you getting the idea that the First Order are a terrorist organization? They're a legitimate, recognized government that holds sovereignty over its own territory. It was my understanding that everything that you're calling terrorism was them operating within their own territory or, at least, in contested territory.

But they do look like a terrorist organization for us, who watch this film. However, I agree that they are a legitimate government only wanting to conquer more territories.

I really wish people would stop throwing 'terrorist' around like this.

The original Empire was arguably a terrorist organization. It spent a lot of time and money creating weapons that had the sole purpose of inspiring terror (That's what the Death Star was). The First Order never does anything simply to terrorize people. It kills enemy combatants and the people who support them. That's it. Just because it's scary, doesn't mean they are terrorist.

 

[Dolly]

Some of this may be explained in the deleted scenes. They were cut for time, which seems silly, as the movie is pretty fast-paced. One of the scenes they cut supposedly involved Leia warning the senate of the First Order. Maybe one day a fan will release an edit that contains the scenes that should have stayed.

It would be nice if you could give some links. Well, the film is not so long to cut lots of scnenes. I wish I could view the full version with deleted scenes then, just to understand this mess better.

 

[RedDeadFred]

I had actually assumed The First Order was still the dominant force (or a broken piece of The Empire, which itself is the dominant force even if The First Order is just a small part of it).

The death of the heads of The Empire wouldn't kill the empire the same way that if the president of the United States went down, America wouldn't implode on itself. Or at least that was my assumption watching the movie.

Yea, this seemed pretty clear to me. Just because Hydra is the only villainous group with the motto of "cut off one head and another grows back" (or something to that effect), doesn't mean it's not true for just about every other organization in real life or fiction.

 

[Hawki]

Wookiepedia can give a better explanation, but basically the New Order wasn't considered to be worth the Republic's time. The Republic was willing to fund the Resistance, but was unwilling to fully commit itself.

Granted, this should have been in the film, but answers exist regardless. I can't help but feel that after the backlash against the prequels in regards to the political focus, Ep. VII went too far in the opposite direction.