Star Wars: The Force Awakens

That plan does not materialize until Yoda agrees to train Luke. For all he knows training Luke could lead to something even worse than the Empire. I don't think Yoda has a plan at all. He lost and retreated into hermitage. I am sure he is communing with the force but so far it has just shown him how to become a force ghost.

Sure they took the kids because they knew they would be hunted down if anyone knew they were alive. As such they could be important later, but there was no way to know how.

After Luke cuts his training short I am sure Yoda is just thinking about how Leia might not be so hot-headed and amenable to training.

We also have to remember that the rebellion is tiny. It is in no way comparable to the Clone Wars. It is a small insurgency with little popular support. There is no reason to believe that this small force could topple the Empire even if they did have 1-2 really strong Jedi with them. 

He said that he hated the Empire, but also that he wanted to join the Academy (it is hotly debated how closely that Academy was tied to the Empire but it definitely was not the Rebel Academy.) He also says that there is nothing he could do about the Empire. That is echoed in his talk with Han about it being a suicide mission. Seriously they sent 32 1-2 man fighters up against a 140k space station with thousands of Tie Fighters. The only reason they lasted as long as they did was that Tarkin did not see them as a threat and never deployed the Tie Fighters. Vader took his squadron out unauthorized. 

I think the general populace disliked the Empire, but that is far different than supporting an armed uprising. The Death Star was intended as the final straw, ensuring that no one would dare even think about rebellion when faced with near instantaneous planetary destruction.

Well except for that initial round table sequence in ANH where its pretty clear the imperial high command is all about that whole Ruling with an Iron Fist thing

Also by ROTJ is the rebellion that small? They have a giant fleet by then—it seems to me to have progressed from just “rebellion” to full-blown civil war.

The deleted scene clarifies that Biggs was going to defect to the Rebels on his way to the Imperial Academy - something about hitching a ride with another ship en route, I believe.

I always had the impression the Rebellion was more of a guerilla war with implicit popular support - the first movie makes it clear that oppression is the primary mechanism of the Empire continuing to exist, and they annihilate a centrally placed world - Alderaan - simply because that kind of sheer terrorism against the populace is what they consider the most effective method and an Alderaanian Senator is a known rebel activist (as is her father, though they're not aware of that)... with the rotating Rebel base being where the Rebellion throws together its starships and command forces to organize its next strike.

In fact the Death Star is kind of presented as a means to transition to a greater stage of authoritarianism, its implicit threat means they no longer need to tolerate the existence of the Imperial Senate (which no doubt has a few other suspiciously woolly headed thinkers like Leia Organa); the Empire is operating, if you'll forgive the corruption of Mao Zedong, down the barrel of a gigantic laser.

I think they made it clear that the bulk of the Imperial Navy was destroyed at Endor as well. It's pretty clearly inspired by the Battle of Leyte, where the Japanese sent 75% of its Navy to halt the American recapture of the Philippines, only to get totally destroyed by the combined fleets of the US and Australia, then numbering over a thousand ships. Just like Endor, what had been intended as a trap for one side became a trap for the other.

At the same time, it didn't end the war. Japan at the time still occupied huge amounts of Asia. Had it not been for the atomic bombs, Leyte wouldn't even have marked the halfway point of the war in the Pacific.

WAT

I'm so glad I was a console gamer and not a PC gamer. There is no way I would still like video games if I ended up having to sit through tons of shit like that.

I only ever played Jedi Outcast on gamecube. that was fun

I sympathize! My friends don't even really work retail anymore. But, we want to see it at a huge theatre which doesn't have assigned seating. So, the lines to get in are really long. Like, hours long. Which means we needed to find an approximately 6-hour block of time we had in common to see it.

Yeah, this didn't work out so well. I did manage to coordinate it with one friend. He and I both requested Saturday, the 19th off so we could see it. After Christmas everyone will have more time. If we all like the film, we'll try to find a time the 6 of us geeks can go together.

Rotten Tomatoes has it at 97%, so I'm expecting that it should at least be much better than the prequels.

This is proving to be a very hectic time for the movie to come out. All kinds of stuff happening at once. At first I thought we weren't gonna get to it until Monday or even Tuesday next week but after seeing me moping around the house my wife took the bull by the horns, cleared her saturday schedule, got a sitter for the kids, and we are seeing it early afternoon.

I remember how enthusiastic a lot of early prequel reviews were, though. (Empire gave the film four stars on release and then like two stars when the DVD hit.)

Anyway I'm going tonight, so that's that.