There's a reason for this and I'm not really sure if I like the answer:

Certain factions of the Rebel Alliance (which, as we saw in Rogue One, isn't the giant, happy family that was portrayed in the OT), is made up of planets that were originally part the Confederacy of Independent Systems, otherwise known as the Separatists, led by Count Dooku and Darth Sidious.

Many Separatist planets had the means to build a mighty military and shunned induction into the Empire. The Empire, meanwhile, has its hand full building the Death Star and managing all of the other worlds its conquered, so it doesn't have time to deal with certain insurgent planets.

Thus, the Rebel Alliance.

they are all imaginary stories:rolleyes:

Sure - I thought the movie did a pretty good job of laying that out.

But up until this movie, if all you watched were the movies, you had more of a grass-roots campaign against a heavy-handed military force.

When you look at it through the prism of Rogue One, it's more like a straight up Civil War. And while the Alliance may be lacking in numbers and perhaps even a little bit in technology, this isn't exactly the Colonials vs. the British Empire here. It's closer to the North vs. the South.

Like I said - it just paints a different picture.

Absolutely and that's one of the many things about this film that makes it a great Star Wars movie.

It also filled the absurd plot hole in A New Hope, gave more depth to the rebellion, how the Death Star was powered and Darth Vader.

It's pretty crazy to realize that he needs to spend time in a bacta tank, 20 years after his duel with Obi Wan, just to stay alive.

And that he built his castle on the planet where he got roasted to begin with. Odd bit of introspection for someone that's still hell-bent on the dark side. Then again, maybe it's less about introspection and more about just fueling rage.

Just a lot of cool stuff in there.

I think it's about fueling rage. He literally became Darth Vader on Mustafar by killing his wife and two unborn children (from his POV, anyway) along with losing his battle with the Jedi.

http://a.dilcdn.com/bl/wp-content/up...5-1024x614.jpg

http://www.starwars.com/news/we-set-...inkId=32763287

This is pretty cool, from Doug Chiang of Lucasfilm:

StarWars.com: To start, this was the thing that really made me jump out of my seat…which then made my wife scratch her head a little bit. Vader’s castle.

Doug Chiang: [Laughs] Vader’s castle was really fun. When I knew that we were going to possibly go back to Vader’s castle, I loved that idea of, “Okay, lets establish Vader’s home.” The initial idea was, “Why would Vader live here?” In our minds, we started to come up with a little bit of a backstory. That perhaps this place had special meaning for him, and that this is where he comes to meditate and to heal himself. We started with the idea that maybe it should be built around his bacta tank chamber, and he comes back here to rejuvenate himself and also to meditate. So from there, the structure itself grew out from the bacta tank, and there were certain ideas that we tried. We were trying to go for a very iconic shape, and we always love tall towers. Ralph McQuarrie actually drew quite a few small thumbnail sketches [of Vader’s castle] that were very intriguing. They were kind of angular versions of a tower, and I saw the potential of where he was going, and I just exaggerated that quite a bit.

One of the things we landed on early was this idea of a tuning fork — a twin tower kind of look. And it was really interesting, because then that started to give Gareth a lot of ideas like, “Well, maybe the structure is built this way because it is like a tuning fork. It’s tuning the dark side in terms of the energy.” And then we actually carried that even further to Jedha. The Jedha temple, the tower there, mirrors this but on the good side. So when you see the film, you can start to see, “Okay, Jedha had its own tower, which was configured like a tuning tower. Vader’s tower, Vader’s castle, had the same thing but it was made in black, whereas Jedha was white.” You kind of start to see the good and the bad. You may not really notice it on a first take, but hopefully it’s that foundation of design subtleties that then the audiences, on second viewing, will appreciate. And I always like to build those elements in there because it makes the design more coherent, it makes the film more coherent, and overall it makes the design language very authentic and real.

StarWars.com: There’s also the note in here — I think you said it — that there is a Sith cave underneath. Where did that come from? It’s funny, because you’re watching the movie and you have no idea that there could be a Sith cave under there, but then you read it in the book, and you’re like, “That’s awesome and that makes sense.”

Doug Chiang: Exactly. It went back to the original idea of, “Well, why would Vader be here?” and there was a series of paintings and sketches that Ralph McQuarrie did, where Luke actually visits Vader in this underground lava cave. I always thought that was such a compelling image, because you have this lava lake inside this cave and there was Vader’s throne. So we took that idea and thought, “Okay, well, maybe on the lower levels of Vader’s castle, there’s a more ancient part. That he actually built this castle on a foundation of an ancient structure.” If you look at the finished design, it has this very strong element of a structure that was there for a purpose, and that purpose was to draw energy from the lava lake. If you look at the design of the base, it feels very much like a dam, and how the lava flows through it, possibly getting energy. And so we thought, “Okay, well, that’s the foundation. Maybe even deeper, or underneath that, is an even more ancient part, which is a natural cave where Vader goes to meditate.” Visually, we’re trying to create a sort of history for the tower. The bottom is the most ancient, the lava lake dam part was perhaps what Vader built his foundation on, and then the tower was Vader’s addition.

The reason "Star Wars" looked the way it did in 1977 was because it WAS 1977. And it was rated PG. Back then, they didn't exactly get visceral or realistic... just like how, on TV, they didn't do it either. Now, you have TV shows like "Criminal Minds" and "Dexter" and whatnot, where torture and dismemberment are de rigeur. You have superheroes who look and act nothing like Adam West and Christopher Reeve.

But let's take a better look at your "kids movie":

- the Empire torches Luke's home, leaving the burned corpses of his aunt and uncle still smoking outside;

- the Empire uses a planetkilling space station to literally obliterate millions of people at once;

- Darth Vader kills Obi-Wan (albeit in a bloodless vanishing act).

Don't forget, there was no PG-13 rating until 1984.

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-h...-rating-debuts

This came about due to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which Lucas, of course, wrote.

Always pushing the envelope.

I've been enjoying the photography of ANH as of late. I usually put on a movie to fall asleep to, and I've been watching Epi 4 quite a bit lately. Certain scenes, such as Threepio wandering the desert with thick, ominous storm clouds in the background give that movie a stark realism that the prequels just can't touch.
Think about it; Tatooine is the most arid planet in the trilogy, has two suns, yet because of the limitations of the 70's, we've got a huge storm brewing in the distance that simply could not occur on a planet like that.
It's the most "technologically poor" movie of the entire franchise, yet it's the most visually rich.

Of course, but the point of new fans generated by the move still stands.

The theme parks are also doing very well after the move.

And Bambi's mother gets shot by a hunter.

I'm not saying the previous movies are G rated, but if you can't see an OBVIOUS shift in tone here, I don't know what movie you were watching. This was a movie about grim sacrifice. About characters who have no heroic arc to speak of but rather are born into suffering, fight and then die. We're following the final death rattles of a handful of miserable existences who's final reward is to be shot, detonated, immolated or otherwise disposed of.

This movie should've had a crawl and it should've been straight from Thomas Hobbes:

{Fanfare!!}

During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that conditions called war; and such a war, as if of every man, against every man.

To this war of every man against every man, this also in consequent; that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law, where no law, no injustice. Force, and fraud, are in war the cardinal virtues.

No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death: and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.

{fadeout to spaceship}

This shit was dark as hell, man. It was absolutely something much much different than the original trilogy and not a positive development for the 'franchise proper'.

Interesting, did not realize!

Episode VII was dark as hell, too.

The "joy" that everyone felt at the end of ROTJ, with Han, Leia, Chewie and the Rebels celebrating the death of the Emperor and the destruction of the Death Star, Luke seeing his father as a Force Ghost next to Obi Wan and Yoda, was a very fleeting moment.

Flash forward 30 years: Han & Leia are separated and living apart. Luke is no where to be found, as he ran away after Han & Leia's child murdered every one of his padawans in his his new Jedi Order. The First Order, the heir to the Empire, creates a weapon that murders billions upon billions of people on five planets. Han Solo is murdered by his own son.

That's some dark ass shit.