I think the smart thing about introducing characters like Saw was not simply to say wanton violence is not the answer but to highlight that the Rebellion was actually The Alliance to Restore the Republic. The problem with many, many rebellions is that the people needed to accomplish the coup are not the same people who can govern afterwards, thus you might see a shift in a few figurehead but the underlying infrastructure is the same. People like Mon Mothma was the political arm that made the Alliance more than just insurrectionists.
It's also a distinction with the Resistance, they wanted to be the Alliance 2.0 but were ultimately just a militia with almost no political support.
Do you not know that in the service one must always choose the lesser of two weevils!
I mean, it's hardly an unfair line.
Saw exists to draw a line between terrorists and actual partisans.
The problem is that for a lot of modern day readers/viewers, that line is something they scoff at because War Is Hell. The thing is that the line very much does exist for a lot of people.
But it explains a lot about why Luthen has a Misaimed Fandom if you believe hes' meant to be on the other side of it.
I mean, they certainly did have political support. The Chancellor was meeting with her agent. However, this version of Russia was fine with nuking the United States for supporting its enemy.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Mar 8th 2024 at 12:29:12 PM
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The Resistance was supported by individuals with the New Republic, but was kept independent enough to work as a proxy war. But if they were to directly liberate a sector from First Order control, the New Republic would likely not lay claim because that would be aggression towards the First Order. In lore they were not intended to be actual insurrectionists, but the movies made them into the end all of First Order opposition.
Luthens motives remind me of the Star Trek episode where a war was fought with computer simulations and casualties were handled with death chambers to make it clean and less destructive. Kirk destroyed those computers because acceptance of the conflict meant there was no incentive to stop it (and the Enterprise was simulated as destroyed in the crossfire). Luthen sees complacency thinking the Empire is too big to oppose, thus he's organizing bigger counterstrikes and pitting smaller Rebel cells to acknowledge each other in order to galvanize the idea the Empire isn't invincible.
Do you not know that in the service one must always choose the lesser of two weevils!
Well, they were trying to provide a reason to bring the New Republic against the First Order but then the latter wiped out the latter.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
The Rebel Alliance isn't going to buy its victory in protest and Senatorial debate. It's going to buy its victory in blood.
While I think there is a point that sometimes some of Saw's acts are painted as more fanatical than they actually are (like in Fallen Order), I think saying the GCW ends only with destruction and blood is a misinterpretation of the story, and to an extent Star Wars' main themes. The war doesn't end only with guns. The Rebels defeat the Empire, but they do it with forging alliances with its other victims instead of fighting each other. One Sith is killed, but another is persuaded to give up his hatred and do some good again. Star Wars has always been a hopeful story about how making peace is stronger than war. One which Andor will eventually lead to.
Edited by Tuckerscreator on Mar 8th 2024 at 7:05:58 AM
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Also, just on a practical level, Saw's path is self-destructive and ineffectual. He and all his men are literally blown up (and he's visually the most heavily cybernetically augmented person in the franchise except Darth Vader). This is most obvious in Rogue One, where if his torture of the turncoat pilot did what he claimed it did (and destroyed Bodhi's mind) then the rest of the plot couldn't happen and the Rebels would have been utterly screwed, as they need Bodhi to tell them where to go.
ETA: Saw is a great tactical commander, but a shit strategist and has no theory of victory. It's not even clear his goal is actually victory most of the time. Nemik, the Wide-Eyed Idealist of Andor has a massively more realistic path to victory than Saw! Saw's a great killer, but he literally never manages to turn 'I've killed a bunch of bad guys' into anything except a pile of corpses. And sure, they're mostly bad guy corpses, but so what? The goal isn't to kill every stormtrooper or imperial civilian, it's to defeat the Empire and he has no path to that goal.
Edited by ECD on Mar 8th 2024 at 7:28:55 AM
Andor's certainly a show about how as awful as the Empire is, the ability for the Rebellion to be able to fight back and thrive as well as it did was not in any way shape or form starting from an easy place. That whatever choices you made as part of the Rebellion, prices had to be paid.
Man. Andor does such a good job of showing the Empire.
It's a fine needle to thread. You have to make the Empire so bad you understand why it must be destroyed, but also believable as to why there are those who are fine with it. And the show fricking nails it. I can understand why Joe Imperial is fine to go about his day in the fascist regime while also respecting those that are not.
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Personally speaking, I like Saw as a character and think he is a great character but that does not mean I think he is in the right. There are some things he's right about and he is needed for the early rebellion; but he is a terrorist and has no real plan aside of hurting the empire.
As a character he has always been reckless, short sighted, short tempered, and honestly kind of asshole. But it all is what makes him so compelling.
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I feel Saw is actually mostly a victim of bad timing.
The Rebellion has a plan...and it's a plan that won't work. They believe they can use the Senate to remove Palpatine from power. Except, the Senate is powerless and dissolved the moment that it inconveniences the Empire.
Saw is aware that destroying the Empire is the only way to stop it and that requires military force—which no one will give until the Death Stars get blown up.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
I still want an action figure 2-pack of funeral garb Brasso and a brick so I can recreate this scene
.
C'mon Hasbro. Do it. You made figures for Transformers representing the exact moments of their deaths. You can release a figure for this very specific scene.
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Didn't the Rebellion straight-up kick out Saw because his attacks were also targeting civilians? He's also kind of a No True Scotsman per his dialogue in Andor, with how he said that there are a lot of other rebel groups throughout the galaxy who are not "true" revolutionaries like him because there's Separatist holdouts, planet independence movements, Republic hardliners, and more.
Yes, as has been brought up before, Saw wasn't disawoved because he does violence, but because he doesn't give a shit about collateral damage.
It's also worth noting that his reckless attacks ultimately also chip away at his group's numbers without achieving much else.
The Rebel Alliance has actual goals beyond "overthrow the Empire", which is why they try to make sure not to alienate regular citizens - Saw doesn't think beyond that first part; he's really just lashing out.
And the tragic thing is that Saw wasn't always like that - he used to be much more idealistic in his youth, but non-stop conflict against first the CIS and then the Empire just broke him.
Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Mar 15th 2024 at 6:40:03 PM
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Yeah, and a number of Saw's actions were just straight up terrorism like on Inusagi.
Saw and his people were hired for a mission there by another partisan group. Inusagi was a mid rim world that had been left alone and neutral for centuries, but with the rise of the Empire used its military might to force them to give it up and sign a treaty that made the planet subject to the Galactic Empire. The people considered it illegitimate rule and wanted to go make to rule under their cheiftess and previous rule.
But that doesn't matter to Saw. The new governor being sworn in was a personal friend of Palpatine and Inusagi was close to Naboo. So Saw and his patisans take the job and proceed to massacre the people and the blossom festival where the governor was being sworn in Imperial and Inusagian alike. Just to prove a point that not even the emperor's home world is safe.
Again I like Saw as a character but that does not mean I'm going to sugar coat him and his actions.
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The Rebel Alliance's long term goal is to establish a new galactic government, and the legitimacy of this goal is pretty heavily staked on them not "using the tools of their enemy against them". They need to have standards for what is acceptable in wartime and Saw did not hold himself to those standards.
A lot of the... y'know, non-war-crime, tactics developed by the Partisans did become part of the Rebellion's repertoire. The Partisans were even one of the first Rebel groups to use X-Wings.
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Hell, remember how he threatened to destroy the last surviving Geonosian Egg, out of bitterness over the Clone Wars?
Man has some serious issues.
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"Hack the base and then blow it up" would have been dumb because it literally defeats the entire point of hacking it in the first place.
They didn't want to just get information this one time, they wanted to permanently listen in on things. You can't listen in anymore if you blow it up, nevermind that the Empire would just move shop and now you have to keep looking for their listening post again.
And no, he's not "ahead of the curve". The main difference between him and the Rebel Alliance is that the latter doesn't think civilians should become collateral damage. Because a rebellion kinda needs the public on side to succeed in the long run.
Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Mar 8th 2024 at 7:48:50 PM
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