Star Wars VII - Trailer Discussion

[Soontir C'boath]

Perhaps Leia did not want to risk populated systems sympathetic to the rebels (another Alderaan) or enter a system patrolled by the Imperial Navy. She may not have wanted to broadcast on the Holonet asking for help attaining another ship in fear that the Falcon's transmissions may get intercepted. The safest option may well have been to reach their main base on Yavin IV and have the DS plans analyzed as soon as possible.

[Anacronian]

Silly me. The Rebellion naturally had scores of bases with starfighers up the wazzoo that could take the Death Star down for certain and Leia only picked Yavin because she was nuts.
The only alternatives were 'let's take the DS to a Rebel Base and hope we can kill it' and since Leia picked Yavin I suspect the 'YAY! Certain Victory Starfighter Spam' bases were currently unavailable, or 'let's ditch the beacon...and the DS is on the loose, and Valen alone knows if we'll ever have the chance to kill it again'.

I have no idea what you're talking about here - both X-wing's and Y-wing's are hyperdrive caperble fighters - there is no need for "scores of bases with starfighers up the wazzoo that could take the Death Star down"

Because you're apparently stupid. The ANH setup meant they'd have the DS in the Yavin system, and the fighters at hand to try it. Ditching the beacon in system XYZ means you can no longer be tracked and Yavin is safe...but you also have no fucking clue where the DS is going next.

yeah i'm stupid even though i have not talked about ditching the beacon - but let me ask you this - is it fucking wise to lure the Death Star to your rebel base without even knowing it has a weakness?? - the Data in R2D2 haden't even been analyzed yet when Leia made that gamble.

[AniThyng]

There really isn't much point to over-thinking this rationally - you'd really be better off just concluding the Force lead leia to make the gamble so that Luke and Han would be in a position to make the shot. As it was, without Luke making the shot and Han to take Vader out, the attack would have failed (Red Leader got a shot as well but the torpedoes missed). And as I mentioned earlier, even if we remove the Force from the picture and went with a grand rebel attack on the DS, it's quite likely to provoke a proper response - bear in mind that in the EU novel Death Star a full scale 400(!) X-Wing attack was mounted on the under construction DS and routed completely by the Imperial Navy.

[Anacronian]

There really isn't much point to over-thinking this rationally - you'd really be better off just concluding the Force lead leia to make the gamble so that Luke and Han would be in a position to make the shot. As it was, without Luke making the shot and Han to take Vader out, the attack would have failed (Red Leader got a shot as well but the torpedoes missed). And as I mentioned earlier, even if we remove the Force from the picture and went with a grand rebel attack on the DS, it's quite likely to provoke a proper response - bear in mind that in the EU novel Death Star a full scale 400(!) X-Wing attack was mounted on the under construction DS and routed completely by the Imperial Navy.

Well if "the force did it" is the rationallity then perhaps the force would let Red leader hit the target if Han and Luke wasen't there and perhaps the force would later clock up vaders toilet and all that.. there is no way of knowing - all we can relate to is what we see in the movies and think about that, Star Wars is not yet a religion(as far as i know) where everything should just be explained by "the force did it".

[AniThyng]

There really isn't much point to over-thinking this rationally - you'd really be better off just concluding the Force lead leia to make the gamble so that Luke and Han would be in a position to make the shot. As it was, without Luke making the shot and Han to take Vader out, the attack would have failed (Red Leader got a shot as well but the torpedoes missed). And as I mentioned earlier, even if we remove the Force from the picture and went with a grand rebel attack on the DS, it's quite likely to provoke a proper response - bear in mind that in the EU novel Death Star a full scale 400(!) X-Wing attack was mounted on the under construction DS and routed completely by the Imperial Navy.

Well if "the force did it" is the rationallity then perhaps the force would let Red leader hit the target if Han and Luke wasen't there and perhaps the force would later clock up vaders toilet and all that.. there is no way of knowing - all we can relate to is what we see in the movies and think about that, Star Wars is not yet a religion(as far as i know) where everything should just be explained by "the force did it".

What we very clearly saw in the movies is Luke blind firing his torpedoes under the advice of a ghost.

If purely rationally, without such mystical intervention, it's quite likely the only way the Empire would be brought down is if the Tarkin Doctrine eventually becomes so unbearable that the Death Star itself or a significant portion of the Imperial Navy decides enough is enough and revolts/attempts a coup (as it was, a sizable fraction of the Imperial Navy was already busy putting down brushfire wars and coups...). Makes for interesting dystopic fiction, but a lousy adventure movie.

[Anacronian]

There really isn't much point to over-thinking this rationally - you'd really be better off just concluding the Force lead leia to make the gamble so that Luke and Han would be in a position to make the shot. As it was, without Luke making the shot and Han to take Vader out, the attack would have failed (Red Leader got a shot as well but the torpedoes missed). And as I mentioned earlier, even if we remove the Force from the picture and went with a grand rebel attack on the DS, it's quite likely to provoke a proper response - bear in mind that in the EU novel Death Star a full scale 400(!) X-Wing attack was mounted on the under construction DS and routed completely by the Imperial Navy.

Well if "the force did it" is the rationallity then perhaps the force would let Red leader hit the target if Han and Luke wasen't there and perhaps the force would later clock up vaders toilet and all that.. there is no way of knowing - all we can relate to is what we see in the movies and think about that, Star Wars is not yet a religion(as far as i know) where everything should just be explained by "the force did it".

What we very clearly saw in the movies is Luke blind firing his torpedoes under the advice of a ghost.

But we did not see a ghost telling Leia to lure the Death Star to Yavin or anything that would indicate that the force wanted her to do that in fact every time there is a "force intervention" the movies makes it quite clear that that is what is happening and there is none with Leia.

[Adam Reynolds]

I know right? Tis a shame there isn't some sort of mystical force that can show the future to certain special people, or worse, show the future in such a way that X gets done but hides Y for other specific things to special people. The only way all that stuff could happen in either ANH and TESB would almost require a mystical force that could do that... oh wait!

This could actually be said about every event in the series. Though only if you believe that the Force is actually sentient. Why would it allow Palpatine to come to power, an act which caused Order 66 and the destruction of Alderaan, which sent ripples through the Force strong enough that it caused Yoda and Obi-Wan to feel physical pain. If the Force were sentient than it would undoubtedly be either evil, or his evil was justified enough that the above was somehow worth it. And if the Force were evil why would it have allowed the Jedi to have reigned for a millennia? Regardless of anything else, such an idea is far to cynical for the classic films.

Obi-Wan's comments about the Force controlling a Jedi's actions might lend credence to this idea but could be explained by a physical process as well. Any phenomenon based on the principle of physical equilibrium, the idea that things always go downhill in energy, has the same effects. If I am standing on a steep hill it would control my actions in that it would make it much harder to go up than down, but I can also exploit the energy gained by moving downhill. The desire to bring balance to the Force could be no different from a pressure vessel trying to reach equilibrium. The Sith, with their doctrines of power at any price, would exemplify this issue, bringing the Force away from equilibrium by attempting to concentrate its powers in too few users. Arguably the Jedi made the opposite mistake by having too many weak users. Even the idea of falling to the Dark Side fits a physical phenomenon, no different than becoming addicted to painkillers.

One idea I have that does somewhat agree with this idea for the Force controlling certain events, is that foresight only works on properly planned events. So in ROTJ, the Rebels planned to attack the second Death Star and thus Palpatine was able to predict their early moves. However none of the elements that ultimately led to his downfall were planned: the Rebel commandos and Han never planned on using Ewoks, Han never planned his ruse that allowed him to take the shield bunker, Lando never planned his suicidal tactics for the fleet engagement and most critically Vader never planned to kill the Emperor to save Luke. This also applied to Han's rescue in ANH, as it was unplanned, there was never a way for Vader to predict it. But as Leia planned to deliver the plans to the Rebel commanders, he could see this. In ESB on Bespin, Lando planned to cross Vader and risk his city to save Leia and Chewie and possibly Han but R2 never planned to learn that the Millenium Falcon's hyperdrive was deactivated from the central computer and thus learn exactly how to fix it. However Luke also never planned any elements of the duel and thus there was no way for Vader to know any of that.

It could also be argued that Obi-Wan and Yoda's spirits had created a shroud of the Light Side which also had the affect of clouding the judgement of those who use the Dark Side for foresight. Like the shroud against the Jedi it was subtle enough that it was somewhat difficult to notice. Unfortunately for the Emperor, he was unable to realize this fact as he had become so confident in his own planning and foresight after he was able to take over the entire galaxy with little but those gifts.

As to the Death Star question, what choice did Leia and the Alliance have? An active Death Star means no more rebellion. Due to its ability to crack planetary shields, it would prevent any world from launching an uprising and preparing for a long siege. While it was likely that once used it could have the opposite effect, as more and more worlds grew disgusted with the Imperial government that was willing to blow up its own worlds . Alderaan and the DS both being destroyed was the best of both worlds for the alliance. It gave a strong propaganda victory as well as the momentum of a major victory that was enough to show that the Empire's power was not absolute.

As for a successful attack on the Death Star being made without Luke, it was likely that if enough raids were launched then eventually one would have succeeded. The question was whether the Empire would have corrected the flaw first or if the Alliance would have ran out of starfighters and support first.

[Grumman]

I can kinda see where you're going with this, actually. In the old EU, it always seemed like galactic society was fairly stable, until some asshole with a lightsaber would step in and throw everything into chaos again.

So is Star Wars an argument for gun control or gun ownership. The only thing that stops a bad guy with a lightsaber is a good guy with a lightsaber. But if there weren't any lightsabers to begin with then no one would have one. Though there is of course the problem that lightsabers are generally homemade, as we presumably see with the new trailer.

Again, the Empire murdered two billion innocent Imperial citizens. You're complaining about private gun ownership when the US government just nuked Los Angeles.

[Irbis]

The Death Star follows the millennium falcon so put the millennium falcon down on a planet the does NOT harbor your rebel base or any other life and when the DS shows up and attack it - see if you fuck up the attack your long fought resistance does not get blown to dust.

That risks Empire catches them in time between landing and finding new vehicle. Where Leia is going to find completely safe passage on moment's notice without possibly losing only copy of document that might stop the Empire?

So set a trap. Rather than risk luring it to your freaking home-base, set up a fake rebel outpost on some planet in the middle of nowhere and have every single fighter in your inventory hiding nearby.

And it's just going to materialize out of thin air without Leia somehow telling them to do so through potentially traceable route?

Death Star shows up and you attack with hundreds of fighters instead of just two dozen.

Then the battle is lost by default because DS has thousands of them and it wouldn't be only a squadron launched because Vader was itching for dogfight. Tarkin was willing to ignore small strike force, he wouldn't ignore big attack.

Or even better, lure it to a heavily populated system and then swoop in to save the day.

You mean, system with heavy Imperial presence where equivalent of coast guard would be enough to apprehend Falcon and end any hope for rebels?

You all act like Tarkin was single digit IQ thug itching to destroy everything yet your own tactic failed on screen already. Tarkin somehow didn't bought the lure of Dantooine, why he would buy something even more transparent?

Alderaan was shoot because it was both personal and the planet was anti-Imperial anyway, no other inhabited world except maybe Mon Calamari had this combination.

In truth Leia has no fucking way of knowing that the Data in R2D2 could actually help them to stop the Death Star and yet she just does this wild gamble that everything will work out - she lures the DS to the rebel base without knowing if it's possible to find a weakness in The DS you all seem to take that as a foregone conclusion but in the movie it's several times stated that the Data in R2D2 are just scematics of the Death Star not a treasure map that points out the Death Stars weakness.

If there is no weakness then the rebellion is utterly fucked and at this point nothing matters anymore. If there is, it makes sense to lure it to a base with already tanked and prepared force.

Also, you guys ignore it was rebels who choose to make a stand. It's not, like, we had them evacuate in record time from a base or anything in very next movie, eh?

As for a successful attack on the Death Star being made without Luke, it was likely that if enough raids were launched then eventually one would have succeeded. The question was whether the Empire would have corrected the flaw first or if the Alliance would have ran out of starfighters and support first.

Seeing Imperial techs managed to guess the weakness and inform Tarkin within minutes of observing rebel attack I'd say it was last time attack was possible unless Tarkin would have ignored that advice out of principle.

[Adam Reynolds]

Again, the Empire murdered two billion innocent Imperial citizens. You're complaining about private gun ownership when the US government just nuked Los Angeles.

And the Empire would have never come to power if the Sith weren't out for revenge, which would have never happened if the Jedi hadn't hunted them to extinction a millennia before the films took place. Even worse, the TPM novelization stated that the first Sith were descended from Jedi, 2000 years before the films. Meaning that without Jedi there would have never been Sith in the first place. Without anything else left about the pre-TPM era I presume that book is still canon. In that context banning Force users(what I meant when I was using lightsabers as an analog for gun control) sounds like a reasonable idea.

The question I was arguing isn't whether the Empire was just, obviously it was not. This is not to mention Palpatine, who came to power on the platform of solving the same conflict he created. The question is whether or not the average citizen of the galaxy was getting tired of the cycles of destruction caused by rival Force users. It seems like we are arguing two different points, on two different scales.

It would be akin to a pair of feuding neighbors who own main battle tanks. Lets call them J and S. J is generally quite friendly and frequently first to help the community. S on the other hand is generally much worse, usually something of a bully. Every once in a while S buys a brand new tank and begins to tear up the neighborhood, only for J to buy one himself in order to stop S from going on a rampage. Even though J tries to avoid hurting everyone else, every time this happens, they level half the neighborhood. And every time S dies his children eventually buy a new tank to avenge his death, easily destroy J's now outdated tank, and kill J. This inevitably leads to J's children to also avenge his death in the same fashion, telling you it was for justice instead of revenge. This shows no sign of stopping after several generations. Regardless of whether S did most of the damage each time, how long would this last before the rest of the community started getting tired of it and decided to simply ban tanks altogether?

Seeing Imperial techs managed to guess the weakness and inform Tarkin within minutes of observing rebel attack I'd say it was last time attack was possible unless Tarkin would have ignored that advice out of principle.

That is a good point, I had forgotten about that scene. I guess it would have came down to the probability of an X-wing making the hit in the first battle. As for the rest of your points I agree completely. Yavin really was the only chance the Alliance had. That sense of all or nothing desperation is part of what made it such a good story.

[Eternal_Freedom]

There is an easier explanation for Leia going straight to Yavin than "the Force did it." Simply: i]she isn't thinking straight.[/i]

Consider what happens to her in the short timespan of the film:

Her ship is persued by a Star Destroyer, damaged and boarded. All aboard are killed or captured, including her.
She's taken, by Vader himself no less, to the very same Death Star she is trying to stop.
She get's tortured for information by Vader but gives up nothing
Tarkin threatens to obliterate her homeworld unless she confesses, only he doesn't fall for the ruse and Alderaan goes boom.
Then she's told she'll be executed, only to be rescued by three blokes with no apparent plan, and then she see's Vader kill the one guy she thinks might actually be able to help the Rebellion.

That's a lot of shit in a short time for a young person. Consequently, I can imagine she isn't entirely rational when she decides to head to Yavin.

[Borgholio]

And it's just going to materialize out of thin air without Leia somehow telling them to do so through potentially traceable route?

The rebels weren't the only ones with spies. I can't imagine it would be difficult to leak knowledge of a rebel base to an Imperial agent so that word gets back to Tarkin.

Then the battle is lost by default because DS has thousands of them and it wouldn't be only a squadron launched because Vader was itching for dogfight. Tarkin was willing to ignore small strike force, he wouldn't ignore big attack.

How do we know Tarkin ignored the attack? We know that it was Vader who ordered the launch of the TIEs but we never see Tarkin's reaction. We know they launched a roughly equivalent number of TIEs to Rebel fighters, they didn't launch an overwhelming force like they could have. So they might have done the same thing with a larger force of fighters. Only in this case, a larger force of Rebel fighters means more ships available to make the trench run.

You mean, system with heavy Imperial presence where equivalent of coast guard would be enough to apprehend Falcon and end any hope for rebels?

I doubt every single system in the galaxy has a heavy imperial presence. We're not talking about luring the DS to Coruscant here.

Tarkin somehow didn't bought the lure of Dantooine, why he would buy something even more transparent?

From his own mouth:

Dantooine is too remote to make an effective demonstration...

He sent scout ships to Dantooine to make certain there was a base in operation, but he wanted an audience when he fired the DS for the first time...so he chose Alderaan.

[AniThyng]

Ican't find the quote now but I'm pretty sure it's established that tarkin deliberately declined to launch his fighters.

[Alkaloid]

Why are we assuming the even if the loss of the Yavin base would be so bad for the Rebels. Sure, you could argue there are a few important people there, but apart from that all that seems to be based there is a few dozen fighters. The Rebellion is big enough at this point that Biggs and Luke, two farmhands in the middle of bumfuck nowhere on a planet so inconsequential the Empire allow the local mob boss to run the place know what it is and want to join it.

A few months post the attack they have a hidden base with enough resources and equipment to require several massive cargo ships to evacuate, they have actual military shipbuilders designing and building state of the art spacefighters from them and they can pull together a fleet with 3 or 4 star destroyer analogues and a bunch of smaller capital ships/corvettes if they need to in order to mount an attack. The loss of the Yavin base might hurt them, but it won't be fatal. Having the ability to know where and when the Death Star is going to be within striking distance of a Rebel base might be considered worth the risk of losing it.

[Patroklos]

I can kinda see where you're going with this, actually. In the old EU, it always seemed like galactic society was fairly stable, until some asshole with a lightsaber would step in and throw everything into chaos again.

So is Star Wars an argument for gun control or gun ownership. The only thing that stops a bad guy with a lightsaber is a good guy with a lightsaber. But if there weren't any lightsabers to begin with then no one would have one. Though there is of course the problem that lightsabers are generally homemade, as we presumably see with the new trailer.

Again, the Empire murdered two billion innocent Imperial citizens. You're complaining about private gun ownership when the US government just nuked Los Angeles.

Out of an Empire of Quintrillions. That's not like nuking Los Angeles, that's like a cop pulling a hair out a random citizen's head. Granted Alderran was famous. However, on a civilization on the scale of Star Wars its pretty absurd to think the galaxy at large is not normalized to disasters of similar scales. Events that kill billions or even trillions probably do not register out side their own localities unless they have outsized political or economic impacts. Alderaan mattered because it was Alderaan and the novelty of the method of destruction, not because of the number of lives lost. I always thought Obiwan's "a million voices cried out in pain" was ridiculous. a million voices are probably crying out in pain ever second from repulsor car accidents on Coruscant alone.

As for the new light saber I have no issue with guards existing as it can make sense in universe. I have a problem with there being a very large and visible break between the main blade and cross guard blades and since we see the machinery of a light saber hilt destroyed by normal damage types this makes them useless as guards as they would just be chopped off.

[The Romulan Republic]

Killing people is like pulling a hair?

Do you try to sound sociopathic or do it by accident?

Yes, its a tiny percentage of the population. Just like the guy shot by that cop in Fergusson is a tiny percentage of the American population. The unprovoked murder of civilians or even the perceived unprovoked murder of civilians (since I don't want to debate the Fergusson case right now) pisses people off.

[The Romulan Republic]

And like you said, Alderan is famous. Its a prosperous and influential world with a prominent politician (Leia) who is apparently known for humanitarian work.

Does that make it worse than if a poor and obscure planet was blown up? No. But it does mean that even the rich and respected aren't safe and everyone knows it. That's going to shake people in a way that a poor person/oppressed minority being killed won't.

So its less like Fergusson and more like if a US soldier publicly murdered a famous celebrity/humanitarian worker/politician on the orders of a state governor who was a friend of the President.

Take a wild guess about what the response to that would be in America.

[AniThyng]

Well in 2001 some buildings in a place called new york were destroyed by terrorists and look where that brought us...

[Patroklos]

Killing people is like pulling a hair?

Do you try to sound sociopathic or do it by accident?

Yes, its a tiny percentage of the population. Just like the guy shot by that cop in Fergusson is a tiny percentage of the American population. The unprovoked murder of civilians or even the perceived unprovoked murder of civilians (since I don't want to debate the Fergusson case right now) pisses people off.

It should come as no surprise to you that different cultures treat the individual differently. In the case of SW we also have several thousand to million species that all see things differently. You are shoe horning in our own bias and perspective.

And you are being minimalist. Brown was a death out of 300,000,000. All two billion on Alderaan are still orders of magnitude less representative of the galactic citizenry than Brown. But even if we left the representation of Brown/Alderaan as equivalent to just Brown on Earth (which is massively generous) given how the SW galaxy functions it is more akin to a Pakistani police officer murdering a random villager protesting their government. Sometimes it gets play, depending on the circumstances, but 99.99% of the time it doesn't and that's just within Pakistan. Now we have a famous example of a similar situation from Pakistan no less that is more specifically equivalent to Alderaan, but the post I quoted specifically listed the 2 billion as the qualifier for outrage.

Listen, I said nothing in regards to the morality of what the Empire did to Alderaan but it is relevant to remember the scale these events are happening in. Billions are a big number to us, that doesn't make them big to a galactic citizen of the Empire. I imagine they have environmental disasters that span sectors or regions obliterating entire races and thousands or inhabited planets on a constant basis (a supernova is screwing up a system somewhere in a galaxy constantly, probably thousands of times over) where inhabited planets are just rounding errors for their FEMA equivalent. It would be like a minor flood in Fiji to most of us.

What does it take to pacify a drug ring, which in SW is probably the equivalent of an industrial factory world of 500,000,000 million inhabitants perhaps? That would be an operation considered perfectly justifiable in the Empire or Republic. It could involve whole continent scale assaults and bombardments killing tens of millions and would be no more than our equivalent or a routine SWAT raid to the SW galaxy. Most wouldn't even know or care.

Individual lives are going to be valued differently in a SW context. We can see this in our own world as our billions add up. In the SW context people and planets (maybe whole sectors) are going to be traded and sacrificed to ensure things like the survival of your species (in the case of minority aliens) or to maintain vast multi sector or even regional entities like Corellia, Hapians, Kuat, or the Corporate Sector Authority before we even get to Empire wide relevant events. Individuals just are not that important. For some reason scifi types have no problem accepting this in similarly large scale environments like the Foundation and Uplift universes but all of a sudden the death of a freighter of refugees is a justified galactic wide calamity when it happens in SW.

And like you said, Alderan is famous. Its a prosperous and influential world with a prominent politician (Leia) who is apparently known for humanitarian work.

Does that make it worse than if a poor and obscure planet was blown up? No. But it does mean that even the rich and respected aren't safe and everyone knows it. That's going to shake people in a way that a poor person/oppressed minority being killed won't.

So its less like Fergusson and more like if a US soldier publicly murdered a famous celebrity/humanitarian worker/politician on the orders of a state governor who was a friend of the President.

Take a wild guess about what the response to that would be in America.

You are responding to me as if you are at odds to what I said, but are in fact just repeating what I said. The outrage is that it was Alderaan and the specific method of its destruction, not that it was two billion people.

[Darth Tanner]

And you are being minimalist. Brown was a death out of 300,000,000. All two billion on Alderaan are still orders of magnitude less representative of the galactic citizenry than Brown.

Er unlikely - even if we accept 10 quadrillion inhabitants of the galaxy wiping out Alderaan is the same as killing 1,500 people from Earth or around 60 in the USA. As RR said if the US army dragged 60 prominent opposition politicians out and shot them what do you think would happen?

Ok people like the Geonosians likely wouldn't give a shit how many ordinary people got killed, you just hatch more eggs right... but I'm sure their rulers would care that their entire planet has been destroyed including the aristocracy.

[Patroklos]

Is it quadrillion? I was going with quintrillion, so it looks like I may be quite off if that is the case.

[Gaidin]

Number scale is a hilariously bad way to put it with Alderaan anyway, because destroying Alderaan was destroying all but a few hundred thousand of a represented planet. Sure there were planets that had much more, and the scale of represented people(for lack of a better term) in the Star Wars galaxy is still massively massively greater than what was killed on Alderaan in that one shot. But that doesn't change the fact that whatever that number was, you're still looking at genocide. At least compare it to a proper historical event.

[Patroklos]

Perhaps. I tend to view the politics of the Republic and Empire as a very Holy Roman Empire sort of thing where polities vied with each other up to and including open warfare at times and extinguishing or usurping voting or otherwise political players, the larger entity only caring if you infringe on one of its reserves of power. And their morality regarding such things to also mirror that time period. Its a far more interesting universe that way.

Anyway your point also leads to the conclusion that its not how many the Empire killed, but who they killed that mattered.

As for quintillions I tracked it down from Saxton. God only knows how long ago I picked that up but its stuck with me every since. Is there a better more canon figure?

http://www.theforce.net/swtc/warships.html#introduction

[Darth Tanner]

Number scale is a hilariously bad way to put it with Alderaan anywa

Yes - The USA started an era of wars over the death of 2,800 people on 9/11... that's 30 days of road accidents. Numbers of deaths is pretty silly way of judging an atrocity or its impact.

[The Romulan Republic]

It should come as no surprise to you that different cultures treat the individual differently. In the case of SW we also have several thousand to million species that all see things differently. You are shoe horning in our own bias and perspective.

Peoples' lives are obviously considered important in Star Wars. Obi-wan treats Alderan blowing up like its a big deal.

Also, I am not a fan of subjective morality when it comes to things like weather peoples' lives matter.

And you are being minimalist. Brown was a death out of 300,000,000. All two billion on Alderaan are still orders of magnitude less representative of the galactic citizenry than Brown. But even if we left the representation of Brown/Alderaan as equivalent to just Brown on Earth (which is massively generous) given how the SW galaxy functions it is more akin to a Pakistani police officer murdering a random villager protesting their government. Sometimes it gets play, depending on the circumstances, but 99.99% of the time it doesn't and that's just within Pakistan. Now we have a famous example of a similar situation from Pakistan no less that is more specifically equivalent to Alderaan, but the post I quoted specifically listed the 2 billion as the qualifier for outrage.

Is their an official population of the galaxy?

I suspect you're taking your preferences and treating them as canon.

Listen, I said nothing in regards to the morality of what the Empire did to Alderaan but it is relevant to remember the scale these events are happening in. Billions are a big number to us, that doesn't make them big to a galactic citizen of the Empire. I imagine they have environmental disasters that span sectors or regions obliterating entire races and thousands or inhabited planets on a constant basis (a supernova is screwing up a system somewhere in a galaxy constantly, probably thousands of times over) where inhabited planets are just rounding errors for their FEMA equivalent. It would be like a minor flood in Fiji to most of us.

One death is often a big deal even though huge numbers of people die regularly. It depends on the circumstances.

What does it take to pacify a drug ring, which in SW is probably the equivalent of an industrial factory world of 500,000,000 million inhabitants perhaps? That would be an operation considered perfectly justifiable in the Empire or Republic. It could involve whole continent scale assaults and bombardments killing tens of millions and would be no more than our equivalent or a routine SWAT raid to the SW galaxy. Most wouldn't even know or care.

You think ordinary crime in Star Wars involves giant wars? That their are no small events? Their may be some vast organizations (Jabba comes to mind), but Star Wars being big doesn't mean that every ordinary event takes place on a huge scale. More like their are a lot more little events.

Individual lives are going to be valued differently in a SW context. We can see this in our own world as our billions add up.

Do you have any evidence for the implication that peoples' lives are less valued now than when the population was lower?

In the SW context people and planets (maybe whole sectors) are going to be traded and sacrificed to ensure things like the survival of your species (in the case of minority aliens) or to maintain vast multi sector or even regional entities like Corellia, Hapians, Kuat, or the Corporate Sector Authority before we even get to Empire wide relevant events. Individuals just are not that important. For some reason scifi types have no problem accepting this in similarly large scale environments like the Foundation and Uplift universes but all of a sudden the death of a freighter of refugees is a justified galactic wide calamity when it happens in SW.

Well Star Wars has never been a terribly cynical setting, at least not when its at its best.

You are responding to me as if you are at odds to what I said, but are in fact just repeating what I said. The outrage is that it was Alderaan and the specific method of its destruction, not that it was two billion people.

Possibly. Although its a heartless bastard who says two billion deaths are insignificant because there are a lot more where they came from.