Rogue One (Spoilers)

[Shroom Man 777]

In my mind and my heart all the Tarkin scenes were just unused ANH footage too...

[Mange]

Er, if you didn't see the copious articles on it, well: they used old ANH Red and Gold leader scenes and sounds that were cut out of ANH so... they are new-old or nold, oldnew or olew scenes.

Well, they didn't use the old footage outright. They cut out the actors and placed them digitally into the cockpits used in Rogue One: Slashfilm

[Galvatron]

Also, I'm calling out GALVATRON:

I am fine if they make a Darth Bane movie if he is only as badass as his name suggests and is thus played by Batista from WWE. It's OK if in filming, like it's right after his Guardian of the Galaxy scenes and he doesn't bother removing his Drax bodypaint.

Does that include mothballing the Republic's fleet of Acclamators after the Liberation of Coruscant?

[Galvatron]

IIRC, X-wing laser cannons are far more powerful than the blasters on a T-47 which could explain why the AT-ACTs seemed weaker against rebel starfighters.

Additionally, the new EU shows us that A-wing laser cannons are ineffective against AT-AT armor and that they have to rely on Y-wings to show up and bomb the walkers. So apparently not all starfighter laser cannons have the same level of firepower. This is from Shattered Empire, Part II:

[Elfdart]

I'd have assumed it too if it weren't for the EU claiming that all the vehicles and weapons they used were created alongside the clone army. I don't know how canon all of that is now, but at one time it was up there with the story behind Han's Corellian bloodstripes.

It doesn't matter much either way. If Sidious had spent the previous 10+ years buying up gear for his clones (along with the clones themselves), fine. I just shows how much UNLIMITED POWAAAAAAH he had even before he became Emperor. If most of the heavy equipment was already in someone's arsenal, waiting for someone to crew it, that's fine too. If the fact that you don't see the transports from II and III in TPM seems off, just remember that it's a big galaxy and it's not really possible to see all the military equipment in use.

6) Mon Mothma, like veal pen Democrats in real life, still has faith that corrupted institutions can stop a tyrant hell bent on doing evil. She wants Erso to testify before the Senate about the Death Star? That'll be about as effective as a strongly worded report from a bipartisan commission looking into... Ah fuck it I can't even write this whole sentence. My fingers and keyboard are in open revolt against writing this kind of bullshit, even to mock said bullshit.

Why is that so hard to believe? The Imperials were worried that merely detaining Princess Leia would generate sympathy for the rebellion in the Senate (a concern that even Vader heeded). How do you think they'd react to proof of the Death Star's construction?

Who's going to bring Erso to the Senate? Mon Mothma? She's already a fugitive. Known allies of hers? They're already suspect. Let's assume the Senate has a Mike Gravel willing to bring Erso's evidence to the floor. Mothma, Organa and the others already know the Senate is useless, which is why they're having a pow-wow at a Rebel military base -they've already decided to take up arms against the Empire. This would be like John Hancock telling everyone that if they can just present evidence for their side to George III and Parliament...

AFTER Lexington & Concord and AFTER George Washington announces that he's headed back to Virginia to raise his own army.

It's a minor plot hole, but it was kind of obvious to me.

[Galvatron]

Who's going to bring Erso to the Senate? Mon Mothma? She's already a fugitive. Known allies of hers? They're already suspect.

Leia is the obvious choice given the fact she was an Imperial Senator herself.

Mothma, Organa and the others already know the Senate is useless

The dialogue in ANH says otherwise.

[K. A. Pital]

The dialogue in ANH says otherwise.

But the film itself shows otherwise yet. Leia is escaping and shooting back at an Imperial vessel. I don't think at this point her claims about the Senate are anything but tough talk meant to show she's not afraid.

[Reyvan]

The dialogue in ANH says otherwise.

But the film itself shows otherwise yet. Leia is escaping and shooting back at an Imperial vessel. I don't think at this point her claims about the Senate are anything but tough talk meant to show she's not afraid.

But the Imperials do take her seriously until the senate is dissolved.

Though I doubt Mon Mothma and Bail Organa were hoping that revealing the Death Star Project would cause the senate to reign in the Empire and force an end to the project. They were probably hoping that by revealing the Death Star before it was complete they would spark a widespread rebellion, causing several senators to openly throw in with them in order to destroy the incomplete Death Star. They just didn't realize that the Death Star was 99% complete and ready to be deployed at the time.

[NecronLord]

But the Imperials do take her seriously until the senate is dissolved.

Not that seriously. Seriously would be letting her go.

[NecronLord]

Who's going to bring Erso to the Senate? Mon Mothma? She's already a fugitive. Known allies of hers? They're already suspect. Let's assume the Senate has a Mike Gravel willing to bring Erso's evidence to the floor. Mothma, Organa and the others already know the Senate is useless, which is why they're having a pow-wow at a Rebel military base -they've already decided to take up arms against the Empire. This would be like John Hancock telling everyone that if they can just present evidence for their side to George III and Parliament...

AFTER Lexington & Concord and AFTER George Washington announces that he's headed back to Virginia to raise his own army.

It's a minor plot hole, but it was kind of obvious to me.

I don't think that metaphor holds. The Alliance to Restore the Republic isn't a rebel colony, it's an internal militia movement with its own sympathetic politicians who are already members of the senate.

Sure, those senators are (obviously) in a majority, but if the senate got evidence of Palpatine's plan, nothing that we've seen stops the senate passing another enabling act, say, to execute order 65 and install Mon Mothma as Supreme Chancellor. And we've no reason to believe that the stormtroopers wouldn't salute and gun Palpatine down.

[Mange]

LFL is rather inconsistent as to the size of the Death Star. According to Luceno's Catalyst, it's 120 km in diameter but apparently according to Hidalgo's Star Wars Rogue One: Visual Dictionary, it's 160 km in diameter (which also seems to be the size John Knoll used for the Death Star in Rogue One based on the AICN article). I must say that I'm somewhat surprised, though pleased, that the DS size has been restored by Pablo Hidalgo (well, by John Knoll rather).

[Shroom Man 777]

We can fan-theorize that, like how in fractal's thread, I proposed that the gaping spaces within the DS not only incorporates random bottomless pits of doom but they are also like areas for internal systems'... interchanging... imagine huge servo-arms or tug boats hauling new components or replacing fried out shield generators the size of skyscrapers....

Like, as I said:

A lot of those empty spaces might also be free space saved up for future additions - maybe more power generations, maybe larger vacuum tubes, skyscraper-sized difference engines of the newest type to perform analogue computations a staggering five times faster than previous models, etc. They could be heat shunts, they could be... huge seemingly empty routes where currents of air or neutrinos or whatever are shunted for cooling... they might even be spaces for aircraft-carrier-sized maintenance vehicles to maneuver and access/manipulate/(re)move huge internal components in.

Imagine huge internal spaces for inertial dampeners and actual physical recoil-absorption systems! Depending on the kinetic impact the Death Star is taking, some components might be mechanically shifted within its guts - like a preposterous kind of clockwork tectonic/seismic shift.

There could be blowback panels - if a skyscraper-sized wound is gouged on the Death Star, those huge gaps might be important to prevent damage in one component from reaching another component.

Steam could be shunted there!

Sea Skimmer likewise suggested: "My pet theory is the Death Star would have become a literal Sith moving death world engaging in endless cloning and human genetic experiments to make stronger sith or destroy the force had it not been stopped when it was. Why wouldn't it even be more evil?"

And I concurred: Someone should go crazy and make a metal-as-fuck chart or infographic where the Death Star schematics show the locations of, say, Sidious' wrist-slit corridors and which bottomless pits are actually meant to be used for vats of accumulated Twi'lek blood for obscene Sith alchemic rituals and so on. Like, while Tarkin and Krennic think it's just a typical military station, deep in his lair Sidious has this chart - written in the blood of padawans and etched on the skin of said padawans - showing the modifications he plans to install when nobody can stop him.

And like during the post-Yavin or post-Endor world-exploderization afterparty... All the Moffs and Krennics will have a huge zero-gravity pool party at one of those huge pit-decks and Palpatine just Force Lightning's them!

So maybe the Death Star's size changes are like... due to its INTERNAL PISTONS and MECHANISMS all doing gigajoule-powered neutrino-heatskin-radiatored neutronium-ingrained hyperdurasteel-structured clockwork shiftings of components. It can grow smaller by several kilometers to make its profile sleeker as it goes through hyperspace.

Then its pistons and mechanisms and macro-servohydraulics and cosmo-pneumatic gears can shift and make it look larger... AS A THREAT DISPLAY TO ITS NATURAL ENEMIES! Like... A LIZARD! Or a cobra!

Plus the VARIABLE GEOMETRY CONFIGURATION CAPACITY will also fit Palpatine's Sith designs for when he truly rules absolute with the Death Star as his personal charnel house of evil Sith alchemy, OBVIOUSLY its internal components must move to align themselves with the evil celestial bodies revered in Sith necrocosmology. Aligned with the tides and ebbs and flows of the Underverse where the Sith originated from - a dark dimension of pure malignancy.

The internal components are also for giant compactor chambers, so Palpatine can hostage worlds with the superlaser, giving them no choice but to surrender all their firstborn children to the Sith Lord. Firstborns who will be placed in kilometer-wide chambers, crammed like space-sardines by their billions, in cavernous technocathedrals with ceilings marked by blasphemous Sith glyphs and runes that cause eyeballs to bleed shards of solidified blood due to their profane non-Euclidean geometries accentuated by the sinister crimson lighting, that will then compress and crush and liquefy these orphans (for their world will simultaneously get superlasered, eradicating their parents) into the elixir vital for Palpatine's ascension. As ordained by the writings of Darth Bane. Ten thousand years ago.

This happens while the bloodcloak-clad Imperial Guardsmen remove their masks, revealing their cadaverous visages, their necromantically-animated skullfaces and they cackle and laugh and sing some profane hideous ancient Sith choral, some hymn, to accompany Palpatine's black communion.

[Nari]

Vader wasn't perfect, but he was a damn sight better than that joke at the end of ROTS. At least they found an actor who fills out the costume.

Because a guy in his late teens/early 20s should have the same physique in his 40s.

Because Lucas could have gotten someone else. It's a mask. It didn't have to be Christianson in the suit at the end.

I recall this bothering me as well at the end of ROTS. As it's not really Christianson in his entirety; Anakin at that point was reduced to a torso, one (?) femur, part of a humerous and one arm, that while it can still drag him, looks in pretty bad shape. So most of what's under the mask and outfit is presumably largely mechanical replacements.

We know from TESB that a mechanical arm can be built to symmetrically match Luke's other one. So given that R1 has shown us Vader in the bacta tank and the flesh bits look much larger than they did at the end of it looks like he has 'bulked up' as you'd expect in 20 additional years. So I guess he keeps getting new replacement parts that match the rest of his physique either for vanity or because they wear out?

[Nari]

While there were a few issues, I enjoyed this more than TFA. As did my wife, who has a relationship with Star Wars analogous to that of Penny on The Big Bang Theory. We saw it in real 3D, and interestingly she didn't realize that Tarkin was CGI. She even said 'awesome!' when the rebel fleet jumped in above Scarif, which was a good use of 3D; they jumped in fast but not directly at you.

One thing that bothered me was the opening scene. Firstly, Jyn's mother essentially committed suicide by storm trooper. Surely it would have been better to help raise your daughter? It's not like staying was going to be an option after showing yourself.

Secondly, I was disappointed in the troopers subsequently searching for Jyn. From the field there must have been clear tracks in the loose soil / mud, so they know she's around, and then when she's hiding she's literally looking at them through gaps in the rock. And there is sufficient light for the audience to see this in the visible spectrum!

I know we can posit, somewhat post-hoc, that Galen (and possibly Saw) have prepared the hideout to conceal its occupants just for this eventuality (which makes sense), but I didn't see any evidence for this other than that they didn't see her. Instead Occam's razor would indicate that this means the death troopers either don't have the IR or I(squared) equipment regular US Army units and civilian police (let alone the Marines or special forces) have today, or they didn't use it. A rabbit hole I know, and I apparently let the movie flow over me after that, but it stuck out for some reason .

[Iroscato]

We can fan-theorize that, like how in fractal's thread, I proposed that the gaping spaces within the DS not only incorporates random bottomless pits of doom but they are also like areas for internal systems'... interchanging... imagine huge servo-arms or tug boats hauling new components or replacing fried out shield generators the size of skyscrapers....

Like, as I said:

A lot of those empty spaces might also be free space saved up for future additions - maybe more power generations, maybe larger vacuum tubes, skyscraper-sized difference engines of the newest type to perform analogue computations a staggering five times faster than previous models, etc. They could be heat shunts, they could be... huge seemingly empty routes where currents of air or neutrinos or whatever are shunted for cooling... they might even be spaces for aircraft-carrier-sized maintenance vehicles to maneuver and access/manipulate/(re)move huge internal components in.

Imagine huge internal spaces for inertial dampeners and actual physical recoil-absorption systems! Depending on the kinetic impact the Death Star is taking, some components might be mechanically shifted within its guts - like a preposterous kind of clockwork tectonic/seismic shift.

There could be blowback panels - if a skyscraper-sized wound is gouged on the Death Star, those huge gaps might be important to prevent damage in one component from reaching another component.

Steam could be shunted there!

Sea Skimmer likewise suggested: "My pet theory is the Death Star would have become a literal Sith moving death world engaging in endless cloning and human genetic experiments to make stronger sith or destroy the force had it not been stopped when it was. Why wouldn't it even be more evil?"

And I concurred: Someone should go crazy and make a metal-as-fuck chart or infographic where the Death Star schematics show the locations of, say, Sidious' wrist-slit corridors and which bottomless pits are actually meant to be used for vats of accumulated Twi'lek blood for obscene Sith alchemic rituals and so on. Like, while Tarkin and Krennic think it's just a typical military station, deep in his lair Sidious has this chart - written in the blood of padawans and etched on the skin of said padawans - showing the modifications he plans to install when nobody can stop him.

And like during the post-Yavin or post-Endor world-exploderization afterparty... All the Moffs and Krennics will have a huge zero-gravity pool party at one of those huge pit-decks and Palpatine just Force Lightning's them!

So maybe the Death Star's size changes are like... due to its INTERNAL PISTONS and MECHANISMS all doing gigajoule-powered neutrino-heatskin-radiatored neutronium-ingrained hyperdurasteel-structured clockwork shiftings of components. It can grow smaller by several kilometers to make its profile sleeker as it goes through hyperspace.

Then its pistons and mechanisms and macro-servohydraulics and cosmo-pneumatic gears can shift and make it look larger... AS A THREAT DISPLAY TO ITS NATURAL ENEMIES! Like... A LIZARD! Or a cobra!

Plus the VARIABLE GEOMETRY CONFIGURATION CAPACITY will also fit Palpatine's Sith designs for when he truly rules absolute with the Death Star as his personal charnel house of evil Sith alchemy, OBVIOUSLY its internal components must move to align themselves with the evil celestial bodies revered in Sith necrocosmology. Aligned with the tides and ebbs and flows of the Underverse where the Sith originated from - a dark dimension of pure malignancy.

The internal components are also for giant compactor chambers, so Palpatine can hostage worlds with the superlaser, giving them no choice but to surrender all their firstborn children to the Sith Lord. Firstborns who will be placed in kilometer-wide chambers, crammed like space-sardines by their billions, in cavernous technocathedrals with ceilings marked by blasphemous Sith glyphs and runes that cause eyeballs to bleed shards of solidified blood due to their profane non-Euclidean geometries accentuated by the sinister crimson lighting, that will then compress and crush and liquefy these orphans (for their world will simultaneously get superlasered, eradicating their parents) into the elixir vital for Palpatine's ascension. As ordained by the writings of Darth Bane. Ten thousand years ago.

This happens while the bloodcloak-clad Imperial Guardsmen remove their masks, revealing their cadaverous visages, their necromantically-animated skullfaces and they cackle and laugh and sing some profane hideous ancient Sith choral, some hymn, to accompany Palpatine's black communion.

Holy shit.

[Shroom Man 777]

My friend says:

Fuck it
You know why the Death Star varies in size?
Because it has a heart
A dark heart
Deep inside
The Death Star hums and beats

And so I guess it ROARS when threatened! Or angered! For a weapon of the dark side must itself FEEL the dark side and so it will in finality find a TIME TO RAGE!

Just like a Metal Gear! For what is a Death Star but a weapon to SURPASS METAL GEAR!

[Channel72]

But the Imperials do take her seriously until the senate is dissolved.

Though I doubt Mon Mothma and Bail Organa were hoping that revealing the Death Star Project would cause the senate to reign in the Empire and force an end to the project. They were probably hoping that by revealing the Death Star before it was complete they would spark a widespread rebellion, causing several senators to openly throw in with them in order to destroy the incomplete Death Star. They just didn't realize that the Death Star was 99% complete and ready to be deployed at the time.

It's hard to say really how powerful the Senate was before it was dissolved. On the one hand, it seems that Tarkin and Vader believed that they would need the Death Star operational before they could deliver a big "fuck you" to the "last remants of the Old Republic". On the other hand, by the time of Empire Strikes Back, we see that Vader is busy spewing out millions of probe droids and commanding a small-ish fleet in pursuit of the Rebels. You'd think after Luke blew up the Death Star in ANH, there would have been widespread mass-uprisings throughout the Empire. Tarkin basically played his card, and failed immediately.

But in ESB, "It is a dark time for the Rebellion", so I guess the Empire is still apparently in complete control of a Senate-less galaxy, so I guess they didn't need the Death Star after all - just the Imperial fleet was apparently sufficient to maintain complete authoritarian control over millions of systems. Maybe there's some shit in the EU about massive uprisings that were all squashed post-ANH, I don't know.

[Galvatron]

But the Imperials do take her seriously until the senate is dissolved.

Not that seriously. Seriously would be letting her go.

If not for Vader's boldness, they may have. Even so, he at least recognized the political risks of detaining Leia and invented a cover story to fake her death.

[Galvatron]

But in ESB, "It is a dark time for the Rebellion", so I guess the Empire is still apparently in complete control of a Senate-less galaxy, so I guess they didn't need the Death Star after all - just the Imperial fleet was apparently sufficient to maintain complete authoritarian control over millions of systems. Maybe there's some shit in the EU about massive uprisings that were all squashed post-ANH, I don't know.

The EU does have some stories about that, but perhaps too many of the worlds that were expected to rise up actually preferred to remain safely protected by their planetary defenses and let the someone else fight the war. Maybe it was news of the second Death Star that convinced some of them to finally throw in with the Alliance since they actually had a proper fleet by then.

And I've said it before, but perhaps much of the rebellion was actually passive disobedience and resource denial.

[Lord Revan]

But in ESB, "It is a dark time for the Rebellion", so I guess the Empire is still apparently in complete control of a Senate-less galaxy, so I guess they didn't need the Death Star after all - just the Imperial fleet was apparently sufficient to maintain complete authoritarian control over millions of systems. Maybe there's some shit in the EU about massive uprisings that were all squashed post-ANH, I don't know.

The EU does have some stories about that, but perhaps too many of the worlds that were expected to rise up actually preferred to remain safely protected by their planetary defenses and let the someone else fight the war. Maybe it was news of the second Death Star that convinced some of them to finally throw in with the Alliance since they actually had a proper fleet by then.

And I've said it before, but perhaps much of the rebellion was actually passive disobedience and resource denial.

possible for all we know, there were systems that while convinced that the empire wasn't worth their support, didn't think the Rebel Alliance was any better.

[Galvatron]

Perhaps some systems couldn't spare resources that would otherwise be needed to shore up their own defenses, but overall I expect the reasons for whatever actions they took were both myriad and manifold. Some helped, others didn't. Some sent weapons, others sent medical supplies. Some openly declared their support for the rebellion, while others remained loyal to the Empire.

While I'm sure the Battle of Yavin served as a powerful rallying cry to the rest of the galaxy, that doesn't necessarily mean the remainder of the war was all rainbows and roses for the rebellion. If anything, the Imperial starfleet probably redoubled its efforts to hunt down the rebel base and to prevent it from launching any more offensives. I'd call that a dark time for the rebellion.

[Knife]

But the Imperials do take her seriously until the senate is dissolved.

Though I doubt Mon Mothma and Bail Organa were hoping that revealing the Death Star Project would cause the senate to reign in the Empire and force an end to the project. They were probably hoping that by revealing the Death Star before it was complete they would spark a widespread rebellion, causing several senators to openly throw in with them in order to destroy the incomplete Death Star. They just didn't realize that the Death Star was 99% complete and ready to be deployed at the time.

It's hard to say really how powerful the Senate was before it was dissolved. On the one hand, it seems that Tarkin and Vader believed that they would need the Death Star operational before they could deliver a big "fuck you" to the "last remants of the Old Republic". On the other hand, by the time of Empire Strikes Back, we see that Vader is busy spewing out millions of probe droids and commanding a small-ish fleet in pursuit of the Rebels. You'd think after Luke blew up the Death Star in ANH, there would have been widespread mass-uprisings throughout the Empire. Tarkin basically played his card, and failed immediately.

But in ESB, "It is a dark time for the Rebellion", so I guess the Empire is still apparently in complete control of a Senate-less galaxy, so I guess they didn't need the Death Star after all - just the Imperial fleet was apparently sufficient to maintain complete authoritarian control over millions of systems. Maybe there's some shit in the EU about massive uprisings that were all squashed post-ANH, I don't know.

One of the themes of TPM was the bureaucracy of the government, and Palpatine using it to his needs along with his powers. Never got the vibe he got rid of the bureaucracy, and instead just continued to use it for his own ends until ANH where he felt comfortable enough he had complete control and ditched it.

[Elfdart]

Who's going to bring Erso to the Senate? Mon Mothma? She's already a fugitive. Known allies of hers? They're already suspect. Let's assume the Senate has a Mike Gravel willing to bring Erso's evidence to the floor. Mothma, Organa and the others already know the Senate is useless, which is why they're having a pow-wow at a Rebel military base -they've already decided to take up arms against the Empire. This would be like John Hancock telling everyone that if they can just present evidence for their side to George III and Parliament...

AFTER Lexington & Concord and AFTER George Washington announces that he's headed back to Virginia to raise his own army.

It's a minor plot hole, but it was kind of obvious to me.

I don't think that metaphor holds. The Alliance to Restore the Republic isn't a rebel colony, it's an internal militia movement with its own sympathetic politicians who are already members of the senate.

Sure, those senators are (obviously) in a majority, but if the senate got evidence of Palpatine's plan, nothing that we've seen stops the senate passing another enabling act, say, to execute order 65 and install Mon Mothma as Supreme Chancellor. And we've no reason to believe that the stormtroopers wouldn't salute and gun Palpatine down.

Everything seen in the movies so far about the Senate, Palpatine and the boys in white shows that the odds of that happening are about as good as the odds of Sidious restoring democracy, then killing himself in a grief-induced fit of conscience over his fiendish acts. The Senate was at best useless and in any event, as Stalin supposedly said about the Pope: "How many divisions does he have?"

Yes, I get it that Imperial officers don't want to antagonize the Senate, but it seems more like a case of not wanting to create unnecessary headaches rather than fearing the Pope's non-existent armies. You saw what happened once it became obvious that a sitting member of the Senate was caught in the act of spying for the Rebellion: the body was adjourned for good. Some threat that was.

[Elfdart]

But the Imperials do take her seriously until the senate is dissolved.

Though I doubt Mon Mothma and Bail Organa were hoping that revealing the Death Star Project would cause the senate to reign in the Empire and force an end to the project. They were probably hoping that by revealing the Death Star before it was complete they would spark a widespread rebellion, causing several senators to openly throw in with them in order to destroy the incomplete Death Star. They just didn't realize that the Death Star was 99% complete and ready to be deployed at the time.

It's hard to say really how powerful the Senate was before it was dissolved. On the one hand, it seems that Tarkin and Vader believed that they would need the Death Star operational before they could deliver a big "fuck you" to the "last remants of the Old Republic". On the other hand, by the time of Empire Strikes Back, we see that Vader is busy spewing out millions of probe droids and commanding a small-ish fleet in pursuit of the Rebels. You'd think after Luke blew up the Death Star in ANH, there would have been widespread mass-uprisings throughout the Empire. Tarkin basically played his card, and failed immediately.

But in ESB, "It is a dark time for the Rebellion", so I guess the Empire is still apparently in complete control of a Senate-less galaxy, so I guess they didn't need the Death Star after all - just the Imperial fleet was apparently sufficient to maintain complete authoritarian control over millions of systems. Maybe there's some shit in the EU about massive uprisings that were all squashed post-ANH, I don't know.

Or maybe some systems revolted and are currently being put down by other Imperial forces. Not that it matters. Between the battles of Scarif and Yavin, the Rebels' long-range fighter force has been almost wiped out and they were forced to flee for their lives at least twice. So both victories came at a terrible cost -one that can't be made up for right away, no matter how many systems revolt. Luckily for the Rebels, by the time they attack Endor, they have not only recovered their losses, they've acquired ships that can slug it out with the biggest and baddest ships the Empire can muster. That's pretty amazing for a force reduced to three fighters after Yavin.

[Reyvan]

But the Imperials do take her seriously until the senate is dissolved.

Though I doubt Mon Mothma and Bail Organa were hoping that revealing the Death Star Project would cause the senate to reign in the Empire and force an end to the project. They were probably hoping that by revealing the Death Star before it was complete they would spark a widespread rebellion, causing several senators to openly throw in with them in order to destroy the incomplete Death Star. They just didn't realize that the Death Star was 99% complete and ready to be deployed at the time.

It's hard to say really how powerful the Senate was before it was dissolved. On the one hand, it seems that Tarkin and Vader believed that they would need the Death Star operational before they could deliver a big "fuck you" to the "last remants of the Old Republic". On the other hand, by the time of Empire Strikes Back, we see that Vader is busy spewing out millions of probe droids and commanding a small-ish fleet in pursuit of the Rebels. You'd think after Luke blew up the Death Star in ANH, there would have been widespread mass-uprisings throughout the Empire. Tarkin basically played his card, and failed immediately.

Battlefront: Twilight Company does start off with the Rebels actually taking and holding planets as they advance into the Empire, the problem is they overstretch and have to start abandoning the worlds they've taken before the Battle of Hoth. So somehow between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, the Rebels actually did gain enough of a following to fight a war against the Empire. That would probably be due to those widespread mass-uprisings.