The Republic becomes the Empire. The Empire does not become the New Republic, it becomes the First Order.
Honestly we’re not given a precise answer to this. In the outer rim territories, looks like that’s it. But I’m not sure that’s the same situation in the inner Core systems.
The crawl states that the First Order rose from the ashes of the Empire, seemingly in the outer rim. Otherwise it seems like the New Republic took over.
The Rebels form the New Republic, and later the Resistance.
The fact that the Resistance is sort of a fringe, unoficial faction of the Republic might help explain the use of guerrilla garments. But in VIII, after the escalation of the conflict and an open attack on the republic, I don’t think they could still keep showing the good guys as a poor band of outcasts. They are in control of the wealthiest systems of the galaxy
We’ll see. But the New Republic has come under attack (losing their capital, senate, and fleet), so they aren’t necessarily in the best position at the moment.
The First Order’s stuff is new and spiffy because so are they. That doesn’t make them in charge, and they’re not. The Resistance is scrappy because they aren’t in charge either, they’re a separate group created by members of the New Republic. As to whether or not they should have armor is a legitimate question but in my mind it would make no sense whatsoever for them to look like stormtroopers.
The thing with the First Order having top tech and being all shiny and new might not be just a design flaw, but rather expose some of the weaknesses of the movie’s plot. At least with what we have been told so far.
If their take was, as Abrams said, to think of the FO as a what-if scenario with the nazis hiding in Argentina, I think they just didn’t make enough research about what happened down here.
I can take that admirers of the old Empire would still honor its aesthetics. I can even take that a splitting appendice of the oficial government would look and feel poor funded. I can a galaxy-wide regime having enough resources to build a superweapon the size of a moon. But it is far more difficult to accept a band of outcasts being able to fund the transformation of an entire planet into a sun-sucking superweapon the upsaid regime couldn’t even afford.
It’s not quite like that though. This would have been if the Nazis took control of the Argentinian government and then the rest of South America. The First Order started as a band of outcasts, but they’ve been growing in power. At the point we meet up with them in TFA, they’ve become quite a bit more than that. They’re a legitimate force in the galaxy in control of a number of systems. The New Republic has been complacent in this and that’s why the Resistance was formed in the first place.
Let’s see what approach they take with Episode Eight, where the New Republic is to be a warring faction. In the meanwhile, I think that clearly these design choices weren’t made under an in-universe logic, but rather with an outsider perspective. Bad guys don’t show their faces and hide beneath masks while the freedom fighters are humans you can get invested with.
Well sure, and I’d say good. Using visuals to tell the story is far more important in my mind than in-universe logic. I’ll admit that the Resistance should have armor in the next film, but if they don’t, I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.