Vaderisnothayden said:The way it was all portrayed, taken in context of the simpicity that marks Star Wars in certain ways, gives the message that it's all over and the Empire is done. Star Wars wasn't about making realistic sense. Simple story like the Emperor is dead so the empire is done fits with the mentality of the OT.
The mentality of the OT, or the mentality of the OT viewers? A New Hope established what little we know of the Empire's structure in the filmed canon. And ANH was written when both Palpatine and Vader were comparatively less important than they were later conceived to be. Even after Palpatine and Vader were elevated to near-Morgoth and Sauron levels, the structure hinted at in ANH would still be in effect.
In ANH, it was established that the Imperial bureaucracy was a willful institution, only controlled by the Emperor through the Senate. With the dissolution of the Senate, the bureaucracy was bypassed or subordinated to the Regional Governors, and the RGs were given direct control of Imperial territories.The relevance of the Marvel comics take on things is that it shows people back in the 80s figuring the empire was mostly over after ROTJ. I suspect that was the assumption among most people. Certainly nobody back then gave me the impression that the empire wasn't over after ROTJ.
There is every reason to believe that these regional governors would have maintained their imperiums. Bureaucracies, almost by definition, survive regime changes unless forcefully purged. You don't need the EU to tell you that the blow against the Empire at Endor was not instantly fatal.
The relevance of the Marvel comics take on things is that it shows people back in the 80s figuring the empire was mostly over after ROTJ. I suspect that was the assumption among most people. Certainly nobody back then gave me the impression that the empire wasn't over after ROTJ.
Why should the EU of the 80s be any more important than the EU of the 90s? After all, the Marvel era is mostly forgotten, but the modern EU has been going strong ever since Zahn. Both Marvel and Zahn worked from the same version of RotJ, both derived different versions of what happened after it, and one really caught on.
I think the tendency to believe that the Empire died at Endor is usually driven by the belief, held by some, that RotJ is the Last Star Wars Ever. If it were, of course one would want to believe that all the battles had been one and everyone lived happily ever after. Among the camp that accepts the EU as deuterocanonical, there is no reason to cling to either belief. Then there's the third camp that doesn't necessarily accept the EU, but doesn't view the Star Wars Trilogy as a limit on the Star Wars universe. If the Star Wars universe is larger than the Trilogy, then there's no pressure to overinterpret the invents of the films in such a way that RotJ is a satisfying conclusion to every plot line in the trilogy. It's simply the end of (some of) the adventures of Luke Skywalker, and the redemption of Anakin Skywalker...but the story doesn't end after the camera irises out.
(I'm intentionally ignoring the handful of celebrations depicted in the SE. There's nothing remarkable about certain groups in a given population celebrating a change of regime.)