The First Order vs the Avengers

[Devonix]

The Yuuzhan Vong disagreed back in Legends, so there's potential precedence.

That was kind of a misconception, the Yuuzhan Vong had basically what 40k would call a weak warp presence. The force could affect them and they could be sensed by it, it's just that there was a weak muteing about it, it's more that the Jedi needed to learn to see differently around them.

[Xyril]

They had Force immunity and Force invisibility, but I don’t think the Force was literally entirely absent from them.

IIRC canonically their ancestors "had the Force stripped from them" (or some very similar phrasing) as a punishment. However, even in-universe I'm not really sure if that's anything more than a semantic difference. Empirically, if Force users can't sense them in the Force and can't manipulate them in the Force, and they likewise can't interact with the Force, then I'm not really sure it's a meaningful assertion to say "Yeah, but the Force is still in them." The Jedi assert that the Force is in all things, but this was dogma from before anyone actually met the Vong. Plus, the Republic was already aware of various creatures with the ability to block or neutralize the Force, but the characters who were familiar with both them and the Vong pretty much all treated the Vong's force absence as a distinctly different condition.

Alternately, zero midichlorian count.

That was kind of a misconception, the Yuuzhan Vong had basically what 40k would call a weak warp presence. The force could affect them and they could be sensed by it, it's just that there was a weak muteing about it, it's more that the Jedi needed to learn to see differently around them.

I thought they in fact couldn't be sensed by it, and in general the Jedi adapted by sensing how everything around them reacted to the presence of a Force-invisible thing (displacing air, etc.) The only Jedi who could sense them directly did so by basically Force-hacking their biotechnology.

[Darth Credence]

Star Wars takes place “a long long time ago in a Galaxy Far Far away” presumably long and far enough that it shouldn’t normally interact with the Marvel universe. That and, the technology, the powers, the setting, all of that work quite differently.

There has been a comic that has Star Wars interact with Earth. Not the Marvel Universe, but not necessarily not that, either. It was a Dark Horse comic, from before Disney owned the whole thing.
Indiana Jones is looking into Bigfoot in the Pacific Northwest. Finds quite a bit of evidence, looks like BF really exists. Eventually, he stumbles on the Millennium Falcon, where he finds the skeletal remains of Han in the cockpit. Turns out, Bigfoot is Chewbacca, just trying to live his life on this backwater they found themselves stranded on.

[Reddish Mage]

the characters who were familiar with both them and the Vong pretty much all treated the Vong's force absence as a distinctly different condition.

Alternately, zero midichlorian count.

I thought they in fact couldn't be sensed by it, and in general the Jedi adapted by sensing how everything around them reacted to the presence of a Force-invisible thing (displacing air, etc.) The only Jedi who could sense them directly did so by basically Force-hacking their biotechnology.

Again everything about the Vong is weird and doesn't fit into anything else in Star Wars. They shoehorned in a plot about alien invaders from the great beyond into a genre about good and evil fighting an endless war.

There has been a comic that has Star Wars interact with Earth. Not the Marvel Universe, but not necessarily not that, either. It was a Dark Horse comic, from before Disney owned the whole thing.
Indiana Jones is looking into Bigfoot in the Pacific Northwest. Finds quite a bit of evidence, looks like BF really exists. Eventually, he stumbles on the Millennium Falcon, where he finds the skeletal remains of Han in the cockpit. Turns out, Bigfoot is Chewbacca, just trying to live his life on this backwater they found themselves stranded on.

*Aheem* I did say it was

A bit like if Indiana Jones suddenly started investigating aliens or something

Does Chewbacca notice that Indiana Jones looks exactly like Han? Almost as if they were the same person

[Peelee]

Again everything about the Vong is weird and doesn't fit into anything else in Star Wars. They shoehorned in a plot about alien invaders from the great beyond into a genre about good and evil fighting an endless war.

I don't think a 19-book-long series could really be called "shoehorned." And it fit far better than an extradimensional being.

[The Glyphstone]

Let's face it. For all the good that Legends brought us, it also had some extremely weird misfires.

[Peelee]

Let's face it. For all the good that Legends brought us, it also had some extremely weird misfires.

When they announced the canon wipe I was actually in the "that sounds like a good" idea camp. Seemed pretty empty at the time, but it seems more people have come around since then.

[Xyril]

Again everything about the Vong is weird and doesn't fit into anything else in Star Wars. They shoehorned in a plot about alien invaders from the great beyond into a genre about good and evil fighting an endless war.

I don't think that's entirely true. The movies and the early comics were very much about good versus evil--with politics mostly being there as an arena for said battle of good versus evil.

As the Legends continuity progressed, this changed a lot. Pretty purely good people did exist, and truly evil enemies would rise up every few books and continue their endless war. However, long before New Jedi Order, Star Wars was becoming a universe that acknowledged the grey: people who were just trying to survive, people who wouldn't go out of their way to be good but also had moral lines they wouldn't cross, bad guys who were never really punished or redeemed but just kind of gradually stopped being such bad guys, and essentially decent people coming into conflict when their interests are irreconcilably incompatible. You had Force users who avoided the hell out of the dark side, but also didn't subscribe to the dogmatic Old Republic Jedi philosophy that even a single toe off the righteous path was an unacceptable risk, and you had allegedly light side Force users who thought that those guys needed to be wiped out just as much as the Sith did.

Plus, on a meta level, there were a lot of pre-NJO books where the eternal war between good and evil was entirely absent, or at the very least tangential at best to the main plot. The Courtship of Princess Leia featured dark side Force witches, but its central conflict wasn't the fight between good space magicians and evil space magicians, but rather Leia's internal struggle between love and duty. Even the kids and young adult books--where you would expect more of a focus on simplistic, good vs. evil narratives--were a bit more complex than that. Zekk had a whole evil Sith academy redemptive arc, but his story also raised issues of poverty and children failed by the system, and nature vs. nurture. The Jedi Academy books were largely coming of age stories, and for some characters, the ongoing battle with the dark side was perhaps the most important part of those stories, but for others, it was not. Tenel-Ka's most important character development occurred primarily in between her horribly age-inappropriate encounters with super villains, which is why she has the distinction of being one of the only amputees who doesn't have "a bad guy chopped it off with a light saber during a duel" in her medical records.

Does Chewbacca notice that Indiana Jones looks exactly like Han? Almost as if they were the same person

It depends on how long he's been stranded there. At some point Chewie will probably forget that Han didn't always look so bony.

Hell, he grew up around hairy people. His ability to distinguish individuals by their naked flesh might be on par with our ability to distinguish them by their naked bones.

[Leewei]

Back to the OP:

The First Order can be compared to Thanos's fleet, with the Children of Thanos being stand-ins for Kylo, Snoke, and the other elites of the First Order.

Could this make a good movie? I don't think so. The resulting picture would at best be a retread of Endgame - fun at times, maybe, but not especially good. Lack of a shared universe also means that a lot of effort would need to be invested into bringing the two realities together.

Given Earth's anti-fleet weapon (Captain Marvel), pretty much the only thing the First Order could do would be to use a planet killer.

Things get very situational, very fast. What causes the conflict? The Infinity Stones no longer exist as such. Possession of the Avengers themselves for experimentation - or perhaps, Stark's Iron Man technology could motivate a First Order attack. A super-weapon would destroy the very thing that the First Order was after, though, if this was the case.

[GloatingSwine]

Fighter pilots always seem to instinctively know what critical reactor core will blow the superweapon up, even when they lack force powers or schematics. So thats likely their smallest difficulty.

Problem is that the closest they have to a starfighter pilot is Rocket Raccoon and he doesn’t have the patience to wait to shoot a critical reactor core....

[Anteros]

Problem is that the closest they have to a starfighter pilot is Rocket Raccoon and he doesn’t have the patience to wait to shoot a critical reactor core....

They don't need to. There's literally nothing the First Order can do to Thor or Captain Marvel. Even if they managed to blow up Earth, they're just going to have angry glowy people coming to wreck them.

[GloatingSwine]

They don't need to. There's literally nothing the First Order can do to Thor or Captain Marvel. Even if they managed to blow up Earth, they're just going to have angry glowy people coming to wreck them.

Yeah, but in Star Wars that’s an accepted risk of Sith villainy. The glowy people are usually just more ghostly and inspiring plucky heroes rather than taking matters into their own hands.

(The First Order is kind of rubbish anyway, they’re the Iron Sky moon-Nazis of the Empire)

[Lord Torath]

Given Earth's anti-fleet weapon (Captain Marvel), pretty much the only thing the First Order could do would be to use a planet killer.

And Steven Strange can redirect the planet killer back at its source with a pair of ring-portals. Good-bye Star Killer Base.

[Peelee]

And Steven Strange can redirect the planet killer back at its source with a pair of ring-portals. Good-bye Star Killer Base.

Can he? The beams look roughly the size of North America. I saw the Dr. Strange movie, and while his time shenanigans may help it doesn't really seem like he can be that impressive.

Also Starkiller Base was ridiculous.

[Lord Torath]

Can he? The beams look roughly the size of North America. I saw the Dr. Strange movie, and while his time shenanigans may help it doesn't really seem like he can be that impressive.

The Death Stars' death rays looked to be on the order of a meter or so in diameter. Strange could handle that.

Star-Killer Base? That's trickier. I only saw The Force Awakens once. I really don't recall how big the cannon was, or how big the shots were. Since Star-killer is roughly an order of magnitude bigger than the Death Stars, I assumed its death ray was roughly an order of magnitude larger as well, which would put it around 10-20 meters in diameter, easily within Strange's capabilities. If it's the size of a continent, first: it's way overkill, and second: yeah, that would make it hard for Dr. Strange to re-direct.

Also Starkiller Base was ridiculous.

Fully agree.

[GloatingSwine]

And Steven Strange can redirect the planet killer back at its source with a pair of ring-portals. Good-bye Star Killer Base.

To be fair by CM2 the MCU is likely to get its own planet killer, because I bet Monica is getting in on the action.

(In the run up to the second Battleworld story Earth-1610 was on a collision course with Earth-616 and Monica Rambeau was on the brink of solving that problem by blowing up Earth-1610 by maxing her powers. If you thought Carol was OP you ain’t seen what auntie Monica can do when she’s tired of your ****)

(Bonus points if they go full NextWave seen it all and has no time for you Monica, because she was about 13 in CM1 and by 2025 she could be mid 40s easy)

[Kitten Champion]

The problem with a Star-killer base type-thingy is they'd need years to build it here. Building something on that level in secret within your own territory with already established hyperspace-lanes, a huge potential labour pool to employ or enslave, and plenty of time at your disposal is one thing... but in our - or the MCU version of - galaxy? Without a baseline economy or huge financial backing? That's going to be a tall order, and stick out like a sore thumb.

The First Order is an army, and thus needs vastly more resources to sustain itself.

[Peelee]

The Death Stars' death rays looked to be on the order of a meter or so in diameter. Strange could handle that.

Significantly more than a meter, but it's pretty inconsistent. The mini-beams inside the station weren't too big, but the main beam looks a little bigger than the equatorial trench (not the trench they did the attack run in). DS2's beam was a little smaller than a Mon Cal capital ship. The sense of scale is not well-preserved, to put it kindly.

Star-Killer Base? That's trickier. I only saw The Force Awakens once. I really don't recall how big the cannon was, or how big the shots were. Since Star-killer is roughly an order of magnitude bigger than the Death Stars, I assumed its death ray was roughly an order of magnitude larger as well, which would put it around 10-20 meters in diameter, easily within Strange's capabilities. If it's the size of a continent, first: it's way overkill, and second: yeah, that would make it hard for Dr. Strange to re-direct.

Spoiler: I may have overestimated; looks more like roughly Alaska-sized or so. Still ridiculously big.

Show

[Lapak]

The big danger from Strange is not gates; it is dumping you in the Mirror Dimension. That's outright stated as an I-Win button against anything/anyone not self-capable of opening ring gates, dimensional travel, or similarly major reality manipulation. And we see him affect an area at least the size of several city blocks, so he can potentially remove the FO ground forces, any leaders that show up to gloat or demand surrender, and probably important pieces of superweapon infrastructure from the field if not prevented.

[GloatingSwine]

The big danger from Strange is not gates; it is dumping you in the Mirror Dimension. That's outright stated as an I-Win button against anything/anyone not self-capable of opening ring gates, dimensional travel, or similarly major reality manipulation. And we see him affect an area at least the size of several city blocks, so he can potentially remove the FO ground forces, any leaders that show up to gloat or demand surrender, and probably important pieces of superweapon infrastructure from the field if not prevented.

Which raises the question why didn’t he do it to Thanos or his goons.

Maybe it doesn’t work like that.

[Reddish Mage]

I don't think that's entirely true. The movies and the early comics were very much about good versus evil--with politics mostly being there as an arena for said battle of good versus evil.

...there were a lot of pre-NJO books where the eternal war between good and evil was entirely absent, or at the very least tangential at best to the main plot...The Jedi Academy books were largely coming of age stories, and for some characters, the ongoing battle with the dark side was perhaps the most important part of those stories, but for others, it was not.

[/QUOTE]

As the Legends continuity progressed, this changed a lot. Pretty purely good people did exist, and truly evil enemies would rise up every few books and continue their endless war. However, long before New Jedi Order, Star Wars was becoming a universe that acknowledged the grey...

I think there's a big difference between some books here and there focusing on other sorts of stories within the Star Wars universe or the introduction of grey Jedi and other moral grey.

The first are simply books that choose to focus on more self-contained stories rather than move along the eternal conflict. The grey Jedi was simply a natural evolution of the central conflict of the books. Sooner or later we get tired of seeing everything in black and white good vs. evil and want to see something more sophisticated and adult.

However, let's compare what its like for luddite xenophobic force-immune bio-tech aliens from outside the galaxy to suddenly invade...

I don't think a 19-book-long series could really be called "shoehorned."

A series of well over a dozen books that changed the entire source of conflict in the Star Wars universe.

So if "shoehorned" isn't the word for that, let's talk about the size of this 19-book pivot:

Imagine if Order of the Stick suddenly switched from its own epic saga to have everyone of all sides get together to battle invaders from another art-style and RPG-ruleset for the next 500 pages. Oh and magic doesn't work on them because they always make their saving throws.

Or how about Naruto suddenly left behind the war among ninjas and everything turns out to be directed by a space alien?

If Ripley stopped fighting the "aliens" and joined the company to go to war against the "terrorists"...

If they decided to do a "Terminator" movie without time travel staring a robot unrelated to the main plot...oh wait.

The Yuuzhan Vong are weird. Really out of left field weird.

[Reddish Mage]

The Death Stars' death rays looked to be on the order of a meter or so in diameter. Strange could handle that.

Star-Killer Base? That's trickier. I only saw The Force Awakens once. I really don't recall how big the cannon was, or how big the shots were. Since Star-killer is roughly an order of magnitude bigger than the Death Stars, I assumed its death ray was roughly an order of magnitude larger as well, which would put it around 10-20 meters in diameter, easily within Strange's capabilities. If it's the size of a continent, first: it's way overkill, and second: yeah, that would make it hard for Dr. Strange to re-direct.

If Doctor Strange was able to just redirect those sorts of attacks and use his portals offensively to kill his opponents and entire starships....

Why is Endgame the only successful possible outcome? Why couldn't Dr. Strange just kill or separate Thanos from the infinity stones at one of those moments he wasn't actively using the stones?

For all the absurd levels of power Doctor Strange shows in the last two movies (well beyond what he does in his own movie), it is implied he has some sort of limit to how well his offensive magic works.

Back to the OP:

The First Order can be compared to Thanos's fleet, with the Children of Thanos being stand-ins for Kylo, Snoke, and the other elites of the First Order.

Could this make a good movie? I don't think so. The resulting picture would at best be a retread of Endgame - fun at times, maybe, but not especially good. Lack of a shared universe also means that a lot of effort would need to be invested into bringing the two realities together.

Given Earth's anti-fleet weapon (Captain Marvel), pretty much the only thing the First Order could do would be to use a planet killer.

Things get very situational, very fast. What causes the conflict? The Infinity Stones no longer exist as such. Possession of the Avengers themselves for experimentation - or perhaps, Stark's Iron Man technology could motivate a First Order attack. A super-weapon would destroy the very thing that the First Order was after, though, if this was the case.

The entire conflict the OP sets up isn't the sort of thing we usually write versus about. This isn't a one on one versus or something like Avengers vs. Justice League which is group vs group.

This is a superhero group versus a galactic faction. The First Order is something that looks a lot like a galaxy-spanning empire. That's not the thing that can be fought in a single straight up battle. The First Order requires an entirely different story and how that story is set up and the rules of battle are pretty outcome determinative. You can write a story about the Avengers infiltrating the Star Wars galaxy and setting up their own resistance, or you could write a story about the First Order deciding to conquer Earth.

I think anything that looks like a straight up battle the Avengers can't win, because the First Order has virtually endless resources, but I'm making a lot of assumptions for that. The Avengers probably couldn't defeat the Kree either if the Kree just sent their entire fleet to destroy the Earth or bust, but you wouldn't see a story that was that straightforward.

[GloatingSwine]

The Yuuzhan Vong are weird. Really out of left field weird.

Largely a consequence of the fact that “the solo twins are kidnapped” only works as a plot and so many times.

And the EU still did it at least twice more than that.

A pathological desire to have the fate of the universe revolve around the same half dozen people was one of its biggest downfalls. (The main one was terrible work for hire authors)

[Peelee]

Yuuzhan Vong stuff.

If you're expecting me to jump to NJO's defense, you're going to be sorely disappointed.

Im not saying it was good, I'm saying it existed.

Largely a consequence of the fact that “the solo twins are kidnapped” only works as a plot and so many times.

And the EU still did it at least twice more than that.

A pathological desire to have the fate of the universe revolve around the same half dozen people was one of its biggest downfalls. (The main one was terrible work for hire authors)

Amazing. Every word of what you just said was right.

[Reddish Mage]

A pathological desire to have the fate of the universe revolve around the same half dozen people was one of its biggest downfalls. (The main one was terrible work for hire authors)

You realize both of these are endemic to the syndication-like transformation of the EU. I don't think the for-hire authors were terrible. I think they generally picked the best of the available talent, with lots of bestsellers between them.

The problem is, when you do syndicate a series among dozens of authors and keep tight editorial controls for the purpose of making sure it remains "Star Wars" what do you expect would happen?

However, while the novels are going to stay grounded on familiar sci-fi and fantasy tropes...they aren't going to break new ground as experimental sci-fi or some new sort of epic novel...I don't see how it is always "the same six" doing everything. Luke starts the Jedi Academy and they bring in a lot of new characters and a next generation and allow the original crew to take on the role of mentors and background characters, which is natural. Then there are all those series that take place in the far past and future. Not to mention you have lots of series (including Clone Wars and Jedi Outcast) that take place during, before and after the OT, that don't focus on the OT crew except as side characters.

Of course you'd have lots of book featuring the core cast of the original movies, and they'll want to insert them into the background when they can. Moreover, this fits the universe because the events of the OT are extremely significant to the subsequent history. However, it's not like there aren't many, many, many novels, comics, TV shows, entire series, surrounding other characters and groups of characters that are either peripherally related or entirely unrelated to the OT group.

[Ramza00]

Which raises the question why didn’t he do it to Thanos or his goons.

Maybe it doesn’t work like that.

He did try it with Thanos on them planet Titan. With the power stone Thanos just punched it away and the mirror dimension never kept. Likewise even though it was not show the other infinity stones probably have ways to get out of the mirror dimension or break the attempt to send people to the mirror dimension. (Perhaps the space stone can teleport away similar to the sling rings, the reality stone may be able to shift them back to their main reality.)

As for Strange vs Maw, the answer is plot. If Strange was fighting serious without stupid plot he would withdrawal from his oppenets senses (perhaps with time stone time loops.) Sling ring to another location once again out of the opponents senses, and then mirror dimension. He would do this not to eliminate the obstacle but also to lower casulities to bystanders. Strange knew they were coming for the stone and thus he was the target, why did Strange not escape the battlefield especially since Strange is capable of illusions and misdirection. It is not smart to fight in NYC.

[GloatingSwine]

You realize both of these are endemic to the syndication-like transformation of the EU. I don't think the for-hire authors were terrible. I think they generally picked the best of the available talent, with lots of bestsellers between them.

The problem is, when you do syndicate a series among dozens of authors and keep tight editorial controls for the purpose of making sure it remains "Star Wars" what do you expect would happen?

It takes less to have a bestseller than you think. You only need to place in the top ten or so for a week and you have a bestseller. Most of the "bestselling" authors who did Star Wars EU were pure airport grade pulp.

But even when they got authors with actual track records it didn't go well. Vonda McIntyre had a Hugo award and Crystal Star was still rubbish.

[Ramza00]

Most of the "bestselling" authors who did Star Wars EU were pure airport grade pulp.

You just describe Star Wars Aesthetic right there. At its core it is airport grade pulp.

Uet it was magic in the bottle for in 1977 it came out at the perfect time to release such a story from a culture standpoint (after vietnam, the space race, baby boomers were 12 to 31 years old and were a surging demographic.)

Combine that pulp with the best sound effects at the time (the sound is weird, alien, perfect, real and also surreal, it excites the passions without inflamming the passions in a negative fashion), wonderful special effects that were groundbreaking at the time, and moving orchestratal music.

It was pulp, but without the synergy of a dozen other things it would not have been a Star Wars.

[Xyril]

The first are simply books that choose to focus on more self-contained stories rather than move along the eternal conflict. The grey Jedi was simply a natural evolution of the central conflict of the books. Sooner or later we get tired of seeing everything in black and white good vs. evil and want to see something more sophisticated and adult.

However, let's compare what its like for luddite xenophobic force-immune bio-tech aliens from outside the galaxy to suddenly invade...

Distinction without difference really. The Vong were, as a whole, pretty much evil. There was a redemptive arc for some of them after the war was over--no different than how they just let the rank and file of the Empire get off after a while--and Jacen Solo of course devotes a lot of words stressing that he didn't think the species was intrinsically evil, just the product of an oppressive government and a poisonous religion. Still, odd backstory and inscrutable culture aside, they were really no less evil than the Space Nazi Empire.

Empire: Oppressive, authoritarian government. Vong? Check.
Empire: Suppressed information and sometimes even scientific development for the sake of preserving their narrative. Vong? Check.
Empire: Xenophobic. Vong? Check.
Empire: Exploited fear, bigotry, disinformation, and political divisions in order to weaken enemies before projecting hard power? Vong? Check.
Empire: Doesn't blink twice at mass murder and literally destroying whole planets and solar systems. Vong? Check.
Empire: Led by an evil space wizard who took power by first manipulating events from the shadows. Vong? Onimi wasn't a wizard.

Oh wait. Yes he was. Because the whole time, the true power behind the Vong was a fluke sensitive hypocrite who exploited a hateful ideology to achieve his own ends, despite violating that ideology whenever it suited him. Among other things, through Shimra he ordered the shapers to research new technology, despite the doctrinal assertion that all knowledge was already divinely revealed. Honestly, it's almost too much of a heavy handed parallel to how Palpatine exploited xenophobia probably not being particularly racist himself: Not only did he frequently collude with aliens when it was convenient, his master was a generic non-human who he probably respected (as much as you can call the Sith master-apprentice relationship remotely healthy), and he recognized Thrawn's ability despite the expected reaction of his human subordinates.

But I suppose you have a valid point. Really, the only legitimate argument that it wasn't part of the "eternal struggle between good and evil" was that the Vong weren't being secretly directed by the Sith the whole time--they were being directed by a non-Sith evil untrained midichlorian wizard. It was a departure from the Sith v. Jedi conflict for sure, but if you're going to argue that the Vong were anything less than evil... well, that just boggles the mind.

A series of well over a dozen books that changed the entire source of conflict in the Star Wars universe.

If you want to call the "entire source of conflict" Sith vs. Jedi, then that's true. If you want to call it good versus evil, then that's categorically false.

Imagine if Order of the Stick suddenly switched from its own epic saga to have everyone of all sides get together to battle invaders from another art-style and RPG-ruleset for the next 500 pages.

Kind of an dishonest analogy. You're talking about completely rewriting the rules of the system--a.k.a. the laws of reality for a given setting-- so it's really closer to taking Star Wars, and inserting a bunch of books where the laws of physics are replaced by the laws of reality from the Order of the Stick.

Oh and magic doesn't work on them because they always make their saving throws.

You mean they introduce a new enemy that has an ability that is unexpected, but still inherently compatible with the rules of the system as it exist? Or drop in a prestige class from a random source book that allows you to use charisma for attack roles, something that no protagonist had ever specifically considered to be possible, but nonetheless conforms to the basic rules of reality? Or psions?

The Order has literally encountered enemies that their magic failed to work on. The only thing your "crazy hypothetical" would change is making it a race or class passive ability, rather than a situational advantage due to specific equipment, spells, or buffs, or simply a massive level advantage.

Or how about Naruto suddenly left behind the war among ninjas and everything turns out to be directed by a space alien?

That depends... are they alien ninjas? There's an aesthetic to Naruto, and aliens that fought with space ships and energy weapons would be a bit of a departure from that aesthetic. Green-skinned aliens who basically fight in the same style as the human characters? Perfectly compatible if it's done well.

Also, it's not really a fair analogy. Star Wars is set in space. The setting already established the idea of faster than light travel, interstellar nations, worlds that sit at the crossroads of travel, and remote backwaters. The movies implied the existence of a universe beyond the grasp of the Empire and the Republic--not impossible to reach, but separated by just enough travel time to insulate it from main plot. The early Legends works explicitly described aliens from beyond the Coruscant-centered sphere of influence coming in with their own agenda and powers such as the Chiss from the Unknown Regions, who only began to noticeably impact the plot when we started having lulls in the whole eternal war between good and evil.

The Vong came from far off space, but in a setting that already established a lot of aliens from not-quote-so-far-off-space. They have weird biology and weird technology, but in a setting that has already established a huge diversity of biology and technology. They have an unexpected relationship to the Force, but in a setting where that's been done before. The ysalamari pretty much anticipated the same "What the hell?" reaction of meeting the Vong, albeit on a smaller scale, and they were introduced in some of the best books by one of the best authors of the franchise. In terms of the action aesthetic, the Vong are still space battles and people inexplicably getting into melee fights all the tie despite having sophisticated ranged weaponry, just like the Empire was. The black holes instead of shields and lava balls instead of plasma balls thing is a weird twist, but it's a detail level twist. The Vong aren't the equivalent of of aliens popping into Naruto with nukes and space lasers--they're the equivalent of invaders sailing in from China with armor that can sometimes stop a sword.

If Ripley stopped fighting the "aliens" and joined the company to go to war against the "terrorists"...

Have you read the extended AvP universe stuff? The movies never really went too far beyond a pretty narrow box, particularly before Prometheus, and they were pretty entertaining movies as they stand. However, the novels and comics have demonstrated that you can include a few more sets of adversaries without destroying the setting. A story leading our heroes to join their previous adversaries against a common enemy? That's got at least one page on TVtropes. A story where a the heroes decide to join a previously neutral or mildly antagonistic party? Same. A story where the heroes either defeat or simply stop fighting one enemy because circumstances change and another one becomes a more urgent threat? Ditto.

A big franchise where the protagonists eventually defeat one set of enemies and move on to a different enemy who play by slightly different rules, forcing the heroes to adapt and go through a mildly retreat of their story arc working towards beating the first enemy? I think that happened every other year on Power Rangers. Not that I hold Power Rangers out as great fiction or anything like that, but in their case what you describe as "shoehorning something in" every few seasons is literally the... well, you called it "genre" so we'll just keep using that term like that.

If they decided to do a "Terminator" movie without time travel staring a robot unrelated to the main plot...oh wait.

You mean if Terminator actually developed into a robust franchise with a vast setting that had room to deliver a variety of good stories, rather than really failing to do well any time they deviate too far from their core premise and the more or less the same group of people? If they proved they could do that well, I would be open-minded about it. As it stands, the franchise has largely failed to hire the right people to craft a story that would make me care about the setting any time the story doesn't directly involve somebody named "Connor." And there's no shame in that--as a series following the exploits of the Connor family across shifting timelines, it's an entertaining story.

However, I strongly disagree with your implication that the failure of this one series to make me give a crap about characters beyond Sarah and John Connor proves that it's somehow weird or impossible to try to tell such a story.

[TeChameleon]

... y'know, I've never really gotten why 'pulp' is such a negative connotation. From my standpoint, it mostly means that the readers/viewers are doing the curating, rather than the editors and publishers. Yeah, lots of schlock gets published, but there's always that tiny percentage of gold. Eh, no worries.

As to the OP...

Barring the First Order glassing NYC from orbit or destroying Earth, I don't know that there's much that they could do to stop the Avengers. The big guns are functionally immune to anything that the First Order can do, and I'd love to see what, exactly, would happen if you tried to Lightsabre Captain America. The blade is weightless, but still somehow exerts force on the handle... unless the Sith in question had truly ludicrous wrist strength, the most likely outcome against Cap's Mighty Shield would be the Sith suddenly finding that they were trying to pick their nose with their sabre while a very startled Captain America looked on in horror.

And if they tried to lightsabre-block Hawkeye's explosive arrows, the end result would just be kind of funny. Granted, Darth Whineypants (seriously, why hasn't Redeemed!Anakin's Force Ghost shown up and spanked that pretentious little twit?) would probably just telekinese it, but oh well. Boy has so many issues that Black Widow could probably reduce him to a blubbering mess with two pointed questions and an offhand comment after she allowed herself to be captured.

Also, is it my imagination, or are the First Order sort of, uhm, well, dumb? Their tactical decisions border on nonsensical, and their strategy is... something? Admittedly, the Resistance in the new movies hasn't proven to be a whole lot smarter (yes, I'll just randomly keep my senior staff in the dark for no reason whatsoever and provoke a mutiny while we're running for our lives, why not?)