STAR WARS — EPISODE VII: THE FORCE AWAKENSLuke Skywalker has vanished. In his absence, the sinister FIRST ORDER has risen from the ashes of the Empire and will not rest until Skywalker, the last Jedi, has been destroyed.In the Hosnian System, the capital of the REPUBLIC, formed by the Rebel Alliance 30 years ago, General Leia Organa struggles to convince the Senate to send troops against the FIRST ORDER. She is desperate to find her brother Luke and gain his help in restoring peace and justice to the galaxy. Leia has sent her most daring pilot on a secret mission to Jakku, where an old ally has discovered a clue to Luke’s whereabouts...The Force Awakens was produced 10 years after Revenge of the Sith, the last one of the prequel trilogy, which fans considered far worse than the original Star Wars movies. The expectations were very high, and the audience was hoping for a good film after so many years, so Disney decided to play it safe. TFA was initially praised by the critics, but it’s evident that the main problem about it is the lack of originality. They didn’t want to take risks, so they reused too many ideas and made TFA basically a remake of A New Hope. Of course, the movie also has its good parts. My goal while writing this is to make the necessary changes in order to improve it without altering the structure of the story too much.WORLDBUILDINGWorldbuilding might be the main problem of The Force Awakens, in my opinion. It looks like JJ Abrams and Kasdan were afraid of putting too much politics like in the prequels, and then decided to jump to the other extreme: there’s simply no context about what is the political situation of the galaxy, what’s happening with the new Republic, and how the First Order seems to be so strong if the Rebels had defeated the Empire. There are some explanations from comic books, but it should have been included in the movie. From Wookiepedia:Following the end of the war with the signing of the Galactic Concordance in 5 ABY, the Republic hastily passed the Military Disarmament Act seeking to prevent a repeat of galactic history; and instead focused on strengthening the forces of local planetary governments and reconstruction efforts to worlds ravaged by the conflict. A fraction of the size of the former Galactic Republic and Empire, the New Republic remained on friendly terms with a majority of galactic systems owing to the egalitarian processes that it embodied into its political message. Briefly inhabiting a wing of New Republic politics, the First Order would eventually secede from the greater body once tensions reached a breaking point. While many applauded the motion, others realized that without Republic oversight, the First Order would return to the draconian ways of its predecessor.The Force Awakens should have explicitly shown that the Republic was inefficient and corrupt, which would explain why it’s so weak. With the First Order conquering a growing number of systems, there should have been a scene in which General Leia would have asked the Senate to fight them, but she wouldn’t be successful. There would be many disagreements between the several systems and politicians could be shown to be FO sympathizers/collaborators, who would support of secession of their worlds from the Republic to join the First Order. Without the support of the crippled Republic, Leia has to act on her own and create the Resistance. A Senate scene like that explains why that group of fighters is so small compared to the First Order, because they wouldn’t have official support from the Republic.JAKKUAnother example of unoriginality is Jakku, Rey’s planet, which is basically Tatooine 2.0. As I said previously, I won’t change the core of the story, but will propose some changes to make the film more original, so I would keep the events set in Jakku (the Stormtrooper invasion, the crash with Finn and Poe, the Millennium Falcon, etc), but would redesign the planet and use the original concept. We already have a desert world, and the original art (http://ift.tt/2nZZ80h; http://ift.tt/2nTIdgV) shows that Jakku was meant to be more of a junkyard/abandoned planet than a desert one, so it’s not a second Tatooine anymore.MAZ KANATA’S/LANDO’S CANTINAI would keep the part when Finn and Rey meet Han Solo and escape from the gangs and the Rathtars unchanged, with one exception: Finn shouldn’t call Solo a “war hero”, as it doesn’t make sense for a Stormtrooper to think that about Han. Instead, he should say “the Han Solo who helped defeating the Empire?”, or something similar. Besides that, I don’t see problems with it. So I’m going to skip to the planet where Maz Kanata’s cantina is located, and my main change would be removing the character entirely. I don’t think Maz adds anything really interesting to the Star Wars universe. They tried to create a mix of a smuggler and a Yoda-like character who is centuries old and knows about the Force, but it didn’t work really well. So the best thing to do would be replacing her with Lando Calrissian, which would also explain what he had been doing in recent times. It doesn’t make sense for Lando, an important member of the Rebellion, to be absent in the Sequel trilogy, and the cantina suits his character perfectly.There’s no evidence from the original trilogy that Lando knows much about the Force, so in the part when Rey finds Luke’s lightsaber, we are going to replace Maz with Han Solo, who said earlier that he used not to believe in the Force but now understands its power. Han would be the one who would try to convince Rey that Luke’s lightsaber is calling to her and that she shouldn’t go back to Jakku, which would make flee and be captured by the First Order, that invades the planet, just like it actually happens in the movie.Another change that I would make is replacing the “traitor” stormtrooper with Captain Phasma. That’s because many fans were understandably upset with Phasma, who has such a cool armor but ended up being Boba Fett 2.0.THE STARKILLER BASE AND THE THIRD ACTThe Starkiller Base is another great problem of The Force Awakens. It’s basically a Death Star III and screams unoriginality, since it’s another concept that has been overused in Star Wars. To make it worse, the destruction of the Hosnian System isn’t nearly as dramatic as the destruction of Alderaan, since we don’t have a real reason to care that much about it (in A New Hope, Luke, Han and Kenobi were heading to Alderaan, and it was also the planet of Leia’s adoptive parents). It also doesn’t make sense for the First Order to have the resources to build a weapon capable of destroying an entire system, something that was never seen before, without anyone noticing it. For these reasons, I would scrap the concept of a Superweapon entirely and make that ice planet simply one of the main First Order headquarters, to where Rey was taken.Instead of destryoing the Hosnian System, the First Order would use its fleet to attack it, so we could have a great space battle against the weakened Republic, which would be defeated and conquered by the FO. General Hux (who, by the way, should have been older, like Grand Moff Tarkin, since it’s not realistic to have someone that young in the highest military rank) would have that speech announcing the end of the Republic and its replacement by a First Order government. That would be a better fall of the New Republic than blowing up the Hosnian System.The only thing I would change in the Rebel base is making R2-D2 awake. They would have the complete map to Luke Skywalker, but they would rescue Rey and fight the Starkiller base first, anyway. That would solve the problem of R2 waking up for simply no reason at all. So, after that, just like in the actual movie, Finn and Han Solo go to the ice planet to save Rey, and Leia still hopes Han can redeem Kylo Ren.I will keep most things unchanged from now on, but would make Kylo Ren not take off his mask to Rey. I believe it would make the dialogue before Han’s death (“What are you expecting to see”/”The face of my son”) more powerful. At the end, Leia also hugs Chewie. Kylo would still kill Han, and lose the fight to Rey, the Resistance would destroy the FO base in the ice planet, and it would end with Rey meeting Luke, just like in the actual movie.I believe that with these changes The Force Awakens would have been a more compelling movie, without the need to change the main structure of the story. They wouldn’t require changes to The Last Jedi and would allow us to understand what is going on in the Galaxy.(Excuse me for any English mistakes, because it's not my first language) via /r/StarWars http://ift.tt/2BSVRt6
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