A couple of things I haven't seen mentioned (sorry if I missed them) and elaborations...
-A force of troopers lands on Jakku to find the missing map, their leader finds the person who had it, briefly and fruitlessly interrogates him, then unambiguously murders him. While this does mirror the Empire's "Kill everyone who might be able to provide you with information" approach from A New Hope, it isn't any less stupid now than it was then.
-We see a stormtrooper shot with a blaster collapse, then trail blood from his hand when Fin goes to help him. How does a blaster create wounds that bleed? Yes, Ren bled after Chewbacca shot him, but a bowcaster fires a physical bolt; that makes sense. You could say the trooper simply scraped their hand against a rock as they fell, but stormtroopers wear armored gloves; that doesn't work. I realize it was necessary to somehow visually distinguish Fin from the other troopers, and blood
always works for provoking a visceral reaction, but as someone who went in trying to enjoy the movie and not pick nits, it was kind of a glaring oversight (if, that is, you're the kind of person who notices that sort of thing).
-Starkiller base is the successor to the Death Star: a superweapon that will destroy the bulk of the enemy's ability to resist and reduce all other opposition to terrified submission. Again, the exact relationship of the Order to the Empire is unclear, but the only difference here is whether the base is seen as "the tool that will let us reclaim our proper glory, for we ARE the empire" or "the tool that will show we are greater than the empire ever was, for we have taken up its fallen flags and ideologies and supassed them"; it's almost as important as a symbol than as a military installation. With that in mind, the superlaser is not, flat out NOT, going to be referred to as "the weapon". "Begin charging the weapon". "The weapon will be ready to fire in thirty seconds". "Fire the weapon". We're not discussing secret plans, here; these are not the things you say when talking about the fully assembled and functional doomsday machine.
-So apparently TIE Fighters now have a rear turret, a seat for a second gunner, a hyperdrive (Fin's comments about needing to escape Jakku don't make much sense otherwise), environmental sealing, and carry missiles AND mag pulses as a standard loadout, but aren't any bigger than they were before? Note they're the same visual design, and they're still called "TIE Fighters"; the tech could've advanced in the intervening decades, but a revision that radical to a core design would've sent the
price through the roof- a rather odd choice, considering that Seinar's biggest customer would have, at the very least, undergone some big changes; it's woefully unclear what exactly the relationship of the First Order to the Empire is, which leads into my next point:
-The lack of worldbuilding is a big immersion-breaker. At least, it was for me, knowing a good bit about the world and its background. Apparently the New Republic and the Resistance are separate organizations, unless that's just First Order propaganda, but then why wouldn't the Republic fleet attack Starkiller base? Sure, they might not arrive in time to save the Resistance HQ, but if a number of their planets are wiped out by a superweapon, they're not going to stay uninvolved for long. And if they are uninvolved, why would the Order make such a blatantly provocative attack on someone they're not fighting yet before finishing the enemy they are? Okay, you may have destroyed their capital and thrown their administration into disarray, but "weapon that can destroy a planet" isn't exactly a new thing here; any organization is going to have multiple layers of redundancy to avoid collapse when facing that threat. Perhaps the Order doesn't see the Resistance as a real threat; understandable, given that they're fighting an enemmy capable of building a superlaser that fires a MIRVing projectile that's superluminal, but that you can see coming (try to figure that one out) into a planet, which they can somehow "aim" (good luck with that one, too) and the "everything we've got" sum total of their military force is 12 X-wings. Really, even a simple "this is all we have that can get there in time" throwaway line would've softened the stupidity of that. You've built (well, rebuilt, or modified, or whatever word you want to use) an interesting world here, Mister Abrams; one I find myself wanting to know more about- that's a good sign. And I realize you want to avoid weighing people down with exposition, but if you won't show us OR tell us about it, it won't feel real. But that's not the only problem that holding out on us gives:
-Why is the Order so concerned with hunting down Luke? Okay, a resurgent Jedi Order could be both a major military threat and a source of confusion when people refer to "the Order". But Luke's in self-imposed exile, and training even one Jedi takes years. Why not simply destroy the droid and let the Resistance waste time looking for Luke and trying to persuede him to return while you beat the Republic into submission? There could be legitimate reasons to not do so, but it's never even
suggested. Ren (and I do deeply appreciate that apparently Disney has realized you can, in fact, have a dark Jedi that doesn't have "Darth" in their name) doesn't seem to have the rank or diplomatic power that Vader did; why is this such a priority? Well...
-The electrotonfa trooper that Fin fights managed to hold his own against someone using a lightsaber. As nice as it was to see the troopers given some nonleathal weapons, what the heck was it made of? Cortosis? Why would you use something like that on a policing weapon? It dawned on me as I left the theater that perhaps the white weapon and blue-white saber blade had never actually made contact; that he'd simply been hitting the hilt, or Fin's hand or arm. But the trooper'd only do that if he'd been trained to fight Jedi- and why would you do that when there's only one Jedi, who's living in seclusion? I can buy "this guy is a seriously powerful potential opponent; we need to hunt him down before he trains more", but "the threat is so great that we need to train all our troops to deal with a potential attack that only comes from him"? That's pushing it.
-For that matter, Fin rejects the violent brutality of stormtrooping upon seeing what it actually entails- fair enough, I probably would too. But the speed and, dare I say it, glee with which he turns on and kills his former allies is more than a little disturbing. Remember, to him, these aren't faceless, identityless hordes; they're the people he grew up wih and trained alongside, and even if he can put that aside, he knows it could just as easily be him under one of those helmets.
Granted, they may be doing awful things, but he knows they're indoctrinated and brainwashed and still doesn't hesitate before slaughtering them wholesale. I found myself wondering, more than once, whether he wasn't actually some deep-cover mole, as much of a stormtrooper as ever.
