Star Wars: 12 things we didn’t understand about The Force Awakens

Director JJ Abrams arrives at the European Premiere of Star Wars, The Force Awakens in Leicester Square, London, December 16, 2015. Reuters

Spoiler alert: don’t read further if you haven’t seen the film.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens, now out in the UAE, is a good film. The bits in Abu Dhabi (sorry, Jakku) are especially good. In its early stages, the film revels in excellent art direction and attention to detail. But it's also a JJ Abrams film, and that means a few parts of the script don't entirely make sense.

"I remember starting to shoot Super 8 and Star Trek: Into Darkness and feeling like I hadn't really solved some fundamental story problems," JJ Abrams said in an interview with Wired.

Abrams' point was that Star Wars: The Force Awakens wouldn't suffer from the same kinds of script problems. This is from the guy who created Lost; script problems are an inherent part of what he does, and The Force Awakens is no different.

1 Who are all these people?

Thirty years is a long time. But The Force Awakens is short on exposition. We know that there's a new Republic, there's something called The Resistance, and something called The First Order. The Republic appears twice: in the opening crawl, and when it is destroyed by a superweapon. The Republic has a fleet that's with the Resistance, and that too is destroyed.

But why did the Resistance come into being if the Republic was the universe’s government? What is it resisting? Why did the Republic ‘secretly’ support the Resistance, instead of trying to eradicate the Empire- and Nazi-inspired death cult with a planet-sized base?

And what’s behind that name: The First Order? The First Order of what? Or does ‘first’ mean ‘best’? In the Expanded Universe, the repository of Star Wars media which, after the purchase of the rights to Star Wars from George Lucas, is no longer canon, the Empire became The Imperial Remnant. That name makes more sense.

In a New Hope, there were the Rebels and the Empire: one was good, the other was bad, and that was that. In The Force Awakens, the situation is much less clear. It affects the sense of threat, too. If you’re not sure who all the protagonists are, it’s not clear what’s at stake if they are wiped out.

2 Max Von Kenobi

Who exactly is Max Von Sydow? Why does he sound suspiciously like Alec Guinness? When did Von Sydow, who is Swedish, learn to do a better impersonation of Alec Guinness, who is Scottish, than Ewan McGregor, who is also Scottish? Who gave Von Sydow the USB Stick of Destiny?

3 What has Han been up to? How did he lose the Millenium Falcon, and how did he find it again?

This is partially explained, but it’s breezed through. Han Solo’s reappearance is so serendipitous that you’d think he could actually sense the Falcon. Perhaps he’s a special, mechanical kind of Jedi.

4 Darth Gollum

JJ Abrams didn’t decide on what Snoke should look like until after the film had been shot. Well, when he leans into the camera, the Supreme Leader looks a bit like a certain Hobbit, who was tempted by enormous power and twisted by evil, and was also played by Andy Serkis.

5 The Jedi Academy

So, what happened? Did Luke train new Jedi? Are there any left? Did Kylo Ren go all “Order 66” on them? Was that flashback to a scene from Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai real?

6 Luke’s saber

“That is a long story for another time”, says Maz Kanata, of Luke’s lightsaber. Which is Hollywood-speak for “just go along with it”.

7 Maz Kanata and Captain Phasma

Two minor characters disappear, one with no explanation. Maz Kanata’s base is destroyed, and we don’t see what happens to her. Presumably she survives, but she disappears and is not mentioned again. Captain Phasma, trailed as being of some consequence to the plot, is dispatched with a joke that she will be thrown into the rubbish compactor. And that’s that.

8 Brainstorming the Third Death Star run

In a New Hope, Rebel Alliance generals studied the Death Star plans and identified a weakness in its defences. In the Force Awakens, a free-form brainstorming session serves the same purpose.

One exchange goes like this: “Hey, new guy, don’t suppose you happen to know whether this superweapon has any major structural weaknesses?” “Sure do!”

Just don’t call it The Third Death Star. Besides: a squadron of X-wings is not a fleet. How did Miles from Lost become an admiral? Does a guerrilla movement without any capital ships really need two admirals? That would be simple way to cut down on payroll costs. I know which admiral I’d fire.

9 Did John Williams really write all this music?

Like JJ Abrams, I used to stay up listening to recordings of John Williams film scores. I have heard the scores of every Star Wars film — including the prequels, in which the music is just as good — more times than I can remember. Williams is distinctively skilled at weaving very complex arrangements around a series of familiar motifs. But the music in the Force Awakens is strangely unlike Star Wars music. There is one piece of music — played when Rey slides down a dune in Abu Dhabi (sorry, Jakku) — which includes a solo piano playing a few simple chords, in a fashion popular with minimalism-inspired film composers, but very unlike John Williams. I simply cannot believe that John Williams wrote it. The soundtrack recycles several themes from the original six films, but without the intelligence, artistry, or style of previous scores. It was the music between the main themes I loved: these were immaculately crafted and detailed, and I have listened to some of this incidental music literally hundreds of times. There is no incidental music on a par with, say, John Williams' The Battle of Hoth.

For every other Star Wars, John Williams has written a new, iconic main theme: Han Solo and the Princes and The Imperial March for Empire Strikes Back; the Ewok theme and Luke and Leia theme for Return of the Jedi; Duel of the Fates, Across the Stars, and Battle of the Heroes for the prequels — plus enough iconic incidental music to ground you in a distinctive musical universe. If there's an iconic theme in the Force Awakens, I struggled to identify it.

We know that John Williams didn’t write the music for the cinematic trailers. And it was reported recently that he didn’t conduct the opening crawl or the music for the credits: Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Gustavo Dudamel was enlisted for this task.

So, did John Williams actually write all of this score? Officially, yes. And we will have to wait to listen to the full soundtrack before we can really tell whether it’s authentic John Williams, poorly-edited John Williams, or just not John Williams. I have my doubts.

10 Nature’s superweapon: the energy of the sun

This is classic JJ Abrams silliness: absurd and unnecessary. The Death Star wasn’t powered by the tears of space orphans: we don’t need the Starkiller to suck up stars. JJ Abrams’s Star Trek could have done without the Red Matter, while we’re at it.

11 The last shot (Spoiler Alert)

One Twitter user said that The Force Awakens has the best last shot in the series. But the rapid, circular pan shot, in which a helicopter circles around Skellige Michael, an Irish island that features the remains of a medieval monastery, is more appropriate to a documentary about seabirds than a space opera. I suppose that, since Rey and Luke are on a cliff, the ending is a literal cliffhanger.

12 Genetics

“I know all about waiting,” says Rey. “Beep-de-boop”, says BB-8. “For my family,” says Rey, winking heavily at the audience.

A New Hope introduced a big, new world without a lot of explanation. But it was also narratively self-contained. The Force Awakens isn't. Arndt, Abrams and Kasdan have introduced, and left, quite a few dangling narrative threads. Many of these are sequel-inducing threats. But there's also a lot of unresolved stuff from the past. None of the other Star Wars films left quite as many plot strands unresolved. The Force Awakens is a ball of them.

It's a good film. It's better than the prequels. The art direction is superlative. It's fast-paced, and fun. But JJ Abrams films always have plot issues. The Force Awakens is no exception.