If I Could Rewrite: Star Wars: The Force Awakens: The Plot

Finally, it’s here! (Sorry, this took so long. I was using No Bones Days as an excuse to procrastinate.)

I’m gonna go into this post assuming that you read the “characters” post. If not, go and do that now.

…Did you do it? You promise? Okay then, let’s get into it.

Alright, on to part two of this series! This is a continuation of the stuff I did in the Character post. Meaning that any concrete decisions I made for the characters still apply here even if I didn’t mention them again. I gonna try not to repeat stuff without adding anything new.

As I said before, I think the movie had the right idea, but the execution is off. These are just the changes I think would help.

Buckle up! It’s a long one.

The Title Crawl

That’s right! My first problem with the movie starts before the movie even really gets started.

The opening crawl of this movie is just misleading. It says the Republic and the First Order’s primary goals are to find Luke. More specifically, the First Order wanted to kill him, while the Resistance needed his help to defeat the First Order.

But that’s just not true.

Conquering the galaxy is the First Order’s main priority. Even Ben, who has a personal vendetta against Luke, only seems to be looking for him to impress Snoke and surpass Vader.

Speaking of, Snoke isn’t even all that concerned about the missing Jedi. Sure, he’s worried about any potential Jedi that Luke might train, but he seems to recognize that Luke isn’t in the mindset to do that.

As for the Resistance, it seems like they recognize that Luke would be helpful against the First Order’s Force users, but they are holding their own pretty well without him. The search for Luke is more propaganda for troops morale than anything else. (After his actions in the Original Trilogy, Luke became a symbol of rebellion.)

Notice how the Resistance only ever sends small recon teams to search for Luke. Their main forces were focused on the more urgent problem, the First Order, and they couldn’t rely on an old war hero who chose to disappear instead of fight.

The biggest letdown of the inaccurate crawl is that this is our first canon look at the Star Wars galaxy in 30 years, so I wanted the crawl to be more honest on the situation. Just change it so that the crawl says only Kylo Ren’s division is hunting for Luke while the Resistance is trying to stop their conquest of the Universe and believes that finding Luke could help turn the tide.

Jakku

On Jakku, there are a lot of minor changes I want to make that set the town for the rest of the film.

Doubling down on Medic!Finn

I didn’t mention this in the character post, but Finn was conditioned to be a loyal disposable soldier. He was raised and trained to fight and die for the First Order from childhood, so he shouldn’t be shocked to see his allies fall on the battlefield.

Desensitizing your Stormtroopers to the horrors of war should be the first thing on the agenda for an evil empire. You don’t kidnap and indoctrinate children to your cause just to let them rebel (Just ask the Jedi Order). If Finn showed signs that he couldn’t handle combat, he should have been removed from his squad before he ever made it to the battlefield.

The only way he would have been allowed to remain is he had specialized training that made him valuable and/or explained away his failing loyalties.

Medic!Finn would fall under that umbrella. As a medic, Finn would need to value life or, at the very least, was trained to avoid killing his patients. Watching the Fist Order enter a peaceful village and lighting it up would go against Finn’s medical training.

I don’t think it matters then who dies in Finn’s hands with these changes and others I plan to make. If we go with the original scene, Finn witnesses both Stormtroopers and civilians dying, so all that death still makes sense to make him question his loyalties. With my amended version, the only people Finn witnesses die are civilians, which justifies his decision to kill his former friends throughout the rest of the trilogy. Pick your poison.

A Temporary Base in Tuanul.

It never made sense that the First Order left Jakku, considering the map was definitely still there. It’s not like they saw anyone go after they arrived. If the map was ever in Tuanul, it would still be there after the raid.

Why take Poe and your forces off-world when all the clues about the map are in that village? The First Order staying in orbit doesn’t the problem either. They should have attempted to investigate the town and the surrounding area more closely.

I guess this misstep let BB-8 escape, but that opens the door to new questions on how the First Order found BB-8 later. Were they tracking Finn? Did they know that Poe was alive? Were they just checking the towns at random? That’s a plot whole I don’t care to fill with more than a handwave. Moving on.

The residents of Jakku should probably be talking about what happened in Tuanul. A whole village was wiped out overnight, and that seems like it’d be the talk of the planet. When Rey is at the Niima Outpost the next day, she should definitely be hearing about it.

Rey’s Force Awakens Now

Remember that scene when Finn and Ren/Ben share prolonged eye contact. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe the two of them are sensing Rey’s Force awakening. Later, Snoke even comments that there’s been “an awakening” (even before Rey starts using the Force).

So, it only makes sense for the plot that Rey actually experienced an awakening.

Assume all the examples I mentioned in the Rey section of the character post apply here, but it’s newer for everyone involved. (She collects her biggest haul, overhears thoughts, and accidentally uses the Jedi mind trick on Plutt.) Maybe she could even sense that she is leaving Jakku soon and tell BB-8 this later when they talk about waiting.

Rey Trained as a Pilot and Recognized the Falcon

Rey shouldn’t be able to outmaneuver trained pilots with just a couple of joyrides as practice. According to the wiki, Rey used a flight simulator to practice, and I think the scene where she put on the Rebel helmet might have been going into that before it cut to Rey meeting BB-8. Let’s just have her use the simulator there.

Also, it’s weird Rey looks up to Han but doesn’t recognize his ship. It works better if she knows it’s the Millennium Falcon and wants to fly it.

Maybe Unkar Plutt is selling the Falcon for a fortune, and Rey could dream of flying away in it one day when her family returns.

Not Out For Blood

During the escape, Finn started killing other First Order troops, some of who weren’t even actively attacking him. My edit here is minor but has a reaching effect.

Let’s make it so that Finn is trying to hit the cord anchoring his TIE Fighter, not his former coworkers. This way, the people he kills result from a reckless accident from his poor aim and not the heartless manslaughter of people he should care about.

Why are we still on Jakku? Is this how Rey felt? (╯‵□′)╯︵┻━┻

Oh, wait, we’re actually done here. (ヘ･_･)ヘ┳━┳ Moving on.

Lucky Dice

There is a scene on the Finalizer where Ben is told that Finn, Rey, and BB-8 escaped on the Millennium Falcon. He throws a tantrum and slashes up part of the ship with his saber.

I want to add a shot of Ben looking at a pair of golden dice on a chain before the officer starts talking to him. Maybe a motif of Han’s theme could play during the scene. These are the dice that show up in The Last Jedi, but I’ll explain more about why they are significant.

For now, all I’ll say is that a lot about Ben’s character is told and not shown, so let’s show something. This added moment is evidence that Snoke was right about Ben being susceptible to the light.

Onward to Adventure

There is a conversation between Rey, Finn, and BB-8 where Finn convinces BB-8 to help him pretend to be in the Resistance, and Rey tells them she plans to go back to Jakku. But this needs to change for two reasons.

Finn doesn’t actually want to join the Resistance, and he only said he was part of the Resistance because Rey assumed it first. Later, he drops the charade pretty quickly after they meet Maz, so it doesn’t make a lot of sense that he would keep the lie going and drag BB-8 into it.

I’m going to change it so that BB-8 is the one dragging Finn further into the lie. BB-8 has a mission to deliver the map, so, understandably, he would just tell Rey where the Resistance Base is without waiting for Finn to ask.

There’s also the fact that BB-8 shouldn’t know Finn is lying, and it wasn’t until Finn asked BB-8 to help him lie that the droid found out the truth. For consistency, I’m going to exchange Finn asking BB-8 to help him instead of Finn telling BB-8 the truth after the droid tells Rey where the base is.

The other change about this scene is making Rey actually want to help deliver the map.

As the story in the actual movie progresses, it becomes increasingly apparent that Rey is being dragged deeper into the plot. (After Rey helps BB-8, the droid refuses to go into town on his own. Finn grabbing her hand and pulling her around made her a wanted woman. Ben kidnaps her to interrogate her about the map.) This change is meant to give Rey some agency, but it also takes her characterization in mind.

It is clear from Rey’s home that she idealized the Rebels from the original trilogy. She would know that their names are famous throughout the galaxy, so she knows helping the Resistance could get her name out there too. Maybe her family would hear about how Rey from Jakku delivered the map to Luke and remember that she’s still out waiting for them.

This kind of thinking would play into how Maz said that Rey already knows that her family isn’t coming back for her. Rey thinks she needs to do something to make her family come back, indicating that she believes they need more reason to return for her.

Because deep down Rey knows that her family isn’t coming back, it doesn’t really make a lot of sense that she would outright turn down her dream job with Han (even with her being in denial). It makes more sense that she would be noncommittal in response to the offer. If Rey thinks that her family might come looking for her after this adventure, it is more reasoning for her being on the fence over her decision to follow her dreams or waiting for them to remember her.

Rey Tripping on Maz’s Basement Dust

I want to add a couple of scenes to Rey’s Force visions. Both of them focus on Ben and explain the importance of the dice.

The first is a scene of a toddler Ben playing with the golden dice while talking to a voice in his head. You can hear a concerned Leia calling out to him, and he tells her a voice is calling to him.

The second new scene would be of an older child version of Ben is being sent to train with his Uncle Luke. Han hands him the golden dice from before as they reminisce on how much Ben loved them when he was a baby. Ben takes them while saying he wanted to be a pilot like Han. Han says maybe he could be Han’s second mate after he’s done training with Luke. Neither of them looks like they really believe that.

These scenes could also be moved to when Rey invades Ben’s mind when he interrogates her.

This serves two purposes. First, it establishes the Rey and Ben dyad link better because of how much he is featured in her visions. The second is that it lets the audience see versions of Ben other than the murderous Kylo Ren. We get Leia and Han trying to save Ben, but we don’t get a reason to believe he is capable of change.

Running Away from Destiny

I need to change the moment Maz tells Rey about her Force abilities and that her family isn’t returning to Jakku to fit my rewrite.

Since my version of Rey isn’t really that driven by returning to Jakku, I’m changing it so that Rey freaks out over the fact that she is the one who has to battle and win this war.

She just wanted to deliver the map to the Resistance and nothing further. The idea that the fate of the galaxy rests on her shoulders is understandably overwhelming.

With a shout of “It can’t be me. I’m no one!” Rey runs off into the forest.

There is Another

I’m just going to have Maz straight up tell Finn that he is Force-sensitive when she gives him Luke’s saber.

I was going to add more scenes where Finn shows his Force sensitivity, but there isn’t a need for that.

There are plenty of moments that show Finn’s Force-sensitive. He hears the voices of the Senate cry out even before they die. Finn finds Poe immediately after he lands, even though Finn shouldn’t have known Poe was still alive.

So, all the story really needs is for someone to confirm it onscreen.

Repurposing a Deleted Scene

There is a deleted scene when Ben explores the empty Millennium Falcon on Ilum. I’m adding back in. Only this time, Ben places the gold dice in the cockpit before leaving.

Thus solidifying his decision to fall to the Dark side. (It also needs to be there so that Luke can find them in The Last Jedi.)

Killing the Starkiller Base

The Republic is supposed to be all about protecting people’s freedoms, but they kill a planet full of their enemies, most of whom didn’t even enlist by choice. Remember, all the Stormtroopers were abducted as children and conditioned to be loyal to the First Order.

Typically, when the characters tell me that one group is evil, I have to believe them. Stories tended to give minimal reasoning why one side is good and the other evil. However, the Resistance’s brutality has me questioning if either side is actually good. In A New Hope, blowing up Alderaan was used to tell us that the Empire was evil, but here the supposed good guys do it with no remorse or repercussions.

To remedy this, I want to add Finn warning the Stormtroopers that they have two options. Either they can stay loyal to the First Order and die, or they abandon the First Order and be given leniency.

I get that this is supposed to be a stealth mission, but the shields going down should have alerted the First Order that the base was infiltrated.

Like I said in the first post, this story is about redemption. Finn gets redeemed, Ben gets redeemed, and Vader got redeemed all those years ago. Why can’t all these faceless Stormtroopers get redemption? If not that, then a fair trial for their crimes.

(I considered changing details of the Finn/Rey/Ben saber battle, but this video by Jill Bearup explains why the fight works. Bearup’s line about Ben being more injured than he lets on does a lot to explain how Rey won.)

Leia Hugs Chewie Damnit!

I think the implication was supposed to be that Leia could sense how distressed Rey was using the Force, but Chewie was Han’s oldest friend and practically a family member. Out of everyone present, Leia’s first thought should have been to comfort or seek comfort from him.

The Ending

The movie should have ended with Rey and Chewie entering warp. The Luke/Rey meeting sets the tone for the next film, which makes no sense because the plan was always for another director to take the reigns.

That’s A Wrap!

This is my rewrite of The Force Awakens. This was actually a lot harder than I thought it would be.

I didn’t realize how self-serving Finn was until I actually sat down and analyzed the movie. John Boyega’s charisma definitely saves Finn from looking entirely like a jerk. I didn’t want to cleanse his character of any selfish behavior because I like morally grey characters. It’s just hard to like Finn when every act of good he does has selfish motivations.

I’m a bit disappointed with what I ended up doing for Ben, but there wasn’t space to do anything else. I guess it doesn’t really matter since The Last Jedi was always supposed to do the heavy lifting for Ben’s characterization. I feel like a lot of his characterization is through our connection to his parents. The audience is invested in Leia and Han, so we want what they want, to save their son.

Leia doesn’t really take the fact that Ben is a grown 29-year-old man into consideration when she claims he can be saved, and I believe Han got roped into that way of thinking when she tells him that. The scenes I added of his childhood emphasize that Han and Leia remember that child they couldn’t protect. They don’t fully understand why Ben became Kylo Ren, nor are they trying to. They just want to turn back the clock and go back to being a happy family (if they ever were that). In The Last Jedi, Rey finally reaches Ben because she saw him for who he’d become and was willing to hear him out.

Despite all these changes I made, I want to repeat that I don’t think this movie is awful. I don’t actually think any Star Wars movie is awful. (Which I find surprising because I didn’t use to like Star Wars movies due to them being spoiled through constant references and parodies in television.) Some are just executed a little better than others.

A professor once described creativity as hearing a symphony in your head and trying to hum it for others to understand. For this movie, there are a lot of missing instruments that can be found in the novelizations and comics, so this rewrite was more of my placing missing instruments in the orchestra.

Well, I hope you liked this post. Until next time. See ya!