8 Things Missing From Star Wars: The Force Awakens

2. An Explanation Of The Current Political Climate In The Galaxy

It's hard to care about the political goings-on of the galaxy when you don't fully understand what state it's in. Of course, the First Order blowing up an entire star system isn't exactly going to make me shrug and get back to my Sunday shopping, but as with Snoke in the last point on this list, a little context wouldn't go amiss. It's incredibly unclear how much reach the new Republic has, or why they wouldn't have a standing army with which to combat the rise of the First Order. Things are further complicated when the bad guys mention that the Republic haven't been upfront about their relationship to the Resistance, which raises the question of why exactly they would need to explain their position to what is essentially a rebellion. Even the moniker of the Resistance doesn't really make sense, as they are fighting for the government currently in power. If anything, the First Order should be called the Resistance. Whilst I'm here, I'm also going to take umbrage with the fact that they're not referring to themselves as the Second Order, as technically the Empire was their first iteration. Perhaps (or rather, hopefully) some illumination to their name and origins will be provided in the next two chapters. Admittedly, fan complaints about the amount of heavy-handed politics in the prequel trilogy have been one of the major concerns of those films, but there was no need to dial it all the way down for The Force Awakens. Just a little more illumination would have gone a long way.