I looked for an online script. In addition to the terms I listed, there's "sentry ships," and lines like "You worry about those fighters! I'll worry about the tower!" No one, Rebel or Imperial, ever says "TIE" in dialogue, just "fighter." Amusingly, the script itself does use TIE consistently throughout the movie in…

But none of that was coincidence. We know it all transpired according to Jedi droid R5-D4's master plan for Luke Skywalker to fulfill his destiny.

How could Rey ever compete with the epic Finn/Poe romance?

I believe it was just "Imperial fighter," "short-range fighter," and "enemy fighters." TIE, like Dark Lord of the Sith, has just been around so long that it feels like it was in the first movie.

Heck, I loved what he did in Age of Adaline, a thoroughly average tale, but he just felt so very hollow and sad here. Appropriate for the backstory perhaps, but not what I was looking for in Han Solo.

That just raises the other problems about the entire Republic fleet being docked at those five planets and the Resistance having no capital ships at all, and all the other systems in the Republic having their own independent planetary fleets according to the new canon, but then we're in the weeds. I can just chalk it…

Well, grilled vegan cheese anyway. With no butter. And a little burnt on the bottom side, which you won't notice until you pick it up, and the waitstaff is already out of earshot so you don't feel like sending it back and just eat it anyway.

Just chiming in to say your mention of the "NO!" and the score just made me tear up a little. I could see and hear it all in my head, and I haven't watched that scene in at least a decade. Conversely, I watched the other scene last night for the first time and had no emotional reaction other than annoyance that this…

Maybe they could have dropped the two minutes of technobabble on the Falcon to make room for a little clarification.

That's exactly why they carved it out of another perpetual snow planet!

Damn, if that's all that's required for emotional engagement, you must have loved TRON: Legacy as much as I did!

There was also Alec Guiness's psychic pain and classic line, and General Dodonna's rather somber condolences to Leia upon her arrival, which she cut off, stating there was no time for grief. All in all, Alderaan's destruction was treated with appropriate consideration and solemnity. With Hosnian Prime, it was more…

Under death sentences from an all-powerful galaxy-spanning Empire ruled by two Sith Lords. Whereas Luke is a hero of the legitimate New Republic government that is at least powerful enough to be a threat to the First Order. He could have lived openly in the Republic without Stormtroopers kicking in his door.

Military budget cuts in peacetime are a hell of a drug.

For me, it just makes me think Luke had a pretty shitty plan that was unnecessarily cruel to Artoo to boot. Just leave him active, and with Rey on Jakku as her companion. Or if Ben Solo was the one that abandoned Rey on Jakku, leave Artoo active with Han or Leia with orders to spend the intervening years looking for…

That's the sense that I got from watching the movie, but it turns out I was just mislead by the vagueness. Apparently, the remaining strength of the Empire was shattered at the Battle of Jakku, with "thousands" of Imperial ships, including the last Super Star Destroyer, crashing down on it, only one year after Endor.

I would never say that a plot point is too obvious for Abrams to use.

Only gotta disagree on number 3. The Emperor didn't give anyone the shield generator location, real or fake. It had to be on the side of the forest moon facing the DS II, the Rebels could probably read the source of the massive energy output on their scanners, or they could have just looked for the big-ass antenna…

So Good will always triumph because Evil is dumb? That's not the way it was when I was a kid.

Yes, but I don't remember him saying anything about torpedoes. They had to make multiple runs because their first pass barely cracked the armor. However, I only remember seeing laser blasts, not torpedoes, unless I missed the SFX in the confusion of the scene.