I was so confused when all that started coming up. So Empire was defeated and a New Republic was established but then a new 'Evil' organisation existed and the 'Resistance' was the only one opposing it? Something seems off.

The idea of how things work in a political setting is that in order for a 'resistance' to exist they would have to oppose a political power who were in charge. The First Order aren't in charge... they are essentially the 'rebel' group. The Resistance and Republic would be on the same side here, well technically there resistance wouldn't exist at all. Not only that, The First Order just destroyed the political centre of the Republic and that Republic probably had representation and important people on it from every represented system in the galaxy. They took out a few planets and just made an enemy of every system in the galaxy, if they weren't already. It wouldn't only be the Resistance responding with force, it would be everyone.

The film was entertaining but in my view full of plot holes because it was trying to fill it with 'nostalgia' instead of creating somethign fresh set in the Star Wars universe.

I'm pretty sure the Resistance works at the behest of the Republic. Apparently the Republic and the First Order kinda signed a treaty of non-conflict or something. Obviously that all went to shit with Star Killer though. I understand why they did not want to put this in the film though, they were spooked by the prequels. 

I read in the official concept art book for The Force Awakens that Maz Kanata was originally intended to have a puppet, but the team ran out of time to make a proper puppet. Hence why she is CGI.

Also, Snoke is Andy Serkis. That's what Andy Serkis does.

I literally was bracing for Maz Kanata like "here comes the freaking Force Awakens Jar-Jar. .. please don't suck, please don't suck, please don't ruin the movie, please JJ, don't fuck this up, not like this ...". Haha.

She wasn't that bad at all. She basically was like The Oracle from the Matrix just not quite as wise/interesting, but there was nothing egregious or over the top looney tunes silly about it. I never got that feeling of "oh the live action characters are totally talking to a tennis ball that was CGIed in later" either. She worked in her scenes and even played well off Harrison Ford, if you have a crappy CGI character they're going to look reeeeally bad next to a Harrison Ford but Maz held her own. 

Snoke was the biggest disappointment, shockingly. The whole giant scale thing didn't quite work. If anything Snoke could've just been a guy in a mask too ... it probably would've looked scarier that way. The face wasn't deformed enough to justify the character being CGI in my opinion.

It's not like the character is a waste, they can make him more interesting in VIII, but yeah that was probably the weakest element of the film for me.

Star Killer?

Eitherway to me, explained or unexplained, makes little sense. A New Republic would not sign a treaty like that with an organisation that looks and works like the empire they just overthrew, especially as the leaders of the Rebel Alliance would have had some say in the reformation of the republic.

I dunno, maybe I expect too much from Disney... considering they basically scrapped most of the EU just to steal one of the main bits from it. :P

I know people hate on Disney, but honestly by and large they deliver quality films. Like none of the Marvel movies they've made has been pure crap, it's all fairly well done, sure some are better than others. 

The EU kinda had to go otherwise Abrams and the new writers of this trilogy would have about 1039393 different post-ROTJ elements to have to work into the film. Like is Mara Jade going to be mentioned? Is she Rey's mom? Blah blah blah blah. It was simply easier just to wipe the slate clean. 

There's a lot of stupid shit in the EU anyway, I like the Zahn stuff and a few other things but not much else. 

Just wait for the pre-sequels to explain :-3

Disney do great things with Disney animated films, both Pixar or not. Although, I am becoming disillusioned with their Marvel work after this weird push for Inhumans while mutants are set back again in comics (I dropped comics out of protest... they were crap too which didn't help :P).

It's just some basic thinking and originality is what we needed with these films and taking the fact that one of the Solo kids had turned bad pretty much straight from the EU (which I don't mind them dropping because they wanted a fresh start for future stories) is a little odd in my view.

I want them to try something new. The next film is one step in the right direction because it'll be the first one not set around Skywalkers, a film just set in the SW universe and has great potential. They could have done more with this one.

I don't know. How hard can it be to transition from that stick she carried around with her to a lightsaber. A lightsaber actually looks easier to use.

This trilogy seems like it will still fixate on the Skywalker/Solo lineage. I guess if you don't like that you're going to have to get off the bus, but that was always Lucas' own idea. It seems like Abrams kinda re-did it in a slightly different way. 

I have The Art Of TFA book and it basically from what I gather the original plot line that Lucas and Michael Arndt were writing had two leads ... a young guy and a young girl. They meet Luke Skywalker half way through the story. There's a "Jedi Killer" character. Apparently what this leads to is the guy turns to the Dark Side, girl becomes good. 

It looks like Abrams just combined the Jedi Killer and "boy who turns bad" into one character (Kylo Ren). The female character ("Kira") looks like she became Rey.