Okay, so I’m completely convinced the original script for The Force Awakens had Finn as the Force sensitive Jedi-to-be and not Rey. There are just too many things that don’t make sense within the context of the film’s plot and just feel arbitrary and rushed. This is how I think the story should have gone:
Act I
General Leia Organa, leader of the Resistance (the old remnants of the Rebellion) to the villainous First Order, struggles to convince her friends in the New Republic Senate that the First Order has reached a power level to threaten the safety of the Republic and that action must be taken to find the long-vanished Luke Skywalker. Apart from Senator Wedge Antilles, one of the last remaining vestiges of the original Rebel Alliance, very few Senators believe her and feel as if she’s just trying to cling to the glory of being a wartime leader. Organa leaves one of her trusted lieutenants on Coruscant, sends Poe Dameron to the desert planet of Jakku to investigate a lead, and heads to Bespin to locate an old comrade.
Poe Dameron finds the map to Luke Skywalker on Jakku and puts in the hands of BB-8, who hightails it out of there before the First Order shows up and starts slaughtering people. FN-2187, a seasoned stormtrooper who has begun to feel doubts about his mission, finally snaps when Kylo Ren uses the Force in his presence and orders the murder of an entire village. FN-2187’s silent defiance attracts the interest of Kylo Ren, who notices something different about the stormtrooper but lacks the discipline in the Force to explore it further. The First Order captures Poe Dameron; FN-2187 realizes he must atone for the horrific actions he was party to and escape with Dameron. The two successfully manage to blast their way out of captivity and make their way back to Jakku on a stolen TIE fighter; however, their ship is shot down, and Dameron is presumed dead.
FN-2187 makes his way to a settlement on Jakku, where he runs afoul of some of the locals, most notably a businessman named Unkar Plutt. Plutt’s underlings read FN’s markings and, misunderstanding, call him “Finn.” The newly-dubbed Finn reaches out to Rey, a scavenger who works for Plutt and has discovered BB-8. Finn (who knows about BB-8 from Dameron) attempts to barter with Rey for BB-8. Rey, who hates Plutt and wants to escape from Jakku, refuses to give up the droid; Finn truthfully points out BB-8’s importance to the Resistance and, when he sees this get a reaction from Rey, insinuates he’s part of the Resistance himself. Rey tells Finn she’s a pilot and can get him off the planet; they just need to steal a ship from Plutt. If he can connect her to the Resistance, she’ll get him off-planet. Finn agrees, and the two of them sneak out of Plutt’s clutches using an old, beaten-up Millenium Falcon. Once in Jakku’s orbit, however, they have to run a First Order blockade; Finn is able to fake his way through using some old codes, but Kylo Ren senses him again and sends TIE fighters their way. Rey, while a capable pilot, is unfamiliar with the Falcon’s controls, and struggles to find the right Hyperdrive controls. Finn is forced to fight off the TIE fighters in the gunner’s chair until Rey sends them to the last known destination in the ship’s memory bank.
The ship materializes in a system Rey doesn’t recognize; Finn scans the maps and realizes they’re in the Republic’s core system. The ship begins to auto-pilot to a nearby planet; Rey is unable to break the controls, so the two of them arm themselves and prepare for the worst. The ship docks at a foreboding-looking base; Han Solo and Chewbacca board it. Solo reveals they are on Corellia, his (and the Millenium Falcon’s) home planet. Finn attempts to tell Solo they need to get to the Resistance; Solo is initially disinterested and offers to fly them wherever they need to go, as long as they’re not going to Coruscant. When Finn persists, Solo decides to vet them the only way he knows how.
Kylo Ren senses a disturbance in the Force. Realizing where Finn and Rey are, he goes to First Order General Hux and asks to take a battalion to Corellia. Not wanting to show his hand to the entire galaxy just yet, Hux declines. Kylo then retreats to his meditation chamber, where he communicates with his master, to whom he refers solely as “master.” The unseen master tells him he agrees with Hux; there will be a time and place to reveal themselves, but not with a direct attack. He does suggest that it would be an important step in his training to pursue this lead on his own.
Act 2
Not believing Finn’s story about being part of the Resistance, Han and Chewbacca take Rey, Finn, and BB-8 to a fortress on the southern pole of Corellia inhabited largely by the less-reputable population of the planet. The owner of the fortress, a former Imperial officer named Maz Kanata, operates a large club patronized by everyone from Republic senators looking to live on the wild side to figures in organized crime. Kanata, a Force-sensitive, greets Solo as a friend she hasn’t seen in years–and who knows that he wouldn’t have come to her unless it was an emergency. Solo introduces Finn, Rey, and BB-8, and explains how he came across them. Kanata points out Solo wouldn’t have brought them there if he didn’t think there was something to their story–and that it must inevitably connect him with Leia. When Solo scoffs, Kanata suggests the battle between the Light and Dark sides of the Force is tied to his ex-wife. Finn wonders aloud why they are wasting time with Kanata when they could be getting BB-8 to the Resistance; Kanata turns on him and reveals that he’s not part of the Resistance at all, and that he as a stormtrooper is the one least likely to be trustworthy. Rey, scandalized, insults Finn and makes to leave. Solo follows her. Finn, however, stands his ground, and says that he’s seen what the First Order is up to and isn’t afraid to fight it. He knows he’s probably going to fail, but he can’t do the things he’s done or see the things he’s seen anymore. This speech impresses Kanata and BB-8; she takes them to a secret room, where she reveals she’s a deep cover operative for the Resistance, something not even Solo knows for certain. She knows of General Organa’s mission to find Luke Skywalker, and is glad that BB-8 has the information; she tells Finn that Luke must be found, and that he’s the key to making finding him worthwhile. She calls Chewbacca and tells him to have the Falcon ready; before they leave the room, she has a moment in which she tells Finn that their meeting was not an accident, that The Force is strong with him, and with Rey, and that he would be wise to let it guide him. Finn worries aloud if he isn’t closer to the Dark side than the Light; Kanata wisely advises him that the balance between the Dark and Light sides is always tenuous, and that anyone who feels The Force should trust their feelings more than their past. She senses the good in Finn, which is why she trusts him.
Solo has a heart-to-heart with Rey in which she explains how she was orphaned on Jakku at a young age and, lest she end up at the mercy of the remaining Hutts throughout the Outer rim, she learned to scavenge, pilot, and fight. Her acceptance was never guaranteed, and she spent her entire life living in fear that she would be caught with her guard down. For a moment, Finn had given her hope, but that hope had been dashed. Solo points out that there was a time when he hadn’t believed in anything other than staying one step ahead of the blaster pointed at his head, until he met Luke Skywalker, Ben Kenobi, and Leia, and realized the time had come when he needed to join a larger fight. Even though he was always trying to run from that fight, that his love for Luke and Leia was chaotic, strange, even damaging, he knew he made the right choice by returning to the battle of Yavin 4 and helping Luke destroy the first Death Star. Solo points out that he doesn’t know Finn or Rey, but he does feel something, the slightest inkling, that their presence means something and means that something is about to change.
Kylo Ren enters the gambling portion of the fortress alone. He’s threatened by some of the mobsters; after a tense conversation, he’s taunted, called a “boy in a mask.” When someone asks him where his father is, he snaps; he ignites his lightsaber and begins to slaughter the entire room. When the criminal element can’t stop him, security tries and fails; they do, however, trigger an alarm. Kanata and Finn emerge looking for Rey and Solo; the latter pair has already arrived. Kanata knows what’s coming their way and encourages all of them to leave. The five of them manage to escape, but not before Solo catches sight of Kylo Ren; they have a moment of recognition. They encounter a small squad of First Order stormtroopers in the hangar; this surprises Kylo Ren, who realizes someone had him followed. The groups get separated in a firefight after Chewbacca leaves the Falcon to cut a swath through the stormtroopers. Solo, Rey, and BB-8 are able to get to the Falcon; Finn tells them to take off, that he, Chewbacca, and Kanata will find another way out.
Solo and Rey head to Coruscant, where they immediately meet with Organa’s lieutenant. They show BB-8 and explain how they found it; Poe, who escaped from Jakku, asks what happened to the man who helped him escape the First Order. After explaining what happened on Corellia, the lieutenant–aghast that the First Order would act so directly and brazenly in Republic space–tells them where Leia has gone. Solo demands to address the Republic Senate–as a war hero and retired general, he has the right to if there is a military need. When the lieutenant tells Solo that would take time to get all senators present either virtually or in real life, he tells Poe to take Rey and BB-8 to Leia on Bespin.
Kylo Ren, having left Corellia on his own ship, retreats to a meditation chamber and angrily addresses his master. His master, delighted to feel Kylo’s anger, apologizes for the deception, but tells him Kanata had something he hoped Kylo would find. When Kylo says he found nothing, his master tells him not to worry; because of his actions, he now knows where Han Solo and Leia Organa are and, while he would prefer to know where Luke Skywalker was, his next actions will undoubtedly bring Luke out of hiding. He sends Kylo coordinates and tells him to rendezvous as soon as possible, because Corellia was not his only target today.
Kanata, Chewbacca, and Finn escape Corellia in a freighter similar to the Millenium Falcon, the Blazon. Kanata, programming a course, notes that the ship’s navigational computer is a clone of the Falcon’s, which surprises Chewbacca, but nonetheless meets his approval. Chewbacca deftly evades the First Order ships pursuing them by charging their command ship, flying mere meters from its hull, then going to light speed, which damages it severely. Finn, impressed, asks where they are going; Chewbacca asks Kanata if she’s sure they should go there. Kanata, knowing Finn can’t understand, cryptically responds “the time has come.”
Act 3
On the far side of Coruscant, away from the Senate building, a team of deep-space sensor operators detect something peculiar; a star system seems to be gradually disappearing. One by one, the planets seem to be disappearing from scopes, and the star itself is rapidly dimming. The operators reach out to their superiors, who are completely at a loss as to what is happening. The star, too, soon disappears from view, and the sensor operators send the data to the Senate building on the other side of the planet. To ensure it’s taken seriously, envoys are dispatched to the other side of the planet; their shuttle will take an hour.
Poe, Rey, and BB-8 arrive on Bespin to find the Cloud City almost entirely void of organic life. Droids are running the day-to-day operations of the mine via the city; Rey notes that these droids are heavily-modified in ways that suggest they haven’t been repaired by a human in decades. They make their way from their landing platform to the main administrative building, led by BB-8, who seems to know the way without hesitation. Inside the building, they find it to be full of what seems to be a growth of droid tech. All of the tech seems to lead to a large chamber (the chamber originally meant for carbon freezing), in which R2-D2 has been installed in a sort of nerve center that allows him to control the entire city. C-3PO, whose body has been modified nearly beyond recognition, is happy to welcome the new visitors, knowing that they are here for Leia. He leads them to Leia, who is in a chamber just off the nerve center. In that chamber sits Leia and Lando Calrissian, observing a bank of screens with dismay. Behind them sits a beautiful woman, frozen in carbonite. Poe updates Leia on his progress; Rey explains who she is, and her story to this point. Lando is subdued and sad, but very vital; it’s revealed that he married and had a child, a child who was Force-sensitive that was sent, along with others, to train with Luke Skywalker at his new Jedi Academy. When that Academy was destroyed, attacked by a mysterious, dark force, everyone assumed it was the will of the Force, because Luke had set up the Academy in the ruins of the old Khyber mine on Jedha. Lando’s son was killed, and his wife mysteriously died of grief; he froze her body in carbonite so that he could be with her until he found out exactly what happened to their child. He became a trafficker of two things the facility of Bespin allowed him to deal: energy (via the gas mine), and information (via Cloud City’s infrastructure, converted by R2 into a massive data antenna). He and Leia were using their sensors and the galaxy-wide data net to scour for places where Luke might have hidden when they noticed the star system–which is much closer to them than to Coruscant–disappear entirely. Lando notices a completely new, foreign energy signature begin to emanate from that blank system. Leia, realizing she has to try to reach out to Luke in the Force, also realizes she needs another loving connection to do it. She decides to meditate and connect to Han, since she knows where he is thanks to Rey and Poe.
Han begins his address to the New Republic Senate, telling them that Leia was right, that the First Order is a genuine threat, and that something awful is about to happen. He explains in more detail why Luke Skywalker disappeared; his Jedi Academy on Jedha revealed secrets about the Jedi’s connection to the Force, including the nature of the Dark Side and how the Sith and Jedi worlds were all connected directly via the same energy that allowed for instant communication about the secrets of the universe. The Jedi and Sith were meant to be balanced, but the Jedi decided that any threat to the light was a threat to life itself. Against the wishes of neutral Force-sensitive beings, the Jedi intended to wipe out the Sith. Luke’s Academy uncovered this information, and a group of Dark Side Force-wielders appeared on the planet. The Knights of Ren seduced Luke’s two best students; one, Qiiyen Windu, Lando’s son, had a change of heart, and sacrificed himself to save the youngest Padawans from the Knights of Ren, and their newest recruit–Ben Solo, Leia’s and Han’s son. Upon killing Qiiyen, he adopted the name Kylo Ren, and disappeared to learn the Dark Side from an unknown master.
Solo says that Kylo Ren is back, and that this means the First Order is about to make a move against the Republic.
The sensor operator envoys get to primary communications tech station in the Capitol, where they point out their findings to the commanders, who direct more sensors at the area and discover that the large blank spot is moving.
As Leia meditates, struggling to connect to the Force, Lando’s sensors pick up something massive, moving quickly from the dead system and headed their way. R2 tells them that, whatever that object is, it can detect the data stream, and that they should leave. C3PO tells R2 to disconnect from the system; R2 seems to comply, sending forth an astro-droid and telling 3PO that he will copy himself into the droid as they make their escape, but he first needs to set Cloud City to self-destruct. Poe and Rey tell Lando they need to make for the Falcon; Lando refuses to leave. Leia, the emotion in the room overwhelming her, finally connects with Han via the Force. They step out of time and have their first conversation in years. They discuss Ben, and their own failures, and the love they felt for each other. They discuss Finn and Rey, and how special the two of them are. Han tells Leia she should be in the Senate, because she’s better at dealing with politicians; Leia replies that there is a reason for him to be there. They reach out together, looking for Luke; their consciousness spans the galaxies until, finally, a picture begins to clear.
Rey finally shakes Leia from her trance, needing her help with Lando. Lando indicates that a squadron of ships has been dispatched toward them, and they have minutes before they get there. Leia, desperate, plays a Jedi Mind trick on Lando; it takes a few tries, but she is able to convince him to come with them, and they all flee to the Falcon. As they get to the ship, Cloud City starts to change; R2 is rigging the gas mines to explode, an act that 3PO says would destroy half the planet. Poe wonders how R2 can control all of this and copy himself to the Astro-droid at the same time. They board the ship and take off; R2 reveals that he lied about the Astro-droid, that it is just a drone, and that he cannot copy himself and buy them time to escape. 3PO gets emotional, but then the squadron of ships–First Order TIE fighters–arrives, and Poe, Rey, and Lando are all occupied fighting them off while Leia frantically programs the Falcon’s navigational computer. As the ship nears a place where they can safely go to light-speed without destroying themselves in the gas of the Bespin atmosphere, R2 transmits a final message before initiating his self-destruct sequence. The Cloud City explosion sets off a chain reaction that destroys the TIE fighters and allows them to go to light-speed undetected; just before they make the jump, Lando notices the stars having disappeared from the space behind them, realizing at the last moment that he’s looking at massive, massive, flying object, whose gravity starts to pull Bespin toward it before R2’s chain reaction fully detonates.
The large object actives an unthinkably large propulsion system that, propels it at massive, just-barely-light The object moves at high speed toward Republic core space. The Senate session is interrupted by New Republic naval forces, which tell the Senators what seems to be happening; a mad dash to leave the Senate chambers ensues. Solo and Senator Antilles make their way to the Coruscant command center just in time to see that the massive object will reach proper sensor distance in an hour. Solo and Antilles volunteer to fly the Navy out to meet the object.
Kanata, Finn, and Chewbacca come out of light-speed on Ach-To, a planet with no intelligent life save for one reading. They fly over a small continent whose mountain range contains the one life reading; they see what looks like a small settlement, and a house. They land the Blazon at the nearest landing zone, de-board, and set off on foot toward the settlement, which is a steep climb. By the time they get to the settlement, they find the life form: Luke Skywalker, praying in front of a small mine, from which khyber crystals glow enticingly. Kanata interrupts Luke’s prayer. Luke, when he turns around to face them, has a look of panic on his face.
Kylo Ren’s master summons him; he activates his viewscreen, only to see the view from a Destroyer positioned far at the edge of the Republic core space he’d just left. He sees the Republic Navy headed to the border to engage.
Han and Wedge, piloting X-Wings, see the massive object block out the stars around it. It slows and stops; it’s a space station, planet-sized, more massive than the Death Star. It seems to be powered by fusion reactions similar to a star at its core.
Kylo Ren’s master explains that the Star-Killer Base has passed its initial tests–absorbing the star from the system in which it was built and engaging its massive propulsion drive–and the only thing remaining is a weapons test.
Star-Killer Base’s massive weapons system takes a long time to power up; the Republic Navy throws a massive volley of attacks at it, only for it to have no impact. Han and Wedge realize there is nothing they can do to stop it from firing its weapons; Han instructs Wedge and as many ships as possible and escape, sending out a broadcast to the entire New Republic that they must evacuate. Han himself leads a squadron of volunteers in an attack on the First Order ships observing behind the base in order to buy evacuees time to escape.
It takes nearly an hour to power up; even with that amount of time, a negligible amount of ships are able to leave the Core planets. Han, his cause clearly lost, finds himself directly in the path of the base just as the weapon finally ignites. Staring into a massive weapon, he closes his eyes and reaches out, finally using The Force on his own. His emotional call reaches Kylo first; he “sees” his son and tells him he loves him. His mind travels throughout the universe and he is able to sense Leia and Luke. Star-Killer fires, a split series of beams that destroys Corellia, Coruscant, and much of the other core planets.
Kylo Ren stands, impassive. His master speaks to him; he doesn’t reply.
On Ach-To, Kanata, Luke, and–to their surprise–Chewbacca and Finn–feel Han’s presence for an instant before it disappears. Kanata breaks down and cries; Luke tries to make heads or tails of what happened. Finn, aghast, says “I didn’t think it was real.”
In light-speed, Leia breaks down in tears. Lando, inferring what happened, holds her in his arms. Poe, Rey, and 3PO pilot the Falcon through deep space.
Star-Killer Base glows with a monstrous glow, the Core New Republic systems destroyed. Hux, aboard it, looks beside himself with glee.
Closing credits.
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