Dumb Things In The Force Awakens That Everyone Just Ignored

Kylo Ren makes it a priority to pick up Rey and bring her back to his ship when he realizes she's seen the information BB-8 is hiding in regards to Luke Skywalker's secret location. So he takes her back to the base, interrogates her for a bit, then leaves one lowly stormtrooper (played by an uncredited Daniel Craig, who just really wanted to be in a Star Wars movie). Rey taps into the Force to make the stormtrooper set her free, and snags his weapon on the way out. Now, if Kylo Ren knows how important she is, why doesn't he have a larger security detail on her? He has no shortage of stormtroopers, so why not put a full contingent in the room with her? Rey has already proven to be fairly cunning at this point in the movie. Sure, she's still trapped on the Imperial base (though she obviously manages to escape anyway), but why not beef up security? She could potentially hold a piece of intel the First Order has been seeking for years, and they put one stormtrooper at the door.

The entire McGuffin about the data file leading to Luke's location served as a great carrot to dangle in front of everyone and keep this movie rolling, but connecting it back to R2-D2 just didn't make a ton of sense. So it turns out a piece of the map to find Luke has been hidden on Jakku and ends up in BB-8, while the rest of the map is apparently locked away in R2-D2. So R2-D2 has had part of the map to find Luke, but was shut down in the corner the entire time. It makes sense Luke would leave the map with his trusty droid, but why hadn't the Rebellion ever tried to access it before? Also, how did R2-D2 know exactly when to wake up from his shutdown mode and plug in the rest of the map? It was great getting R2-D2 back in on the action, but it just didn't make very much logistical sense.

Everyone assumed the new stormtrooper leader Captain Phasma was going to be a major role when Gwendoline Christie landed the gig, but she ended up playing a fairly small part in the story (albeit one that likely sets up a bigger arc in future films). Her biggest moment was actually pretty lame: Phasma is set up as a tough-as-nails drill instructor early on, but she pretty much caves immediately after being captured at blaster-point by Finn on Starkiller Base. Finn tells her to bring down the shields across the base, and she does it with barely a fight. If Phasma is such a strong warrior, why not try to get the drop on this former trainee to protect her base? It makes sense from a story perspective that the Rebellion team needs her to drop the shields, but it all happens way too easily.

There's a reason we don't see Poe Dameron following the crash of his TIE Fighter on Jakku once he helps Finn escape, and that's because he was supposed to die in that scene. Oscar Isaac told GQ that when J.J. Abrams originally recruited him to play Poe in The Force Awakens, he told him his character would be a brash, charismatic pilot who leads this daring escape—then dies in the crash. It's the classic fake-out approach, and even though Poe wasn't supposed to survive the first act, Isaac signed on anyway. But later on, Abrams decided to keep the character around and have him show up in the back half to help lead the X-Wing mission. Bringing Poe back was a great move (Issac is perfect in the role!), but his sudden reappearance is a bit jarring. The story never follows him after the crash, and we're just told later that "Oh! Hey! I survived and made it off the planet, too, all off-camera!" It felt tacked on, and less like a surprise and more like a decision made then tweaked into the script.

There aren't many characters who can understand what Chewbacca says, and that's because he speaks the language Shyriiwook. But who can also speak the language of the Wookies? Rey. We see Rey interact with Chewbacca throughout the movie, and along with Han, she's one of the few characters who can understand him. So how exactly did Rey learn this little-known language? We're told Jakku is a trading post planet, which means there are probably a lot of people traveling in and out. So maybe she picked it up from a few travelers over the years passing by on Jakku? We don't really know, because they just kind of leave it hanging out there after playing the reveal for a gag.

This one has been debated at great length pretty much everywhere, but it's certainly worth noting. Yes, Luke Skywalker picked up the Force relatively quickly in the original Star Wars trilogy—but he also had a few mentors to train him. Whereas in The Force Awakens, Rey picks up the Force after being pushed into situations where she might need it. She's so good, in fact, she's able to go toe to toe with Kylo Ren—a trained warrior—by the end of the film (though he's admittedly injured during the fight). Of course, there could still be some good reasons for this that haven't been explained. We still don't know Rey's parentage, and that's something the creative team has teased could play a major role in the franchise moving forward. There could certainly be some story threads to give this additional context in Star Wars: Episode VIII, but right now we just don't know.

When Rey and Finn realize Han Solo knew Luke Skywalker, they seem positively befuddled by the thought that this those "legends" could actually be true. Umm, it hasn't been that long since the Rebels took out the Empire, has it? Yes, the world of Star Wars obviously doesn't seem to have much as far as a news and communications infrastructure. But it's hard to believe these massive events could've completely faded into the stuff of mythical legend in such a short amount of time. When the Empire fell at the end of the original trilogy, freedom reigned through the galaxy. Luke, Han and the gang were given medals by Princess Leia in front of pretty much everyone. How has all of that been forgotten in this relatively short period of time?

J.J. Abrams snuck in a bit of stunt casting in The Force Awakens, though you probably didn't even notice it. Before the film opened, there was a good bit of buzz about Abrams' move to cast The Raid series stars Iko Uwais, Yayan Ruhian and Cecep Arif Rahman in small roles. If you're unfamiliar, The Raid films feature some of the craziest and most ambitious action scenes ever put to film. Abrams is a fan, and decided to work these guys into the script to show off their skills. So who were they? The leaders of the Kanjiklub, the guys who board Han Solo's ship before all hell breaks loose. Bringing in a few legit action stars was a cool move, but they were fairly underutilized in these roles. You have some of the best action choreographers on the planet there, and you just have them stand around for a few minutes? Give them something to do.

This is one that was largely glossed over in the film, but it begs the question: Han Solo and Luke Skywalker obviously see what's happening in the galaxy, and they both choose to sit out the battle against the First Order. What? They were both major leaders in the Rebellion chronicled in the original trilogy, and played key roles in the defeat of the Empire. So when the First Order rises to power, Han decides to keep kicking around as a smuggler—despite the fact that the First Order could pretty much destroy the galaxy. Sure, he had a falling out with Leia, but isn't the fate of the galaxy more important? Even worse, Luke opts to go hide out on a deserted planet to brood while the entire universe falls apart. Yes, we know he had a terrible experience in the years between the original trilogy and The Force Awakens when Kylo Ren went rogue and killed a bunch of pupils. But it seems petty for the galaxy's greatest heroes to just ride the pine.

Seriously. As we learn in the film, there's nothing wrong with Kylo Ren's face, and he essentially wears a mask as an homage to his dearly departed grandfather. Which is fine—the mask is a big part of what made Darth Vader so intimidating, and Kylo's certainly lives up to the legacy. But one big reason Vader's helmet was so scary is because he never took it off—well, you know, right up until he died, of course. We see Kylo take his mask off a few times, which makes sense from a publicity point of view, because they cast up-and-comer Adam Driver in the film and the creative team obviously wants to show him off a bit. But if Kylo really wants to be Vader, he'd keep that thing on no matter what.