History Fridge / TheForceAwakens

** Rey's piloting skills can be further explained by her being a scavenger: Her survival depends on her ability to discern what is and isn't valuable when taking apart a ship, so it would stand to reason that she has learned how certain parts work (demonstrated when she fixes the ''Millennium Falcon''[='s=] mechanical problems). While this wouldn't directly translate to her being an AcePilot, it would give her an edge over an average Joe who'd never seen a ship before. That plus her innate Force skills would allow her to hold her own. The novelization also adds a line where she comments she used to sneak/wander aboard the various grounded ships on Jakku and poke around with the controls.

* Both Kylo Ren and Han Solo are one of the very few characters commonly referred to by their full name, and both names are three syllables each. This is very interesting once you know that [[spoiler:Han is Kylo's father]].

%% This isn't Troper Tales or a forum. Refrain from first person entries, speculation, and "replying" to entries. RepairDontRespond is in effect here as much as any other page.

** She has a giant collection of artifacts in her basement that she's been collecting for what could be over a thousand years, one of which just happens to be the lightsaber that Luke lost in Cloud City. How many other "tales for another time" does she have stashed away in there? It gives her "You monsters!" line more weight: the First Order is destroying a thousand years of history by destroying her castle.

** We -- in real life -- are looking at things like UsefulNotes/WorldWarII as an example of a "war", yet in its time still had several "legends" like [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Zaytsev Vasily Zaytsev]], Creator/AudieMurphy, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Churchill Jack Churchill]], [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xie_Jinyuan Xie Jinyuan]], UsefulNotes/ErwinRommel, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Visintini Mario Visintini]] and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tadamichi_Kuribayashi Tadamichi Kuribayashi]] with only a few dozen million fighting. The "wars" in ''Star Wars'' involved literally ''billions'' of beings across dozens if not hundreds of planets. With all that going on, it's not hard to imagine that "a single moisture-farmer-turned-Jedi plus a pack of around a dozen highly-skilled soldiers killed the Emperor, his Force-Wielder Second-in-Command, and the most powerful weapons ever seen TWICE" would be hard for most people to believe is absolutely true -- most would assume it's a massive embellishment of facts, if they believed any of it outright at all.

** We -- in real life -- are looking at things like UsefulNotes/WorldWarII as an example of a "war", yet in its time still had several "legends" like [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Zaytsev Vasily Zaytsev]], Creator/AudieMurphy, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Churchill Jack Churchill]], [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xie_Jinyuan Xie Jinyuan]], UsefulNotes/ErwinRommel and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tadamichi_Kuribayashi Tadamichi Kuribayashi]] with only a few dozen million fighting. The "wars" in ''Star Wars'' involved literally ''billions'' of beings across dozens if not hundreds of planets. With all that going on, it's not hard to imagine that "a single moisture-farmer-turned-Jedi plus a pack of around a dozen highly-skilled soldiers killed the Emperor, his Force-Wielder Second-in-Command, and the most powerful weapons ever seen TWICE" would be hard for most people to believe is absolutely true -- most would assume it's a massive embellishment of facts, if they believed any of it outright at all.

** We -- in real life -- are looking at things like UsefulNotes/WorldWarII as an example of a "war", yet in its time still had several "legends" like Vasily Zaytsev, George S. Patton, Audie Murphy, and Erwin Rommel with only a few dozen million fighting. The "wars" in ''Star Wars'' involved literally ''billions'' of beings across dozens if not hundreds of planets. With all that going on, it's not hard to imagine that "a single moisture-farmer-turned-Jedi plus a pack of around a dozen highly-skilled soldiers killed the Emperor, his Force-Wielder Second-in-Command, and the most powerful weapons ever seen TWICE" would be hard for most people to believe is absolutely true -- most would assume it's a massive embellishment of facts, if they believed any of it outright at all.

** We -- in real life -- are looking at things like UsefulNotes/WorldWarII as an example of a "war", yet in its time still had several "legends" like Vasilay Zaytsev and Erwin Rommel with only a few dozen million fighting. The "wars" in ''Star Wars'' involved literally ''billions'' of beings across dozens if not hundreds of planets. With all that going on, it's not hard to imagine that "a single moisture-farmer-turned-Jedi plus a pack of around a dozen highly-skilled soldiers killed the Emperor, his Force-Wielder Second-in-Command, and the most powerful weapons ever seen TWICE" would be hard for most people to believe is absolutely true -- most would assume it's a massive embellishment of facts, if they believed any of it outright at all.

** The First Order could also reflect the rise of the military juntas -- most notably the UsefulNotes/NationalReorganizationProcess in Argentina -- and how terrifyingly they trusted their own beliefs, to the point where they could have remained in power to this day, if not for the Falklands War.

* Kylo Ren's grudge against Finn seems almost out of place in the context of the story. You'd think he would consider Rey to be more of a thorn in his side, given all the ways in which she challenges him. So why is Ren constantly throwing [[DeathGlare Death Glares]] at Finn and shouting "TRAITOR" in fury when they finally have a confrontation? However, it makes a lot more sense when we remember that Ren's true conflict is being torn between the light and dark sides of the Force. It's implied throughout the film that his violent, raging personality is his attempts to deny the light within him and prove himself a true servant of the dark side, as he's been conditioned to do. Why does he hate Finn so much? Because Finn was able to turn away from the dark side entirely. Despite the fact that Finn has been programmed from birth to be a loyal servant like all the other Storm Troopers, he rejected the First Order and everything they represented to embrace the light. He did so with little to none of the internal peril that Ren is still dealing with. Not only that, he goes under the wing of Ren's father, Han Solo; like Rey, Finn becomes something of a surrogate child to Han, a role Kylo Ren was robbed of by Snoke. All of this combined, it's easy to see why Finn is something of an UnknownRival to Ren. Finn has done nearly everything Ben Solo failed to do. He's a reflection of Kylo Ren's greatest insecurities, making the penultimate lightsaber duel between them all the more meaningful.

* Kylo Ren's grudge against Finn seems almost out of place in the context of the story. You'd think he would consider Rey to be more of a thorn in his side, given all the ways in which she challenges him. So why is Ren constantly throwing [DeathGlare Death Glares] at Finn and shouting "TRAITOR" in fury when they finally have a confrontation? However, it makes a lot more sense when we remember that Ren's true conflict is being torn between the light and dark sides of the Force. It's implied throughout the film that his violent, raging personality is his attempts to deny the light within him and prove himself a true servant of the dark side, as he's been conditioned to do. Why does he hate Finn so much? Because Finn was able to turn away from the dark side entirely. Despite the fact that Finn has been programmed from birth to be a loyal servant like all the other Storm Troopers, he rejected the First Order and everything they represented to embrace the light. He did so with little to none of the internal peril that Ren is still dealing with. Not only that, he goes under the wing of Ren's father, Han Solo; like Rey, Finn becomes something of a surrogate child to Han, a role Kylo Ren was robbed of by Snoke. All of this combined, it's easy to see why Finn is something of an UnknownRival to Ren. Finn has done nearly everything Ben Solo failed to do. He's a reflection of Kylo Ren's greatest insecurities, making the penultimate lightsaber duel between them all the more meaningful.

* It makes sense that Kylo Ren, despite the way he's obviously peacocking to make himself look cooler and be more intimidating, isn't as impressive as the Sith Lord he's desperately trying to emulate. He was raised by both his parents, is incredibly gifted with the Force and likely knew so from a young age and never really experienced any tragedy or grew up in an oppressive environment, so even when convinced to turn to the Dark Side, he doesn't have much darkness in him beyond petulant whining and temper tantrums. He lets Hux boss him around, insult him to his face and tattle on him to Snoke. Even his lightsaber and Force abilities seem to be used more for intimidation than fighting an equally armed opponent. Given the scene of Rey {{lampshading}} his Vader fanboyism while being {{Mind Probe}}d by him, it's highly likely this was the {{Intended Audience Reaction|s}}. To wit, Bad Robot ''knew'' they couldn't really top Vader as TheHeavy, so they deliberately set out to create a villain who was trying to be TheHeavy and failing miserably, and everybody in the film knew it. Bonus features on the Blu-Ray pretty much confirm this.

The logical conclusion from all this? Since neither Luke nor either of his mentors nor Vader and his master ever demonstrated any such ability to extract detailed and specific information from an unwilling mind, ''Snoke'' must be the expert on using the Force to read minds, and the one who taught Kylo Ren how to do so as well. When Kylo's attempt to extract Rey's memories of the map backfired on him, you'll notice that he immediately turned to Snoke, insisting that he believed he could still extract her memories of the map from her if Snoke would provide some "guidance" to his probing. Snoke pretty obviously predates both Darth Sidious and Darth Vader, as he knows dark-side techniques ''neither'' of them ever did.

* Speaking of mind reading, looking back over the whole franchise, isn't mind reading the ''one'' thing Kylo Ren does better than any of the Jedi or Sith ever did? You'll notice that when Vader was trying to learn the location of the Rebels' base from Leia, he didn't try to extract it from her mind the way Kylo extracted the location of that missing piece of the map from Poe. Vader also didn't try using the old Jedi mind trick (even though he'd surely have learned it from Obi-wan as part of his training at some point) to try to bamboozle her into talking with something like "You will tell me the location of your principal Rebel base." "I will tell you the location of our principal Rebel base." Maybe he just figured Leia wasn't weak-minded enough to be influenced that way, but more likely he figured the Jedi mind trick just ''doesn't work that way'': even if Leia's mind ''was'' sufficiently susceptible to that trick (this being back before he or anyone else realized she had Force sensitivity), probably all that would result from mind-tricking her is that she would tell him the Rebel base was anywhere he consciously or subconsciously ''wanted'' it to be, including somewhere on Coruscant or in the middle of a black hole. That's why Vader tried to torture it out of her, and Tarkin held her planet hostage. Neither Darth Vader nor Darth Sidious were ever able to read more than Luke's ''emotions'', with Vader rightly guessing at the climax of their battle that the emotion he was picking up from Luke was an instinctively protective feeling a brother typically has for his ''sister''... not unlike the feelings Anakin Skywalker once had for his mother and then for his wife (which Darth Sidious picked up).

* The Resistance actually lost. Yes, they found the map to Luke and destroyed Starkiller Base, but look at the cost. They lost half of their X-Wing fleet, and more importantly, Starkiller Base destroyed the (current) seat of the Republic. The Republic which secretly funds the Resistance. And, [[AllThereInTheManual supplemental materials say that post-''[=RotJ=]'', the Republic disbanded most of its navy, favoring individual planetary defenses but still keeping a navy at the capital.]] We can see ships getting destroyed by the Starkiller attack. So the Republic, which controls most of the galaxy, just lost almost every senator, its fleet, and is likely in chaos. Now look at the First Order. It lost TIE fighters and Starkiller Base. A big loss, yes. But its leadership got away and it didn't lose any capital ships. They even had time to evacuate the base. The First Order might have just gotten a big advantage in the war. This seems to be further implied by Supreme Leader Snoke's relative lack of urgency while being told about the eventual destruction of the presumably costly installation; he clearly didn't seem to mind losing it, focusing on preserving the assets that are his soldiers' lives.

** He's not relying on it for life support like Darth Vader, and when he takes it off we see that he's not horribly scarred, so he's not using it to hide any injuries or ugliness. He's just an ordinary guy. He doesn't look very scary, and ''he knows it'', so he wears the helmet to ''make'' himself scary.

* Why was Poe able to fly a TIE so well despite having never gotten in one before? Poe could easily have logged dozens of hours in simulated [=TIEs=] as the [=OpForce=] in various simulation exercises. And the reason he had such trouble with the launch sequence? Nobody bothered programming TIE launch procedures into the simulator, as the point of said exercises was combat training, not takeoff and landing practice.

* Finn's initial reluctance to join with the Resistance and desire to run away from the First Order makes sense when one recognizes that Finn has been raised by the First Order a young age. He's no doubt had "THE FIRST ORDER IS INVINCIBLE!" hammered into him his whole life and thus thinks that there's nothing he can do but get away from them.

* Remember how Obi-Wan felt when Alderaan was destroyed? Imagine how Luke felt when Starkiller Base fired.