People are perfectly capable of well liking a film whilst wishing ,at the same time, some care and thought had gone into certain elements of it. It still remains a largely enjoyayable thrill ride. But for some of us who appreciate good plotting and storylines it could have been done better. At the speed they did it and under the time spressures it a great SW film, BUT it has several flaws that should have been fixed at a script level.
I have , as I have said, a huge issue with this sudden abilty (newly created) of anyone to track any of spacecraft by their "signatures". I am assuming it was introduced to explain how Han found the Falcon quickly. Hux uses the same mechanic to track the Resistance Recon ship back to their base. And although its cut from the film ,Unkar Plutt tracks the Falcon to Maz's castle (where he gets his arm ripped of by Chewie)and thats in the novel. Everyone can track ships and particulary the Falcon, and, this is going to be particularly difficult going forward, because of the Kylo connection. In fact its critical.
Why , given this is the case (and presuming they don't want Kylo and the First Order to find Luke and the First Jedi temple quickly since he has been in hiding for years) WHY DOES REY decide to fly the Millenium Falcon, a ship that has already been tracked by so many people in this film to its destinations ,DIRECTLY TO LUKE????? (no wonder he looks annoyed with her).
Actually I know exactly why this happens and all the other things I questioned in that critical post happened. Its because the script ,as it was written ,required them to happen like that , for EFFECT. NOT because it really needed to make alot of sense.
But by doing this , it potentially causes so many problems for the next two films as you can see. It may look good at the time but its a horrible flaw and as a SW fan I hate to see these kind of errors in the film. It weakens the story, makes key characters, both the good and the evil look like idiots at times and I don't want that. Thats why I critisice the story, not because I hate it, I just, like most SW fans, want it to be better and truer to the SW universe I love and respect.
So if the story requires Kylo to kill straight away so he has a reason to take Poe prisoner,so ,as a pilot that he can help Fin to escape, then OK, but its not good. If it does not require Kylo to ask the obvious question "where is the Resistance base" because that would make it the immediate target of the First Order rather than the New Republic, (it would have made for alot shorter film as well) then OK but STILL not good. As the central body of government,it was always going to be more dramatic to destroy the New Republic for the stories sake and they were always going to behave to be toast if the First Order were going to take power.
But I don't have to like those choices. Unfortunately for me TFA story now seems more contrived with repeated viewings . Key plot points and devices are rushed forward and tied together weakly. You cannot explain them away for later, unlike elements of the unexplained character histories which are just fine. That was true of the OT BUT, and its a big but, the OT is hugely consistent to both its characters and storylines and what happens doesn't contradict much of what occurs during the films or trilogy itself.
Going back to the beginning of my post ,in "A New Hope", the only reason the Empire found where the Rebels were on Yarvin was they ATTACHED a tracking DEVICE to the Falcon and let it escape. Leia knew it and allowed it to happen. I always assumed Han removed the beacon later. That works, it and makes sense.
Again if they could have just traced the Falcon by its signature, then they wouldn't have needed to send out all those spyprobe droids in TESB to find the Rebels on Hoth or hired all those Bounty Hunters to TRACK THE MILLENIUM FALCON. Boba Fett should have been able to find the Falcon at anytime, if he could just trace the Falcon by its signature.
So going forward in the trilogy, how it will be possible or even make sense for any key character to take the Falcon or any other spacecraft whose destination is of any significant interest anywhere critically important WITHOUT being tracked.
Its there in the film. Its mentioned by two key characters twice.
The truth is its a large and horrible flaw in the story. And somebody should have spotted it and solved.
Yet there is one an easy and elegant solution and one key character in TFA should be able to solve the problem. But will they do it?