Selucia said:
Kylo ren's voice was awful and off putting but apart from that the movie actually looked decent i hope they explain however everything went from celebrations across the galaxy thanks to lucas and his constant editing to people are even more ignorant about the force and the galaxy's history.
(skip to the bottom for what I'm calling after the preamble if you don't want to read the lengthy explanation)
Well if JJ knows what he's doing, this story is going to go into some very dark places, and from the trailer it seems possible he does. The first thing you need to understand is that in the Star Wars universe there is no free will at all, period. People think they have free will, but it's an illusion, and everything is pre-ordained by The Force which acts as a universal puppet master. The Force decrees that the universe works in cycles where good and evil both get a chance to rule the universe for thousands of years at a time, in between each cycle there is a period of balance where the two are more or less even. This is why force powers wax and wane and improbable things happen. Oftentimes the narrative the Force weaves is not straightforward either just because the bad guys are being given the universe doesn't mean that the good guys won't succeed/win a few battles in ways that otherwise feed the narrative being created.
The central key to understanding Star Wars at this point is that the galaxy was at the end of a long rule of good, where a military wasn't even really needed, the Sith were wiped out to the point where nobody even knew what they were. The next step of course is for a period of balance, and you'll notice Anakin is supposed to "bring balance to the force", this is misinterpreted by some of the Jedi to mean he's going to defeat the Sith, but that makes no sense if you REALLY think about it because when good rules everything and peace and stability are the order of the day that isn't "balanced". Sidious thinks that this means Anakin is supposed to help him bring down the Jedi and usher in a reign of darkness in his name, but that's not accurate either because we're not quite there yet (and nobody knows this cycle exists except for us watching the movies and taking the time to "get it"). Everything that happened in Star Wars was about balance, all the good guys and bad guys fight and do their thing but at the end both the Galactic Republic and Empire are in flames. You'll notice Anakin goes from being good to evil, and then back to good again just long enough to pretty much do the most damage to the galaxy and prevent either good or evil from ruling. When he's done there is basically one partially trained force user still alive (Luke) and he has his own issues just like Anakin did. Basically when Anakin lobbed the Emperor into the reactor core balance was achieved, and the prophecy was fulfilled.
What this all means is that in canon Star Wars what we're looking at is a giant victory for the bad guys coming up, since it's time for the era of evil. What I'm CALLING right now is Luke is going to be a bad guy, if not the big bad, whether he starts out that way or becomes corrupted during the series this is what makes the most sense for the series and it's kind of inevitable if JJ actually respects the universe and understands how it's going to work. I suspect this is why Luke is missing from so much promotional material so far, it's protecting that spoiler for those who might not be expecting it.
Now, you might be thinking "But Therumancer, isn't that a giant downer, and something Disney would never do?" the answer to that is two fold. For one, we have no indication how long The Force is going to drag out a new cycle fully arriving. While it all ends with a big 'ol "Empire Of Evil" there can still be some back and forth and tales to be told in the meantime. Secondly Lucas created a little known "out" to allow our plucky heroes to avert the cycle by killing the force. Lucas' writings were instrumental in doing "Knights Of The Old Republic II" which as some might remember involved a character called Kreia who figured out what The Force was doing and set out to destroy it in order to give people free will. Due to the game's troubled development a lot of it was cut so we go from her first step of killing all the force users to... our final confrontation without any real explanation as to how she planned to kill a metaphysical entity to begin with. Of course the real stinger here is also her spouting prophecy at the end of the game explaining how everything was now going to develop, and leaving open the question if she could have ever done it to begin with, or if simply thinking she could was part of the Force's narrative and manipulations to begin with. While one can argue KoToR II was axed the same way the EU was, the basic root of the story still remains valid as it shows that from Lucas' own theories it's possible that The Force could be killed. So if somehow the good guys were able to destroy it, and then convince the bad guys to simmer down, or otherwise pull of a stunning victory without the invisible puppet master pulling the strings everything could still have a happy ending... or at least a bittersweet one as one could always wonder whether such free will is a blessing or a curse, I mean with The Force in charge people couldn't permanently screw themselves since when evil reigns the force would always eventually guide it back the other way for a time.
As a final point for those who never really understood it, while The Force works through force users primarily, it controls everyone, but force users are it's primary means of making what it wants to happen occur. Mitochondria levels are like the points of articulation on a puppet, the more of it you have, the more The Force is working through you. For someone like Anakin it's so high because his entire existence is to act as a major catalyst of events.
Overall Star Wars has more in common with some eastern and middle eastern schools of thought about fate and a lack of free will than the modern western insistence that we govern our own fate. The key element to it is of course that the universe is complicated enough that nobody realizes how predestined things happen to be. Prophicies in Star Wars have weight, as you saw with Anakin bringing balance, he screwed both sides... killing all the good force users, and then killing the Emperor, when he was done both sides of the coin got themselves pretty much leveled. Of course the mechanitions were such that it seemed like a moral quandary from a mixed up dude making his own choices. You were told from the beginning EXACTLY what was going to happen, and nothing he did would change it. This means the situation from our perspective might be hopeless unless there is as I said a Catch 22 about somehow being able to exercise just enough free will among the little people to end it, or perhaps more accurately in doing so perhaps The Force gets bored and decides to end itself (and of course one can always wonder if something like that is ever truly gone by it's very nature... but well, I'm rambling).
But yeah, the bottom line is... Dark storylines, Luke will be a bad guy, if not right off the bat it will happen if you respect the material that's the direction the universe is going in. As the "last known force user standing" he's going to be a major focal point for the narrative of "welcome to the reign of evil for the next few thousand years... you'll see good again but not for a looong time".
