What would have been a better plot than yet another planet killer?

Probably just a fleet of really advanced Star Destroyers/TIE's/ground vehicles to carry on the Nazi/WWII comparison.

 

I'd want to do something which takes less focus away from the search for Luke. I want something to give Leia/the Resistance a reason to reach out to the Republic for assistance, only to see their plea ignored (and then have the tables turn in VIII or IX, with ).

The obvious solution, is just to turn Starkiller into a base with no super weapon at all... but then the Han and Chewie would need a better reason to go there.
After that, I would replace it with a fleet laying siege to the Resistance base... but then you would need to change things a lot to give Rey something to do.

I would have to rethink a lot of it.

 

Not bad... but I find it hard to believe that the First Order would have shipyards on the same planet that is operating as their main base of operations.

 

They already had it.... the search for Luke, to kill him and stop any chance of new Jedi's being trained and causing them problems ever again.

The First Order slaughtering potential rebel sympathiser locations (whether they actually were ones or not) one by one throughout the galaxy with ground troops and orbital attacks, and after each one sending out a galactic transmission that if the they simply turn over the map to Luke's location then the slaughter will cease.

Leia without the complete map is unable to use it to find Luke still obviously refuses to betray her brother and sends out all the rebel forces she can muster to try and warn planets and defend them from from First Order attacks until innocents can be evacuated off planet. But her forces are spread too thin and the rebellion suffer heavy losses all over the galaxy along with allies and the innocent.

Normal people start getting as angry with the rebellion as they are with the First Order as millions of innocents are killed as each day passes over a "silly map" causing many allies to the rebellion to start betraying their friends. Leia's guilt for the daily loss of life increases.

Han hatches a plan to get the rest of the map that they need to find Luke from the First Order command ship (where he also knows that his son is on).

Everything goes well and they manage to get the rest of the map, until Han confronts his son, tells the others to get the map data back to the rebellion and tries to convince his son to go home with him. Ren contacts Leia and offers to trade his fathers life for the map via hologram. Leia already devastated by the loss of life throughout the galaxy and confronted by her son and losing the love of her life, sends the map data to the First Order (against the council of the other rebel leaders)... where Ren happy that he can finally find Luke and kill him to prove he is better than his grandfather then slays his own father in front of Leia's eyes.

Unfortunately for Ren, the other leaders also receive the map and don't care about Ren's desire to confront Luke, preferring to just destroy him and be done with it and order and orbital attack on both Luke's location utterly destroying the ancient Jedi temple and also Leia's location revealed by the hologram conversation. Ren in a rage of being denied his legacy confronts the leaders that ordered the strike and slaughters them.

Rey and BB-8 using the complete map go to the planet where Luke is, but find it completely destroyed with no life signs left. She returns to the back-up emergency rebellion location to tell Leia the tragic news.

Leia having barely escaped from the orbital strike and now in a hidden location with the last remaining rebellion leaders is devastated by the loss of life, the almost complete destruction of the rebellion, the loss of Han, the realisation that her son is truly lost and now her brother being killed is in utter dispair when a hooded figure walks into the room.

Luke, sensing the disturbance throughout the galaxy from what the First Order has done was finally forced to leave his meditation at the old Jedi temple days before it was destroyed and return to the 'world' and rejoin the fight. He found his sister because "he has always sensed where she was".

Add in the plot points throughout with the new characters within this structure.... ...and the saga continues.

 

Sorry bud, no-one thought to ask me.

You should hear what I would do with the next 2 movies...

 

This movie didn't really need a super-weapon. The central plot was the search for Luke. It was in the first act. It was in the second act. It shifted to the destruction of the super-weapon in the third act. Then it unsatisfyingly resolved the search for Luke in the epilogue when Artoo magically woke up.

If they had simply replaced the super-weapon subplot with the search for the second half of the map, I think this movie would've been the better for it. Han, Chewie, and Finn could've still rescued Rey. Maz, a pirate by trade, could've led Poe and BB-8 to the wreckage where the rest of the map could be found. If they really wanted to continue their homage to the OT, the wreckage could've been on the forest moon of Endor -- in a debris field that is the second Death Star.

 

Nop

Nope,

but it would involve the high ranking members of the "First Order" planning on using Kylo Ren to destroy Luke and then betraying him to try and finally rid the galaxy of all traces of the Jedi and Sith for all time so that they can control the galaxy forever without the interferance of Jedi and Sith petty scuabbles interfering as they have for the last several millenia.

This would put Kylo Ren in an interesting position. No empire at his back, no friend to the rebels... but a dangerous threat to both.

 

So there's a Republic, who just sits around letting the First Order move around Republic space and killing civilians, while Leia's band of Rebels are getting blamed for not doing anything? Or is there no Republic? Was the Rebellion's victory over the Empire at Endor all for nothing?
The political state in your version is confusing...

In reality, Starkiller exists in the plot solely for the purpose of giving the heroes a reason to go and rescue Rey, a girl they barely knew who was of no importance.

Even if they found out that the First Order had the map, it would lack the urgency that the plot needed...
You basically have a standoff where the First Order have Rey and one half of the map, while the Resistance only have the 2nd half.
There needs to be something to force someone's hand here.

 

The search for Luke.

 

Umm, you mean the Republic which was on screen for about 10 seconds before being blown up by a massive "First Order" built planet sized superweapon (Called "Starkiller"... which is none to subtle) that they were apparently utterly unaware of even being built?

Not including various small towns and castles are being blown up by "First Order" forces left right and centre? And none of this the Republic deemed worth even sending an investigator to check any of this out?
THAT Republic?

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the Republic is either completely powerless in the galaxy now or utterly incompetant at this point.

Quite obviously things have changed a great deal since the last movies. Who knows what happened between then and now.

Regardless... it's only confusing if you actually thought that the Republic a
had any weight in the galaxy anymore when you watched the new movie... as it appeared to me that they quite obviously don't.

However, If you thought that, then I guess I would be confused if I was you too.

 

Two words.. Trade negotiations.

Edit: and blockades, lots of em

 

Oh, there'd be no Ewoks. It would be in a non-Ewok-inhabited region of the forest moon. Maybe the wreckage would be overrun by carnivores to add a little excitement. Or maybe the wreckage would be underwater. Definitely no Ewoks!

But Finn did want to rescue her. I felt like it was the main reason he was going. And I don't think it would've taken a lot of convincing to get Han to go. He was no longer the "better her than me" guy that we met in ANH, and he had a bit of a soft spot for Rey. Han helping Finn would've cemented his arc as a selfless hero. Both of their arcs, actually. But they probably wanted a bigger end for Han; one where he went out saving the galaxy, not just a girl.