I was driving home from Plano, mulling over these complaints that Star Wars: The Force Awakens is just a retread of the original 1977 movie. So I decided to make a mental list of all the things in the movie that we've never seen before in any Star Wars film. Because I'm nerdy like that.
Anyway, here it is. Please correct me if you can think of a single example of any of these things in the first six films.
1) a rolling ball droid
2) a hot-shot pilot who's a major character and also with the resistance when we first meet him
3) stormtroopers making a landing for a ground assault
4) a Force user who can freeze blaster bolts and paralyze people
5) female stormtroopers
6) a stormtrooper taking off his helmet
7) a stormtrooper breaking conditioning
8) a full explanation of where stormtroopers come from
9) a woman as the central protagonist
10) a fully formulated economic ecosystem based on scavenging the wreckage of a galactic-scale war
11) humans who have learned to understand the language of astromechs
12) the inside of a wrecked Star Destroyer
13) people on a desert planet being thirsty (!)
14) self-rising sponge food
15) good guys flying a TIE fighter
16) TIE fighters strafing civilians
17) someone having to get the hang of piloting a spaceship
18) atmospheric spaceship combat
19) Han Solo actually smuggling something (!)
20) Han Solo listening to Chewbacca and treating him like a partner instead of a pet or underling
21) the interior of a large civilian spacecraft
22) fighting alien monsters aboard a spaceship
23) someone who is sexually attracted to wookiees
24) a female general
25) a planetary-scale weapon being fired with a view from the surface that shows its beam taking up the entire horizon
26) a Force user who can read minds
27) a Force duel that's entirely mental
28) a sun being sucked away into darkness as the visual and thematic backdrop to a high-stakes dogfight and an even higher-stakes personal confrontation
29) a human female wielding a lightsaber
30) a female with a speaking role who is a Force user
Did I miss any?
