I would not have repeated the OT’s central conflict quite so blatantly, mostly because unlike JJ I had no idea that it could sell, much less be a record-breaking hit 😂 My vision of the ST would probably have been a more PT-like affair, but about the struggle of building a New Republic in contrast to the ending of the Old. 

A brief summary because I ended up writing a monstrosity under the cut: Poe’s adventures as a New Republic pilot and spy reporting to Leia the Republic Chancellor, a more gradual deprogramming process for Finn who is a kidnapped Mandalorian child soldier and the main antagonist for the whole first movie, Rey as a world-weary space scavenger looking for her family. Ben Solo starts out as a powerful but arrogant Jedi whose outsized pride and understandable resentments lead him over three movies to become the Big Bad while Finn goes in the opposite direction, reclaiming his heritage and fighting back against the organization that stole him as a child.

I’d have made Poe an officer in the New Republic (which is his actual background in the ST, of course) leading a mission given him by Chancellor/First Senator Leia Organa to investigate a disturbance in Mandalorian space. The NR and the Mandalorians are negotiating peace and trade treaties, but the Mandalorians are distracted by raids on their outlying settlements and, most disturbingly, their children being stolen. They blame the Republic, or at least its inability to reign in the chaos in their space which they believe simply pushed the raiders and slavers into Mandalore space. The Mandalorians also bitterly remember how clones of one of their warriors were used as slave soldiers by the old Republic. Some even suspect the Republic is trying to build another Mandalorian army. Leia wants to stop these raids, but it’s not easy gaining a skittish Senate’s support for missions outside Republic space. Poe has to find the smoking gun on these raiders to bring the Senate around. Along the way he is helped by Master Luke Skywalker and his apprentice, Jedi Knight Ben Solo, who ends up coming along with his old friend and rival (and implied old flame, depending on how much I can get away with).

Poe ends up being captured, however, just as he and Ben are nearing the raiders’ base. Poe kills one of the raiders that he took as a Mandalorian pirate and then is taken down by one of the dead man’s fellows–another seeming Mandalorian who fights with devastating effectiveness and ejects Ben into space before taking Poe prisoner. This is Finn. Poe escapes later when Ben, who had saved himself with the Force, comes back to save him, seething with wounded pride–something he has quite a lot of–that he was bested and almost killed by a non-Force user. He, Ben Solo, Master Skywalker’s finest student! A Skywalker by blood! He vows that there will be a rematch.

Poe and Ben have escaped, but are far from home free. The ship they stole to escape is damaged in pursuit and they hide from pursuers in a debris field, occasionally bickering, and several scavengers come upon them only to squabble among themselves over salvage rights. The winner is a tough young woman who arrived in a cloaked ship before blasting everyone else away–Rey, who’s a lot like Valkyrie from Thor: Ragnarok and is played by Devery Jacobs the way God intended. Ben and Poe instead convince her to help them out and they’ll give her anything she likes. What she really wants is to find her family, in search of whom she’s been traveling ever since she got off the junkyard planet Jakku. Poe promises the full support of the Republic for her search.

According to the information Poe had managed to extract from the ship’s databanks it turns out that someone is building an army with stolen children and, what’s more, this started decades ago. They appear to be remnants of the Empire. The mysterious warrior Finn may have been one of the first wave that was taken, judging by his age. Poe and the others need to take this information to the Senate and Mandalore, but are slowed by Finn’s dogged pursuit before Rey sets a clever trap and they take him and his crew prisoner. Finn fully expects to be tortured and killed, and is angry at the death of his friend Slip at Poe’s hands. Finn refuses to divulge anything but Poe and the others can tell just from the way he talks about the Republic that he was heavily indoctrinated his whole life. He is honorable, however–he asks that Poe spare his crew and that they execute just Finn himself as an example. Rey thinks Finn is a lost cause, which stance Ben is inclined to side with, but Poe tries to get Finn into the reality-based community which mostly has the effect of making Finn defensive. More than actual facts, however, Finn is confused at how well he and his crew are treated. On the one hand he suspects a trick, obviously, but the first seeds of doubt are planted.

Finn, however, is far from naive–he has extensive knowledge of galactic politics and military and makes some sharp critiques of the Republic’s incompetence and injustices, and his arguments actually have an effect on both Poe and Ben. Ben has seen the pressures his mother is under trying to run the Republic, how self-serving and cowardly the Senators are. Finn’s argument that only a strong central leadership backed up with credible threats of force can make the galaxy governable resonates in particular with Ben. This will be the start of Ben’s own fall as he is increasingly consumed with the thought that only he can right the ship of the galactic state.

Meanwhile Rey finds latent memories coming back from snatches of Finn’s conversation and the way he fights. Could he hold the key to finding her family? Was she a stolen child soldier like he was? She also respects Finn, and he her, for their respective skills. She doesn’t have a bone to pick in this fight and there’s no personal enmity between them. She thinks she might have liked him if he weren’t a brainwashed stiff. Scratch that, maybe she likes him nonetheless. Their interactions are increasingly filled with banter and borderline flirting.

At the end of it all Poe’s party bring the information and the prisoners to Republic space, but it is too late–the Mandalorians have invaded Republic space. They have decided that if the Republic will not keep the order they will do it themselves. Leia calls for a measured response, but the Senate quickly overrules her and actually issues a vote of no-confidence, then arrests her as a Mandalorian collaborator and would-be dictator. The situation escalates to war and Ben seethes at what happened to his mother. He runs off to rescue Leia and enlists Poe’s help. The Republic military takes in Finn and his crew and brutalize one of them when they resist, showing that Finn is in danger of much worse treatment than he was with Poe. Rey sneaks after Finn’s prisoner transport, unwilling to lose this possible lead to her family. End first movie.