lightsabers are great and all but if you can't magically deflect shots from people shooting at you that awesomeness is sort of squandered by you getting your ass shot off as soon as they see the jerk with a space sword running at them
But for a jedi A) they're more of an officer than a grunt in terms of the battlefield, so they don't need a big gun, are space samurai so their swords are symbols as well as being weapons, and C) they don't much care if you try shooting them.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
Actually no, a lasersword is pretty unlike a sword. Swords have a flat side which cannot cut you, possibly even only a single sharpened edge. A lightsaber essentially passes through solid matter effortlessly.
Generally speaking, you don't touch the blade of a sword all that often in most (not all) forms of bladed combat. The fact that it can instantly cut through things is not a huge difference as far as actually wielding it. Training for it? Sure. More complicated. But not that much more complicated unless you are wanting to pretend it is for magical space samurai reasons.
not to go too far off on this tangent (too late) but the technique of grabbing a blade was a phenomenally important component of medieval sword training to defeat armor, and any competent swordsman would understand halfswording (at least, in any era of good plate armor)
I was surprised at how prevalent it was but it makes sense when you realize you can't hack through armor with a sword
it's way more complicated to wield a lightsaber than a sword and not die though, swords have weight and resistance, you're not going to drop it and end up with your organs pouring all over the floor
That was a bit wierd to me. I mean, yes, it seems like a good technique to improvise a mace or spear if you are stuck with a longsword against an armored opponent, but if you know you are going to fight armor why not carry an appropriate weapon in the first place?
How awesome is it to be excited about Star Wars again?
I was desperately hoping the movie would be good, but an unexpected but truly welcome new pleasure is that Star Wars is kind of a Wild West free for all again. This is the most open the Star Wars universe has been since about 1990, right before Heir to the Empire came out. I mean there were comic books and game sourcebooks but those were all extrapolations from the film; there was less of this suffocating notion of "canon."
The galaxy of TFA is an evocative, thrilling mystery again, where every blank spot or unanswered question can be taken as a spur to the imagination of the viewer instead of a chance to run to Wookiepedia. Of course, that will gradually change with time, but that's okay; if Rebels and TFA are any indication, the Disney Star Wars galaxy might end up being a little closer to what I was excited for 25 years ago to begin with.
I had an opposite reaction. 30 years worth of story to tell and it was mostly reset to the beginning. Plucky underdogs, oppressive dictators, the Jedi down to their last man. I felt that possibilities were cut off because we're never going to be allowed past this paradigm.
I didn't leave thinking the Galaxy was a huge and wondrous place to explore. It felt static, unchanging.
Like, shockingly so given how good the rest of the movie was shot. It looked cheap and nature documentary like and just went on way to long.
It's like....five seconds.
Did look cheap, though.
I didn't say it was long, I said it went on way too long.
Actually time it last viewing. Closer to eight seconds, which isn't long for a wide shot, but just feels that way because the technique is so jarring compared to the rest of the film...
I was thinking about what I wanted from the movie, and as I've mentioned many times I really think that the Starkiller base was a misstep, that they should have gone for a Raiders of the Lost Ark kind of second half.
"How I would have done it" wankery inc:
I would have kept most things the same up until they leave Maz’s planet. I might have made a few changes to how Han got the Falcon back. Something like Rey going to lightspeed to escape the Star Destroyer, but without any coordinates input into the navcomputer; that jump would put her right in front of Han’s ship. The map wouldn’t be a fragment, it would be the location of a Jedi temple that wasn’t destroyed in the purges, having been abandoned millennium prior – in that temple, they’d be able to find out where Luke had gone. Maz’s cantina would be in an out of the way location on a world that obviously had larger cities. But that would be about the extent of the changes.
The big changes I’d make would start with the Starkiller base. It might even still exist, but it’d be a massive Chekhov’s gun, to be used in future movies, and clearly under construction in this movie. There would be no attack on the Republic capital. Instead, after the raid on Maz’s cantina, Snoke would order Hux to send a fleet back to Maz’s world to perform orbital bombardment on the cities in retribution for helping the resistance. There would be talk about how they’d have to go low in the gravity well to perform that, that that would make them sitting ducks for the resistance. Snoke would basically explain to the audience that the goal is to use the only major force they have in the area to keep the resistance from helping in the pursuit for the Jedi temple – they’d go save people, leaving Hux and Ren a free hand to go after the temple. In the resistance base, Leia would be firmly in command and coming up with plans, and she’d take the bulk of resistance forces to stop the Imperials from razing the surface of a planet, while sending Poe’s squadron to back up Han and Finn.
Kylo would arrive at the Jedi Temple. He’d get to some ancient holographic map thingie, and it wouldn’t respond at all to him. Hux would sneer, but Kylo would explain that it won’t work for him because he uses the Dark Side. He’d order Rey brought down from the ship, recognizing she was Force-sensitive. Han and Finn and co would arrive. They’d sneak into the Jedi temple, hitting a number of the same beats that they did in the movie, but with more of an ancient temple vibe. Rey would escape while being brought down, without overtly using the Force. Meanwhile, we’d see Leia engaging the Imperial forces to save a planet.
Rey would meet up with Han and Finn. Han would realize that Rey needs to get into the chamber where Kylo currently is, so that they can get the map. Han would basically walk into the central courtyard and call Kylo out, distracting the Imperials and letting Rey and Finn sneak into the sanctum, where they get the map to Luke. They sneak out, and see Kylo kill Han. We’d see Leia’s fleet blowing away Star Destroyers, and Leia momentarily crushed by grief before ordering a squadron to cut off the escape of Imperial forces. Meanwhile, X-Wings and TIE fighters fight over the Jedi Temple, and the Star Destroyer can’t help directly for fear of destroying the temple. Poe helps clean up the excess stormtroopers, and we get a Finn/Kylo/Rey lightsaber fight, with similar results – maybe put the fight on a bridge or something, and a crashing TIE fighter forces Rey to back off rather than a splitting planet. Kylo would be evacuated by Phasma, whose arrival would force Rey to flee. The Star Destroyer in orbit would start barraging the planet, and the Falcon would have one more escape sequence to get back to the resistance.
And then end things in pretty much the same way.
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
Somebody breaks down the major scenes of TFA using the D6 game rules.
I still, to this day, feel WEG was and is the best way to play a Star Wars RPG.
The new-ish FFG system is pretty fantastic.
Yeah, I hugely recommend it to anyone who hasn't checked it out yet
Before the game was out a lot of people were skeptical because of the proprietary dice system but it's really incredible and well-done. The dice make the game extremely quick and easy to learn and play, even if people have little to no experience with role-playing games.
ShadowenSnores in the morningLoserdomRegistered Userregular
Why did you have to use the Hope trailer?
The Hope trailer is everything wrong with rendered cinematics: extremely pretty and incredibly vapid.
I don't even mind the blade block thing, I just hate that the Republic troopers, with, y'know, guns and surprise, charge at the Sith. You know, the people with lightsabers. Absolutely batshit. There should be mines and layered traps leading into killboxes.
No wonder basically everyone but Satele, Jace, and Malgus are dead at the end. That's some excellent battle planning.
Random thought: The movie should have cut to credits after Rey leaves, maybe with a cool final shot of the Falcon going to lightspeed that then seamlessly transitions into the credits and then meeting Luke should have been a post credit stinger.
Or something like that. The movie feels pretty much done when Rey peaces out so the last scene just feels kinda draggy.
The Hope trailer is everything wrong with rendered cinematics.
I mean
maybe the actual problem is in viewing it as some kind of military tutorial and also inferring an entire battle from a series of shots mostly focused on a handful of main characters
1) If I were the type of person to read or write fanfiction, the acid test I would use for whether the person was in proper command of Finn's characterization is what he says the moment after being knocked on his ass. Because Finn gets knocked on his ass a lot in this movie, and every time he stands up or wakes up, the first question on his mind is "Are you okay?" (or the variant "Where's Rey?" or "Is Rey okay?"). He instinctively disregards his own condition out of concern for everyone else's. It's nifty and might slip past you if you aren't watching for it.
2) As regards the question of "Why are there so few X-Wings in the Resistance fleet?", I noticed that the scenes showing the Resistance forces either approaching or leaving the Starkiller base are truncated in such a way as to not preclude their forces being significantly larger than depicted. That is, you never see the end of the X-Wing column as they drop out of hyperspace, and the X-Wings we see leaving the planet are Poe's squad, whom I personally would expect to be the last people to flee the explosion of the Starkiller since they'd be trying to confirm that Finn, Rey, et. al. were safely evacuated.
My favorite musical instrument is the air-raid siren.
Join can't have meeting Luke as a post credit stinger. Since its plot critical to the next movie.
How is that plot critical? They show him for like a second and there's no dialogue.
Plus everyone can just watch it on the you tubes if they missed it.
Because finding like is probably a point of the next movie. If the second movies comes out and Rey is with Luke training everyone will be like "whaaat?"
Join can't have meeting Luke as a post credit stinger. Since its plot critical to the next movie.
How is that plot critical? They show him for like a second and there's no dialogue.
Plus everyone can just watch it on the you tubes if they missed it.
Because finding like is probably a point of the next movie. If the second movies comes out and Rey is with Luke training everyone will be like "whaaat?"
Like how in Empire, Luke went to train with Yoda and everyone was like " what the hell is this? Why didn't they show this character in the last two seconds of the previous movie? "
Join can't have meeting Luke as a post credit stinger. Since its plot critical to the next movie.
How is that plot critical? They show him for like a second and there's no dialogue.
Plus everyone can just watch it on the you tubes if they missed it.
Because finding like is probably a point of the next movie. If the second movies comes out and Rey is with Luke training everyone will be like "whaaat?"
Like how in Empire, Luke went to train with Yoda and everyone was like " what the hell is this? Why didn't they show this character in the last two seconds of the previous movie? "
I don't understand what you're saying.
You could not have ESB start with Luke and yoda already knowing each other without introducing them in Star Wars. Introducing them after the credits does not count.
The reason we have end credit sequences in marvel movies is because they wanted to add something that had no part in the next movie or the current movie.
If they had skipped everyone's intro movie and went straight to the avengers everyone would have been the "wtf".
+1
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
Join can't have meeting Luke as a post credit stinger. Since its plot critical to the next movie.
How is that plot critical? They show him for like a second and there's no dialogue.
Plus everyone can just watch it on the you tubes if they missed it.
Because finding like is probably a point of the next movie. If the second movies comes out and Rey is with Luke training everyone will be like "whaaat?"
Like how in Empire, Luke went to train with Yoda and everyone was like " what the hell is this? Why didn't they show this character in the last two seconds of the previous movie? "
That's not the order of the sequence, though. A New Hope ends with Luke and co being given a medal for their heroic service to the Rebellion. The Empire Strikes Back starts with Luke and co in the service of the Rebellion. One leads to another.
You can't end TFA with a shot of the Falcon flying off to find Luke and starting the second movie with him being found. If you end TFA without having found Luke, you have to spend the beginning of the next movie finding him, to bridge the two movies together. You can't end A New Hope with Luke and co getting their medals and start the next one with Luke having a training session with Yoda.
That was a bit wierd to me. I mean, yes, it seems like a good technique to improvise a mace or spear if you are stuck with a longsword against an armored opponent, but if you know you are going to fight armor why not carry an appropriate weapon in the first place?
Swords are fine against armor, you grab it to direct the tip where it needs to go
and of course they're amazing against hordes of unarmored peasants
How awesome is it to be excited about Star Wars again?
I was desperately hoping the movie would be good, but an unexpected but truly welcome new pleasure is that Star Wars is kind of a Wild West free for all again. This is the most open the Star Wars universe has been since about 1990, right before Heir to the Empire came out. I mean there were comic books and game sourcebooks but those were all extrapolations from the film; there was less of this suffocating notion of "canon."
The galaxy of TFA is an evocative, thrilling mystery again, where every blank spot or unanswered question can be taken as a spur to the imagination of the viewer instead of a chance to run to Wookiepedia. Of course, that will gradually change with time, but that's okay; if Rebels and TFA are any indication, the Disney Star Wars galaxy might end up being a little closer to what I was excited for 25 years ago to begin with.
I had an opposite reaction. 30 years worth of story to tell and it was mostly reset to the beginning. Plucky underdogs, oppressive dictators, the Jedi down to their last man. I felt that possibilities were cut off because we're never going to be allowed past this paradigm.
I didn't leave thinking the Galaxy was a huge and wondrous place to explore. It felt static, unchanging.
Has the galaxy ever been a huge and wondrous place to explore in Star Wars? It's always boiled down to a bunch of creatures from the edge of human imagination standing around in a grungy bar. The setting got any wonder out of its system thousands of years ago.
How awesome is it to be excited about Star Wars again?
I was desperately hoping the movie would be good, but an unexpected but truly welcome new pleasure is that Star Wars is kind of a Wild West free for all again. This is the most open the Star Wars universe has been since about 1990, right before Heir to the Empire came out. I mean there were comic books and game sourcebooks but those were all extrapolations from the film; there was less of this suffocating notion of "canon."
The galaxy of TFA is an evocative, thrilling mystery again, where every blank spot or unanswered question can be taken as a spur to the imagination of the viewer instead of a chance to run to Wookiepedia. Of course, that will gradually change with time, but that's okay; if Rebels and TFA are any indication, the Disney Star Wars galaxy might end up being a little closer to what I was excited for 25 years ago to begin with.
I had an opposite reaction. 30 years worth of story to tell and it was mostly reset to the beginning. Plucky underdogs, oppressive dictators, the Jedi down to their last man. I felt that possibilities were cut off because we're never going to be allowed past this paradigm.
I didn't leave thinking the Galaxy was a huge and wondrous place to explore. It felt static, unchanging.
Has the galaxy ever been a huge and wondrous place to explore in Star Wars? It's always boiled down to a bunch of creatures from the edge of human imagination standing around in a grungy bar. The setting got any wonder out of its system thousands of years ago.
Yes. Star Wars is like Trek's universe with more wars than exploring.
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AbsoluteZeroThe new film by Quentin KoopantinoRegistered Userregular
People keep saying the ending was too long and somehow the solution is to make us all sit through the credits before we see Luke.
How awesome is it to be excited about Star Wars again?
I was desperately hoping the movie would be good, but an unexpected but truly welcome new pleasure is that Star Wars is kind of a Wild West free for all again. This is the most open the Star Wars universe has been since about 1990, right before Heir to the Empire came out. I mean there were comic books and game sourcebooks but those were all extrapolations from the film; there was less of this suffocating notion of "canon."
The galaxy of TFA is an evocative, thrilling mystery again, where every blank spot or unanswered question can be taken as a spur to the imagination of the viewer instead of a chance to run to Wookiepedia. Of course, that will gradually change with time, but that's okay; if Rebels and TFA are any indication, the Disney Star Wars galaxy might end up being a little closer to what I was excited for 25 years ago to begin with.
I had an opposite reaction. 30 years worth of story to tell and it was mostly reset to the beginning. Plucky underdogs, oppressive dictators, the Jedi down to their last man. I felt that possibilities were cut off because we're never going to be allowed past this paradigm.
I didn't leave thinking the Galaxy was a huge and wondrous place to explore. It felt static, unchanging.
Has the galaxy ever been a huge and wondrous place to explore in Star Wars? It's always boiled down to a bunch of creatures from the edge of human imagination standing around in a grungy bar. The setting got any wonder out of its system thousands of years ago.
I like to think of it like earth circa 1900 or so. Very few places remain totally unexplored (although the new canon seems to be making wider use of the Unknown Regions, so suggesting that about an eighth of the galaxy was only recently colonized by the Empire, to the point that nobody else knows about it). But it's not easy to get from one end of the earth to the other, there are lots of places which are on the fringe, wild and near-lawless, and a lot of places quite comfortable and civilized, and a lot of militaries and nobility and intrigue.
If I hadn't known that Mark Hamill was in the movie, I would have thought that they would have ended like they did ESB. With Rey and Chewie blasting off to find Luke. Episode 8 could have opened with Rey walking up to meet Luke
You can't end TFA with a shot of the Falcon flying off to find Luke and starting the second movie with him being found.
You totally can. You could give Rey a bit more dialogue with Chewie/R2 to start, and you'd obviously skip the weird panorama shot, and it would totally work. However, we don't know how they want to start Episode VIII, and it may not flow into that as well. Perhaps they want the illusion of Rey being absent for a long time up until the end of the movie / maybe not even until Episode IX, and seeing her at the very beginning of the movie wouldn't be conducive to that. Like many things with TFA, I'm sort of waiting for all three movies to come out before I give my final judgement.
That being said, aside from the weird panorama shot (hold the camera still for a nice wide shot of Rey and Luke and all that gorgeous scenery! It looks WAY better!), I thought it was a nice ending to the movie as-is.
The Hope trailer is everything wrong with rendered cinematics.
I mean
maybe the actual problem is in viewing it as some kind of military tutorial and also inferring an entire battle from a series of shots mostly focused on a handful of main characters
I'm not asking for Rommel, I'm asking for alleged Special Forces commandos with guns to not charge into melee range against people armed with fucking lightsabers. This seems a pretty obvious thing to avoid.
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But for a jedi A) they're more of an officer than a grunt in terms of the battlefield, so they don't need a big gun,
An entire film of this:
But also with lightsabers.
But also with lightsabers.
not to go too far off on this tangent (too late) but the technique of grabbing a blade was a phenomenally important component of medieval sword training to defeat armor, and any competent swordsman would understand halfswording (at least, in any era of good plate armor)
I was surprised at how prevalent it was but it makes sense when you realize you can't hack through armor with a sword
it's way more complicated to wield a lightsaber than a sword and not die though, swords have weight and resistance, you're not going to drop it and end up with your organs pouring all over the floor
Nah. Near future nerds will never have a chance at out-nerding 70s uber-nerds.
I still, to this day, feel WEG was and is the best way to play a Star Wars RPG.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
No entry on the team without a complete memorization of the THAC0 table.
I had an opposite reaction. 30 years worth of story to tell and it was mostly reset to the beginning. Plucky underdogs, oppressive dictators, the Jedi down to their last man. I felt that possibilities were cut off because we're never going to be allowed past this paradigm.
I didn't leave thinking the Galaxy was a huge and wondrous place to explore. It felt static, unchanging.
Actually time it last viewing. Closer to eight seconds, which isn't long for a wide shot, but just feels that way because the technique is so jarring compared to the rest of the film...
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"How I would have done it" wankery inc:
The big changes I’d make would start with the Starkiller base. It might even still exist, but it’d be a massive Chekhov’s gun, to be used in future movies, and clearly under construction in this movie. There would be no attack on the Republic capital. Instead, after the raid on Maz’s cantina, Snoke would order Hux to send a fleet back to Maz’s world to perform orbital bombardment on the cities in retribution for helping the resistance. There would be talk about how they’d have to go low in the gravity well to perform that, that that would make them sitting ducks for the resistance. Snoke would basically explain to the audience that the goal is to use the only major force they have in the area to keep the resistance from helping in the pursuit for the Jedi temple – they’d go save people, leaving Hux and Ren a free hand to go after the temple. In the resistance base, Leia would be firmly in command and coming up with plans, and she’d take the bulk of resistance forces to stop the Imperials from razing the surface of a planet, while sending Poe’s squadron to back up Han and Finn.
Kylo would arrive at the Jedi Temple. He’d get to some ancient holographic map thingie, and it wouldn’t respond at all to him. Hux would sneer, but Kylo would explain that it won’t work for him because he uses the Dark Side. He’d order Rey brought down from the ship, recognizing she was Force-sensitive. Han and Finn and co would arrive. They’d sneak into the Jedi temple, hitting a number of the same beats that they did in the movie, but with more of an ancient temple vibe. Rey would escape while being brought down, without overtly using the Force. Meanwhile, we’d see Leia engaging the Imperial forces to save a planet.
Rey would meet up with Han and Finn. Han would realize that Rey needs to get into the chamber where Kylo currently is, so that they can get the map. Han would basically walk into the central courtyard and call Kylo out, distracting the Imperials and letting Rey and Finn sneak into the sanctum, where they get the map to Luke. They sneak out, and see Kylo kill Han. We’d see Leia’s fleet blowing away Star Destroyers, and Leia momentarily crushed by grief before ordering a squadron to cut off the escape of Imperial forces. Meanwhile, X-Wings and TIE fighters fight over the Jedi Temple, and the Star Destroyer can’t help directly for fear of destroying the temple. Poe helps clean up the excess stormtroopers, and we get a Finn/Kylo/Rey lightsaber fight, with similar results – maybe put the fight on a bridge or something, and a crashing TIE fighter forces Rey to back off rather than a splitting planet. Kylo would be evacuated by Phasma, whose arrival would force Rey to flee. The Star Destroyer in orbit would start barraging the planet, and the Falcon would have one more escape sequence to get back to the resistance.
And then end things in pretty much the same way.
Yeah, I hugely recommend it to anyone who hasn't checked it out yet
Before the game was out a lot of people were skeptical because of the proprietary dice system but it's really incredible and well-done. The dice make the game extremely quick and easy to learn and play, even if people have little to no experience with role-playing games.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
The Hope trailer is everything wrong with rendered cinematics: extremely pretty and incredibly vapid.
I don't even mind the blade block thing, I just hate that the Republic troopers, with, y'know, guns and surprise, charge at the Sith. You know, the people with lightsabers. Absolutely batshit. There should be mines and layered traps leading into killboxes.
No wonder basically everyone but Satele, Jace, and Malgus are dead at the end. That's some excellent battle planning.
Or something like that. The movie feels pretty much done when Rey peaces out so the last scene just feels kinda draggy.
How is that plot critical? They show him for like a second and there's no dialogue.
Plus everyone can just watch it on the you tubes if they missed it.
I mean
maybe the actual problem is in viewing it as some kind of military tutorial and also inferring an entire battle from a series of shots mostly focused on a handful of main characters
1) If I were the type of person to read or write fanfiction, the acid test I would use for whether the person was in proper command of Finn's characterization is what he says the moment after being knocked on his ass. Because Finn gets knocked on his ass a lot in this movie, and every time he stands up or wakes up, the first question on his mind is "Are you okay?" (or the variant "Where's Rey?" or "Is Rey okay?"). He instinctively disregards his own condition out of concern for everyone else's. It's nifty and might slip past you if you aren't watching for it.
2) As regards the question of "Why are there so few X-Wings in the Resistance fleet?", I noticed that the scenes showing the Resistance forces either approaching or leaving the Starkiller base are truncated in such a way as to not preclude their forces being significantly larger than depicted. That is, you never see the end of the X-Wing column as they drop out of hyperspace, and the X-Wings we see leaving the planet are Poe's squad, whom I personally would expect to be the last people to flee the explosion of the Starkiller since they'd be trying to confirm that Finn, Rey, et. al. were safely evacuated.
Because finding like is probably a point of the next movie. If the second movies comes out and Rey is with Luke training everyone will be like "whaaat?"
Like how in Empire, Luke went to train with Yoda and everyone was like " what the hell is this? Why didn't they show this character in the last two seconds of the previous movie? "
I don't understand what you're saying.
You could not have ESB start with Luke and yoda already knowing each other without introducing them in Star Wars. Introducing them after the credits does not count.
The reason we have end credit sequences in marvel movies is because they wanted to add something that had no part in the next movie or the current movie.
If they had skipped everyone's intro movie and went straight to the avengers everyone would have been the "wtf".
That's not the order of the sequence, though. A New Hope ends with Luke and co being given a medal for their heroic service to the Rebellion. The Empire Strikes Back starts with Luke and co in the service of the Rebellion. One leads to another.
You can't end TFA with a shot of the Falcon flying off to find Luke and starting the second movie with him being found. If you end TFA without having found Luke, you have to spend the beginning of the next movie finding him, to bridge the two movies together. You can't end A New Hope with Luke and co getting their medals and start the next one with Luke having a training session with Yoda.
Swords are fine against armor, you grab it to direct the tip where it needs to go
and of course they're amazing against hordes of unarmored peasants
That Kylo Ren can be a real trickster. He must have gotten that from his uncle.
Has the galaxy ever been a huge and wondrous place to explore in Star Wars? It's always boiled down to a bunch of creatures from the edge of human imagination standing around in a grungy bar. The setting got any wonder out of its system thousands of years ago.
Yes. Star Wars is like Trek's universe with more wars than exploring.
I like to think of it like earth circa 1900 or so. Very few places remain totally unexplored (although the new canon seems to be making wider use of the Unknown Regions, so suggesting that about an eighth of the galaxy was only recently colonized by the Empire, to the point that nobody else knows about it). But it's not easy to get from one end of the earth to the other, there are lots of places which are on the fringe, wild and near-lawless, and a lot of places quite comfortable and civilized, and a lot of militaries and nobility and intrigue.
You totally can. You could give Rey a bit more dialogue with Chewie/R2 to start, and you'd obviously skip the weird panorama shot, and it would totally work. However, we don't know how they want to start Episode VIII, and it may not flow into that as well. Perhaps they want the illusion of Rey being absent for a long time up until the end of the movie / maybe not even until Episode IX, and seeing her at the very beginning of the movie wouldn't be conducive to that. Like many things with TFA, I'm sort of waiting for all three movies to come out before I give my final judgement.
That being said, aside from the weird panorama shot (hold the camera still for a nice wide shot of Rey and Luke and all that gorgeous scenery! It looks WAY better!), I thought it was a nice ending to the movie as-is.
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*goes back to lurking*
I'm not asking for Rommel, I'm asking for alleged Special Forces commandos with guns to not charge into melee range against people armed with fucking lightsabers. This seems a pretty obvious thing to avoid.