- Space Battles are fought with gravity bombs and hyperspace kamikazes
I guess the Visual Dicctonary covers the bombs in some capacity, but without that explanation, what about the TIE Bombers in the asteroid field dropping bombs? I think this is fairly easy stuff to explain away with just saying they're pushed out and inertia carries them even. I've seen this come up in other complaints though as a general complaint regarding the new movie(s) though and my first thought was ESB with the TIE Bombers.
I personally loved this idea of "heavy bombers" compared to fighter-bombers from the OT we were used to. I'd always wondered if there was such a thing in Star Wars, or if it'd ever make sense, and for me this was a good example of how the concept could work. They're somewhere below capital ships but above fighters in size. I liked it a lot.
Regarding the hyperspace Kamikaze, it was visually great, but it does open some questions like why it wasn't ever used before.
- Huge capital ships used to be faster than smaller transports, not now
I'm not sure what you meant here... In Jedi, capital ships are painfully slow. In the opening of ROTS, capital ships are again painfully slow. They're the earth equivalent of large battleships. I never got the impression from the past films that the Destroyers and Mon Cal Cruisers could outrun the old Rebel Transports, or even smaller class capital ships like Corvettes necessarilly, Hammerheads, or whatever. It's even a basic building block of most of the video games that surrounded space fighting, that smaller ships are generally somewhat faster than larger ships, or at least can keep pace.
The entire "slow speed chase" thing I thought was maybe not the most exciting for the big screen but it was also similar to naval warfare on Earth, and I thought the notion of gun range was interesting too and added to it. It almost felt like Hux was toying with them by letting them run out of fuel because they didn't have options but to run.
- Hyperspace travel can now be tracked, instead of a major route of escape
I was with you on this except someone I know mentioned to me Vader tracking the Falcon to Yavin IV... It's similar, unless the Falcon went sublight all the way to Yavin IV, but I was pretty sure canon says it didn't. I'm not too sure on that though, but I kinda agreed on this. I didn't like them doing away with hypering out as a good way to get away. Likewise I was thinking, how did the Avenger track the Tantive IV... Tracking through hyperspace has happened before, somehow.
- Jedi have all new powers like flying through space or projecting themselves to other planets
Is it "flying through space", or did she, rather than "lift" something, instead pulled herself towards something (IE: the cruiser)? Leia having some force ability was interesting I thought, and this establishing it beyond being able to connect with Luke across the galaxy was something I actually kind of enjoyed seeing. It seemed like in TFA she didn't have any force ability.
- Force Ghosts can impact real-world changes instead of just being a guiding voice
I'm thinking you meant the tree and Yoda, but I can't say that upended much myself.
- Jedi can randomly choose to become one with the force instead of dying from a wound or old age
Maybe at Luke's age, the battle did kill him... maybe it took too much out of him and he knew it would end that way for him?
- Siener TIE Fighters and Incom X-Wings are now made by the same company
This popped into my head too, but both Sienar and Incom had many factories, and assuming a galactic conglomerate is not much different than a big company on Earth contracting factories who work with other companies making competing things... I think this is totally believable. Just as one example, Ryobi and Craftsman, and DeWalt power tools can and often are made in the same factory. It happens.
Maybe the guy who owned that ship made their repulsor units, or a circuit board both required even? Who knows. It could be more or less complex than it appeared. I can't say it really bothered me much, but I noticed it too.
- Droids were inferior to human fighters, now exponentially superior (BB8)
Maybe AT-STs aren't hard to control... Chewbacca drives one pretty easily, assuming he never has before. Granted he's not a droid, but droids fly hover tanks and other things in the prequals, and I assume BB8 can fly an X-Wing (R2 could). I dunno. It was a "BB8 saves the day" moment and again that's ok by me. It didn't make all droids vastly superior to humans, at least not to me, when I watched it. It's like R2's escape from the SBDs or whatever. Droids being heroes and doing unlikely stuff. Poe did call him one of a kind, I guess.
I'm not arguing that a lot of that stuff isn't different though... This movie was different compared to the past, in many ways. In other ways it was also very similar... I see people's points on it being different and new, for better or worse depending who you talk to of course.
