These are really good points, and I like the structure that you give for the crawl. I feel like there has to be some perfect solution, a crawl that includes all of the things that are important, but JJ really made the galaxy into a convoluted state and I’m tying myself in knots trying to explain it easily. My latest (unposted) attempts at a crawl do give more emphasis to the mission, which helps to give the whole thing more energy, but it’s still not there yet.

One random aside - in making Jakku in/near Imperial space, it gives a reason for why Rey should have a British accent.

Anyway, right now I’m exploring the idea of unifying the crawl through the idea of ‘vision’. Basically, I’m trying to make sense of why Luke is so important to preserving peace in the galaxy - it isn’t because he’s going to wave a lightsaber in front of the First Order and they’ll simply run away - it’s the prophetic vision of the Jedi that protects the galaxy from a sudden surprise attack. So in this way, the Starkiller weapon is perfectly reasonable as a threat arising as a direct result of the Jedi being absent from the galaxy.

More generally, since I’m giving Rey at least three Force visions instead of the one in the original movie, ‘vision’ could reasonably be the theme of this movie. I imagine that the Force, unable to channel its visions through Luke, must find another to ‘awaken’ with this power. There’s a good argument for giving Rey more explicit visions of the Starkiller in this case, but it might not be necessary in practice.

But as for including the Starkiller in the crawl, I can see where it would make the movie seem like a New Hope clone right off the bat. But remember, I’m hoping to move the first image of the base until after the halfway point at Maz’s castle, so it might otherwise come out of nowhere. I’ll try what you suggest, in only alluding to an impending attack.

Despite all the trouble over three measly paragraphs, I’m still quite enjoying this challenge. 😃