To take the first one, that Republic reinforcements may be en-route during the Starkiller battle, that is actually what I imagine happening at this point. In fact, my concept is that the Raddus and its attending ships in TLJ are actually these reinforcements, they merely got to the Resistance too late to help in the Starkiller battle. This is also why the Resistance has a specialized fleet of what appear to be gravity-based, planetary bombers. This makes a lot of sense if they were being sent to take out something like an Oscillator on a giant planet Death Star, and not much sense for anything else.
I do agree that it should be unclear whether or not the ships actually launched before the system’s destruction, with the implication that they couldn’t even launch. This would make their appearance in TLJ a bit of a welcome surprise.
Oh I see. That does make a lot of sense. Ideally, it’s something that would be explained in the TLJ crawl, but of course that’s not something you can worry about here. Making the fleet’s status unclear seems like a perfect solution.
In thinking about this last night, I had the idea that perhaps R2 is in clear disrepair. For example, there could be panels hanging half-off of his body and he is smeared with dirt and oil. I imagine that this wouldn’t be too difficult to implement since R2 would be stationary for this change. In this state, BB-8 unveiling him is less like reuniting with an old friend and more with realizing how neglected he has become. BB-8’s sadness at seeing R2 in this state is immediately understandable and enhances the theme which is apparent in the scenes of Han and Leia happening around this point - our heroes are in a bad place and relationships that should be vibrant are stained with neglect.
Also, if R2 was so damaged, Rey’s involvement in the final scene would be much more expected since she tends to fix droids out of hand. You know, that whole “Your antenna’s bent” thing. When the scene transitions to night, R2’s broken and dirty panels are fixed and now he merely needs to wake up for the rest of the plot to happen.
Man, if anyone can pull that off, it’d be you, Nev! That sounds incredible - both working perfectly with what we’ve established about Rey, and also being a fantastic visual metaphor for the state of the Republic in light of the rise of the First Order. I could totally see R2 falling into disrepair without Luke there to maintain him.
For his introduction, could BB-8 maybe overhear some off-screen line of dialogue from someone? “Did you get the droid unpacked yet? I don’t know why the General insists on keeping him anymore…” And then he goes off to investigate, and finds R2 in disrepair? Not sure how that might work with the available shots; but in theory, it gives R2 a quick (re)introduction to set up his reveal. Also shines a bit more light into Leia’s desperation to find her brother.
Also, “Expect to launch within the hour” sounds great to me! I honestly really like sade’s idea of name-dropping Holdo here - not only would it make her feel less out-of-the-blue in TLJ, where she’s suddenly second in command even though we’ve never heard of her; but it would also help to establish both Poe’s and the audience’s inherent mistrust of her, because she failed to help them with Starkiller. (Actually, that would also help to explain that the Republic Fleet joined up with the Resistance afterwards, since we’d know Holdo was in that group. “Oh, there she is! Finally!”)
Maybe something like: “General, the Senate has voted - Vice Admiral Holdo is mobilizing the fleet! They expect to launch within the hour.” “They haven’t got a chance.” (Just because she trusts Holdo, she also knows that Hyperspace travel isn’t instantaneous unless it’s in TROS.)