It’s taken a number of rumors (both plausible and outlandish) and quite a bit of speculation from all across the fandom, but it now appears that the pieces are coming together, and that with the help of Making Star Wars, we’ve got a picture of what part of the first act of Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens is going to look like.
A long time ago, Devin Faraci reported that the movie would begin with a hand attached to a lightsaber floating through space and landing on a planet where major characters appear. While this initial rumor has since been dismissed by a number of sources, it now appears that his source was on the right track – there is a lightsaber that somehow ends up on the planet without burning up in the atmosphere (did the will of the Force get it there?), but there’s not a disembodied hand clutched to it. The lightsaber lands on a savanna environment, where it is discovered by a character codenamed “Naka”, who is a farmer. While inspecting the lightsaber, Naka accidentally sets it off, which causes a small fire.
Naka takes the weapon from the fire and delivers it to an individual codenamed “The Vicar”, who MSW speculates is Max Von Sydow’s character based on a film role he had that with the same name. The Vicar then contacts the Rebel Alliance, who send Poe Dameron over to the planet to retrieve the weapon alongside his droid, BB-8. Poe gets the lightsaber, but soon discovers that the Empire also caught wind of the message and has sent Stormtroopers after him. Poe sticks the lightsaber into BB-8′s hidden compartment and allows it to escape, while he is eventually captured by the Imperials after holding them off.
At the same time and on the same planet, a Stormtrooper squadron that Finn is a part of descends upon a village to raze it to the ground, led personally by Kylo Ren. They are met with some resistance, but many of the villagers are unarmed. Nonetheless, a number of Stormtroopers are killed in the process, including Finn’s friends. Finn objects to killing unarmed civilians, and deliberately allows a number of them to escape. Kylo Ren is displeased with this and has Finn detained on the Star Destroyer orbiting the planet for refusing to follow orders. As luck would have it, Poe is in the same brig that Finn is placed in. Poe and Finn reluctantly agree to work together to escape in order to work toward a common goal, in spite of being on opposing sides of the war. They hijack a TIE fighter in a daring escape… And they then crash-land on the surface of the planet. To be continued!
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One of our own sources has been able to vouch for this outline, but with one notable addition to the continuity of this series of events: to ensure that their escape works out, Poe and Finn cause a large explosion in the Star Destroyer, which causes the ship to fall out of orbit and crash-landed in the desert. The leaked concept art showed a downed Star Destroyer in the background of one piece, and it also shows an image of a TIE fighter that was shot down on the surface of the planet, which now seems to be the TIE fighter than Finn and Poe take in an effort to escape in. It’s likely that the above scene from the trailer takes place immediately after the TIE fighter that gets gunned down.
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Our source told us that Han is not present in the final scene of the movie, and given the sequence of events that were described to MSW, it’s abundantly clear why: he’s dead. He goes out to confront Kylo Ren personally before he is killed, giving Finn, Rey, BB-8, and Chewbacca enough time to escape from the villain. This scene in the trailer is thought to take place after the group escape from him. While this is a plot thread that most people suspected would happen as soon as Harrison Ford signed onto the film, both sources support each other with this turn of events, giving both reports extra credence.