A couple things I dislike/don’t understand about the scenes at Maz’s castle.

Maz says something like ‘I’ve been around for 1000 years, I’ve seen the sith, the empire, the first order. The first order is spreading and we must all join the fight to stop it.’

So, the sith and the empire weren’t worth fighting against, but the first order is? Vader, the emperor, 2 death stars weren’t a big deal? What is it about the first order that makes them more dangerous? The movie can’t show us this in any meaningful way, it just has Maz tell us this. I don’t buy it.

I’m not sure I understand Finn’s character anymore. He completely freaks out about the first order and just wants to flee to the outer rim. Based on how he’s acted before this scene, it seems like he should want to join the resistance.

These 2 things are especially confusing in light of the fact that we know almost nothing about the politics of the galaxy! How powerful is the first order? The republic? The resistance? what is the scale of the conflict?