I could go on a lengthy rant about how Disney has totally screwed up Star Wars, but instead I thought I'd point out what it should have been with a short treatment. You know, the kind of pre-script that movies start with and what JJ Abrams needed extra time to write that pushed the movie back 6 months(and it still sucked).
So, here goes...
STAR WARS VII
Opening Crawl:
It is 700 years after the death of Darth Vader. The Jedi Order has been reestablished and the remnants of the Empire finally defeated with a number of powerful alliances rising in its place. The galaxy has been divided, but at peace for a long golden age.
Underneath the tranquility the darkside is beginning to stir. The Sith are long gone, but evil persists in many forms. Fearful, they hide in the shadows trying to undermine the stability of the galaxy and continually fail. Under the guidance of Luke Skywalker the Jedi Order is too wise and powerful to be countered, so alternative means are sought to bring about their downfall.
A silent war has begun, but not against the great alliances or the Jedi...but against the force sensitives of the galaxy. They are quietly going missing and younglings strong with the Force are becoming harder and harder for the Jedi Order to find...
Opening scene:
Cargo ship in orbit of planet deploying crude shuttle that flies down to unremarkable city.
Lands and three mercenary-dressed individuals walk down ramp pulling casket-like container at night, going inside industrial complex and through a series of maze-like corridors to secret area.
They report to a well dressed individual who inspects the cargo and finds the unconscious, yet living force sensitive youngling. One of the retrievers complains about the uselessness of these missions and finds himself suddenly thrown back against a wall by the Force and held there as he gets lectured by the section leader of their darkside cult.
He speaks of them having to find and destroy a particular individual that is a threat to everything darkside, and that those force sensitives that cannot be recruited must be destroyed, not only to weaken the current Jedi Order, but to find and destroy the one that a powerful darkside prophet has foreseen coming.
The subordinate complains that the current Jedi Order is the threat they should be worried about and manages to use his own limited force powers to extricate himself from the leader's grip and stands him off. The leader doesn't respond violently, but passionately speaks of the veracity of the prophecy and that they only have a short window of opportunity to find the one that will wield the white blade. If they can do that the approaching darkness will arrive unhindered and the galaxy will fall. If not, the white blade could lead the galaxy to destroy the heralds(them) and endanger even the masters, which are only whispered to come in future days.
Scene change: Jedi Temple(one of them)
Luke is introduced and the discussion of the lack of younglings is mixed with reports of rumored adult force sensitives being killed or going missing. A move against the Jedi Order is suspected via attrition rather than attack, and Luke reminds the Jedi that their focus should be on attaining 'self-sufficiency,' a lightside power that only Luke has mastered and which has allowed him to survive 700 years(and which he suspects Yoda somehow tapped into as well).
Luke gives his own lecture, and through it a number of lengthy flashbacks concerning the Jedi and what happened with Han, Leia, their children, etc are fleshed out. This mix of current events and past continues on through the first half of the movie, including full scenes from the past that give the original characters a good amount of screen time while the hunt to discover the source of this plot continues.
With the Jedi unable to find most of the younglings in time, they do catch on to the presence of a pair of siblings that run a very profitable corporation building and selling ships. Their force sensitivity has been brought to light, and it is suspected by Luke that they might become targets, thus he sends a Jedi-led team to surveil and watch over them, hoping to catch the 'phantom menance'(pun, I know) that so far lurks unseen.
When the move against them is made, it comes from blaster wielding force users, moderately strong in the darkside but mostly ignorant as to the ways of the force. They have no knowledge of the Jedi arts but their few skills are very effective against non-Jedi and they infiltrate a business meeting at the heart of the siblings' facility with the intent on assassinating them and making it look like a corporate hit.
The Jedi team move to stop them and succeed, but one of the business associates there attracts the attention of the senior Jedi. In the aftermath the Jedi team explains to the siblings the danger they are in and insist that they be taken into protective custody, fearing another attack shortly.
The lead Jedi, during this time, subtly confronts the stranger who he has a strange feeling about. They talk and banter back and forth, eventually leaving the group to go back to the businessman's ship while the siblings and the rest of their new protective team head elsewhere.
When the Jedi finally lets the businessman go on his way, a few seconds pass before the Jedi is ambushed by remnants of the assassins as they take advantage of an opportunity to kill a Jedi caught alone. Using terrain and guile, they get the drop on him and wound him using tri-barrel blasters that fire three bolts at one in triangle formation, meaning that at best the Jedi can only block two, allowing the third to get through and kill him.
The Jedi dodges and evades most of it, proving a very hard target to kill, but with some force powers thrown in the assassins, while losing several of their own, manage to wound him, slowing his movements and making his soon to be death inevitable.
But it wasn't to be, for the businessman suddenly jumps into the fight displaying that he also is force sensitive. He uses a blaster and telekinesis mostly and helps to chase off the few remaining assassins...now marking himself as a new target.
Questions abound, but the businessman is evasive. Talking goes nowhere and the wounded Jedi relents after he is helped to a med center. The business man leaves and the Jedi reports back to Luke who says he will investigate this man himself and that the Jedi should stick with the siblings and be on guard, for Luke has never heard of this blaster variant or this group of Force users as is deeply concerned.
With Jedi now being the target as well, they are all instructed to operate in pairs at the minimum and never go out alone as they hunt for these illusive enemies.
Two more attacks are attempted against the siblings and are thwarted as they travel across the galaxy to get to the safety of a Jedi Temple, whereupon the assassins will not go. Meanwhile Luke searches for this businessman, finding he gets around a lot. He follows his trail and catches up to him on a waterworld, sensing a disturbance in the Force that leads him into another ambush, not of Luke, but the businessman.
But the ambush, while being large in number and very craftily arranged, fails miserably. Before Luke can intervene the businessman defends himself and is pushed to the point of abandoning his blaster and brandishing a lightsaber of his own to cut through a door.
When the assassins see the white blade, they go into a frenzy of suicidal attack while a few slip away to report that they've finally found him.
With the tri-blasters and the confines of the ambush area giving this rogue Jedi all he can handle but looking like he could defeat them given enough time, Luke decides to cut it short and intervenes, wrecking the plans of the assassins and killing all that remained, his green blade fighting alongside the white.
A polite confrontation follows with Luke wanting answers and the unbelievable story of the white blade's existence being revealed. His master was a Jedi of the old Republic, long since dead, who foresaw his birth and created a training facility specifically for him. He was discovered where he was supposed to be and taken into the custody of some friendly monk-like aliens that the Jedi trusted.
Then the white blade trained in secret using holocrons and automated training equipment created for him. His master told him that a great threat was coming in the future and that he was the only hope to counter it, not defeat it, but just be able to fight it. Without him the Jedi Order and the galaxy would surely fall, so he had to train long and hard in secret until the time was right.
The time wasn't yet, but Luke had found him out early and the two continue to talk as they leave the ambush site and Luke goes with the white blade off planet, insistent to get more answers.
The white blade reluctantly agrees to having Luke hitchhike and learn more about him as he goes about his business...which turns out to be militaristic in nature. He has been growing an army in secret, not force sensitive one, but conventional forces in preparation for this future threat.
Along the way they are not ambushed, but full out attacked in broad daylight by an army of darkside users. Now that they've located the white blade, they must throw everything against him and kill him now before he can develop further.
Luke and the whiteblade, cut off from the rest of the Jedi Order, run from planet to planet with a not so small fleet of enemy ships pursuing them and seeming to be waiting in ambush wherever they go.
With their options limited, they must travel into primitive areas and away from the Jedi temples or advanced and heavily defended worlds in the major alliances. The enemy is herding them away from any help they might have summoned and Luke knows it.
They know they have to fight and look at the available lists of planets they can get to. Not much there, but with a sense of great importance Luke sees Dagobah on the list. It is uninhabited, familiar to him, and a good place to hide a ship and make a stand.
They head there and a huge battle on the ground ensues, with you seeing just how powerful Luke is and the surprising skill and oddities in this rogue white blade.
Eventually fleets of Jedi-led warships from multiple alliances arrive and rescue them. The realization of what has happened sinks in and the threat of the 'phantom menance' and its true scope weighs heavily on everyone. How could this have arisen right under their noses? And how many more of them are there?
Another flashback occurs with a discussion Leia and Luke had with the Force ghosts back in the day that transitions into Yoda appearing in the present with Luke, the white blade, and a handful of other Jedi present on Dagobah.
Upon conversation Yoda realized he knows who the white blade's master was, and says that he was a radical Jedi that left the Order because he believed it was corrupted and that he was pure lightside, hence the white blade.
The white blade rogue argues with Yoda now in a discussion that eventually leads to the threat that is coming...and that fact that it isn't this band of dark side newbs.
Then Anakin appears and sides with the white blade, telling Luke that he needs to hear this other point of view, differing with Yoda.
The white blade agrees to take Luke to his secret training facility and show him the 'true' way of the Jedi. The lightside that the Order never truly embraced, tricked by the darkside into holding back.
Anakin and Yoda politely spar a bit over how his own training was handled, but eventually Luke leaves with the white blade after giving orders to the rest of the Jedi present to pursue all leads on this darkside cult and to continue looking for force sensitives to protect before they can be made to disappear.
The movie ends with them jumping into hyperspace onboard the white blade's ship and beginning a quest for knowledge to unravel both the history of the Jedi Order and the future threat lurking on the horizon.
