Spoiler Alert!
Despite my best efforts it's turned out to be impossible to avoid spoilers for the Force Awakens, and now the movie is TOTALLY RUINED! Here's just the short list so far:
Thanks Internet. :(
- That desert planet in the trailers isn't Tatooine, it's a topsy-turvy Earth where Apes rule instead of Man.
- Darth Maul returns! (In a short cameo as an angry senior citizen who whips out his lightsaber when the battery of his Rascal scooter dies in the checkout line of the Naboo Walmart.)
This time the Death Star is actually star-shaped instead of round.- In a shocking retcon it is revealed that Han Solo didn't shoot Greedo at all, Greedo just spontaneously died of Subway Sandwich poisoning during their encounter. Han has been haunted by that moment for the last 30 years and become a hermit.
- Midichlorians now come in oral, nasal, and suppository forms. (See your doctor for more information.)
- Chewbacca dies tragically halfway through the movie when he stops and refuses to go any further in the middle of the Swamp of Sadness. Han desperately tries to cheer him up by reminding him that the movie he's in now is better than Revenge of the Sith but to no avail.
- The main plot of the movie involves the protagonists discovering that the entire Galaxy is being manipulated by a malevolent mechanical intelligence designed to take fragments of the pop culture Zeitgeist and rearrange them in visually pleasing and nostalga-triggering but ultimately soulless ways. (According to an algorythm that has gone terribly wrong at least once in the past, when the unit had insufficient enthusiasm for the universe it was controlling.) The Rebels attempt to destroy this entity by firing a proton torpedo into the small secondary exhaust port right below the main port but are forced to withdraw upon the realization that doing so would risk turning the entire universe into a bizzare "Fast and the Furious meets Lost in Space" mashup, as happened to the previous parallel dimension after the entity got bored and moved on.
- The Millennium Falcon sinks in the end.
Thanks Internet. :(