We should recognize that
The Force Awakens is a rehash of the original trilogy, compounding the lack of creativity with the destruction of a third "imperial" weapon of mass destruction.
In the prequels, the warfare is worse than 2GW -- it's more like 1GW, with two massed armies clashing on the battlefield under the appearance of combined arms. It's a battle or mass warfare you'd see in a comic book or a RTS computer game, not in the real world -- men and machines rushing into one another on the battlefield. Is it more dramatic (and easier for visual story-telling)? Or does it betray the lack of a military background of the "artists" behind the product? One could say the same about the space battles in the prequels and the original trilogy -- ships engaging one another like 18th century ships of sail. (Indeed, the instruction for game play for the board games revealed tactics comparable to that era, all the way to the first World War.) Yes, there are small fighter craft thrown in the mix, but their ability to damage the larger spaceships seems inconsistent. Apparently no one in the Star Wars universe has discovered the use of nuclear weapons on the battlefield. (Unless the artists wish to claim that force fields and such are sufficient protection against nuclear weapons -- space fantasy, not science fiction.)
I wish someone more familiar with warfare would write about this.
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