Oh sure, I'm just using Alakabeth's style of hyperskepticism and hypercriticism to ESB rather than in TFA, which I disagree with, even though I do admit that the imperfections he points to are mostly there in the movie.
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Except almost all of your complaints are about
character motivation, a topic which is only really used when a character does something outside of what they normally do. When they break character.
Incidentally, no one is complaining about character motivation with The Force Awakens, but rather about character knowledge, or lack of information conveyed to the audience, etcetera.
Why did Vader go to Hoth? Because he chose to. It's what he does. It only doesn't make sense if it's out of character, which it isn't as ANH demonstrates.
Why did he ask for Bounty Hunters? Because he's shown to believes his officers are incompetent and they're not producing results, so he felt it necessary to bring in additional help.
As for movie making.
Movies rely upon the scenes to set things up.
One example, the fleet over Hoth.
We know an Imperial Fleet is in the area of Hoth and wants to attack the Rebels.
This is reinforced by a ship threatening a fleeing transport and previous to that, the rebel pilot briefing.
Then we see the Ion Cannon defeat the Imperial Threat and allow a transport to escape.
At this point, the threat of the Imperial fleet is defeated. We don't need to see this happen again to keep believing they can get away.
The Imperial Fleet remains a non-threat until such time that the movie RE-ESTABLISHES it as a threat.
This threat is re-established when the Falcon is being chased.
You say roughly 'why didn't they blast the transports'? And I say 'show me a star destroy that hasn't been ionized'. Show me that the Ion Cannon is disabled? You can't, that's why the transports not being blasted makes sense, because there's nothing in the movie to re-establish the threat. Incidentally the Falcon being chased not only re-stablishes the threat but also re-focuses it. The threat is no longer against Hoth but instead against the Falcon.
Similarly with the ground assault. The Imperial AT-ATs were to assault the base, and destroy the generator.
Luke and his X-Wing are not at the base. So while his attitude might be a bit too casual, there still is no threat established against that area. We don't hear an Imperial say "sweep the area" or "there's a transport over there, send troops!" etcetera.
The movie tells the story. It establishes antagonists. It establishes means to nullify them, etcetera.
In TFA, in the battle over the smuggler world. The Imperials leave the world completely unmolested by the Resistance X-wings.
This is a problem because it's never established why the Resistance doesn't attack.
The X-wings are a threat to the Imperials, Kylo's ship is an Imperial, therefore the X-wings should remain a threat to him.
All it takes is one line, Po saying "The Imperials are retreating, let them go. Let's secure the area for arrival". and the movie will make sense. But because they're too lazy, or too incompetent to do that, the Resistance threat is unresolved and the scene doesn't fully make sense. The audience instead has to
create reasons for why they're not being attacked or they lose their suspension of disbelief.