What's so hard to understand about The First Order?

One of the major gripes/complaints I'm reading in reviews, and on forums for The Force Awakens, is that it fails to explain the power struggle between The Republic, The Resistance, and The First Order, but it doesn't seem that hard to understand.

The way I see it, The Republic was reestablished after the events of Return of the Jedi due to the efforts of The Rebels. In the following years, The First Order slowly formed from the remnants of The Empire, which only survived on the outer edges of "civilization" among planets that weren't directly under the influence of The Republic. These are the planets like Jakku and Takodana (similar to The Rebel planets of IV-VI) which are much less advanced and civilized than The Republic controlled planets we don't see until their destruction by The Starkiller (all of which appeared very similar to The Republic controlled planets of episodes I-III.)

The Resistance is a military group attempting to unite previously autonomous planets and star systems, under one banner, before The First Order becomes more powerful than those individual entities. Though The Resistance has received some support from The Republic prior to the film, it wasn't until The Starkiller was unleashed, that The First Order were seen as the threat that they truly are. The events at the end of The Force Awkens will probably be seen as an act akin to 9/11, and lead to all out war between The Republic and The First Order.

Anyone disagree? Is there anything that I may have missed? Anywhere that I completely missed the mark?

In summary, the cast of the original trilogy messed up in the meantime and led to the pretty much the exact same setup of Episode IV.

Well at the beginning of IV, there were only two factions; the rag-tag Rebel Alliance, and The Empire who had already gained control of the former Republic. TRA seemed to be barely getting by until they took out The Deathstar and gave people "A New Hope" (see what I did there ;) )? I'd say things were much more grim when IV began.

According to the official Star Wars website, the Resistance is essential Leia's army. But my questions are:

1. How much of the galaxy does the First Order control?

and

2. Why didn't the Republic just fight the First Order themselves?

It does kind of make sense, but I hope Episode 8 will explain more of what happened after Episode 6.

@xwraith: 1: Wondering the same thing, I was was just expaining how it all made good sense to me.

2: I don't think the Republic realized how great a threat The First Order are, but Leia being Leia, sees it before the rest do. It's like providing support to Syrian Rebels, but keeping a distance, and then all of the sudden al-Asaad hits California with a nuke, and issh gets real.

It's hard to understand because the movie didn't explain it, but the last thing I want is a bunch of boring political exposition like what the prequels had.

Echoing Uncanny_Doom here but the film could have done a better job with the explanation of the First Order than what we got. Not saying go with "boring political exposition" but that's what the beginning crawl is essentially for. Instead they chose to focus on Luke Skywalker, which while a big part of what drives the chase aspect of the film doesn't do anything to set-up the political tension as well as A New Hope did even with small hints and conversation drops through the film.

Its not that its so complicated to figure out how the First Order got established, cause even in Episode 3 Obi-Wan mentioned how hard it would be for Palpatine to control the galaxy without a Senate and by Episode 4 Palpatine dissolved the Senate and had regional powers govern themselves. So in the vacuum of the Empire's collapse obviously the Republic couldn't get everyone back under its control so quickly. But Abrams and the writing staff decided to breeze over that point where the beginning crawl could have been:

"The galaxy is divided. As the new Republic struggles to re-establish order following the Empire's collapse a number of systems still under Imperial control have banded together into a new military-government structure: The First Order, expanding its influence by force over unaligned systems and planets. Conflict with the Republic is inevitable.

In the wake of this rise Luke Skywalker has vanished........."

and so on with what the film already had. There, done, easy to understand and explains why The First Order would build the Starkiller as a means of initiating the first strike against the Republic Fleet. Not hard at all.

This is an area of the new films, and a few other films and games I've noticed recently, where the use of other media I feel is hurting mainstream viewers. In the case of Force Awakens, prequel stories for Finn, Rey and Poe were released just before the film was, helping fill in a bit more about the characters. Not to mention the comic books showing Luke and others dealing with some of the fallout from the Emperor's death. But someone whose just going to see the movie wouldn't get this information and is, in a way, penalized for not branching out past the film. Take Finn for example. Overall I thought they did a good job with his character but he tells Han he worked in sanitation (to which I couldn't help but think of Tropic Thunder) yet in his prequel story he's set-up as this badass who Captain Plasma commends for his tactics and strategy, calling him "officer material". How is the guy from sanitation going to get that kind of praise? where was anything like that indicated in the film? It wasn't just those prequel stories are supposed to help us understand the character more....instead just giving us contradictions. I think this is a big reason why they just pushed through some opening exposition but at the same time is not a trend I think Hollywood should follow. Let other media expand after the fact and movie canon is established, not alongside where different writers can contradict themselves.

What I want to know is how they came to power. The empire literally lost at the end of ROTJ. This is only 30 years later. People shit on the political intrigue of the prequels but at least it gave you insight as to wtf is going on. But no. People want more explosions.

I've found an answer to my second question. The Republic couldn't fight the First Order directly as a result of a treaty. I also think it's worth saying that the entire Republic doesn't support the Resistance- only a few Senators do (the woman on Hosnian Prime was one of their biggest supporters).

If thats true, then Republic should smite the First Order after they destroyed those moons with that Deathstar v3.

Or is the Republic so stupid that they will hope this Resistance will prevail on its own.

It seems to me like the Rebellion never took full advantage of the fall of the Emperor, Vader and the Death Star. I mean Leia said their fleet was half destroyed during the battle and by the end. There was only like 6 or 7 fighter ships including the Millennium Falcon on their jump to light speed. Seems like that's what remains now of their fleet, lol. Or maybe they had more fleets around the galaxy. But that wouldn't make sense because this seemed like a final act for the rebellion or "the resistance".

An all or nothing, considering Gen. Leia who I'm assuming is the leader of the resistance and Admiral Ackbar were at the base that was on the planet that was being targeted by the death star planet. So it seems like the rebels messed up big time in those 30 years.

On the Empire or First Order side, I think a major blow was dealt to them with the death of the emperor and so on. But it seems like they've recovered a bit. Even though there was a "New Republic" formed, but I guess that didn't stop them or bother them too much. They even still had the full support of clones and it seems like the taking of kids and morphing them in to stormtroopers was an entirely new program within the last 30 years. So the First Order has had it good. They did build that huge death star p planet hybrid thing.