Saw this movie and had an hour long trip home to digest.
No, it's not perfect. Nothing ever is. There are parts which I felt were slow. The final attack on the Superweapon lacked impact and drama (music was a bit off there), even though they kept saying that it was going to fire soon - not even close to ANH level of tension. The whole superweapon part didn't feel like it needed to be in the movie at all, to be honest, especially since it got destroyed and we had enough drama with characters already. Can one superbase survive for longer and cause some real threat - this weapon harnessed the energy of the sun, couldn't it be set up to be very hard to take down and last the whole trilogy like a bit threat? Feels like a waste of an awesome concept a bit.
There are also some slower and frankly unnecessary moments in cantina and Han Solo cargo sidestory which are a bit awkward. I also felt that the ending left a lot of threads dangling this time, as if JJ made a plot of TV pilot again.
Everything else was AWESOME though. The amount of good stuff in this movie is incredible. The movie hits all the right notes, has great cinematography, starting shot is cool, action is awesome, characters are relatable and not cliché. A lot of action felt grounded and real. The use of real locations and effects is palpable, there is a sense of reality in this world.
It's definitely up there with OT and shits all over the prequels. As a matter of fact there's no mention of anything from the prequels. When FO fires the superweapon they talk about destroying the "Republic" but we get no mention of Coruscant or anything of the sort even there.
Kylo Ren is a good villain and is set up to become even better. The guy is clearly having issues and more depth than appears initially. Phasma, on the other hand is overhyped and shouldn't have been marketed so much. She's there for a couple of scenes but so far she could've been any other senior stormtrooper. Her fate is ambiguous so maybe she'll come back and become more important later on. I don't like the big CGI hologram guy because he has literary no set up. I get that we'll see more in the sequels but, while the Emperor was kind of a natural villain, being the leader of the evil Empire and all, the new big bad is just ... there... and he's dark...
The main protagonists are great. Both actors perform admirably, Finn is great, Rey is awesome, no damsel in distress here. BB8 is the best thing in the movie. Returning cast does good, Harrison is a joy, Leia as well. Luke, heh...
Can I also say that while there wasn't that many lightsaber scenes in the movie, they felt more real than any complex choreography in the prequels? Just brutal hamfisted swordfighting - awesome. Felt very real and once again those shots were fantastic even if the fights were, in the end, quite simple.
Last, the great thing about this movie is all the stuff that is not there. No politics, no mention of prequels, no slapstick gags. I didn't feel like any callback to OT was forced or out-of-place. It was so easy to screw up but this movie is about people acting under distress in a very relatable way and nobody ruins this.
In a nutshell, this movie had a very difficult task: bring back the old cast and do them justice, set up a whole new range of movies, set up new interesting heroes and villains, and, at the same time, live up to the exorbitant amount of hype. It succeeded everywhere, but for the hype which was anyway impossible to do.
I can see that most of my issues come from that need to have a bigger universe. That so many things could've been told but are not because we'll get the sequels, we'll get the prequel between-the-trilogies cartoon, we'll get the comic books and other stuff. This movie's greatest success is that it's good, like solid good, and also sets up a huge amount of interesting stuff around it. The Star Wars universe is once again exciting.
Just don't go in there expecting the second coming of Jesus.
In my book, JJ pulled it off and I'm going to see it again maybe next week or even earlier.
