So I'll ramble on with some of my thoughts. Beware the wall of text.
I saw a few people knocking the movie for starting on a desert planet. I didn't care about that at all, I just wanted it to start strong and it certainly did that. They did a great job of introducing the new characters and setting up the story in a hurry.
Like many others have said, Rey is really great. Glad she's apparently the new main character. They nailed it with casting her. Finn was pretty good. I wasn't blown away by him. He had a few funny moments but I felt like a couple of his funny lines were really cringe worthy. Like they were just trying to force the comedy in situations where it didn't need it. So I guess I can blame that on the writing rather than the character. But I do like how he's a "different" character in the sense that he came from the other side of things and we don't know if he has any innate force ability. Presumably he does but I guess we'll see.
Kylo Ren was good, too. I'm just glad they didn't kill him off in this movie because I was going to be very annoyed if we had another Darth Maul situation. But I really like his unique force powers. Freezing the blaster shot and the whole mind reading thing. Seems like stuff that was beyond even Vader. But he's really unstable so if he controls himself and goes totally to the dark side, you have a really powerful, badass villain.
I was in a nearly full theater and you could tell people were really into it... but I think everyone just felt deflated when he killed Han. Everyone just seemed to lose their energy and that carried out to the end of the film. I get why they did it, but I can't help but feel like everyone was disappointed once he died. I even heard people saying "oh my god" and "oh jesus" lol. The whole vibe from everyone just dropped completely at that point and it never came back. When the movie ended, I thought people might be kind of excited and hyped up again but... nope. It was gone after that.
But Harrison Ford did nail it in this movie. I wasn't sure how he would be but he pulled it off really well. Carrie Fisher seemed like... I don't know. Like she wasn't ready for the role or like it has just been too long for her or something. It felt like it wasn't even Leia every time she was on the screen.
I was disappointed that we didn't even get a line out of Luke. It was cool to at least see him but I was expecting him to say something. Oh well. Their training in the next movie should be great. I don't know if Rey is Luke's daughter or what but it sucks that they went that route with her with the "I don't know who my parents were" thing. I mean, she's obviously going to related to a major character. My first thought was that she was a younger daughter to Han/Leia especially with the way Han was looking at her when he was thinking about offering a job. But I guess that wouldn't make sense. I guess she can only really be Luke's in that case. She can't be a random person with that much natural force ability. That would be pretty silly.
But overall, I really liked it. They nailed it as far as re-establishing a new trilogy goes. It truly felt like a good Star Wars movie. I thought the pacing was really good and I was always engaged, which is a problem I had with most of the Star Wars movie at some point during each one. There was plenty of action between the lightsaber fights, the X-Wings and all that which I was hoping for. The comedy was well done except for a few head scratching moments. The music was good and wasn't overpowering like it was in the prequels. BB-8 was great. Poe was awesome and he's such a good actor. I hope he has an even bigger role in the next movie.
Some of the gripes were the way they destroyed the starkiller base at the end. Of course they had to blow it up with mere seconds left while flying towards it like they did with the death star. It almost made me roll my eyes. The whole stormtrooper hitler-esque part was weird and kind of lame. I don't like how they hardly explained anything about the Knights of Ren. Han and Chewie with a "surprise, we found the ship immediately" moment was kind of silly, I thought. But I can roll with that.
But overall, a great Star Wars movie. I can see why some people will think it's just average or not enjoy it that much but for me, it's right up there with ANH and ESB as a Star Wars experience. I'll stop rambling now. I think I got most of it out of my system, haha.
