General Stuff:
~ The coincidences in this movie are pretty crazy. I can take Finn and Poe crashing so close to Rey is and finding the falcon on jakku but Han taking them old friend who just happens to have Luke's light saber for reason. Come on.
Coincidences are kind of a "thing" in Star Wars. Like how Luke, the son of Vader, just happens to stumble upon 3PO and R2D2 as they have the Death Star plans (and even needed a droid to break down in order to get R2). Or how the Millenium Falcon, with no hyperdrive and not very far away from Hoth, just happens to be in range of Lando. Or how Obi-Wan and Luke just happen to stumble upon one of the fastest ships in the Galaxy in Mos Eisely. I'm okay with an old friend of Han's who's Yoda-tier in age coming across Anakin's lightsaber.
~ That last scene was weird and unintentionally funny. Rey and Luke just staring at each other with Rey extending her hand. So weird. Should have end with the close up on Rey's face.
~ Another single weak point on the super weapon where it somehow blows up the entire planet. Really?
Things with giant energy sources usually end up having a giant exploitable weakness. It seems like with each new version of the Death Star the weakness gets bigger too.
~ Han's death didn't do anything for me. Mostly because it was completely telegraphed and didn't any emotional because we don't know the relationship between these two characters fully. Instead of feeling emotional I thought "yeah fuck Han, continue being awesome Kylo"
Just because a death is telegraphed doesn't make it any less significant. It wasn't meant to really shock in the sense that "oh god Han died" it was more meant to establish that Kylo Ren isn't going to be redeemed like Vader. Honestly Han and Kylo's relationship on screen wasn't any more developed than Obi-Wan and Vader's relationship in A New Hope.
~ All the action scenes were fine but nothing more. I wasn't invested in any of it. Some kinda boring.
~ I also found the light saber fight to be kinda short and dull. Besides Kylo beating his chest their was nothing special or exciting about it.
Kylo wasn't beating his chest just for the sake of it. He was trying to shake off the pain of the giant wound Chewbacca put on him after he killed Solo.
~ Some weird moments between Rey and Finn like asking if she has a boyfriend or when Finn was going to take off in Maz's castle. That conversation just felt weird for people who haven't even know each other for a day.
Questions:
1) Starkiller Base. What a strange inclusion. I know it's there to be the deathstar superweapon that all the heroes need to blow up but what was it purpose? Was it Snoke's ultimate weapon to destroy the republic? Why did they fire it at those planet? Why did the not expect The Resistance to attack?
The attacked that planet because it was the current headquarters of the Republic. They weren't expecting the Resistance to attack because the Resistance didn't know about Starkiller base until Finn told them.
2) What's the state of Republic? I think I heard something about Republic sending General Leia to lead a resistance in the First Order territory. Did anybody heard something similar?
Opening crawl talks about the basics of the First Order, Republic, and Resistance. I think they kept the New Republic stuff on the down low to avoid boring Senate/political stuff like in the prequels
3) Why did Luke go through all this map bullshit? If he didn't want to be found why leave a map? He had to know The First Order would kill to find his location, right? Was he waiting to Rey was ready? This whole movie is his fault for being the typical cryptic Jedi asshole.
The movie goes out of its way to establish that Rey has some kind of connection to the Skywalker family (See: everything about how Rey got tons of visions from Anakin/Luke's lightsaber and is super Force sensitive). It's entirely possible that Rey could be related to Luke and Luke went into hiding until Rey was ready, similar to Obi-Wan and Luke's relationship in ANH
4) Are they really not going to explain how Maz got Anakin's light saber? Also why didn't she tell Han she had it?
Why do we need to know how Anakin's lightsaber got retrieved? Luke survived falling into a giant pit in Bespin, so I think the audience can just accept that the lightsaber landed somewhere and was found.
Characters:
Disappointing.
~General Hux and Supreme Leader Snoke are evil bad people! How interesting!
Did you have the same lack of feeling about Tarkin in ANH and Palpatine in ROTJ? Because that's exactly what they are as well.
Overall
As disappointing as I feared.
