My overall thoughts:
I loved it. It had the weird position of having both an extremely low bar to clear (be better than the prequels) and a high bar to clear (be as good as the OT) and I felt it did both. It felt like a Star Wars movie. It followed a good movie formula. It was the right mix of practical effects and CGI. They learned from the prequels.
There were some things I didn't like, and some things I am kind of holding judgement for because I think they will be addressed in VIII and IX. I'm not crazy about the latter in a movie like this, but overall things were so much better am I willing to be less nitpicky.
Loved:
The characters. I actually care about them. They have great chemistry, they're likable on their own, already it feels like it did when watching Luke, Han, and Leia during ANH. This was the biggest failing of the prequels and the biggest strength of the OT, so they've set it up for success right off the bat.
X-Wings. My biggest fanboy weakness is that I can be easily distracted with X-Wings being thrown into a movie. I don't need A-Wings or B-Wings, just give me the coolest one and go nuts!
The opening. Quickly get to the point of the story, show us the bad guys being bad, get this going right away and they did that.
Again, the real look of it. You're seeing the original cantina type aliens, original Jabba's Palace type aliens and droids. Real sets. You can see these differences better and effects should enhance these things, not replace them.
Liked:
Kylo. He's not just a rehashed Vader, instead we can see a villain on their own journey. Some might not like the dark force user being all emo, but I thought Driver pulled it off great. This guy being super emotional helps explain why he would have gone to the dark side in the first place. Then him killing his own father putting him over the edge also makes a lot of sense.
The humor. Some found it 'too jokey' but I thought it worked in real well. There was no shortage of jokey stuff in the OT and I feel it was well balanced. A lot of the comedic relief came from good dialogue and interaction or from BB-8 who basically provided the same relief that 3PO and R2 always did.
How they're setting up Rey. Absolutely has to be Luke's daughter (right?!) given the "cave scene" and what is effectively planted images in her head of where he was. Then with the whole 'now it is calling to you' seems to be the most obvious set up.
I don't have an issue with her matching Kylo. We already saw she is good with a bowstaff and can handle herself in hand-to-hand combat so its not like this is going from 0-100. We know that Kylo is hurt and like Vader v. Luke in Empire, he wasn't trying to kill her. But different from Vader v. Luke, Kylo is no Darth Vader so her getting the upper hand isn't out there in terms of belief.
Things scaled well. The battles were bigger, but not "shove so much into the screen we can't keep up" bigger.
Disliked:
Snoke and Phasma. Now Phasma was basically marketing setting up a character for failure because we were given the impression that this was some kind of spec ops (or whatever) badass Stormtrooper but instead it was a character with what, 2 minutes of screen time (maybe) who ostensibly is killed off-screen? What was the point? Snoke to me should have been referred to as only an off-screen entity, similar to the Emperor in ANH because he added another villain that doesn't really have anything to do with this part of the story. Hux and Kylo were enough IMO and then we can finally meet Snoke in the next part.
The Finn v. Stormtrooper lightsabre fight. Didn't need to happen. All it set up was to show how Finn could survive a fight with Kylo which as far as I can tell only happened to set up a misdirection in the trailers. There were other ways to get to the Rey-Ren showdown IMO.
I'm still not sure how I feel about it
Rey learning to use the Force so quickly. This seems like something they'll explain later, which I don't really care for, but I would have liked some indication she could do things without understanding it was, then when learning that Luke and the Jedi and all that were real it clicked. Now with my assumption that she's Luke's daughter and he presumably had the connection with her, then it makes sense that it triggered something. But I don't like how there was no learning experience or realization moment. It just went from 'the force is real' to 'I can use this pretty well' without any step in between.
But yeah, a solid Star Wars movie and a solid movie in general. JJ did good.
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