I finally watch the movie this weekend, took me a while to find a night with a babysitter. And I had completely avoided spoilers even previews ahead of time, all I knew were the old characters were back, and it started on a desert planet that wasn't Tatooine.
I haven't done a movie review before but I feel like doing one for this movie.
I liked the story, and how they integrated the old and new casts, and the overall tone of the movie was allot better than I/II/III. But I found the character development to be quite a bit weaker than any of the other movies.
Finn and BB8 were perfect characters, no problem at all
The old characters did not need development and were well used, no problem at all.
If I wanted to nitpick my complaints would be
If Rey was going to pick up on the force that quickly they needed to foreshadow it more. (accidental telekinesis while scavenging, maybe give Maz the ability to use the mind trick or something, so she was emulating something she had seen when she left the cell). I just didn't like that she went from thinking Luke and the Jedi were myths and Jedi mind trick and Force Pull in a matter of days.
Poe needed a way bigger role, I think if he had suddenly reappeared at the scavenger camp right as the tie fighters were about to attack it would have taken nothing away from the plot, and they could have given him 10 extra minutes for screen time, for a character we probably needed to get to know better.
The whole scene with Kylo and Han would have been better if that was the first time they showed his face. It would have made it allot more emotional IMO, which that scene needed, and maybe a bit less development of the Kylo chartacter would have given them more story to work with in the future.
The lightsaber scene was a little too much. The should have either cut it really short and had Rey/Finn make a lucky escape or had Chewies shot cripple Kylo allot worse, so it would be believable that they survived against a well trained Sith.
I don't think the First Order needed to be that powerful that early in the trilogy, having them as an upstart collecting the scattered remnants of the dark side and emperial army probably would have been an more entertaining plot device, than showing us there's a bigger badder power than the empire that already took over 30 years later. But maybe the next two movies will prove me wrong about that. It just seemed to me the Star powered planet gun did nothing to drive the plot, they should have just made the whole thing about race to capture the droid, then the rescue of the girl, there was enough movie there and it would have given them the opportunity develop the First Order as a growing threat.
There were also times where is seemed like Abrams was poking a bit of fun at old movies, which I did not like for a movie that was trying to add to their story. Oddly he did the same thing with Star Trek and I really liked the way he used it for a reboot, not sure why I took it differently with a continuation.
Star Wars is a funny series, because all 7 of the moives had better stories to tell and better characters than the actual movies themselves. I'd probably give this one a 8 /10, and say it's a movie you can't not watch. The Legend is still bigger than the movies themselves, but it doesn't have the obvious flaws that Ep I and Ep III had.
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