I finally saw it today. It was not as good as it could have been, but also not as bad. Just some thoughts....

-I guess Luke was dead serious when he said he wasn't going to train anymore Jedi. Like, literally. 
-I kind of liked the mind meld thing Snoke did with Ren and Rey. It was pretty cool. 
-It was a two and a half hour movie and it feels like a lot happened but not a lot happened at the same time. It was kind of weird. Maybe the jumping so often between scenes. 
-Those crystal fox/dog things were neat. I wanted to take one home with me. As cold as it's about to get up here, it would feel right at home. 
-The humor in some parts was typical, in others it seemed forced. Similar to the 2nd and 3rd Transformers movies. The people my generation and older (and some of the younger) watching these movies don't need to have everything handed to us, especially what passes for humor these days. Subtle is always better. Or at least not quite so blatant or forced. 
-With Luke hanging out with the other dead Jedi and Carrie Fisher gone, it'll be interesting to see how they do this going into the third movie. I read somewhere that the third one was supposed to be her possible last hurrah or finale of some sort, like this one was for Luke. I guess we'll see. 

-It was sad to watch this knowing Carrie Fisher won't be back IRL (maybe CGI long enough to have a proper send off dying in battle or something.) The end of an era for me. Princess Leia was the only princess I ever wanted to be. She was bad [BLEEP] and didn't take any crap from anyone and she was who my five year old self wanted to be. Cinderella and Snow White could go to hell for all I cared. 
-The only reason people are going on about Carrie being best supporting actress is because she died. The same thing happened when Heath Ledger died and people wanted him to win best actor. He deserved it, she didn't IMHO. There isn't enough material there to warrant it unless the rest of the actresses nominated just truly suck. 

I think it's kind of cool that a movie franchise I fell in love with at the age of five is still relevant and can be enjoyed 40 years later. There are some hiccups, sure, but I still get chills when I see the word scrawl and hear that music at the start of every movie.

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