I've seen it twice now.  Huge fan of the originals as I was a toddler during the early 80's and I watched the hell out of them to the point that I could recite every line of dialogue verbatim as it was happening and probably still could.  I made my wife watch 4 thru 6 in November as she had never seen them and actually that was also my first time re-watching them in many years. 

 

Impressions after leaving the theater on the first showing:

 

The story and the emotional connections between characters (specifically Finn and Rey) felt rushed to me.  Also, Han's death felt rushed because there was no development of Han's and Kylo's relationship other than it being explained that they were father and son.  The disappointment I felt when Han was killed trumped any sort of touching emotional connection they were trying to demonstrate between father and son with Han touching his face before he fell.  I'm sure they were trying to make you hate Kylo because of it, but I think they failed in that at least with me.  It was more disappointment that they would kill Han off.  I realize that the blame lies with Harrison Ford because I believe it's come out that he told them this was his last Star Wars movie so they needed to figure out how to carry on without Han Solo.  I just felt like if Han had to die, it would have been better for it to happen in 8 or 9 instead of here so they could develop the father/son relationship a bit more.  To me, this was really selfish on Harrison's part considering what the franchise did for him.  I know he wanted out back in Empire and ROTJ as well.

 

The music was not as prominent and/or as good as it was in the original trilogy.  I'm not sure how else to describe it.  The music in the original trilogy and to a lesser extent the prequels was very good if not perfect.  The music in the original trilogy can, by itself, pull on me emotionally.  I left the theater thinking that the music didn't really do anything to or for me in this movie.  That may seem trivial to some, but that was kind of a big deal to me.  They could have re-used some of the tracks from the original trilogy (Imperial March anyone?) or modified them slightly and I would have been A-OK with that.

 

I didn't like the Maz character for a number of reasons.  I'm sure one of them was because she was one of the few CGI characters, but it was more than that.  The "all-knowing, all-wise" type character without backstory doesn't usually do it for me.  Yoda worked being an aged Jedi Master and before he ever appeared on screen you knew he was the one who trained Obi-wan so they already laid the ground work with Obi-wan's abilities and his mentioning that Yoda was his teacher.  Maybe they'll bring Maz back and more will be explained, but I can't help hoping that they don't.  I realize her race lives a long time and that she's 1,000 years old or whatever, but that's not enough to explain it at least for me.  I suppose they'll have to at least explain how she got the lightsaber.  Also, Kylo seemed kind of emo to me which was kind of annoying.  I guess having a different spin on a Star Wars villain is ok though.  

 

The disappearance of Poe from the Tie Fighter wreckage seemed weird and felt like weak writing for him to reappear later with one or two lines of explanation.  I haven't confirmed this, but my buddy told me a few days after we saw the movie that he read that Poe was originally supposed to die there and they ended up writing him back in after that scene was filmed which is why it felt that way.  If that's true I'm glad they decided not to end Poe there and write him back in, but it confirms to me why I felt it was weak writing at the time.

 

The story as a whole borrowed heavily from A New Hope.  I'm not sure how anyone could deny that.  This was clearly more of a copy of A New Hope than ROTJ was.  Just because they both had Death Stars?  That seems like the most basic of comparisons between the two.  The Force Awakens parallels A New Hope on so many levels.  And although the Star Killer base was much more powerful than either of the Death Stars, it didn't feel as menacing for some reason and was destroyed rather easily just like its predecessors.  How many times are we going to allow a small star fighter to destroy such a consolidation of power?  The whole Star Killer problem seemed so "ho hum, let's go blow this thing up" to me.  Maybe it comes back to the music not being as good as it should or could have been.  Also, I really missed the 20th Century Fox lead in prior to the opening song and story scroll.  Unfortunately, it will never happen again with Disney owning it now.  (minutiae, I know)

 

Overall I did like the movie despite my long write up of negatives here.  It was immediately better than any of the prequels, but I don't think any current or future Star Wars movie will ever live up to the originals.  Unless you grew up in the 90's or after and you don't have the emotional connection to the original trilogy like I and many others do.  

 

When I saw it for the second time, I left liking it more than I did the first time.  Not that I didn't like it to begin with.  I really liked the focus on staying away from CGI characters as much as possible.  The music didn't seem as bad as I made it out to be but it was still clearly not featured as prominently as it had been in previous movies and I don' think that's a good thing.  I still think if Han could have died in 8 or 9 it could have been done in a more climactic way.  I understand it's hard for them to build up one relationship in one movie that focuses on so many main characters, so again the blame falls squarely on Harrison for this.  Finn and Rey's rush to an emotional connection didn't seem to bother me as much the second time around.  I'll probably see it at least one more time in the theater before buying the movie when it's available.  

 

One line of text that I picked up on the second time around between Hux and another officer (maybe it was Kylo) was that Snoke instructed them to capture the droid or destroy it meaning that Snoke's motive to find Luke isn't as strong as Kylo's.  I don't think Kylo would have been ok with destroying the droid at that time, since he wasn't aware of Rey at that moment.  I know this might not end up meaning anything, I just found it interesting that this display of their motives/goals not being 100% aligned was interesting.

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