Very excellent film. Super enjoyable. Great cast. Cool action scenes. It was funny and kept my interest, and a film I am planning to watch again as soon as I'm able too.
But it wouldn't be a Star Wars film if it was nitpicked like crazy, right?
! The Good
! All the new protagonists are great. Rey, Finn, and Poe are all very excellent characters. Super excited to see more of them.
! I want to make it clear I really like Rey. Her actress is great, and her character was awesome. She's a badass. And I loved that she was great with machinery; her background in scavenging made that make sense. Her interactions with Finn, Han, and even Kylo were excellent. There's a lot of chemistry there. Her yearning to stay on her home planet didn't feel clawing or forced, and her emotional beats felt earned. When she's upset, it was earned for her to be upset because something happened. When she's afraid, the fear is sold. There's just one scene I didn't buy, but everything else was spot on.
! Finn's very likable, andprobably the closest of all the characters to match up to being the Luke/Han hybrid character, and I say that in a very good way. He got Luke's heroicism, especially if it involves saving a pretty girl, and Han's ability to BS his way in and out of any situation. He's a good person at heart, but his first instinct is survival. He's a stormtrooper so he's pretty good with a blaster, but I like that whenever he held the lightsaber he wasn't adept in using it. And he's great with the rest of the cast.
! Poe's role was near perfect. He's the very definition of less is more, because he wasn't in the movie too much, but the scenes he was in, he nailed. He's funny, kind, charismatic but not in a cocky way. I'm going to go into "Mary Sue" types later, but given he played a small role so far, I think he was near perfect without feeling like a Mary Sue. I also really appreciate in a world where everything is a freaking love triangle, Poe wasn't set up to be part of one. That's super refreshing. The bromance with Finn was excellent.
! Kylo Ren's warming up to me. I felt Adam Driver's confliction within his character, and while the big climatic scene was telegraphed, I think the emotional beat was earned just because of how his character was written. I'm just hoping he's able to complete his training, and I'm genuinely curious as to where his story is going and where his story will end. And his moment where that conflict was "resolved" was chilling.
! Han Solo's role was excellent. At first I was wondering how he ended up where he ended up at the start of the film, but right away it's explained or heavily implied as to what happened and all of a sudden the depth of his characterization went from "I can't believe this is where Han ended up" to "I'm totally onboard to where he's ended up". And as mentioned, he's great when interacting with the new blood. And his scenes with Leia were done in good taste as well given what happened in between the films. It wasn't pandering and felt genuine. The Bad
! Why is Kylo Ren's hair Black? That makes no sense.
! I wasn't a fan of how well adjusted Rey became with the Force at the end. There's a number of factors why.
! The first was the whole Mary Sue aspect. She's already a great machinist (though I guess Anikin/Luke were also excellent Pilots too), and everyone's fairly adept with a blaster. But her talent in using the force was unlike anything seen in any of the previous films, in the prequels or the original trilogy, and Anakin/Luke were supposed to be super special, but Rey just took it to another level. I also would have even bought her being able to use a Jedi Mind Trick on a Stormtrooper, but then we get that ending scene.
! The ending scene is the second and my biggest issue with it. I don't care that Kylo was injured, apparently Rey focusing on the Force allows her to become much more adept in combat and defeat Kylo in a lightsaber duel? Maybe I'm misunderstanding the Force, but to quote the film, "That's not how the Force works". I would've bought the two trying to use the Force on each other, and her winning out due to her raw power or something, but not winning via a duel with a lightsaber. Even if she is adept in combat due to her staff weapon as shown in the beginning, she was losing at the beginning which implies Kylo despite the injuries was the better fighter. It was her tapping into the Force that made her better though?
! The third and final factor the way she used he Force too, she was "reminded" that the Force exists, and then tapped its power? People hate on the prequels, but I think the Midichlorians are a better concept than how the Force was used in this film. The Nitpicky
! Funny enough, I think using a Death Star 3.0 was fine. The plan took much more than "shoot this one part of the ship", which I think made it worthwhile and not feel like a retread. That said, I do think that what the Death Star 3.0 failed to do was have a scene that lived up to the Build up of the Death Star. When the Death Star was used, it was used on Leia's home planet, so there was an emotional attachment there watching the planet be destroyed. Watching multiple planets be destroyed showed the bigger/better/wow factors, but there wasn't an emotional attachment to the scene. I'd argue even the build up to it's use wasn't as great, though I did like the Hitler speech, primarily because I joked about the Hitler salute and it actually happened in the film. I guess this should be in the bad column, but it's not that big of an issue for me.
! The prequels kinda ruined Episode 4 for the same reason, but when Finn and Poe were escaping, why isn't there a laser in the docking bay that could just blow up the Tie Fighter instead of having stormtroopers shoot at it?
! Throughout the film, I thought Snoke was a "fallen Jedi" that learned how to become a Ghost like Obi-Wan. i didn't realize he was a hologram until I started reading up on the film later. All in all, I wish we got a better picture on how Snoke converted Kylo Ren to the Dark Side. It would've been easier to buy Kylo Ren's inner conflict.
! Also, I wonder why Obi-Wan or Anakin isn't appearing to Kylo Ren to snap him out of it.
! Force nitpick. Maybe Kylo Ren and Snoke just isn't trained on this, and the other films are equally guilty of this as well, but why could Kylo Ren use the force to find Rey? Especially if "the force is strong within her", which should be something that can be sensed.
! The final ending shot should've ended on a closeup of the character's faces, not a panning shot at the end. in fact, that whole scene felt a bit dragged out. My theater was a rambunctious crowd, but no one cheered when Luke finally was "on screen". That ending could have been tighter, and there were a few scenes like that, and I think they were extended precisely because they expected the fans to be screaming/squeeing. The one time the crowd did cheer but the scene wasn't "pausing" for the character was C-3PO.
! When on the Han's ship and the rabid aliens are loose, Finn should have died. Nobody else got dragged the same way Finn did. They died right away. That took me out of the scene.
! Why didn't more people comfort Chewy at the end? Poor Chewy…