I feel I am in the minority here, but I didn't like it. And I was excited (especially due to the good reviews and high praises), but definitely not overhyped.
My major gripe is that it was too much shooting and explosions and not enough character development. Also, the writing and dialogues felt somewhat cliched and tired. (I mean come ON! Destroying the death star for the third time?! Did they really have to fucking rehash the story... ) The old actors seemed (to me) like they were kind of phoning it in, as well.
I did like the new actors, however. Both the casting and their acting seemed good. The special effects were cool as well (ILM still have it, it seems
). And the action sequences were, for the most part, made well, too.
Specifically the Kylo Ren character, however, was especially bad. His motivation - he follows in Vader's footsteps. But even Vader came back to the light side at the end of Ep. VI. Or are they planning on retconning this? His mother is the leader of the Rebels and his uncle is the last of the Jedi. Why not follow in their steps instead? Also, when I heard Snout talking about the Ren riders I almost heard "Huzzah!" (like spoken from a true Knight of the Thorn
), especially considering how shitty his sword work seemed later on. Combined with the actor who played him, he really seems like a very non-threatening villain. And a big part of this are his interactions with Ray.
May be my memory is failing me, but I never recall being mentioned that light-sabre fighting is some innate ability of force sensitive people or that raw potential can overcome training. Actually in previous movies - Vader wiped the floor with Luke in Ep. V and arguably the most powerful force user ever (Anakin) lost to Obi-Wan in Ep. III, despite having trained for some 15 years at the time. And Kylo lost to Ray, who we've only seen fighting two unarmed thugs using a stick-like weapon? He is training for more than a decade and she found out she is force sensitive that very same day. I mean does she even need Luke - at this rate, in a week she will probably be farting out galaxies. Or, alternatively, Kylo is the shittiest force user who ever lived. And let's not forget - he also lost when instead of him reading her mind, she read his. In the force pull battle for Luke's sabre, Kylo lost again to Ray... Are they cray-cray? I know that JJ tried to cop out at the end with Snout saying that he needs to finish his training, but let's get real here - if he didn't learn the stuff in 15 years, it's doubtful he will do it in a couple of months.
In order to show us how unique and wonderful Ray is, JJ (or whoever wrote this) made Kylo seem pathetically weak. Compare that to Vader who seemed like a fucking juggernaut for most of the OT.
I won't even mention the cartoonish bad guys, the depressed R2D2, and some other stuff.
Now don't get me wrong - on its own I would have probably liked it better, but in light of the Star Wars franchise, where we've seen practically the same story told better, it just fell flat IMO. If it had more of its own story, with less action sequences and more fleshed out characters, it could have worked much better for me. As it stands, I am left hoping that the next episode will be just that, but I will not be going to the cinema to see it, that's for sure.
tl;dr not worth it - wait for the dvd/bluray