Pretty much everything I love flows from my love of the original trilogy, and this didn't disappoint.

Great action and great continuation of the world creation. I did like that they just through the audience into the new state of affairs, with only the minimal explanation of stuff in the opening crawl. Finn, Rey, and Kylo were all great characters. Good intro to Poe, Phasma, and General Hux (Gleason did a solid job at channelin Tarkin). Happy as Hell to see Han and Chewie get their shine. Best action sequence was the first Falcon chase. Followed by the lightsaber fight in the forest.

Also great was how they mixed the practical effects with the new digital technology. Looked pretty damn seamless in most cases.

Okay, now a for a few things, I had... minor issues with. They've been covered by other above, but I'll say them again anyway. First, they really didn't give Oscar Isaac that much to do, and as a result, not that much reason to care about him. And as a result, I really didn't feel much about his mission to blow this version of the Death Star. There's an interesting character there, but I wanted more. The same went for Christie and Gleason on the First Order side. I imagine they're going to flesh them out in the sequels.

Second issue was that it really was just about the exact same film as A New Hope. Just about all the same story beats and everything. Hey, I get it, the first one worked for a reason, so there's something to be said for following that template to introduce a new generation to this stuff. But it's part of the reason why I didn't feel much about this new version of the Death Star, although I will admit a Death Planet that create energy by destroying stars in pretty cool. But then the X-Wings fighting to blow the thing up was fairly lackluster. Like, there was very little of the tension that was in the same sequence in A New Hope.

But I did enjoy it and will be seeing it again. A few times. I've heard there's a theater in San Jose where they're showing it in 70mm (the only place west of Iowa where they're doing it), so I'm going to find a way to check it out. If nothing else, I went to catch it in my favorite movie house in Oakland, rather than a multiplex (where I saw it last night).

One more note that's neither negative or positive: Watching this made me feel really old. Or, more specifically, seeing Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and Mark Hamil in this film made me feel really old. These are literally the first heroes of my youth, and seeing them hobble around the screen, after years of hard living, was... something else.