The negative comments are off, because nitpicking about
lineage and politics and who had what baby, or how much it's
like Ep 4 isn't relevant. None of those are the issues with
the movie.

The praise is off, because this movie isn't in the same planet
as 4,5,6 in any basic measure of filmmaking: pacing is hokey,
the interactions are mostly hokey, the story is clumsy.

It's a hokey, clumsy, awkward movie.

A very good, fun, beautiful, hokey, clumsy movie.

But it lacks the sheen of the 4,5,6. There's no real excuse
for that, so people who love the movie need to stop trying
to explain it with "well, it set everything up well." I don't
care. It was hokey. That's doesn't mean it's bad. But it's
a hokey dokey movie with very clumsy order of events.

Everything feels like a film where the point is to fit as
much interesting shit as possible into two hours+. It doesn't
feel like there are characters who autonomously and
organically stumble on interesting events because they operate
in an interesting world. That is how the original trilogy was.
There were actual characters dealing with stuff. They happened
to come together. And these cool things unfolded.

This movie lacked that.

This is why none of the performances are convincing: no one
ever really looks surprised, because they aren't. The actors
act like they are in a Star Wars movie. They know it. We know
it. And so they don't really come across as convincing people
(Finn comes close). It's just bunch of charismatic people
(and good actors) being shuttled between super important
events.

The old characters were the worst, because none of the give
a shit anymore. Having them play such a big role was a HUGE
mistake story-wise. They all mailed in their performances
because they don't care. Like, how passionate do you think
Fisher and Ford were in doing that scene about their breakup?
Both looked like they wanted nothing to do with it.

This trilogy is going to be fun, but Star Wars is done as
being interesting or relevant. The mythology is dead.

In some ways, the clumsiness of this movie makes me rethink
how bad the prequels were. Maybe pulling this off is just
difficult. And so maybe we were just too hard on Lucas.