Was the hype justified?

Rating: 8/10 (3 January 2016)

I believe it was 3 years ago when the announcement came that Disney bought the rights to Star Wars and announced that they were making a new trilogy of movies. When I heard this, my thoughts were "this is a joke". I continued to hold that thought over that period of time and the hype surrounding the movie was unfathomable. I honestly did not see how it would be possible to continue after the events of Return of the Jedi.
Nevertheless I thought I would still watch the movie. To my surprise I actually liked it. They were actually able to come up with a decent story to continue. They also introduced new characters and made them the main characters rather than put the focus on the recurring characters which I thought was a good idea. I also liked the background of the characters. It did leave one or two unanswered questions which hopefully will be answered in the later movies. I liked J.J. Abrams's movies and once again he has delivered.
I'm still not quite sure if the hype is justified though. There have been a number of occasions when a movie has been bigged up, I end up going in and thinking it wasn't as great as people thought it was. In this case, however, my expectations were lowered. I can only hope that the other two movies to be released keeps up the standard.