I liked it more watching it at home

Rating: 10/10 (17 April 2016)

I saw this with my son on opening day and again a couple days later, thought it was pretty good, funny, exciting and nostalgic. At the time I would have given it a 7 out of 10 stars but to be honest most of that rating was because it was star wars, I expected a little more in the theaters. I saw the first one when I was 8 years old back in '77 at a little theater on university in Ann Arbor which is now a mall I think. Been a star wars fan ever since. The opening credits are the same; 'a long time ago ...' looks exactly the same, 'Star Wars' with the john williams theme looks exactly the same, a planet with a star destroyer silhouette at first looks like a paper cutout, all of it I expected more. I think that I carried this disappointment for the next couple of hours and it affected my opinion of the movie. Of course I bought the movie the day it came out on DVD, watched all the bonus features and then the movie on blue ray and DVD, it's even playing now as I type this, I really wish there were more bonus features, which is something that I rarely say. Now having seen it several times I give it a solid on it's own 9 out of 10, the extra point is just because it's star wars. The actors are engaging, emotional and complex, much better than the original star wars, even Han Solo is better 'I never ask that question 'till after I've done it' the look on his face is awesome. The main character in this movie carries it better than Luke did, she has a great deal of depth and charisma whereas Luke was more a whiny kid 'but I was going to toshi station to pick up some power converters' even at 8 years old I thought he was whiny. A lot of little things they put in there I was happy for; the sound of the millennium falcon not going into hyper drive, Han Solo being captured (they really should make a figurine with his hands on his head) the look on Chewy's face in the copilots seat near the end of the movie, that they found a role for Simon Pegg, loved Daniel Craig's part and that a couple of star wars nerds had made a droid and they were given a role in the movie. No idea why but I like seeing admiral ackbar. One of my favorite little things was the millennium falcon scraping a piece of metal during the first spaceship fight. Originally I was kind of agreeing with bad reviews that I was reading about all the similarities with the other star wars movies but some of them go a bit too far; there's tie fighters in this movie, there were tie fighters in the others, they talk about the force in this movie ... just shut up and watch it on it's own, it's an awesome movie. The bad guy is full of anger and rage, the heroine is full of hope and promise, that's the only similarity that matters, a fight between the dark side and the light side, that's what all these movies are about and they did a wonderful job at it. It's beautiful, fun and nostalgic.