Nooooooo!

Rating: 7/10 (20 December 2015)

"Nooooo!!" was my reaction (aloud in the theater) when the film ended... I spent all the film waiting for Luke to be found only for him to not even utter a single word...!! Arg!!! Where was the "The force is strong in my family, etc" from the trailers....?
My expectations had not been high for this film, but had been raised by the deceptive trailers... I then prepared for the film by re-watching all 6 films, starting with Episode 1. What a delight watching all those films was... I re-discovered the prequels and watched them with new admiration. The prequels may not be what people wanted or liked, but they are truly superb films, if just for the scenery and imagination!
As for Episode7, where was the innovation? Just a copy of A New Hope. The story did not move forwards. My first disappointment was "Did it really take only 30 years for the new Republic to lose again to the new First Order, after the victory in Return of the Jedi, and to go back to the same situation of a rebellion, now called "resistance"? And wasn't Anakin and/or Luke supposed to bring back "Balance to the Force"... Whatever happened to all that, if we are left with the same type of world we had when ANH began?
My hope throughout the film was the finding of Luke... something interesting, I thought, might give a twist to the story there... Alas, when he is finally found, not even a word!!
(And after all the copying of the original Star Wars, we did not finish with the typical ending of all previous films: the characters looking out --as in Empire SB or Attack of the C.-- or facing --as in Episodes 1,3,4,6--.... ) Not that the latter bothers me so much (although it WOULD have kept the original structure of the SW films; which reminds me that I don't recall in this new film the innovative visual transitions between scenes that the original SW films had, and which I loved --will need to check on that if I see it again).
But I am bothered by the last scene... Will Episode 8 pick up exactly at that scene? I doubt it... I would have loved to have heard Luke's reaction to Rey and his lightsaber... And thus, that left me highly disappointed with a "Nooooooo!" akin to all the "noooooos" in the former Star Wars films...
Also, the Force didn't feel as magical as it should have... Ben Solo aka Kylo Ren seemed contrived to me...
And why not call him Jacen Solo as in the Expanded Universe...? I know Disney said they would not follow the EU, but at least some things they could have kept the same... after all, some of us spent years and years reading novels which had a seal of approval from Lucas, only for all that to be trashed away in one stroke... I also wonder if in future films we will find out more about who Max von Sydow's character was...
To be fair, the film had plenty of action and some fun, nostalgic, scenes, and I enjoyed seeing Han and Chewie again in the Millennium Falcon (Han, Chewie and the Falcon were the highlights for me). It is a fun film and well made with some nice characters (i.e. Rey) but overall it was a disappointment, even with my initial low expectations.
I miss Lucas, wooden dialogues and all....