2nd best Star Wars so far

Rating: 10/10 (18 December 2015)

With Empire Strikes Back being my all time favorite movie, loving the entire original trilogy and being a huge fan of the franchise, seeing this one was exactly what I wanted after Return of the Jedi. This is the Star Wars movie we have been wanting since 1983. The reason I gave it a 10/10 after watching it once is because I can't find anything I didn't like. I am going to watch it again tomorrow and after that probably some more times and maybe my opinion will have changed but everything in it was great.
To begin my list of things I loved are the characters, old and new. Rey exceeded my expectations and is my favorite female protagonist character since Sarah Conner in T2. She made me care so much for her and we see a great character arc. Finn is a very funny and good character who also shows a great emotional change throughout the movie and has a few funny moments that a made the entire theater laugh. Harrison Ford has the time of his life recreating Han Solo and he knocks it out of the park. His banter with Chewie is classic and even some good new things. Kylo Ren was my most anticipated character for this movie seeing that he would succeed my all time favorite movie character Darth Vader. What can I say, he's very great, epic, the new lightsaber is really cool and he makes it that way. Then we have Poe Dameron who I feel was underused, he's not much in the movie and I just wanted to see more from him but maybe we'll get it in Episode VIII. Snoke was a bit like the emperor and also great for the little part he was in there. Phasma looked promising but had hardly any screen time. Of course I was as surprised as others about BB-8, people thought he could've been like Jar Jar but he was a lot like R2 and very funny.
Enough about the characters, the best thing of the movie was the immense use of practical effects. We know that JJ likes to make the movie real and not use a lot of CGI and it shows. Everything in this movie looks so good and real and original that it blew my mind. The cinematography was mindblowingly good and I really felt that we were again in that galaxy far far away of the originals. If I nitpick a little bit, I would say that there are some CGI moments where it shows it's CGI but I'm fine with it. All action scenes were filmed beautifully and made me feel nervous for what would happen, I caught myself reacting with my face to what happened on screen because I was really invested. All explosions are real explosions which makes for more realism and excitement. I should also give credit to the costume design department, everyone in this movie was dressed perfectly. The new stormtroopers look great, the rebels have nice suits and our main characters are dressed just right.
Then as far as story goes, from the moment the text-crawl starts you know this is going to be a great one, no silly political things of the prequels but just good old Star Wars. They tell us what is going on and it just makes sense with this being 30 years after Return of the Jedi. I won't spoil anything but if you're a fan of the originals, this story is just what you want from a new Star Wars movie. And when the movie ends all you want is Episode VIII to start, that is one of the best things a Star Wars movie could do, like they did in Empire Strikes Back, to end with the public wanting more.
What can I say more, I am a huge Star Wars fan and this movie did everything right for me, I am going to watch this multiple times in cinemas and even more after on Blu-Ray. Go watch this movie and enjoy it!