Thin plot, nice wrap up for fans, pace too fast.

Rating: 6/10 (20 December 2015)

As a fan, I really enjoyed getting a wrap up of the old movies, by bringing in old characters and seamlessly introducing new characters. Doing this I think they should have a nice foundation for developing the story further. They also managed to keep a distance to I-III, and rather build on the world of IV-VI, and not introduce conflicting information.
Although, speaking of story, while I watched I felt something was missing, but unfortunately I didn't realize what is was before walking home. There was almost no plot to speak of, just moving from suspenseful scene to suspenseful scene. In that aspect, you didn't get to know the new characters very well, and in fact, I-III was better.
But it's not all bad, in some way they managed to capture the spirit of the old movies, and fixing some of the mistakes, which leaves you longing for more. Details like believable alien characters, non disturbing CGI, storm troopers that can actually aim and know battle tactics (to a degree).
They also managed to find a balance between excessive humor (I-III) and too serious (IV-VI) and you didn't end up with any character to hate for it.
Though, I did end up hating one. Kylo Ren. First of, another guy with a mask and a distorted voice? Boring! No wait, he removes his mask? ... I preferred him with the mask on. It got very sentimental at that point, but with so little story, boring, unlike the struggle we saw through I- III with Anakin.
And a trained padawan gets defeated by an untrained force sensitive and a storm trooper in a light saber fight? That felt very unbelievable. Granted, Kylo Ren was emotionally unstable and lacking in focus and control (like Anakin, and to a degree Luke), but obviously he was stronger than Ray.
And the way Ray discovered her abilities as quickly as she did was also quite disturbing, considering the learning curve of Jedi's before her, but I suppose that fast paced movies, comes fast paced learning. I'll let this slide though, if we will discover that Rey is the most force sensitive being that ever existed in further movies.
In summation, content with the execution, disappointed by the lack of story.