A good follow-up for the Saga and a nice bridging job for the future

Rating: 8/10 (18 December 2015)

Writer and director made a good job of undertaking the enormous job of shooting a decent sequel to the Saga created piece by piece in the last 40 years. It is not easy for a 135 minute movie, 1) to introduce a new future, 2) introduce a new generation of heroes and villains, 3) while making a believable follow-up connecting past and present.
Kudos to Kasdan, J.J. Abrams (and Arndt) for a successful entry into a new chapter of this great Saga. As anyone will agree, Star Wars is almost a new-age religion, with its own deep symbols, history, special logic and mythology. Upon very high expectation of hundreds of millions of people around the world, the movie is a success by every measure.
As a gen-Xer, with two kids, we enjoyed all 135 minutes of it. Rey is a gem, Finn and Poe are doing their jobs fine. Old guard (Leia and Luke) is so-so but Ford is a better than expected Han Solo after so many years.
My kids (13 and 9) know the whole Saga, I mean every bit of it and they did not find any character or fact misplaced. Some interesting notes:
1- Abrams made clever use of old and well known memes from the earlier films. Like the bar full of weird characters, a planet similar to Death Star destroyed similarly, (this time pilot Poe leading the Red Team), Kylo Ren in a similar role to Darth Vader, a new character called Snoke instead of Palpatin as the baddest bad etc. Adam Driver as the new villain Kylo is a fine casting choice but not yet mature. He needs more evil ingredient inserted in him before the next movie. (He could spend some time with Dr. Kissinger while he is alive!)
2- The viewer immediately understands that Rey has Jedi powers unknown to her. We know that she has the Force in her, but she is ignorant of all this, so that adds to the story flow immensely.
3- Finn represents all the new viewers who do not know anything about the past history. Rey represent kids like mine who know everything about Star Wars but do not yet feel part of it. Very clever use of new characters.
4- Han Solo and the old guard like Chewie, R2-D2, C-3PO, Leia etc connect with the old generation of Star Wars fans and act like a bridge to the next generation.
I congratulate the team who made this movie happen.