Engaging plot with extreme nostalgia

Rating: 9/10 (23 December 2015)

-------------------------USELESS RANTING TO "STAR WARS FANS"--------------------------- Before I start my opinion I would like to address the rest of the users that have decided to rate the movie less than 5 stars; If you're rating this under 5 stars you're either a Star Trek groupie or a very cynical bitter person. There were some issues in the movie I will admit however nothing can be perfect.
I'm a "younger" viewer with consideration I only got to see Episode III in theaters before this, I appreciate that Disney is trying to re-kindle a fire in the youth of today. To the people/person saying that this movie is simply just a rip-off of Episode IV, NO, it's not; In the fourth episode there are a plentiful amount of differences and to say that Disney would completely rip off a movie from the same series is extremely ignorant. Yes, Disney has been caught ripping off movies before but they could not possibly be ignorant enough to "rip off" a complete plot from the same series. Most points that I've seen claiming that it's ripping off of Episode IV would be compared to claiming that EVERY movie EVER created with a similar plot to IV is a rip off; I'm sorry to burst your bubble but in the 21st century original movies are no longer made, all movies can be considered "rip offs". Secondly, to those claiming that the CGI effects are at par with the first Star Wars movie is an over exaggeration at minimum. I can tell you now that when people go see the movie they're not going to be looking for the fishing line holding up the Death Star, because there is no model of the Death Star, that's why it's CGI. You can't even claim that the CGI is equivalent because when the first movie came out CGI was at an extremely primitive form compared to today. Thirdly, yes, Disney over-played the nostalgia card, but not to the point that it beat you to death and made you hate the characters or editing styles from the original movies. I see it this way: 1) They played a small movie trailer with barely any information. 2) The public sent out excited and enthusiastic replies upon the movie immediately. 3) Disney replied with trying to add features from the original trilogy to re-kindle your teenage love for Star Wars. 4) Instead of being thanked for the nostalgia trip they're hated for it.* WHAT?! The nostalgia emotion in the movie was near drugs and you hate them for it? That doesn't make sense. The list of things that people need to be a little softer to the touch with can go on forever but these three definitely needed to be addressed.
In summary thank the industry for allowing your children to feel the same emotions as you did when you were their age.
----------------------------------------ACTUAL REVIEW------------------------------------------ I loved the classic movie style that Star Wars has always portrayed adding small little features to the movie that really allowed it to fit in to the universe. Simply adding the scrolling text (which was mandatory) at the beginning and slight little fades in and out of scenes really enhanced the feeling of "Yep, this is Star Wars". In the beginning I was a little confused about the whole plot and what was playing out but it mostly tied together at the end, so facing a bit of confusion for maybe an hour trying to remember what happened at the beginning was a struggle but definitely watching it through again would help. I also thought that they should've done more with Maz since she seems to be the wise Yoda equivalent for this epilogued trilogy, and I wished that going to her planet could've been slightly more prefaced or explained (backstory or simple monologue). As the characters came together it also caught me off guard at some major climax points during the movie with random scene changes in what seemed to be a pretty epic battle or sequence of events. They did a great job keeping me on the edge of my seat though, I was literally on the edge of my seat for 20 minutes or so from suspense. I thought that there was a ton of action keeping the audience or at least me engaged as well, I'm not a fan of the long monologues I would rather back stories be played out in some sort of suspense.
Character balancing I felt was solid except Fin should not have been able to be as proficient as he was with a lightsaber unless there will be an explanation to that in a later movie. I thought the graphics were great, I really noticed them in the lightsaber battle scene near the end where you could tell that Kylo's beam was jagged while, previously Luke Skywalker's, Rey's lightsaber was a solid blue with no jagged edges. All together I enjoyed the movie and the fact that you just needed to know the basic information on the previous movies to still enjoy the seventh.
All together a really great movie, kept me wanting more while I was watching hoping that it wouldn't end. But when the movie did end I was satisfied. I will probably go see this movie again just because I've always loved Star Wars but I could easily see just a regular movie watcher going to see the movie again.