Surprisingly good

Rating: 8/10 (22 December 2015)

Minor spoilers ahead.
I confess that the move to Disney made me uneasy with the new films. I am also a huge fan of the Expanded Universe (EU) and I'd love to see characters like Kyle Katarn in the sequences.
Yet Disney delivered something better than I expected. It feels different, more mature, if you will.
First, let's get the main context out of the way: I'd say that the plot has two protagonists rather than one. We start with the story of Finn and later we bump into Rey. Both are important, and both have different lives and prospects. Finn is a stormtrooper who had enough and decides to leave. Rey is stuck in a planet waiting for someone that will probably never return, so she is afraid to leave and miss it. But Finn appears and they are forced to take action.
We see the old heroes again. Han Solo and Chewbacca are important characters and they bind the story together. Time has passed and many things changed, the jedis are but an almost forgotten memory and the First Order (which is the equivalent of the EU's Remnants) is a new threat.
Many people say this is the same story from Ep IV. There are many similarities but I disagree. Rey is an unwilling hero. She didn't lost everything, she never had anything to start with. Finn is not a mercenary or a pilot or anyone important originally. He is fleeing for his life and then he is forced to turn back and face his fears. The sequence of events is not the same. They can be similar, but they are different in many aspects too. It is not the same.
The First Order created a massive space station called Starkiller. The true fans know that name. It is like the Death Star, yes, but I wonder if they took some ideas from EU too because it also is like Star Forge from the "Knights of the Old Republic" game. This new weapon is not a huge ball of steel as before, it is a weapon and power plant nested deep into a planet. When the heroes arrive, they fly through the surface covered with trees and snow. The Starkiller has a gravitational pull and an atmosphere, just like a planet. It is far less fantastic than the Death Star.
Then comes Kylo Ren, which is a very interesting character. He is not plain evil. He is a disturbed person and he thinks he is doing something important. And although Kylo Ren is powerful, he is not invincible. Ren is like a guy who was trained to use the force but his skills are not as good as he likes to make people think. And he is constantly frustrated by the failures on his plans.
The stormtroopers look more intelligent, a lot less clumsy and closer to what soldiers should look like. One of them fights Finn with a melee weapon, and Finn can handle it, which means they are trained at some point. They actually manage to hit people with blasters. And they are organised. Finn is almost hysterical when he is attempting to flee. They go after Rey and Finn and for every change of plans they have a responsive course of action. They are feared by some, and whenever they appear, destruction issues. In this film the stormtroopers destroy at least two settlements and the outcome is not pretty. It looks more real than in previous films.
There are lightsaber duels, but don't expect Qui-Gon Jinn's professional fighting style. It is not acrobatic beauty, it feels more like a real duel. They get tired, they make clumsy movements, they look like they try hard to survive and end the fight. I really liked it.
Also, no more childish jokes. No Jar Jar Binks and ewoks on dubious flying devices. There are some funny moments like when Kylo Ren is having a rage outburst and two stormtroopers decide to change their route or when Chewbacca is talking to this physician on the Rebel Base. It is a more mature humour.
All put, it feels like a more natural take on Star Wars.
About the connections: Yes, Luke appears. In two scenes. One is in the trailer (where he puts his robotic hand on R2-D2) and is a flash-back scene and the other is the last scene in the whole film. He is an important part of the story but he doesn't appear, he has no lines. Kylo Ren was his student and he wants to find Luke and kill him. R2-D2 is for some weird reason deactivated. Leia and Han are not together and it is implicit they had a fight.
But there are many loose ends. There is lack of political background. We have too much of that political nonsense in Ep I-III and nothing on Ep VII. If the rebels won, what happened? I don't know. There is a Republic, but then there is the First Order and there is a Rebel Alliance. It's just weird. Who sustains the First Order? No idea. Isn't there a Republic army? No idea. Is there a Senate/Parliament? I don't know. Who is this guy Snoke? No idea. Why is R2-D2 turned off? I don't know. If they have lived with droids for thousands of years, how come they can't get files out of R2? Aren't the First Order the rebels this time? Go figure. Let's hope they answer our questions on Ep VIII.
And let's hope it will follow the same line of fantasy. Not real, yet not exaggerated. I give this film an 8. I liked it a lot, but many loose ends and strange story points make it a bit confusing. I want to see what Luke is up to. And I want to see what Rey will become. And I want to understand what happened to the new Republic.