Upon Further reflection, an updated review

Rating: 4/10 (26 December 2015)

Or maybe I'm just not the wide-eyed teenager I was when saw Star Wars (I refuse to call it "A New Hope") in 1977.
J.J. Abrams has produced a pretty good story here, but much like his Star Trek movie, I don't think he fully grasps the source material. For Instance, when the Death Star Mark III blows up "The Republic", what were they blowing up, exactly? Coruscant from the prequel films? (Other outside material indicates it's another planet) Who is the First Order, and why do they seem to have updated versions of all the Empire's Stuff? It seems like 30 years have passed since "Return of the Jedi", but things seem pretty much the same.
And this is the biggest problem I had with the film. Jedi had the main characters complete their Arcs. Han and Leia were together, the Empire was defeated, Luke had mastered his Jedi Powers, Vader had been turned back to the light side of the force.
In this one, Luke has turned his back on the Jedi, the First Order comes up as a more Nazi-like version of the Empire, Han has gone back to being a petty criminal. It's like the whole first trilogy didn't happen or everyone is even worse off than they were before.
And then there is Luke Skywalker, who doesn't show up until the last 30 second of the film and looks like a homeless person.
Now I'm going to talk about the whole scene where (SPOILERS) Han Solo is killed by his son, Darth Emo.... errr Kylo Ren. It's very derivative, of when Obi-Wan is killed In Star Wars of Qua-gon is killed in "Phantom Menace". That and apparently there are no safety-rails in the Star Wars universe. So we have someone else dropping thousands of feet after being wounded with a light-saber.
I do like the fact this film had a strong female protagonist, a conflicted anti-hero. I like the fact that when a planet is destroyed, we actually get to see the horrified people on it. (Something that was missing from Star Wars, and emphasized the true horror of the weapon).
I like the fact the battle scenes looked like they involved real actors in real costumes, and not some CGI'd cloned troopers versus robots. It felt more REAL to me, especially when you see the ground littered with casualties, just like you'd have in a real war.
I like the First Order. It seems truly evil in a way the Sith and Empire were not in the earlier films. (They kidnap and brainwash babies to be Stormtroopers). I also like the star ship effects. I like that the desert planet appears to have suffered severe consequences of the War.
IN short, it was a great movie, but it raised more questions than it answered about a universe that is very familiar to its fans.