I was very disappointed with the film. It was beautifully done, but I particularly hated the characterization of Luke and found the plot lacking.
On the one hand, I understand and appreciate the director's vision that anyone can be a hero; that you don't have to have some special lineage to make a difference, hence the broom kid at the end and all of Luke's musings about the vanity of the Jedi. From that point of view, I understand throwing away Snoke's relevance and dismissing any significance to Rey's parentage; however, these core films are supposed to be the story of the Skywalker lineage and I feel like Episode 7 and 8 are disjointed in a way that the other films aren't, including the admittedly awful prequels. This whole 'turning Star Wars on its head' thing should have been saved for Rian Johnson's new trilogy. It's pretty obvious after watching 'The Force Awakens' that these disgarded plot points were meant to be significant, but Johnson decided, "Nope, that doesn't work for my film". Maybe Abrams can rectify some of this in Episode 9, but the damage is done. It's not like you can bring Luke back to life.
Which brings me to my biggest gripe, which is how they handled Luke. Mark Hamill's been on record making it clear that he disagreed with the director's characterization of Luke, and I couldn't agree more. He's a miserly curmudgeon who has resigned himself to die in exile on an island. The same guy who saved the galaxy and never gave up on anything, including his father turned supreme evil being who EVERYONE had given up on, and what does he do when Kylo breaks bad? He just gives up. I can't get over the fact that he never actually left the island. That's not the Luke I grew up with. Yeah, I know he force projected and saved the Resistance, but it would have carried so much more weight for me had he done it in person and not via Force Skype.
Few other things:
The hour long slow chase until the rebels run out of gas plot was silly. Couldn't the First Order have hyper jumped a few ships in front of the rebel fleet and trapped them in the middle?
Finn's plot felt completely tacked on. It's as if the writers had no idea what to do with him, so they drummed up some crazy mission so he'd have something more to do than sit around and wait.
Why hire Gwendoline Christie and Benicio del Toro and basically give them nothing to do (more so for Phasma who was heavily hyped and really did nothing for two films)?
You can survive the vacuum of space if you're a Force wielder?
If you know you're going down with the ship anyways, why not pull off the "Kill 'em with a warp speed jump" maneuver before they have a chance to start blowing up all of the transport ships and catch them by surprise?
Is the Darth Maul fight going to be the best lightsaber fight ever in perpetuity? These two new films haven't come close to replicating the only thing the prequels did well, the lightsaber duels.
I know this post comes off as very "Get Off My Lawn", but man did I walk away disappointed. Maybe my expectations were too high. I had zero expectations for last years Rogue One and I was very pleasantly surprised. The Vader scene at the end of that was amazing. For those whose generation were not defined by the original trilogy, I can see them very much enjoying this film. But for me, it just messed too much with the characters that I grew up with and loved. To each his own, though. I'll still be one of the first in line for Episode 9 😀