Positives:
1) Visually fantastic. Really gave you a scale of the ships, brilliant flight sequences and even some visually stunning worlds. A feast for the eyes.
2) Generally good actors. I thought particularly the Finn storyline was good and I warmed to the actor immediately. One could say Disney was playing the ‘politically correct card’ but certainly it didn't seem forced (pun intended).
3) The Score: John Williams + Star Wars = match made in… space. The sound just felt so familiar yet new at the same time. Genius.
Negatives:
1) Rylo Ken: by far and away the biggest let down to me. Acted well but basically nothing more than a petulant child (clearly what they were going for). Not sure if they were trying to give us a new Vader but they failed if that was the case. Only thing I can think of is his daddy issues will now drive him to be more ruthless in episode VIII.
2) Starkiller base: will these evil groups never learn to put a bit better security around the weakest part of their big killer weapons? They had two relatively recent occasions to learn from, let’s be fair! This part of the storyline was hugely obvious and ended up being nothing more than a subplot in my eyes when it was clearly the main event/storyline.
3) Overall it was exceptionally predictable: the only surprise (to me) was that Poe Dameron turned up alive and well later on. I predicted quite quickly that we wouldn’t see Hamill until the end (clearly he was in it at some point), Solo would die by the hand of Rylo Ken, Rey would have a lightsabre battle, none of the other protagonists would die.
I’m still trying to decide about the Rey character - Jury out on my opinion of her. She looks the part but far far far to many things that were glossed over such as how she (basically) wiped the floor with a reasonably well trained Rylo Ken. Writers could have been explained ability to use force so quickly by some unexplained ‘abilities’ during her youth which led to the point we saw in the film.
