I'm going to preface this with just a little background. I love Star Wars, I collected the micro machines, I've probably played all the games, some of them a few times over. I am partial to the Jedi Knight series, Knights of the Old Republic games and I loved Empire at War. I currently play X-Wing a Star Wars themed war game competitively.
Star Wars has everything a Sci-Fi/Fantasy fan could want;Space wizardry, light sabres, dashing space cowboys and some of the most fearsome villains in pop culture to date. You can't turn on your TV without hearing some sort of Star Wars pop culture reference. The original Star Wars movie invented the event movie and also revolutionized the way movies were made to this date.
I won't waste my time talking about the prequels too much, but I will state that I didn't think they were very good and didn't feel very much like Star Wars movies. Moving forward to whats important.
About Rey:
A lot of critics are saying that Rey is a Mary-Sue, (Someone that everything comes easy to in short, you can google this for more details if you like) I however do not feel this way, I think the film establishes quite well the reasons why she is good at flying the falcon,is adept at close quarters combat and why she knows her way around imperial architecture. As a scavenger she has grown up almost alone on the harsh planet of Jakku.
She didn't have the sheltered life that Luke had on Tatooine, her life would have been much harder. Shes probably has had to use that staff of hers to defend off thieves and possibly rapists on several occasions. I mean shes a pretty girl living on the galactic equivalent of a truck stop. Its also good to note that she takes BB8 away from that alien with very little resistance, almost as if he is scared of her. She also mentioned she has flown the falcon before just not in outer space. Oh and the most obvious she lives in the carcass of an imperial AT-AT and rummages through Imperial class star destroyers to survive on a daily basis.
Also, its not explained yet but its quite obvious that she is very strong in the force and may be a Skywalker or a Kenobi(She behaves more like Obi-Wan than Luke or Anakin) or she could be a new random force sensitive with no jedi lineage. (who knows). I'd really like it if she was Kenobi's granddaughter but its looking more and more that she probably Luke's daughter due to her what seems to be a natural proficiency with technical stuff(Droids, ships etc) .There is also a large chunk of the fan base who feel strongly she should be Luke's, because Star Wars is the Skywalker story and the only new Skywalker so far is Ben Solo, one of the series main bad guys thus far. Guess we will find out in Episode VIII.
In the Star Wars the force awakens like the originals we don't go into a lot of detail about the politics, the war or anything else that's going on around us this includes a lot of the names of the planets and people we meet on the journey. This makes a lot of sense because like the rest of Star Wars universe we are going to learn about these things from the books, games, toys and other merchandise. That being said casual audience members do not care about any of those things anyway, also there is a lot of story to tell in this first movie of a three part trilogy and we don't have time for this crap. We just want to get to the good bits.
The focus on the characters as the force awakens within them is what really drives the story. You quickly fall in love with Rey, Finn, Poe and the adorable BB8. Speaking of BB8 its really great how they seamlessly established his rapport with C3PO and R2D2 almost as if they were his older siblings.
The re-introduction of Han and Chewbacca is spine tingling as is the re-introduction of the Millennium Falcon when we see it again for the first time. However Carrie Fishers performance as General Leia really falls short from the rest of the cast and is the biggest let down for me.
About Kylo Ren
As for the Villains, Kylo Ren is almost perfect, you know straight away that this kid is a Skywalker by the way he throws a tantrum every time things do not go his way( Classic Luke/Anakin behaviour). He also has that constant inner struggle between the light and the dark side of the force also akin to Luke and Anakin. I feel like even though we know this guy has done awful things like his grandfather before him, we can see he is very conflicted about them, there is a part to him that wants to take it all back and go back to Han and Leia, but he knows that he cannot, he has committed himself to something greater than himself. He feels strongly that he must finish what Darth Vader started and is willing to sacrifice everything for it, including his own father, Han Solo. I think this makes the character quite endearing and I can't wait to see what happens next in his story.
There are a lot of theories rolling around that Supreme Leader Snoak is Darth Plaguis, Palpatines master and someone who has mastered the Darkside art of cheating death. This would make a lot of sense seeing as Darth Vader was originally seduced by the dark side because he wanted this power to protect those he loved but could only obtain it through the dark side. This also adds up because Kylo Ren is looking to complete what Darth Vader started? Perhaps he wants to learn these dark side secrets to also learn this but with the costs being so severe what does he want to accomplish? Only Episode VIII will tell.
TFA as a movie in a whole is an awesome addition to the Star Wars saga and is a good base to relaunch the story off of. Its a faced paced action adventure space opera set in our favourite universe. It introduces us to a brand new cast of awesome characters and reintroduces some of the old ones that made us fall in love with the original trilogy in the first place. I can't recommend you see any other film this summer(winter if you live in the northern hemisphere).
That's it from me for now, I'm probably going to watch the Force Awakens another five times! Peace and the force be with you...
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