Okay…
Film was really good.
Just a few personal qualms…
-silence up until “Star Wars” appears. I like the additional intro music. The hack job they did for the digital release was still better than silence. I look forward to edits inserting the Fox fanfare.
-BB8 should have rolled in at the END of the Von Sydow conversation, with a quick few last words and goodbye. The pace in that initial sequence seemed really off to me.
–side note: why B-B-8. Every time a character says it, it throws off the cadence of their speech.
Say AB8 and BB8 out loud to yourself and you’ll hear what I mean, how the BB is jarring to say.
-Music too loud on Jakku. Some of the best Tatooine moments in ANH were sound effect/silence driven.
-Poor editing on conversations with Leia. Oddly, it wasn’t just the delivery I found jarring - the camera seems closer to her face than to Han’s. It throws off that one on one interaction and feels as if all of her shots were done alone in reshoots. She does seem far less comfortable in her lines, but her dialogue was the most poorly written in my opinion. Her “it was Snokes fault” was the weakest line in the film, and considering she’s speaking to the man who abandoned her after their son left, there should have been a little bit more sting in her words, reminiscent of SW and ESB. Here, I feel like she is suffering from the same dumbing down and weakening that the writers handed her in RotJ, the same way Padme (ignoring the deleted scenes) was handled in RotS.
-R2 waking up was just stupid and seemed overly coincidental. At the least it should have been intercut with Rey and Leia hugging to show that Rey’s arrival is what did it.
-Was I the only one waiting for Luke to crack the slightest of grins and force pull the lightsaber into his metallic hand? I liked the long hair though 😃