I think Abrahms got the tone mostly right, the dialog and acting is good, but it’s like an amalgamation of situation reprisals from the original trilogy. So I think it’s an OK fan homage, but not an authentic part of the Star Wars story.
I don’t take TFA to be an canon part of the SW saga, because its construction and meaning is, frankly, derivative and absurd.
The basis for all the trouble of TFA is that Han and Leia were bad parents… and somehow that one thing resulted in a reset of everything to Episode IV’s state, so that all the same motions could be gone through again - yet the main characters in TFA don’t notice that they’re just doing all the same things all over again.
The film is wilfully uncaring of its constant recasting of setups, imagery, scenarios, banters from the original SW trilogy. And as the film doesn’t take itself to be an equal part of the SW saga, but rather a homage to it, neither do I take it as being a believable entry.
A lot of The tone of TFA is well done, and very much Star Wars, unlike the films of the prequel trilogy. A lot of the dialog makes sense, and the acting is pretty good. But it’s all used to recreate facsimile experiences and imagery from the original trilogy. It’s playing pretend.
The Nazi imagery scenes in TFA were beneath anything Star Wars, and the film jumped the shark at that point. Also, Hans supposed death was silly in so many ways: On a bridge over a chasm, mimicking the Luke and Vader scene at Cloud City in ESB… father facing his son, who is literally a Vader wannabe… the beam of light on them, which fades as the son makes his attack…
Forget the invalid Ewoks = care bears jest argument, everything about Solo’s son being what he was, and Solo’s cheap gimmicky in TFA death was ultimate cheesiness, and came across to me as very contrived.
Also, TFA is flagrantly nerdy (the light saber hilt, the Vader wannabe, the contrived Han death - which Harrison always wanted, the mega weapon plot device, and more), while the original SW saga is not.
Overall, I found TFA to be a decent watch, but it also hurt me a bit to watch, because it used the classic characters, their actors, and did so much right - but in the end it doesn’t have the sincerity or integrity of the original trilogy, and is clearly a homage to the original Star Wars saga, and not a part of it.
Also. before watching TFA, I started to watch Episode 2 of the prequel trilogy, thinking I would enjoy it while passing some time. I ended up shutting it off because it was just crap. I hadn’t seen any of it in years, and before putting it on, I thought it couldn’t be as bad as my memory was suggesting to me. Man, my memory knew what it was talking about. For the short time I watched it, Episode 2 was abysmal, like a half-assed clumsy children’s cartoon, made by people who didn’t know that making something nonsensical and flamboyant doesn’t amount to quality children’s programming.