“Force Awakens would be higher if it weren’t so dependent on having a next installment to answer all the questions, so it’s retroactively worse as a result.”
^ Couldn’t the same be said for The Empire Strikes Back ? ( don’t get me wrong , Empire is my favorite )
The only legit “mystery box” in ESB is “who is the other that Yoda was talking about?” Things like “will they save Han?” or “was Vader lying?” aren’t really mystery boxes, imo. Just loose ends. It’s obvious where those story threads wanted to go.
TFA, on the other hand, has the following mystery boxes:
Who is Rey?
Who is Snoke?
Why did Luke blame himself and walk away from everything, as Han said?
Why didn’t Luke sense Han’s incoming death and come to his aid?
Is Finn force-sensitive too, and if so, will that get in the way of Rey being the supposed new Jedi messiah?
Is Finn the “backup messiah”? Or is that Kylo, since he will obviously be redeemed?
Is Finn gonna be the new face of the rebels, while Rey is the new face of the Jedi, or is that Poe, since the script decided to leave him alive at the last minute?
From a meta perspective, why is the rebels vs empire dynamic repeating? How can this new trilogy actually say anything new if we’re just repeating the old again? What’s the justification of undoing the happily-ever-after and bringing the OT heroes back to square one?