Solid 7.5/10 film for me, much better than the prequels but it apes ANH far too much. That pulled me out of being fully engrossed in the movie.

Also, I really disliked how they ignored the implicit promise of the end of RotJ and the whole idea of the Republic of a more civilised time. 30 years down the track we have what basically appears to be the same status quo as the beginning of ANH, big evil Empire and small underdog resistance.

Supplementary materials reveal that theFirst Order is an Imperial Remnant stationed in the Unknown Region and that the Republic haven’t investigated that area really so we’re only seeing an absolute corner of the galaxy and the whole galaxy isn’t like this.

But the movie doesn’t hint at that at all. Everything we see basically points to the Empire being dominant again. It’s lazy and bugged me as well.