Smoking Lizard said:
Emphasis added. I suspect your father is in his 40s. That’s when us older guys really start getting overwhelmed by the awareness of our own mortality. Our children are now adults. The fun times of our own childhoods are long gone. Old age is fast approaching us. When we were young, two years seemed like an eternity. Now, we remind ourselves, “I really need to get a new battery for my watch,” and then suddenly realize, “Holy crap! My watch went dead two years ago!”

Your father was suffering the cruel tugs of nostalgia. Nothing more. And that’s what so terribly gratuitous about this movie: It’s nostalgia for the sake of nostalgia.

Well yeah, early 40s, you’re correct.

Still, I think that’s a win in my book for what TFA did. They could had made Han Solo just appear. Yeah, he’s a nostalgic character, but he was used in a manner that was arguably good. Vader is iconic too. Comparing my dad’s reaction to Vader in RotS for example is like night and day way back in 2005. My dad saw how they screwed up Vader. He never felt regret, or as that it was botched, when Han/Leia/Chewie/The Faclon appeared on screen.