All my nitpicks and problems aside…it just didn’t have the spirit of STAR WARS. The stuff that grabbed us in the original film and the best of the EU; the spark, the spirit of adventure, the TLC given by nerds in a garage sticking together model kits at breakneck speed, Gary Kurtz and others having to race to finish directing second and third unit insert shots, the intrinsic flaws, the ties to real-life shared experiences, the yearning for something more…in short the Damn Fool Idealistic Crusade.
It felt like it had all of that to me.
This Abrams/Kasdan interview tells me it had the proper spirit behind the scenes too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlrfnT5KNGc