In terms of the Sagas itself I liked the return of real sets - acting and reacting in a real environment or sets (or as close as).
yet it wasn’t that the CGi was bad, it was that they were CGI characters in a ‘real’ film.
to be honest Maz has grown on me
Real sets - great point. I think most people have taken that drastic upgrade for granted. The point about the juxtaposition of real and CG also resonates with me. I don’t know how they could have blended it better, but that would be a reasonable explanation for why so many have objected to both Maz and Snoke.
And I love Maz. She’s got a little of the stereotypical “wise old person” thing, which decreases her depth a little, but I think she looks cool and her facial expressions are fascinating, and her voice is really good. I definitely want her to still exist somewhere in that universe. Also, for a lady thousands of years old she’s kind of cute. I love her line about her boyfriend, followed by “I like that wookiee”. In the theater I was like “what”. A good introduction, audacious, cute, and immediately there is a history there. It will be funny if we ever get to see her and Chewbacca interact, I’m not sure what the best way to play that out would be though. The obvious thing would be to have her chase him around, but that would be kind of cartoonish (lame).
Maybe if she was just doing something to make him uncomfortable, so we get to see Chewbacca socially uncomfortable. Like maybe he’s sitting down and she’s bugging him and he just suddenly gets up and leaves the frame and that’s the end of the scene. Or all this could happen in the background of another scene.
A lot of comments about Hamil’s contribution - yes. That look on his face was all the presence he had in this film, and it was exactly as intense as we needed. That is the face of an immensely powerful man who is almost broken inside.