I’m late to the game; I did see it opening night, and five subsequent times but I stayed offline to try and make my own opinion of what I saw.

My first “nitpick” during opening night was that the Star Wars theme sounded different. Of course, this is due to another orchestra taking over for the LSO. I was also surprised, yet not surprised, that they used the SE “A long time ago…” style and font. Additionally, Abrams broke the traditional “wide ending shot” rule, which was offsetting at first. Aaaaand I was disappointed that the iconic shot of Ren igniting his lightsabre was cut out. The off-screen version was very lame.

Besides those technical bits, it was truly something. I laughed, I cried (mainly during the opening crawl – how embarrassing!), I cheered. Being the first STAR WARS film I have even seen in theaters, I have never experienced anything like this before. I wish I could relive the opening night again. The crowd was so into it, especially when the Falcon was shown. I recall everyone going nuts over Leia and 3PO, rather than Han and Chewie – odd. Overall, it’s a competent film that has one-to-many callbacks for comfort, but has paved the way for something brilliant.

I walked out not digging it, came back loving it.

7/10 – not perfect, but is better than ROTJ, in my opinion.