I saw The Force Awakens tonight for a second time. The film was much better than I remembered it, but ultimately it was still my least favorite Star Wars movie thus far, except for perhaps The Phantom Menace.

In the end, I still believe that Han Solo returning to the smuggling business after the events of the Original Trilogy destroys his character arc. That is probably my primary concern with the film.

The movie was at least tolerable when I watched it with the assumptions that Rey was Luke’s daughter whom he had trained as a child and that Kylo Ren had wiped her memory and abandoned her on Jakku.

If Rey had suppressed memories of her training with Luke as a child, her ability to perform a Jedi mind trick on the stormtrooper and to wield a lightsaber in combat becomes more believable.