**** Here there be spoilers ***
Let's just take a look at a New Hope.
What do we know of Luke's backstory? Ohh right. Nothing.
How about how he used the force to guide an otherwise impossible shot with little training?
How about Darth Vader's non existant character depth? He practically acts like a robot in the first movie. All we know is that he's super religious, has super powers, is better than everyone else and very obedient. That's it.
Leia's home planet gets blown up? Why do we give a shit about that again? It's not like Leia is a critical character at that point in the movie.
I think you're looking at the originals with Rose-colored glasses. The only real difference between the Force Awakens and a New Hope is that they know they're making a sequel after the Force Awakens and planned the movies out in accordance with that.
But you're right it did bug me how Rey became so strong so quickly, and it was pretty friggin annoying that she could wreck Ren in a fight like that after he had been groomed for years in the ways of the dark side, but we really don't know much about the force at all. Perhaps there is precedence for what happened. Perhaps this is a result of there being so few Jedi. Remember, Leia and Rey had a intense connection as soon as they met. There could be something greater at play here, and we might have just scratched the surface.
But man... can we move past the whole "death star" thing? They could have made a giant halo-like space station around the sun and accomplished the same thing while being far, far more original.
All in all this movie was very much a "passing of the torch" from one generation to the next in more ways than one. I think it accomplished exactly what it set out to do and sets the franchise up for plenty of success in the future.







