Finally watched VII. Stayed away because the hype was turning me off.
I feel the acting and the plot was executed much better than in the prequels. We didn't have any face-palm moments like the Anakin/Padme romance or when Anakin randomly decides to turn to the darkside. The character's acting felt genuine, organic and not forced which was a really nice change from the prequels.
That said, this movie fell well short of any of the originals in my opinion and it completely failed to recreate the magic of episodes IV and V. JJ Abrams did exactly what he did with Star Trek: he made an above-average action movie that will please the masses and sell lots of tickets but it will not be something that will go down in history as any kind of masterpiece and it will not restore the franchise to its former glory.
I agree with the OP that this movie basically felt like a remake of episode IV with some cosmetic changes that really only served to weaken the story. They tried to treat the First Order the same way that the Empire was treated in episode IV: except we already know so much about the Star Wars universe that the First Order feels less like a mysterious and ominous threat then it does like a patchy and poorly explained emperial resurgence group: how did they get a new Sith? Why did the rebellion fail to extenguish the empire after episode VI? These were questions that should have been explained in episode VII. I also had no idea who the imperial senate was that got destoyred in VII because I thought that they were disolved at the beginning of IV. I felt bad when alderaan got destoyed in IV and I felt the horror that the empire caused through the reactions of Leia and Obi-Wan but when the planets were destoryed in VII I didn't really care: these were just a bunch of faceless planets and nobody in the movie seemed to care that they were gone either.
I also agree that Rey is basically just Han Solo and Luke Skywalker merged into one character. She also doesn't have any personality flaws which basically makes her superwoman. I'm sure that this will make the radical feminists happy and will garner glowing reviews from the liberal media, but this makes for very poor story-telling and is a big reason why episode VII is going to be forgotten in a few years. People (including women) are not going to be able to identify with Rey because she is too "perfect." Luke and Han were very strong and relatable characters BECAUSE they had obvious flaws and weaknesses which they overcame as the series went on. Heck, even Leia was a much stronger character than Rey because while Leia was also a strong female lead she still relied on Luke and Han for a lot and this put her character into tough spots and allowed for the types of conflicts that exist in people's regular lives: this made her character relatable and people grew to love her because of this. I'm sorry but super-woman is not relatable. Fin also kind of felt like an unnecessary sidekick.
