Rejoice! The Force Awakens Is A Real StarWars Picture!

Sooooo thrilled to hear this!! Thanks for the review and lack of spoilers!

A few of the series are classics. Most are just good pop entertainment. Put your brains at rest for two plus hours and revel in a bigger than life comic book. My only dissatisfaction is people who take these as some sort of religious experience, and I've run into a few of them. The simplistic moral message is part of the fun, but not to be taken seriously. Like sablebrush says, joie de vie. Have fun. If anyone says anything serious afterwards, they have to pay for everyone's popcorn.

man oh man... Im so excited to see this tonight.

When you realize how awful the last three films were you can get a feeling for how powerful the the first three were. I'm more of a Star Trek guy than Star Wars but it is nice to hear this franchise has found its way back to good story telling.

I must admit that I did not see numbers 2 and 3 of the original trilogy nor any of the most recent 3. That being said, will I be lost if I watch the new one or do I need to see the original 3 in their entirety first?

The scene where Jar Jar Binks accidentally kills Han with the plasma flow modulator is the best scene in the entire series, IMHO.

I saw projections where they estimate it will break $265 million the first weekend and I'm told you can't get a ticket to see it until January, at least around here.

Moviegoers "nearly lose their minds" when projector breaks during late-night showing of Star Wars. (video included)
http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2015/12/18/projector-breaks-during-late-night-showing-of-star-wars-crowd-goes-crazy/

Brought me to tears. Bravo Disney, excellent movie.

Sable glad it meets the approval. I'm scheduled to see it after Christmas. Strange all the prequel hate but each to their own. Grand Admiral Thrawn needs to get a cameo before sequel trilogy is through.

I just got back from my screening. 7/10 and worth the price of admission.
I wont say why it didn't get a 10/10 to avoid any spoilers. A clue is in sablebrush52's original post so probably not hard to figure out.

The humor must've been the put off, Pete.

Having watched the original trilogy in the theaters when they were released I was very disappointed with the prequel trilogy( Ja Ja Binks was blasphomy). From everything I have read and seen, the makers of this movie went back to their roots and lost a bunch of the lousy CG and opted for the more life like models and sets like in the first 3.
Computer graphics is ruining movie making for me as it is so obvious when they use it now. I grew up in a time where was no such thing as computers so when you saw 5,000 people horseback, that is what you got. Rent the movies, Lawrence of Arabia, Cleopatra, The Ten Commandments, Ben Hur. That was movie making at it's finest, I believe one of those I just mentioned had 10,000 extras. The sets alone for Cleopatra were mind boggling.
Watch the final gun battle in the movie The Wild Bunch, it is so much better than film making today.

I heard this current episode gains a lot from going back to some of the more primitive special effects, like models of spaceships, to supplement the electronic effects, and that this both recalls the earlier best movies in the series and just gives a more authentic feel. I'll have to take a look and see what I think. Also, some of the original actors give fine performances, not just cameo appearances.

Apparently there are a lot of companies using CGI effectively, most notably the vehicle traffic in almost every movie nowdays is supposedly all CGI, and I never would have guessed until I saw the wireframe version of those shots.
But here we get a few instances of both obvious and silly CGI filling up screen, one scene in particular that would have been better left out entirely... Really no different from the things George did, just, thankfully, it only lasted a minute or two.
I could pick out flaws in both the practical and digital characters, but I definitely can't fully endorse the use of digital yet. Depending on what they're aiming for it really needs to have something practical to keep either the effects grounded or keep the writers from going bonkers and losing all sensibilities in their style.

If you think George was any less crazy in the 70's think again, watch the deleted scenes for The Empire Strikes Back and you'll see that it really was the directors keeping George on a leash that made those movies good.

It's a miracle that this franchise is worth anything to begin with.
My best summary of Episode 7 is "I smiled a lot and cringed a few times".

I would cut about 25% of the story here.

The Original Trilogy only needs a few tweaks, plus roast the Ewoks, and 1-3 should be condensed into a single movie (Someone needs to initiate "Order 66" on the Prequels and cut 66% of the runtime).

Star Wars 4 A New Hope: 10/10
Star Wars 1 Phantom Menace: 7/10
Star Wars 7 Force Awakens: 5/10
Wow, this movie was not an original Star Wars Film. It borrowed to much from Star Wars 4. JJ Abrams made a mockery of Star Wars, at least Mel Brooks told everyone that he was lampooning StarWars. Space Balls 2 would have been a better title. Abrams just plagiarizes and lampooned, while having minions like Kevin Smith come out and say it's the best since Empire. They need to bring Lucas back to the drawing board and save this Disney Franchise.