I loved it. Got to see it a day early as a "journalist", which was pretty sweet - in 3d, for free. I was grinning like an idiot the whole time. I saw Han dying from a mile away. They made the most of him and then let him go in an appropriate and story-driving way. I also saw the whole "30 seconds of Mark Hamill" thing coming - his name was on the posters so he had to be in it, but I knew he wouldn't do much of anything. Overall, I thought it all came together quite well. It felt like a film made by Star Wars fans rather than by a greedy old bastard who just wants to sell more action figures. And I thought the new characters were really well-done. All of the characters, in fact. All of them felt more real. Everything about it felt more real than any other Star Wars film.
And no, it's not even remotely realistic. But if you want to talk about realism, how can people travel faster than light speed with no relativistic effects? Nothing about the Star Wars universe makes any actual sense, but it doesn't matter, because it's about the story, the characters, just getting caught up in the magic of it like I did when I was a little kid and saw the originals for the first time.
One thing I'm surprised I'm not hearing more about is the sense of scale. Maybe it was because I saw it in 3d (something I normally don't like - it usually gives me motion sickness - but in this case I think they filmed it just the right way to make it work), but I feel like for the first time I got a true feeling for how BIG everything was. It was amazing.
"So how do we blow it up? There's always a way to do that."
I think J.J. Abrams did a great job, and I'm relieved to see the lack of lens flares (which have been replaced with bits and fragments of debris flying around all the time). I can't wait for the next one. In fact, I plan to go see this one again. And I can't wait for everyone I know to hurry up and see it so I can finally talk about it in public. My sign language teacher keeps trying to get me to give him spoilers... Asking questions like: "Do you think Harrison Ford will continue in the series?" So I taught him the word "spoilers" and then told him "no spoilers." Not gonna happen, dude. Go see it for yourself.