Personally, I was worried about the whole black stormtrooper thing because they were all supposed to be clones if you only followed the movies for canon information. However, they explained it perfectly that the troopers were humans stolen while young. Very good job on integrating the change from clone to human soldiers.
Storm Troopers were all clones, in canon, for the start of the empire. Basically all now deemed non-canon books (of which I have read only...maybe 3 at most, all had purist human troops pretty much post Death Star II for the very reason they were able to amass such an army of clones so quickly. Yes, utterly obedient clones, however cranking up the growth cycle was stated in the past to totally accelerate their life cycle, and as they were clones they were simply disposed of or otherwise in purely front line functions. Without having the utter facility of the Imperial Senate and such, there's no real way they could continue to fuel that war machine in that manner, plus ignoring a manpower pool of both volunteers and individuals "drafted" in such a manner described, given EVIL EMPIRE having no problems with that, is foolhardy from a logistical standpoint.
All in all it was an enjoyable movie when you ignored the whole Force loopholes and magic fails. Personally, I would rank it above the prequels, but below the originals for sure.
Dilithium, Voyager series as a whole, the Force isn't a loophole. It's a plot mechanism the same as warp drive and everything else. The only difference is that Star Trek has capitalized on creation of mediums such as TM's effectively on their handwavium, which is just as much believable bullshit as the next sci-fi movie or series.
Cons: Hype Hype Hype. They hyped up the trooper captain to be this badass, but she gets caught and tossed into the trash. Fisher was fucking horrible. I wanted to falcon punch her every single time she came on screen. A super duper death weapon that physically sucks up a sun? C'mon, at least make it somewhat believable, that had zero basis in reality.
This is a universe where you can make a shield system that can effectively stop anything moving under lightspeed. It wouldn't be outrageous to bullshit your way to having used a massive grid of deflectors to provide one single portal with some focusing arrays to aim it where it needed to go. This is also a universe just like Trek that has artificial gravity as well as antigravity.
As mentioned earlier, how did a never trained Jedi, beat down a former Jedi trained under Skywalker, a current Sith, and supposed successor to Vader?
Half-breed (Han never showed much in the way of Force powers nor Force sensitivity, and Leia had enough to be able to do some minor communication but never displayed anything further than that) with incomplete training Jedi vs innate training. The crossbow shot? Distraction, even Vader only got his licks in on Luke when he was throwing him mental hooks. Old boy just shanked his pops trying to have a Luke moment to gain power or focus, albeit in a reverse manner compared to Luke having at his pops under threat of lightning bolt...and his life.
Bullshit, he was more than capable of doing some voodoo force magic to knock her out as he did before. Only reasonable explanation is he got cocky and was toying with them. I can suspend belief enough to think she is a naturally gifted pilot, and was able to pickup the controls for the Falcon fairly quickly. Even more unbelievable, is a former sanitation trooper using his mop handling skills to stand toe to toe with before mentioned Sith trainee. Even given hand to hand combat training, he would not have stood a chance for as long as he did.
If he's had any training with the anti-saber PR24 like Billy Badass the trooper did, it's not surprising. Plus, honestly he didn't stand a chance for very long, new breed sith was having his chestbeating moments to try to get the pain to focus him, if you didn't notice. He was already off balance mentally (obviously, thinking Vader was something to emulate and not realizing the reality of things there) but now was off balance physically due to being injured, and off balance emotionally due to shanky shanky and obviously feeling it was wrong at some level given his response at the time.
My guess is that Rey is the daughter of Luke based on her interaction with the light saber. That might account for how quickly gifted she became, as she would be a direct descendant of a trained Jedi, versus a descendant of someone who has untapped Jedi power. Might also explain why Ren was fucking with her in the forest instead of killing her, or forcefully extracting the info to where it would hurt her. I think he might have held back when interrogating her.
He's a halfbreed half trained Jedi turned dark side, with incomplete dark side training at that. He's trying to emulate Vader via all the plot devices, but the only real thing he's faced from what I inferred was jedi's in training at Luke's academy he had going on. Sorta like Anakin did in Clone Wars...
Overall, I get that this movie appeals to the little boy inside all of us that wanted to swing swords and travel through space. Hell, it combines two cool things into a giant space opera. That doesn't mean care should not be taken when crafting these movies, and they should be held to a higher standard. Oh, and fuck JJ. In ST and SW, he was not needed to rekindle interest in either saga. Both are timeless, and will generally stand the test of time.
Gotta love diversity. The fat bodies die along with every other ethnic dude in outer space.