Fan Service nice and all, but please don't insult my intellect! In advance I have to tell that I am a conservative fan, who saw the original movies (New Hope, Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi) in theaters in the 70's and the 80's.
I didn't read any Extended Universe books, because I never accepted them as Canon.
I hated EPISODE I-III and never accepted them as Star Wars movies.
Now I saw this one and my opinion is as follows, writing the negatives first:
First of all I have nothing against Fan Service, like showing the chess table, making a new cantina scene etc., but I don't like if the creators think that I'm stupid and they just recreate "A New Hope" with new actors, where Luke is now a young girl and Darth Vader is a young guy learning how to be a bad guy and they hope that I won't recognize that they were just lazy to invent a new story.
My second problem is the lack of dramaturgy. There is no story arch. It's just a rush from one action scene to the next action scene. In between some very very bad dialogs. There is no right pacing at all. There is no suspension followed by relaxing. There is a scene at the end of the movie, when the "Death Star" exploded and the "Rebels" came back to the base, the music is just tense and everybody is running around. Why? Then suddenly there is a moment between two characters where the music suddenly changes to the well known Star Wars tune (Luke watching the sunset on Tatooine) and then hectic again.
Apropos music: It is bad! I am not a musical guy and I never recognize music in a movie (which actually should be that way if the score is good), but in this movie the music never fits the scene. It's always present. It never just sets the mood, but it is overtuning the images and you almost can't see what'S happening, because the music covers up the visuals and you concentrate on the music, how displaced it is.
Dialogues are bad! When Han meets the bad boy, I thought I stab my self with my drinking straw. When Han and Leia start to explain Each other, what they experienced TOGETHER after Return of the Jedi, that's just bad writing. Ask any script writing teacher. I think that'S lesson #1 on how not to write a script.
Illogical things "en masse", which I don't even want to explain in detail.
And so on.
Now the positives:
This movie is 100 times better than EPISODE I-III all together. It has almost the right Star Wars mood. It was nice to see practical effects and real sets again. The visuals are A.M.A.Z.I.N.G.! The costumes and armors, ships and other props are so cool! It screams Star Wars. Acting was pretty good. Humor is exactly the right amount.
So I gave it a 7. I hope the next movie won't be the remake of the Empire Strikes Back movie.