This will be late, and it will be unpopular.
I saw Star Wars on opening night. I didn’t like it that much. The dialogue was flippant, entire story arcs could have been left out without drastically altering the story, the timeline was impossible to follow (things could not have been happening in real time and stayed internally consistent), the Force now seems like a Harry Potter-like magic without limitations, Maz Kanata (somehow) is a millennia-old deus ex machina (also Han was her contact before–how did anyone in the Resistance know how to contact her? I doubt the person trusted with Luke’s lightsaber is going to give out her contact info willy-nilly), and Yoda’s moral lessons were way too heavy-handed.
For at least the first hour, I wondered where my Star Wars movie was. It didn’t feel like one. The dialogue was all wrong, the scenes were weird (blue milk teats? really unnecessary). The last 75-90 minutes were much closer to the right feel.
That said, it was shot and cut well (again, as long as you’re ok not knowing the timeline involved).
I’ll see it Saturday with and see whether I like it any better after that.