Just came back from seeing the new Star Wars movie and in a scale of 1 to 7, I would give it somewhere around a 5 or a 6. It won't live up to any feelings you have about the originals, if you have them, but it's still very well made and a worthy successor to them. I will say it is the movie the prequels could have been (not "should" -I am no one to suggest that); it's entertaining, it's got good effects and action sequences, and most importantly the dialogue and characterizations aren't as embarrassing.
It does suffer from the Nolan-realism syndrome: the notion that high fantasy must be "realistic" in order to be taken seriously and therefore be good. As a wise man once said, Star Wars fans hate Star Wars; it's only the "idea" of it that they like, but not how whimsically and make-believe-ishly it has been executed. No spoilers, like I promised, but the villains are Nolan-realistically bloodthirsty and merciless, because the old "Stormtroopers miss every shot" thing is not Nolan-realistic, it's too fantastic for modern day "geeks". An odd thing to be happening to Star Wars -which triumphed at first precisely because it wasn't Nolan-realistic and everything else around it was-, but it's about my only pet peeve with the movie as a whole.
A new fantasy movie like A New Hope might or might not happen to deliver us from all the excessive Nolan-realism these days -but while we wait for it, let's all rejoice in the return of Star Wars to the big screen. The Force is with movie theaters once more!
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keirajo
I joke with my SW-fanatic co-worker that I won't see it...but I'll eventually buy it on DVD and watch it. :)