I, for one, freaking loved it.

I'm sure a lot of that was that I sequestered myself completely. I never even watched a trailer.

Going in, all I knew was that there was a bad guy named Kylo Ren, who I honestly didn't think was human. I knew that there was a black stormtrooper. I knew that there was a droid that looked like a soccer ball wearing a yarmulke. That's about it.

If I'd watched all of the trailers and dissected them and formulated my own theories before I walked into the theatre, I probably would have hated it. I didn't, and I loved it. The only thing that really bugged me was... well... come on, bad guys. How many times are you going to try this Death Star thing before you realize that it's a bad idea? Well, that and the nomenclature of "The Resistance." The Rebels won. They're the damned Republic.

As for it being a rehash, of course there are going to be obvious similarities... but I feel like this is setting up an inverse storyline. I-III were all about good becoming evil. VII introduced Kylo Ren's inner conflict and pull to the Light... and I feel that ultimately, over the course of VIII and IX, we'll see Kylo Ren renouncing his Darkness. Dude killed his dad. That's something that only a being of pure evil can do and walk away from. A pull to the Light indicates a conscience, one that will eat him alive once he realizes what he's done.

I think he's in for a rude awakening when he finally learns to communicate with Vader and sees what we all saw at the end of VI.