Ok. I'm a huge Star Wars fan. I watched the Original Trilogy when I was a kid and loved it, but then I watched the Prequels as a kid too - and hated them. Clearly, it's not a nostalgia thing - my opinion on these films is purely objective :) Episode 7 - TFA was hmmmmm, like a great cover of a classic rock song by a tight band. They hit all the right notes, and didn't go off (tune or storywise) even once. That said - boring. If I wanted to watch A New Hope - I'd have watched A New Hope. Still, kept my hopes up thinking they'd go someplace different ultimately in the next films. Rogue One - was freakin great. Not the best, but definitely better than TFA and a step in the right direction. Better characters, better story, less of Star Wars nostalgia served up as new fare to the fans. This trailer though - looks like Empire all over again. Hoth = some new icy world, Darth Vader helmet from the back = Leia's hair from the back. Yoda training Luke on Dagobah = Luke training Rey on island place. Yawn. Seems like we're doomed to live out endless cycles of repetitive, derived, mindless CGI fare in cycles of 3, until Disney gets bombed into Armageddon
Episode VII was garbage. It was a complete carbon copy of the original film with some other themes and plots that were overlaid to try and make it seem original, but failed flat on its face as those themes just copied other Star Wars sources. The plot was a nasty cocktail derived from two failed script treatments and one that was cowritten by none other than the biggest hollywood hack around, JJ Abrams. The characters were the best part of the movie, no matter how woefully underutilized (Luke, Poe, Phasma) they were. Even with the excellent character-building, however, Rey and Finn had terrible arcs because they have complete heel-turns at least twice. Kylo Ren has been converted by the Internet Hate Machine into a whiny teenager meme when he should be a mentally unstable unstoppable murderer.
The problem with Episode VII is that it would have benefited if the EU was not in the canonical quagmire it is. For those of you who don't know, the Star Wars Expanded Universe was repackaged last April as "Legends," however it has never been clarified whether or not Legends is no longer canon. The Lucasfilm Story Group (the committee Disney put together to churn out copy-paste storylines) dodges it completely, and the "new canon" books still reference and go along with old sources. If movie-goers went in knowing the political dynamics of the Galaxy post-Vong War they would have been much more satisfied (No Coruscant did not blow up, the entire Republic did not blow up, the First Order is not what became of the Empire, etc.)
However, none of that matters because JJ Abrams decided to cut out many of the meaty plot exposition scenes since he's an adrenaline junky who wants to see the x-wing make bigger death star go boom. Even with the knowledge of the Galaxy after Episode VI, I'm sure Abrams would have just cut out anything that was too boring. Maybe it's fear from the prequels being too political, or maybe it's because Abrams is a hack. I'll let you decide that one.
I like the memory wipe thing but rhey is too young when she was left behind to be trained much in the force. I liked the scenario someone was saying about her being related to obi wan. Did anyone ever play the knights of the old republic games?
