It's cliché to have the main villain be the son of a major character. It's literally roles reversed.

Rey is obviously Luke's daughter and the creators are going to wait until the next movie or the movie after that to do a big reveal, despite the fact that 1) it wasn't hard to figure out and 2) a goddamn Disney game fucking spoiled it when Rey & Kylo fight and Kylo says "Fight me, cousin". So what's going to be the big reveal? Are they going to mimic the infamous Vader/Luke scene? Maybe Rey will say "Luke... YOU are my father."

We knew early on that Kylo Ren was Han's son. In fact, they kind of brushed it off quickly. It wasn't all "I'm Han's son" followed by a dramatic pause or anything. And I liked they didn't make a big deal about it, although still annoyed on how cliché it is. But it gets even more cliché when Han and Kylo meet... on... a... fucking... walkway. Was I watching episode 7? Or episode 5? This is terrible writing. I get the whole symbolism and whatnot, but come on! As soon as Han walked onto the walkway, I knew Han was going to die. Why? Because the whole scene was cliché. It would have been worse if THAT'S where the father/son reveal was though.

And that's not the only thing. So this new weapon/base thing, which is essentially Death Star V3.0 EXTREME manages to blow up in the exact same fucking way the Death Star blew up in the first place. That's uh... that's crap. Plain and simple.

They potentially killed off a character that needed more characterization because she could have been awesome. And not only that... if they did kill her... it was off-screen. Off-screen deaths are stupid.

1) Kylo Ren.

I had a feeling that he might have been one of the issues, and he's an interesting one for me, because I do see the problems with him, the whininess, the apparent uselessness of him, but for me it actually highlights how powerful he is/can be. This is a guy that stopped a blaster bolt in mid-air, and forgot about it, who can stop a grown man in his tracks, and even drag them through mid-air. His command of the force is arguably already at Vader level, in terms of being able to move/stop things. But he can't control his temper, and likes to bash things with his lightsaber when he isn't getting his own way. To me, that says "how powerful/dangerous is he going to be when Snoke teaches him to let go of that emotion?" It's a case where we're seeing the villain learning in parallel with the heroes learning. Not quite an "origin" story, because we haven't seen any of what happened with Luke, but he's definitely not the finished article.

Him being Han and Leia's son isn't something that I'm crazy about, especially if Rey is going to end up being related to Luke. You could almost see a parody movie of it having a guy going "OK. IS ANYBODY HERE NOT RELATED TO ANYBODY ELSE?" and I do think they kind of rushed the scene with him and Han where Han dies. But I'm interested to see where he goes, how he turns into the proper villain that I'm guessing he will in VIII and IX.

2) Finn.

I like him. I mean, I can't argue with what you're saying about him caring about Rey so much when they just met, but then I think about Kylo Ren's real name being Ben, and it's like "Han didn't even LIKE Obi-Wan, and Leia never met him," and actually Rey was kind of the same with him after a while, so maybe Jedi just get super attached to people they barely know. I mean Anakin went straight to the "are you an angel" thing with Padme.

But dude is charming, and John Boyega seems like the coolest guy and maybe that's made me more inclined to like the character. I do think he could do with having something that he's really good at though, because he's not as good as Rey at lightsabering, he's not as good as Poe at X-Winging, he's not as good as BB-8 at being funny, and he's not as good at that one badass who's all "TRAITOR" and hits him really hard with an electric stick thing at storm-troopering, he's just sort of there. Likeable, but not really important. So he needs to do stuff.

3) Rey.

Yeah, I kind of addressed your point in amongst the Kylo Ren stuff. I think Daisy Ridley's great as the character though, and probably the best thing about Force Awakens.

4) This is probably the biggest one for me. Coming out of the movie the first time, I was absent-mindedly thinking "oh, this bit matches up with that bit from A New Hope" and the more I did it the more I realised that it's borderline the same story, with embellishments here and there, and the way VIII goes is really going to decide how I feel about that. If it follows Empire Strikes Back to the letter, then that's straight up bullshit, but I think this is so similar to A New Hope because they were trying to get Star Wars back to being Star Wars, after the prequels went away from that "feeling." Kind of like a "yeah, we're going back to the old-fashioned way of doing things! Look, here's Han Solo doing an Obi-Wan impersonation!" thing. Which I'm OK with, provided Episode VIII takes that and tries to go in a different direction. I do think they could easily have gotten rid of the Death Planet thing, and had something a bit less similar to the Death Star. Especially because Snoke was all "ah well, never liked that place anyway. Go and pick up Kylo and meet me at mine."

5) I think Phasma's back in a bigger role in the next one. Hopefully to give Finn something to do.

I think that may actually be the way it goes with VIII. We'll see Luke training Rey, Snoke training Kylo (so they can do the whole "look guys, these are the differences between the two), complete with Rocky-style montages, and then Finn killing Phasma will be one of the bigger moments. Benecio Del Toro is in it as a villain too, so they'll probably focus on him so Kylo Ren can chill out in the background a bit more.

I suck at debating, because a lot of this is sort of "well yeah, but let's see what happens in the next one." I really enjoyed Force Awakens, probably because of the similarity to A New Hope (yay, nostalgia), but I think that when I've watched Episode VIII, I might actually go back and rethink how I've rated Force Awakens.

But in terms of a comparison against Episode 1, at least it was Oscar Isaac and not a shitty little brat blowing up the enemy thing, and we didn't have any nonsense about midichlorians and Anakin not having a father. Although Darth Maul is a million times cooler than Kylo Ren, so there's that.

1) My fear is that we won't get to see what you're talking about. We both agree that Kylo is fucking powerful. That's a fact. But Snooki (I really hate the name Snuke/Snook/Snike/Snokekd whatever it is) can do his best to free Kylo from his emotions except... what's there to do now? Kylo killed his father. Unless there's going to be a massive huge plot twist where the bad guys win and he kills Rey... what could Kylo possibly do now that would make him hated even more in the eyes of the audience? If he kills his mom too?

2) I like the actor. I like how Finn is played. But he's still there, just like you said. However you also said "so maybe Jedi just get super attached to people they barely know." are you implying he's a Jedi? Because I don't see that. If he is a Jedi, okay, it makes sense for the whole "Let's bang, OK?" thing.

3) N/A

4) N/A

5) I hope she is back. Because like I said, killing someone off-screen is stupid.

Rocky-style montages though. I'm afraid they'll take it literal. Like we'll see Rey disarm Luke or something and then in slow-motion, she jumps up and down with her arms up. Or... I can see Kylo doing something similar. Although that'd be funny.

Comparing it to Episode 1 with what you said: I have no problem with Anakin blowing it up. The idea behind it seems far-fetched, sure, but I thought showing Vader as a kid with determination and that from the beginning he's like Butters in South Park with a ridiculously high death count was good.

Just sticking with Finn here, I don't know if he's Jedi, but I think he might be force-sensitive. Like Female Yoda...I mean Maz.

Finn was raised from birth to be a soldier. Having just escaped said life, it seems pretty reasonable that his psyche is fucked up enough that he latches himself romantically to the first woman he's ever met that didn't treat him like "GET BACK IN LINE, GRUNT".

There were only a couple of things I didn't really like. I think Rey defeated Kylo Ren far too easily for her lack of experience. It's not that big of a deal, but they did establish Kylo Ren as being very powerful and he was trained.

The other part I didn't really like was the Starkiller. I liked a few of the illusions to the original but the Starkiller is literally just another death star, it's become such a cliche for Star Wars. And when is the Empire/First Order gonna stop making the weak spots to their ultimate weapons so easy to exploit?

He was wounded. Chewbacca had shot him and then Finn softened him up before he fought Rey.

I mean really the final battle feels way too much like A New Hope minus the suspense.

And making another Death Star was lame. You got a whole universe and you decide to go back to that?

I did like Finn.

There was exciting battles. My favorite being the chase through war torn Jaka. That had a good amount of twists and turns.

Seeing Han again was cool but I guess it didn't have a big impact as it should have since we all knew he was in the film.

It's certainly better than The Phantom Menace.