I enjoyed Force Awakens for the spectacles, but it did little for me in terms of story. Things felt too contrived; there were too many conveniences, which felt cheap. I also didn't like the new characters.

As for Rogue One, it was "grittier", which I appreciated. I enjoyed it a lot more than Force Awakens. I just hope they do a decent job moving forward with episodes 8 and 9 (screw Roman numerals, by the way).

Edit
I should mention that my viewing experience of Force Awakens was lessened because someone had spoiled the bigger plot points for me before I saw it.

I wish. Episode 7 undermines nearly everything accomplished in the original trilogy.

I was BLOWN AWAY that a tacked on PREQUEL to a series, that nobody really cared about, ended up being (to use your term) "gritty", and so damn amazing.

Also in the news. The new Dave Chappelle is on Netflix and it's GREAT. Though you can tell the constant cigarettes are starting to kill his voice.

I watched it when it first came out. I'm not a big SW fan so I couldn't really care less about the franchise, but I think I generally didn't like the movie. I can't remember my criticisms, but in any case I think I managed to sit through it all. As more of a Star Trek fan I find that the Star Wars media tends to seem rather low budget and random, even if they managed to spend tens of millions on its production. It just seems amateurish like they started hacking at a script without knowing how it was going to end. It probably helps that most Star Trek media is in the format of 40 minute TV episodes instead of feature length films, but they do have their share of those too (which admittedly I haven't seen many of them).

Wow, I am constantly surprised at the criticisms of these movies. You question their ability to travel long distances in the blink of an eye but nobody questions how they are walking around their ships with full gravity and no inertia from movement etc... etc...

I guess I'm different. I go to see a movie, I don't expect realism. I expect... a movie... fiction. I can't think of anything that I didn't like.

I loved the ending where

I thought that plot twist was brilliant to be honest!

The tie in at the VERY end did feel really rushed. Plus, Darth Vader while everyone thought he was super cool... the continuity didn't make sense. He's super super angry in this movie and swinging and force choking everyone. And then we begin A New Hope and... he's so much more calculating and reserved. And I think that was kind of the point. A Sith MASTER uses the dark side but isn't controlled by his emotions. Whereas a Sith new recruit is overwhelmed by them ala Kylo Ren (even though Ren is supposed to be a master or whatever which is also B.S.). But at the end of Rogue One, Darth Vader is like some crazy murderfest guy... which is fine if you want that but... then a New Hope hits and he's TALKING to people, interrogating prisoners. He's creepy BECAUSE he's so reserved.

Also, if he can force pull people, why the hell not force pull the ONE guy with the damn deathstar plans?

The tie-in at the end was silly and forced. (Ha. Pun.)

That being said, I loved the rest of the movie. It did feel like they spend very little time at each spot BUT contrast it with Force Awakens where they just go from one planet to the next and SIT AROUND AND TALK. Every place just spends 5 minutes of fan service without actually propelling the movie forward. There were like 10 minutes of ORIGINAL content in Force Awakens of new, cool ideas. In Rogue One there's at LEAST an hour.

Ships shooting ion torpedos. COOL. (We haven't seen those since freakin' X-Wing Vs Tie Fighter games.)

New service droids and the reprogrammed one that feels like C3-PO meets . VERY Cool.

Space Muslims. Cool.

Force Monks. Very freakin Cool.

MORE SHIPS. Great space battles. (Unlike the Force Awakens Tie-Fighter / X-Wing battle which is literally just background effects while the characters do stuff. The X-wings "win" and then magically lose somehow and allow Kylo Ren's ship to leave.)

Seamless hyper-transport. (The very end where they're retreating and then Darth Vaders ship WARPS INTO IT destroying it?)

NEW SHIPS that feel canon and look right. YES.

Pushing one destroyer into another. Mwahaha.

Explaining why the Death Star had such an obvious defect? Neat. I didn't ask for it, but it's a "plausible" reason and not some horribly obvious tacked on handling. It felt canon.

Death Star using 1 generator instead of full power? A neat special effect that ends up having a PRACTICAL plot effect. They're worried the Death Star might not run at full power, and then the obvious--I don't want to mention--part. Excellent use of a new concept twice. It the movie didn't feel like we were just being "shown" a bad thing, and then the second time "feel" the bad thing. Both times felt pretty natural.

I loved the grittyness of the film. You saw camera angles that George would NEVER use like the handicam shots.

(spoiler...Ish)

If you saw the movie you'd know what I'm talking about. A guy who ISN'T a Jedi. He CAN'T wield a lightsaber or use the force... except he can use hints from the force because he is such a strong BELIEVER in the force. Like a wizard in Harry Potter. You either are or aren't. But what if you were such a studied muggle that you could "kind of" use a wand.

The point about the Rebels is a good one. HOWEVER, it wasn't the rebels that were cowards. I REALLY liked how they showed that the rebels were TIRED. They were fighting for so long and (NEAT) did unethical things "For the greater good."

ALSO, the COSTUMES. They were new AND FELT NORMAL. Way more than Force Awakens (though it's set in the future, yeah... but not that far.) The new Imperial general clothes, cloaks, etc. It all felt normal and GREAT. (Although the Sith's Temple or whatever... looked WAY too much like Mordor...)

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Contrast with the big pile of DOG POOP force awakens where they straight up make the Empire... Space Nazis... but don't have the balls to actually put a swastika on them.

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It was so damn stupid. It took all of the real fear of a cold, calculated Empire and replaced them with silly Westboro Baptist Neo Nazis.

I also liked the bad general dude. He was slightly cliche but he had SOME depth. I liked his "too eager to suck up to get ahead" attitude. He felt like some Wall Street jerk in the Empire attracted to money and power, and once he got high enough in rank he ended clashing against something different than bureaucracy and greed... the cold calculating evil of the Sith. A completely different motivation behind their actions.

- ANOTHER good thing. When they're getting attacked on the planet and all the Empire guys just stand around and the white general dude is like "DO SOMETHING!" That's a REAL feeling scene. Everyone is so shocked that anyone would dare attack them, they're stunned, and then the bureaucracy is so powerful that nobody knows who to call or what to do when a real situation happens.

The TWO unforgivable parts in the movie?

[edit]

I forgot to complete my thought about the rebels. The rebel LEADERS were hesitant to engage in an operation that would cause many losses and may not actually help their cause. So I don't really count them as cowards.

Also, WTF: Look at all the cool scenes they ripped from the movie we saw: (Scroll down to near the bottom for the "dialog cut from movie" video.)

http://www.ign.com/articles/2016/12/17/rogue-one-whats-the-deal-with-darth-vaders-castle

That reminds me of another thing I hated about Force Awakens. The Super Death Star (Star killer?) was such a stupid thing.

Building TWO death stars in the series was almost insane. "Hey guys, we build this MOON sized ship... TWICE. With the SAME flaw in it." By time you hit Jedi. BUT, they changed it up because it was till being built. Which was kind of cool.

Force Awakens... they build a THIRD DAMN DEATH STAR? I MEAN COME THE HELL ON. .. And it's got ANOTHER critical weakness... A THIRD TIME? They're really stretching credibility here. It's straight up comical at this point, like some insane silly James Bond villain. "OH NO, here's comes Dr Evil with his THIRD LAIR of DOOM!" Or like a comic book villian, "Here's comes X, trying to take over the world again with his robot minions! However will we defeat him, team?"

Moreover, it's just damn lazy. (TO DAMN LAZY for a BILLION DOLLAR franchise.)

"OH WOW, this NEW death star can blow up FIVE planets in a row."

Okay... but... the LAST two could also do that... they just had to fly around for five minutes for each one. WHO CARES if an entire galaxy, an entire civilization blows up in 30 seconds, or 30 minutes?! WHO CARES?! Compared to the thousands of years they existed on those planets?

And how can ANY of us possibly comprehend and empathize with an entire civilization dying? How can any of us wrap out heads around it? It's a horrible plot device. A human brain can't comprehend it, so why the hell is it in the movie? Am I supposed to be sad everyone is dead? And if not, why the hell are you showing me it? (Just like what Disney did in Tron: Legacy where they killed all the synthetic people... but never showed them. All you heard was cheesy death sounds. Am I supposed to care about these people that live in a computer that I've never heard about before?)

Moreover, if they were gonna go the "Empire are just neo nazis" route, it would have been a THOUSAND times more heartfelt and impactful if they did ACTUAL Nazi stuff instead of "POLITICALLY CORRECT NAZI" stuff. Actual torture chambers. Actual interment camps. Actual genocide. THAT would have been intense. Not this White Washed, PC, version of Space Nazis where they would never torture you... but they'll blow up your entire galaxy (including ALL the important resources/documents/armies alongside it? REALLY?). Taking Scorched Earth policy to a whole new level there...

And why blow up the Republic anyway? Couldn't they have just THREATENED them with the new doom laser and extorted them into gaining resources, power, influence, slaves, whatever. It just doesn't make sense.

When the USA got nukes, they didn't blow up entire countries off the face of the Earth. They dropped TWO BOMBS. Enough to get the point across so they could then extort/influence the country to their whims.

How many potential new Storm Troopers could they have enslaved from those planets they blew up? It's SILLY.

And just as a movie device, GOOD GOD. "Hey guys, it's a death star... but this one is... BIGGER." Has got to be the laziest plot device for a SciFi movie in the history of movies. Look at Tremors 1, 2, 3, etc. Even though the 2nd onward are cheap B-movies, the movie revolves around prehistoric worms. BUT, each movie had NEW evolutions of those worms. The 2nd one, they could walk and see heat (while the 1st movie was vibrations ala Dune). The 3rd one had jetpack "butt buster" ones. And so on. NONE of those movies did "Hey, it's a worm... but it's a BIGGER WORM!!! OMGAWWD". If you can't beat a SciFi channel B-movie, what the hell are you doing with your career? Would you have watched Star Trek 1/2/3 if they were just Wrath of Kahn (good movie!) but... BIGGER WRATH OF KAHN SHIP. And the next one... BIGGER WRATH OF KAHN SHIP! ("But this time Kahn IS A ROBOT!") Hell no you wouldn't.

Rogue One felt like a narrative. The characters were just a part of a bigger story going on. Force Awakens felt like the opposite. It felt like the WORLD bent to whatever the characters (::cough:: writers ::cough::) needed to happen so that these characters could go through a list of "cool scenes". It was like Family Guy. And I mean that seriously. The writing for Family Guy is extremely lazy. I'll never forget the South Park creators talking to film students saying:

"What we've learned makes a good story is, you never have 'this happens' AND 'this happens'. You want to do 'this happens' BUT 'this happens' BECAUSE 'this happens'. Use BUT and BECAUSE. If you have this AND this AND this, it ends up boring."

Family Guy is SUPER like "this AND this AND this." Peter discovers X, then Y shows up under the carpet, then Z happens. There's no real struggle, suspense or twists. Even the "twists" in Family Guy are all just tacked on, for the same of a list of jokes they want to say. And Force Awakens felt like a bunch of tacked on bullet points of neat scenes that barely fit together in any natural way, and only link because the writers deemed that they should.

I mean, the millennium falcon JUST so happened to be sitting on the first planet AND it just so happened to be fueled and ready to fly? REALLY? ... REEALLLY? In the original New Hope movie where the ship is introduced they remark how "old" and "piece of junk" the ship is. So this 100+ year old ship is both faster and more powerful then contemporary ships AND ready to fly?

Pacific Rim's "Big robots punch Godzilla" felt better put together and had me cheering way more than Force Awakens. (Though I did cheer on Rogue One at some badass stuff.)

"Did you like Force Awakens?"

Me standing in front of my TV:

I did see the movie. I guess I just read your words literally.

I'm 22. I wasn't alive to see the original trilogy while it was new, though they were the first I saw as a child. But I personally prefer episodes 1-3 over 4-6, as they are more nostalgic for me, and I enjoyed the CGI. Yeah, much of it hasn't aged well, and lots of the dialogue is cheesy, but I still enjoy it. Besides, the light saber fights are way better in the prequel trilogy, and there's plenty of cheesy acting in the originals, too.

But hey, each to their own.

I'm just hoping that things improve moving forward with episodes 8 and 9. My expectations aren't too high though. I enjoyed the Star Trek movie reboot thing a from a few years ago, for example, but hated the sequel (rehashing the Khan story but in a crappy fashion felt cheap and disrespectful to the original movies). I thought the third movie would bring things back to good standing, but I was even more so disappointed with that one. So I have very little expectations from JJ and Star Wars.

It seems that a lot of sequels are garbage these days. They used to almost always be garbage, but in the mid 2000s, things seemed to be a bit brighter for a time. But now it's back to garbage. Or maybe sequels have always sucked, but I was just blind to it? Just like they're rebooting King Kong again! I saw the trailer the other day and thought, "didn't I they just remake that?" But then I realized that was 12 years ago! Man, how time flies... I just don't see a reason to remake/reboot these things so quickly (if at all ever). I've recently felt the same way with video game sequels, too. Animal Crossing from the GameCube era, for example, is more than enough for me. I bought the first two sequels, but felt they were not as good as the original. I recently tried the third sequel was was really disappointed. Kind of bummed me out. So screw sequels, I guess...

Ramble, grumble...

Some people were making good points that Force Awakens really highlighted how overly critical we were of George Lucas and how much we shat on him. Don't get me wrong, I'm not "super" impressed with the prequels with lines like "You are softer than sand... m'lady" (was he wearing a fedora?) and MITICHLORIANS RETCONNING the entire series.

HOWEVER. As much as "Star Wars Prequels" didn't feel... exactly like Star Wars. (Read: Force Awakens being so conservative its afraid to do anything at all) It sure as hell felt like SOMETHING NEW. It was so new that it didn't exactly feel like Star Wars so much as "in the universe of Star Wars". But George sure as hell put a lot of effort into it.

(Fun fact: Tons of the original SCRAPPED ideas for Star Wars New Hope that producers/etc ripped out of his movie for being too silly or stupid ended up in the prequels. Almost like he was like "SCREW YOU. Those WERE good ideas damn it!")

So I'm still on the fence about the prequels. One thing I remember as a kid, being MOST interested in was ... "How did Darth Vader become Darth Vader?" the coolest bad guy in fiction ever created. And then the prequels hit and I was like "Wait, so he's just a whiny bitch?" and then the prequels ENDED the moment he turns into vader! We never got to actually SEE Anakin BECOME Vader. We just saw him turn to the dark side and get the suit. All of that I didn't care about... I wanted to see young vader WITH the suit, encountering stuff and becoming more and more of the badass we see in the originals. What missions did he go on? What things did he see? To me, the prequels were set at least 10 years too early. I was hoping George was going to give us info about vader that would enhance the words we saw in the original series. Pick a random line, say, "You are apart of the rebel alliance and a traitor." and then we find out he was referencing a very specific event in his history that fueled his emotions and actions. (We did get a slight hint/taste of that with Rogue One.)