Best part of the viewing experience was the huge cheer from the crowd for General Leia.

As we'd just watched the Honest Trailer for the last of the prequels, I admit that I laughed and laughed at the bratty slashing of the room with the lightsaber because, wow, such Anakin. It clearly skips a generation.

I love that Rey is like what would happen if Han and Luke had a kid (dear JJ, don't listen to me about that, though that would be hilarious, please no Jedi mpreg), and that Finn got so enthusiastic when he did something right, and oh, the poor boo latching on like a baby duck to the first two people who are actual people to him.

I loved it all. Even the ridiculous parts. Except for Han dying, but I wasn't surprised by that.

Having gone into it almost completely unspoiled and knowing nothing, I especially loved the fake-out on who the real hero was going to be. It started out with Poe's daring escape with the special droid, and then whoops, he's dead, the real hero is the brave former Stormtrooper escaping his bondage! Except whoa, no, the REAL hero is the scavenger from the desert planet (should've been a clue, right there) and how happy am I that the new Jedi is a girl? A girl who seems like an awesome combination of Luke, Han, and Leia rolled into one? Hell yeah, I'm in for this ride, and it looks like Chewie is too. Bring all the handwavium you need, we've got a spaceship.

I went in completely unspoiled, and as a result I gasped and whimpered when Han died. I was NOT prepared. I think I figured that if they were to kill him, they'd do it later in the series. Ah, well.

Over/under on whether Ren could ever be redeemed, since he's gone and done the one thing that Luke nearly died to avoid doing in RotJ? Also, Ren probably has a higher body-count to his name than Vader, given the populations on five planets. (Were they all in the same star system? How does that work?) (But then no one never accused JJA of having much understanding of astronomy.)

Man, I loved Rey. For one thing, every time someone showed up to rescue her, she'd already rescued herself. Every friggin' time. It was great.

She called out the stupid thing where the guy drags the girl along by the hand while they're being chased, which has always bothered me--all it does is slow him down, and throw off her balance.

She really is Leia's spiritual heir, in a lot of ways.

That said, why did Luke never train Leia in the Force?

For myself, I really don't want Rey to be a Skywalker or related to any of the old cast. I want her to be just some random kid who was abandoned on Jakku. I'm tired of dynasties.

Regarding Rey I wonder if one or both of her parents were among Luke's trainees that Kylo Ren killed. Which is why they never came back for her.

For myself,

I agree. I thought she'd call Luke "Father" when she found him, and I was glad she didn't.

That said, why did

I wondered that, too, and my best guess is that Leia decided her role was to continue to lead the Resistance (man, I cheered when they called her "General") rather than to be trained as a Jedi.

She obviously can sense some things, because she knew when Han died.

Dana, I think that's kind of spoilery info for being outside the spoiler tags.

It looks whitefont to me, but I'll edit the whole post to white it out.

Not your most recent post, Dana; 2 posts back.