Big reveal: Rey is actually KHAN!
Honestly, I hope that Rey is just a random person with no connection to the original cast. It's enough that Kylo Ren/Ben Solo is Vader's grandson; making Rey a lost Solo--or a surprise Skywalker--just makes the galaxy too small...and we've already seen how small Abrams thinks it is.
Saw it again yesterday, and I'm still annoyed by the way Starkiller Base worked. At least, just the way the laser seemed to crawl through ordinary space to hit the Hosnian System, with its progress and effect both visible from Maz Kanata's planet in (presumably) an entirely different system. C'mon, J. J., space is NOT that goddamn small. It would've been easy to have the weapon fire, show the beam tunneling through hyperspace (and how spectacular would an image like THAT be?), maybe see some weird ripple in realspace visible from various planets along its path, and have a computer console light up in alarm on that ship Finn was about to leave in--and he realizes the source of the hyperspace anomaly as coming from Starkiller Base, which makes him change his mind and run back to the castle to look for Han and Rey. Maybe have someone shout something about the HoloNet (EU nod!) reporting that the Hosnian system being destroyed. Heck, anything's better than being able to see a planet blow up from an entirely different planet somewhere else entirely.
Sorry, rant over. I have minor nitpicks about the movie, but that's the thing that bothers me the most. Abrams really has no sense of scale.
Other minor nitpick related to something I predicted about the movie back in spring when the first full-length trailer came out:
Some thoughts I had while watching the trailer for the umpteenth time:
1. According to the news that came out of the Star Wars Celebration panels, the desert planet, Jakku, is the sight of an old battle between the Empire and the Rebels/New Republic, and is littered with wrecked ships as a result.
2. Daisy Ridley's character is a scavenger on Jakku.
3. The two clips we see of the Millennium Falcon in the original teaser and the official trailer also show it on Jakku, engaged in a dogfight with TIE fighters and fleeing from a single fighter, respectively.
4. The official trailer also shows Daisy and John Boyega's characters running from a TIE fighter attack.
5. The clip of the Falcon shows it flying into the massive engines of a crashed ship--something a pilot, even one as daring as Han Solo, wouldn't be reckless enough to do (especially with a ship the size of the Falcon) unless he was familiar enough with the lay of the land--as Daisy is.
6. The two interior shots of the Falcon show BB-8 peeking around a door and, later, Han commenting to Chewbacca that they're "home."
So it's probably safe to assume that the Falcon was damaged in the Battle of Jakku and abandoned, and was later found by Daisy's character, who managed to fix it up and get it in working condition (as much as can be expected) by the time John Boyega's character comes along and they're forced to flee from the Imperial forces that are chasing after him--meaning Han and Chewie don't step foot on the ship until much later in the movie.
That's probably been obvious to everyone else from the beginning, but hey, I thought it was a cool idea. I bet I'm right, too. And how great would it be to see Daisy's character scrounging for parts on Jakku, then walking into a makeshift spaceship hanger where an aged and battered, but still beautiful, Millennium Falcon is sitting there waiting for action?
Hey, I was
kinda right! Still wish we had seen the Falcon before Rey decided to steal it, even briefly--either have her working on it in secret, or, more in keeping with her status as an indentured scavenger in the movie, fixing it up for that junk trader in exchange for food. Even a throwaway line would've worked:
Unkar Plutt: "For these things you brought me, I'll give you...one half-portion."
Rey: "Last week they were a half-portion each!"
UP: "That was before you damaged that YT-1300 you were supposed to fix."
Rey: "You've added so many extra parts, it
can't be fixed."
UP: "Hmph. What about the droid?"
Rey: "What about him?"
UP: "I'll pay you for him...sixty portions."
Something as small as that to establish its presence instead of having it just show up out of the blue would've been cool, but it's not a big deal.