When I first saw TFA I thought it was pretty clearly worse than the already terrible prequels.
Rey's scenes near the beginning are excellent, and I would have loved following along a movie about her in the same vein. But that isn't what we got, or at least not what I got (this is why it took me so long to grok that people truly liked it).
At the very least, everything after Han's arrival was atrocious.
We literally have TFA fans in this thread arguing that Han may have never successfully smuggled anything and has the mentality of a 6-year-old in order to justify him prancing BB-8 around openly, instantly having it observed by those trying to find it, only minutes after he demonstrated his awareness of the importance of hiding it. All so they don't have to acknowledge that, after the promising start, TFA warps at light speed through all the intended plot points with no regard for the world or characters involved in those plot points.
So we watch Starkiller Base destroy stuff with no world building to make it meaningful... the fact that it is confusing, that we are given no context for such a weapon existing or of the government being destroyed, is only a side effect. The disease is that Nobody. Fucking. Cares. We're doing a bee line through these plot points because the weapon that destroys stars is monstrously boring to the people making the film. World building is monstrously boring to them. A single captain is responsible for getting in the trenches with troublemakers and trying to get Finn in line, and later unilaterally shutting off the shields without going through chain of command. This is not character economy. It is the "small world" syndrome of someone who fundamentally can't stand world building.
The big reveal of Rey being able to control minds is, first of all, turned into a joke. We get a silly progression of try, try again a second later and you can get the storm trooper to cartwheel out the door, shut off the shields, and moonwalk down the halls while the base explodes. But honestly, that too is only a side effect. The disease is that they want to make sure Rey stays as much as mystery as possible, so it is impossible for us to follow her and feel accomplishment; we're just waiting for the other shoe to probably drop, in a different movie we'll see someday.
After the beginning, every character is a plot device, every scene is an obligation. We feel nothing when Solo dies because he was already reduced to a plot device and is better off getting out of these movies. We feel no accomplishment when Rey can control minds because she's a plot device by the time of that scene. The movie doesn't ever slow down and let us get to know anyone. It's a perfunctory rush job (again, after the beginning) and it does not deserve slack because of being the first in a series. It's bad, so it's bad.
