it removed from the saga all the irritants from the prequels then essentially remade ANH with bits of ESB/ROTJ thrown in.
Essentially. It's shockingly similar in some ways - even repetitive. I think, though, that this is what SW fans yearned for after the prequels. The movie pandered to the fans. It's good and bad.
Anyway... concretely my main gripes are with the recycling of the "fallen Jedi" story line and the "kid found on a desert planet" story line.
I was expecting a fully functional Jedi Temple with several apprentices. It's ANH all over again.
The only good clue comes from Adam Driver, who says that Kylo Ren doesn't see himself as evil but as doing the right thing. I suppose he became convinced somehow that the Jedi were always evil and responsible for the war and chaos
I think there is a great backstory here. I wonder perhaps if Ren wasn't sent on some missions for Luke and became disillusioned with the general anarchy in the galaxy after the fall of the Empire? The collapse of the Empire may have somehow led to galaxy wide poverty. He probably complained about this to Luke and considering Jedi rarely give good answers to their desperate students, he became disillusioned with them. He perhaps even saw his parents as anarchists and yearned for order. Snoke may have played him on this.
Another hope is that they won't recycle for Rey the "dangers of being seduced to the Dark Side" arc. We've seen both sides more than enough already. Could we move on to other angles for the Dark vs. Light conflict, please? Another hope for Rey is that she won't turn out to have been "hidden for her own safety" by her loving family. I'm hoping Maz had it right that those she was waiting for would never come back to Jakku for her, that she was either abandoned there by someone who feared her emerging powers (and thus she's probably not a Skywalker) or else that if she's Luke's daughter she is believed to have been killed in the attack on his "academy" but in fact was kidnapped and abandoned on Jakku by a younger Kylo Ren who didn't have the balls to simply kill the little girl.
I'm pretty sure she has Skywalker genes. It's regrettable, but inevitable.
I'm not sure where the "Resistance" is coming from, though. Why aren't they the Republic's military? Why is that movement openly opposed to the First Order so small? When did it start? Why is someone like Leia at the head of the resistance instead of part of the Republic? Is the Resistance purely a continuation of a rebellion that never shed the arms, or is it a rebirth after years when the rebellion no longer existed?
The other question is how Snoke managed to gain resources that rivaled the original empire. To turn a planet into a weapon couldn't have been cheap, and he's clearly got the money to form vast armies and match the Rebels/Senate in might.
I'm eager to see where they'll be going with Luke, and to discover more about the circumstances of how and why he tried to bring back the Jedi Order
I thought this was kind of obvious. This is what I would do if I was Luke. I can't imagine it's healthy for the galaxy to have only one remaining Jedi and they're useful to have around.
and why the fall of Ben Solo led him to vanish. What was he trying to achieve, put an end to the war because his own efforts to bring back the Jedi Order was the cause of the First Order's attack in the first place?
Han said he felt guilty, and I suppose he blames himself for allowing Ren to fall, much like Obi-Wan felt with Vader. I also get the feeling that Ren and friends killed everyone at the Temple. Luke may be trying to start again in secret, to evade the dark side like Yoda did when he went to Dagobah. By training Rey there he can at least hope to match the FO as a team of well trained Jedis. Luke is also looking for the first Jedi Temple... not sure what he wants there, but perhaps to commune with former Masters and gain some wisdom.