Not_MatlockYeah, they didn't exactly explain his motivation for turning to the dark side very well. I'm guessing they're saving it for a later movie (kind of like how anakin's motivations for turning to the dark side weren't explained until the prequels). However, it doesn't make much sense to do it way way since Vader was originally just the 'fallen bad guy' in the original trilogy, and then later revealed to be Luke's father, whereas Ren is immediately announced as Han and Leia's son. You can't drop a bombshell like that without providing a decent explanation as the WHY he went all evil.

I'm kinda hoping some of the expanded universe lore ties into this with the whole Sith tomb being underneath the jedi academy that causes Ren to fall the the dark side.
i think its reasonable to expect that luke will explain what happened early 8

AndKennethAlso when the dude took off his mask my friend next to me said "ew put it back on" which I thought was pretty on point. In general the whole character (who I'm calling emo ren now) was all like "mom, dad, you just don't understand, the darkside is way cooler I mean come on the light side is just so lame."
i was talking about that with a friend, I would agree but him taking off the mask is the first time we see any real development in his character. I don't think they could have had him simultaneously showing no development and be han and leia's son at the same time. Not to mention it would have been pretty lame for him to just kill han without any real emotion, especially because its the dark side

Going into this i thought there was 2 ways in which the movie could be a disappointment, the first was they could have fucked the premise, they needed a way to throw off the balance the balance of power to make them rebels again, I thought they did this well enough. The other way was for there to be no real closure, this was also avoided by sticking to 4 so closely. Avoiding those two problems definitely made it a solid movie.

~radical opinion part here~

I felt as though by sticking to 4 so fuckin closely it killed the movies chances of being incredible, once i clued in pretty early to the fact that i was watching 4 with some fresh faces there was no more chances for me to be amazed. I felt as though by feeding into this nostalgia they were taking a conservative approach. I realized Han was going to die about half an hour before it actually happened just by following 4.

There were real positives though, I thought the new characters were managed very well, both Finn and Rey were well done and i thought Ren was very well done, he had the same amount of depth that you'd expect of a sw villain that isnt maul (unless you count clone wars i guess). I think this movie will be remembered by how well the next two do, and I certainly think 8 cant be as similar to 5 regardless of how erect people get thinking of 5. They've got peoples attention and reinvigorated a passion for sw again, now they need to do something with it. 8/10

This also really reminded me how much I love the old republic era sw as well so thats something i guess im off to play kotor