I was afraid of this. A clumsily directed movie designed to placate the Star Wars nerdverse filled with esoteric and archaic throwback references to SW canon in an effort to prove its authenticity. It would be as if Abrams was saying to himself, “Okay. After the disaster of the prequels we have to make this specific movie in order to mollify the masses so they achieve catharsis. and then we can move on to making the movies I wanted to make.”
Someone on the news this AM called it "Star Wars VII: The Forced Apology" (for the prequels)
Disney has $4MMM to recoup and a Star Wars movie that’s at least is good as Return of the Jedi to start is the safest and easiest way to do it.
If it can hit that mark (which I don’t think will be hard to do), the nerdiverse will be in out-of-their-minds ecstasy.
So far, it sounds like it has. I think a big part of that is that, for once, fans have learned to manage their own expectations.