Saw MOST of it last night... right up until the fire alarm went off with about 20 minutes left
Worst part was, there seemed to be no "security or safety procedures" at all: the ugly lights all came on, but the movie kept running. We sat there a good five minutes still watching, until one guy finally went out to find out what was up... then came back and waved at his buddy to leave with him. A few more got up after that, but it was a couple more minutes before another customer started waving for everyone to leave. Once the stream of people were holding the door open, we could hear the alarm chirp-chirp-chirp from out in the hall... but since it was in the middle of the final battle, one could have been forgiven for thinking the noise was part of the movie.
Finally as we were filing into the tunnel, we saw two little staff girls standing there to the side, talking amongst themselves and on their headsets, but never talking to us; the movie was still playing as we left, and some people were still in their seats. We were heading out of the hallway into the back corridors and realized that our theater's other fire exit was RIGHT THERE, and if someone had come to the front to direct us that way, we would have all been out a lot sooner.
Anyway, we went to Timmies for a while, then headed back to see what was up... they were still open and people were going into the later movies. They refunded our tickets and gave us extra passes as well, though I did manage to bash my elbow outside because the mall's shitty snow clearing made things super slippery...
As for the movie.... biggest complaint for me: the music kept throwing me off - it would start to sound like the original score, a couple of the same bars, then go sideways from there. Kinda grated on me and made if feel more like someone was trying to do a Star Wars ripoff. I did notice the themes got more and more like the "original" as the film progressed. I can't imagine that's accidental.
K-2SO was fantastic. Felt like kind of a blending of C-3PO with Marvin the Paranoid Android's attitude, and R2-D2's balls (because let's face it, Artoo was a gutsy little fucker who took no shit from anyone).
The space battles were incredible, and really invoked the wonder of the originals. With the newer movies (and indeed, newer combat scenes in general), the battles have become faster and more cluttered, and the action is filmed in way too close, with scenes being cut together too quickly, all which makes it hard to keep track of the action. In R1, they pulled it back, took longer shots of individual dogfights, made the battles seem big and expansive, rather than shoving you in the middle of a small part of it. Very nice.
The cameos, as Ch28 noted, were well-placed and didn't detract at all, as were the multiple references to the original universe (Sen. Organa mentions Capt. Antilles, for example). Cutting in some old footage or familiar characters was also well done, without being OVER-done.
Spoiler!
Lack of the classic opening crawl was kinda weird and disappointing. That and the accompanying fanfare are THE defining characteristic of Star Wars movies. I can see why they probably did it - this is "a Star Wars story", not centering on the usual main characters or family, and they no doubt wanted to avoid the fanwanking that could be generated by trying to shoehorn something different into the timeline... but dammit, it just didn't set the feel it could have right off the top.
The Tarkin CGI was... odd. Sometimes looked good, sometimes looked like a video game (or a video game trailer). With the budgets in play here, one would think they could have done better, or had someone a little more detail-oriented keeping tabs on the FX. Based on the pic of Leia above (we bailed before it got to that scene), I'd say that had the same problem - they maybe needed less light or more shadow to add some more texture or depth to the skin.
James Earl Jones doesn't quite have the same depth to his voice anymore that made Darth Vader just sound just plain sinister, but I suppose it was better than if they'd got someone else to TRY to do it (I can't watch any Looney Tunes without Mel Blanc, it just ain't right). Whoever they have playing him under the costume (IMDB lists two different people) doesn't have David Prowse's imposing figure, and for me, seemed to have a little too much swagger. Overall though, great to see the Sith Lord again.
Oh... and the whole archive thing, manually driving the thing to pluck out the "tape"... what the fuck. WHAT. IN. THE. FUCK. I know it's "a long time ago" but what is this, 1956?
EDIT: Shit, somehow a whole paragraph vanished.
I found the banter in this a lot more organic and believable than in other recent movies, especially TFA. Nobody will likely ever match the chemistry we got from the Luke/Leia/Han trio (sure their acting was stilted at times, but how they played off each other more than made up for it and really made us care about them), but this was certainly a lot more endearing than we've been given lately (don't even get me started on Nat and Hayden... blech).