4 days? It starts the 16th in most of Europe

More than twice.

But I'm watching it on Friday, chill out

Saw it at midnight and then immediately after. This film is like meeting up with some old friends who you haven't seen in a long time and finding out that you get on amazingly with their new friends.

7 hours 30minutes and counting down...

I also saw this at midnight last night and again today. I liked it more the second time actually, being less distracted by recognising trailer shots and oh yeah, the sound going out for several minutes at the beginning of a very significant Han scene.

All the actors are fantastic. There's not one dodgy person in the entire thing. The 4 young leads are amazing. I'm reminded a lot of Mad Max in terms of its relentless pace, marriage of old and new special effects techniques, and return to what worked best in establishing the franchise.

Also, fucking Luke Skywalker!

Nice, it was going by so fast I only had time to search out Weebs.

I was pleasantly surprised at how much of a main character BB-8 was. More than Poe was, definitely. I expected him to take up R2's sidekick status, but he definitely made a trio with Finn and Rey much the same as Han, Luke and Leia in ANH.

Really enjoyed it, but I'm not at all sure how I feel about the climax. I didn't feel Starkiller Base had enough buildup, and the tension of the third act suffers as a result--the final duel is intense as all hell, but the dogfight feels almost like an afterthought.

Also not sure how to feel about Han's death, I love what they've done with Kylo but I don't think they gave us enough of his and Han's relationship for it to truly feel meaningful.

That said, I absolutely loved a lot of the rest of it and will be enumerating how as we discuss, I'm sure. Just wanted to get my only big complaints out of the way up front.

One thing that the film absolutely nailed is exactly what Dorkman told Abrams to nail in his open letter--the characters. Finn and Poe are each such damn fun, and Rey is completely badass and endearing without being a Mary Sue. Kylo is such a compelling villain, he's completely different from a Vader clone and is in a lot of ways what Anakin should have been. That's true of all the new leads, none of them is a copy of an OT character, they're all completely new people. Even if I'd had a middling response to the film rather than the mostly-love that I did, I would still go back to VIII without hesitation for these characters.

Rey's got abandonment issues: the tally marks on her wall, the vision after touching the lightsaber, and so much hugs when Fin actually came back for her.

I may be way out of line here, but didn't the dialog mostly concern Fin and Rey introducing themselves to  people? Especially early in the thing, every word felt like an exposition dump. "The Falcon was stolen from whoever and sold to that other guy and then borrowed by Whathisnuts." I get it, there is a history here.

Apart from that, the visual story and action won me over when the kids blasted that second TIE fighter on Jakku, and the tentacle creatures are my favorite monsters yet. I did not retain their species name, in spite of the triple repetition... started with an R did it?

Fight choreo was superb, IMO. Untrained in style, even down to a few unnecessary twirl-flourished from Kylo Ren...just like we all do when there's nothing better to do while holding a lightsaber/stick. Lots of brutal non-lethal touches, even a chopped off hand!