So I finally got a chance to watch the movie for a second time last night.
While I liked it the first time, I was taken off guard by some things not being quite like what I was hoping or expecting. I did enjoy it more this time around knowing what to expect.
I rarely felt bored or annoyed this time. I even enjoyed the Rathtar sequence. This seems just like the type of trouble that Han Solo would get himself into. And without the sequence, Chewbacca doesn't get injured, Rey doesn't take over co-piloting the Falcon, Han doesn't offer her a job, and it doesn't make sense for her to inherit the co-pilot role (because I assume Chewbacca is the owner and main pilot now).
I didn't mind the retro callbacks. The only one where I thought it went too far was for Han to say, "Is there a garbage disposal nearby ... or a TRASH COMPACTOR?" Yeah, we get it, Han. One could cut that last part of the line and it would still make sense and work just fine.
Other random thoughts:
I seem to recall someone in this forum saying that Rey knew how to pilot the Falcon because, having been "adopted" by Unkar Plutt, she would have flown in the ships in his junkyard before. (Or maybe I'm remembering what people said wrong.) But after the escape, Rey tells Finn that she's never flown this ship until now. They're both excitedly talking over one another, so it's hard to tell without having the subtitles on (which I did).
Still, that doesn't make her a Mary Sue. She has a lot of trouble piloting the Falcon at first, and keeps bumping it and knocking it into things. It's like someone who's mechanically inclined driving automatic transmission for their whole lives, suddenly being put behind stick shift. She gradually gets better. Yes, she and Finn congratulate each other on what a great job they did, but I think the implied thing is "...under the circumstances."
It's interesting that the accepted lore among all fans is that Kylo Ren killed all the other Jedi, but the line is not directly said in the film. The belief about the Jedi massacre comes from Han's line, "(Luke) was training a new generation of Jedi. One boy, an apprentice, turned against him, destroyed it all. Luke felt responsible… He walked away from everything." (my emphasis) While this is probably splitting hairs, his statement may mean that others escaped and went into hiding. The Order is no more, but it's not explicitly said that everyone else is dead.
I've heard people say (elsewhere, not on this forum) that Chewbacca doesn't react strongly enough to Han's death, in terms of trying to kill Kylo. But here's what he does: He shoots an arrow at Kylo. When it doesn't kill him, Chewbacca steps back (likely realizing that Kylo could kill Chewie with the Force if he wanted to). He then kills a whole mess of stormtroopers before setting off the nuclear detonators that destroy nearly the entire base.
Also, the sequence of the trench run didn't bother me as much this time. It was much shorter than I remembered.
I still wish we had seen more of the people on the planet that got blown up. (And even though five planets were destroyed, we only saw the inhabitants of one.) Even one extra two-minute scene on the Republic homeworld would have helped, so we would have known and cared about the people there. To be fair, what we get is still longer than what we got for Alderaan in ANH.
So, there are some random thoughts from my rewatch. I may never get the movie that I was hoping for, but the movie that this is, is very enjoyable and worth seeing again. There really isn't much that I even want to edit out of it.
