I'll tell my story starting from the day Disney bought Lucasfilm, it was 2012, I was a freshman at highschool back then, and of course, I was a huge star wars fan as I still am. I was on twitter when I got the news and I was devastated by them, also, I had some star wars haters around me and they kept saying things like "even lucasfilm has given up on star wars" so, it was a bad day for me.
Then they announced a sequel movie, and I was like "um thats nice, I guess", I had worries about it since Disney was making the film. (Even though they made brilliant movies such as Pirates of the Caribbean and The Avengers) I was just not fully comfortable with someone other than Lucas making a Star Wars movie.
Fall of 2014, the first teaser was dropped, and oh my god, I must admit that teaser still gives me chills whenever I watch. Seeing new faces in familiar places, seeing the falcon, seeing a new droid with an awesome design and seeing a very impressive dark warrior who wields a new type of lightsaber. All of these things combined with the Star Wars theme at the end of the teaser left me shaking.
April 2015, the second teaser was released, it was giving more details about what we had seen in the first one while adding more mysterious content, like melted mask of Darth Vader. That was one hell of a scene, the internet had earthquakes over Darth Vader's mask. And as the first teaser did, the second one left me shaking too.
October 2015, 59 days before The Force Awakens' release date, the trailer was released. It was rumored to be released around 9pm in the US, and I live in Turkey which is 7 hours ahead of the US. So I set my alarm to 4am and it was there when I woke up. I couldnt watch half of the trailer in my first attempt because of the tears on my eyes. I had to calm myself down and rewatch it for hours, so I did, and my roommate found me lying on the floor, shaking with hype. The trailer was just perfect, I still watch it from time to time.
The movie was released on 17th of December in Turkey, but I wasnt able to see it until 19th since I live in dorm and we're not allowed to go out on weekdays. I had deleted my twitter, facebook, instagram to stay away from spoilers but I was spoiled that Han was going to die over iMessage by someone I used to call "friend".
To be honest, I wasnt very happy when I first watched it. Partially because my gigantic expectations, and also because the similarities between Episode 4 and 7. But the more I watched it the more I liked it. I accepted the similarities by taking them as facts, like real facts. And now TFA is ranked 3rd in my ranking of star wars movies. (5-4-7-6-3-1-2) I enjoy it, and I really like it, but I cant hold myself from saying that it could have been better.
I guess I should end writing my thoughts bc it has been a really long post, also, English is not my native, so I'm sorry if I made grammar, spelling or any mistake at all.