This movie is like a counterfeit copy of Ep. 4

Rating: 1/10 (20 December 2015)

Currently this is a better movie in IMDb top 250 than Green Mile, T2, Apocalypse Now, The Departed and even Alien. I usually don't spread negativity, but word must get out.
Everything in this movie disappoints except for CGI. I expected a weak movie at worst, but it turned out to be a ridiculous one. First there are small things: stormtroopers standing upright in a re-entry vehicle like if it was a bus; Rebels (I'm going to call them Rebels and Empire for convenience, because the movie doesn't depart from this idea at all) for some reason send their best pilot on a spy mission, in a 100% recognizable X-Wing, which he parks right next to a place where he's meeting his contact, and yet the imperials that storm the village don't notice it, except for 2 troopers that get shot instantly; prisoners constantly escape custody, they can also steal a fighter from a military starship if they please; stormtroopers are specifically mentioned to be "elite troops", yet they walk, run and shoot worse than people that spent 30 days in a military boot camp, and this is an obvious downgrade from clone troopers of prequel trilogy that have shown at least some semblance of fighting capability; Rebel pilots are keen to shoot randomly flying TIE-Fighters and running stormtroopers, but completely ignore landing shuttles parked nearby, including the one that's obviously a lead ship carrying someone important. This list can go on for some time, really.
Then there's disregard for laws of physics. Yes, Star Wars isn't exactly 100% scientific, but there are things that are too basic to ignore. A planet-sized battlestation fires what appears to be a plasma beam that travels in real space at a speed significantly lower than the speed of light, yet arrives in another star system within seconds, and people in a third star system watch it happen in the sky like it's merely a couple of thousand kilometers away. Disney obviously has a very skewed idea about interstellar distances. Millennium Falcon gets belly-smashed into ground several times without anyone on board so much as even noticing. There's a breathable atmosphere and pine trees on a fairly small planetoid of Starkiller base, too small to hold such a dense atmosphere, and at the same time ships enter and leave this atmosphere several times during a single battle within seconds and without experiencing a burning re-entry. This is also a list that can go on.
But worse of all, there's disregard for Star Wars tradition. I understand that Disney chose to make all of old Extended Universe material non-canon to create new material, but what was the point if they weren't going to make it better? A non-forceuser can now fight trained Sith in a lightsaber duel, without Kylo using the Force even once over the course of that fight. Remember another recent Sith apprentice, Darth Maul, that could take on a Jedi master and a padawan at the same time, and manage to kill the master? Well, that's not Kylo. He can stop blaster shots in mid air at one point, yet he also can get shot at another, and then lose a lightsaber duel consecutively fighting a non-forceuser and then an untrained forceuser. He was wounded, yes, but Sith of the past managed to do things like use the force to prevent their bodies from decomposing and fly around in a disintegrating star cruiser held together by them and them alone, and that didn't prevent them from being excellent saber fighters. And yes, Kylo is copied from Jacen Solo, but Jacen is a tragic character whose experiences on his way to the dark side are long and perilous, and his reason for turning is more than noble. Kylo isn't anywhere near that. He, like the rest of this movie, is bootlegged material.
I won't comment on how much Driver fits Kylo's role, although for many people (me included) his reveal was the point beyond which it was impossible to take the movie seriously. I'll only say that Sith usually didn't wear masks unless they needed them, and Kylo doesn't even need to conceal his identity, since pretty much everyone knows who he is, and he certainly doesn't need the mask for life support purposes, so why bother? Ah, yes, and there are also giant plot holes characteristic of a counterfeit copy. Episode 4 was built around stealing Death Star plans to find a weakness and deal with this obviously serious threat. Here the Rebels are looking for Luke (why exactly?), while completely ignoring a giant battlestation that obviously didn't get built overnight, until it destroys capital of the Republic (again, why?) and billions of lives are lost. At that point Rebels realize they have a threat on their hands, and it takes them a minute and a single low-ranking defector to figure out how to destroy this station. That's it, no plan stealing, no analysis, just a minute of Star Trek style mumbo-jumbo conversation and the new Death Star is done for. Ridiculous. Oh, and the engineers of the new station obviously learned nothing from the past 2 battlestations. Their newest creation still has an obvious weakness, except now it's also identifiable without having to analyze it's plans. Brilliant. This movie is like watching 2 people trying to outdo stupidity of one another in a live conversation.
No wonder JJA and Disney felt like they didn't need Lucas anymore. They were copying his work and didn't think they needed him for that, but they were wrong. Fans were worried about John Boyega and the new lightsaber design, but John and the new lightsaber can now laugh at it, because they turned out okay compared to things that really ruined the movie.
Like the rebooted Star Trek, this movie wasn't even worth its trailers. And that's before you take into account that there's a huge established Star Wars canon out there.