Did we all watch the same movie?!

Rating: 1/10 (20 December 2015)

How in the world is this movie getting such positive reviews? I really have no idea what people are talking about when they lavish so much praise on such a mediocre film. Since anyone reading this probably already knows what other people loved about the movie, I'm going to skip all of that and get right down to the nuts and bolts of why this is actually a bad film.
The story and screenplay is among the worst I have ever encountered in a movie. I'm not even exaggerating. Yes, it pays a lot of homages to the original source material, and the original story wasn't that bad and might even be considered good by the standards of the genre that it helped pioneer. But the way this very similar story unfolds in this movie is outright horrible. None of the motivations of any of the characters makes any sense whatsoever, not even the old- mainstays from the original trilogy. Only extremely superficial backstory is given for the new characters introduced, which neither helps to explain the characters actions nor demonstrated abilities. The dialogue might actually be the worst out of the 7(!) movies thus far, and that's pretty hard to accomplish when characters like Jar Jar Binks and young Anakin Skywalker exist. At least in the prequels, episodes I-III, the flow of conversation made sense and was more or less appropriate to the setting and the story that was trying to be told. But in The Force Awakens, we're treated to non- stop throw-away lines that don't advance the story, don't fit into the setting, and don't distinguish the characters or make them memorable. As terrible as Jar Jar is as a character, at least he's memorable, which is more than can be said for any of the new characters introduced here. For those who have seen the film -- now be honest with yourselves -- are there any lines or scenes that are particularly memorable? Any at all? I can't think of a single moment, nor a single character, nor single line that had any kind of magic or soul in it. The actors themselves were passable -- not great, not bad -- but they had horrible material to work with, and I don't use the term "horrible" lightly. Possibly only M Night Shyamalan could produce a worse script out of all of the big budget writers and directors out there these days. To top it all off, there was zero climax. Oh, there were plenty of huge, universe-changing events, but they may as well have been on a laundry list for as much build-up and resolution as they received. It was like watching the manifestation of a 4th-grader's story sketch: "and then this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened. The End." Heck, for all I know, maybe JJ Abrams cribbed one of his kid's Star Wars fanfics; that would actually explain a lot about his apparent creative process.
I do not recommend this movie. In fact, I recommend you don't see it so that this sort of cash-grab mentality is not encouraged. You will not be missing a memorable experience. If you do see it, you won't remember it the next day, so you might as well have not seen it.