Hugely disappointing

Rating: 4/10 (6 January 2016)

Yet another film made for the trailer. A crying shame given the material they had to draw from and the incredible production values - which are nothing short of spectacular. If you can totally switch off your brain, you'll enjoy it. If you can't... oh boy...
Let's start with what happens once Finn and Rey escape on the Millennium Falcon. Once they leave the planet, where the First Order star destroyer inexplicably can not or does not track them, they are immediately captured/boarded by Hans Solo and Chewie (plot convenience much?). At the same time, Hans Solo's ship is boarded by not 1 but 2 parties of creditors for a ridiculous corridor stand off. Instead of these creditors being interesting aliens, they are caricature Scottish and Chinese people. Who the hell thought any of this was a good idea? WTF is wrong with the writers? Then some giant alien (released by a clichéd 'oops, wrong button') starts eating everybody... until it grabs Finn, at which point it drags him round the ship until he can be freed because, y'know, who cares about consistency?
Messes like the above plague the film throughout. The scenes rush from one to the next, with action valued above character development or plot flow. Got a plot problem? Throw in some action, hope the audience misses it. This goes right back to the early scenes. Rey and Finn steal the aforementioned Millennium Falcon, to escape First Order troops. With no prior precedent, Rey is suddenly a crack pilot capable of the most ridiculous manoeuvres. Is she a sand rat who struggles to get enough food to eat or is she amazing at everything? Luke Skywalker, the best Jedi of all, was like a fish out of water at the start of the original trilogy and a lot of the first film was devoted to his training. Not here, Rey is amazing from the get go, and learns the force as and when it suits the plot.
The force... this ancient mystical power that can be yielded by certain individuals. It was used sparingly in the original films. Not so here, practically every encounter with Kylo Ren involves it. He can suspend lasers with it! He can read minds. In fact, his abilities basically trample the entire history of the franchise, making a mockery of Darth Vader's pathetic powers.
The First Order were a corny rehash of the Nazis. The speech was so cringe-worthy. The weapon was so over the top that I struggled to comprehend that it could even have been in the books - now a planet sized death star that doesn't just blow up one planet, but an entire solar system _through hyperspace_ i.e. anywhere. Oh, and it eats suns. (Which made it seem a bit of a one shot deal.) Of course, when it blows up a system, it leaves the one planet that our heroes and the rebel base happen to be on (a plot hole so big you couldn't fill it with a death star). Oh, and all science went out the window for the effects - you could see the laser and planets being blown up from the rebel base, the universe's smallest solar system perhaps? I mean, can you see ANY planets with the naked eye in our solar system in broad daylight, let alone ALL of them?
The entire attack on this super weapon planet is just an eye rolling level of awful. I don't think there was a single redeemable moment aside from the critical one - as Ren murders his father - which was rescued by the actors amid the disaster of a script and plot.
Then there's the terribly written scenes on Takodana, or the giant Smeagol 'Snoke' (fittingly voiced by Gollum voice actor Andy Serkis), or the hundreds of other issues that sent my eyes back up into my brain.
By the end of the film, I was so disillusioned with the popular trash that I'd been sprayed with that I was even bothered by the way Luke Skywalker dramatically slowly removed his hood and Rey stood there with the light sabre in her outstretched arm, with that emotional look on her face that the actress can do on demand.
The actors did well with their very limited roles. I was rooting for Rey as portrayed by Daisy Ridley, and John Boyega did a good job with his dreadful lines which got worse and worse to the point of cheesy comedy - a shame given the intrigue of the opening character development, a conflicted storm trooper that escapes then hides his origins. Adam Driver is menacing as Kylo Ren whenever he has the mask on, but he just doesn't have a bad guy face. He needed some scars, something to make him look more than just a cutesy kid who had inexplicable daddy issues. Harrison Ford does as well as can be expected, and even makes you believe a few of his lines towards his demise.
The one exception was Carrie Fisher, who was was dreadful. Leia should have been recast. Whatever charisma she once had is now long gone. In its place is a plastic wooden old woman unable to move her face enough to display any kind of emotion, and who just stood around regurgitating whatever lines she was fed as if she were reading the news.
All in all, it was a gross disappointment. I think one scene summed it up the most - when C3PO (inexplicably with a red arm) and BB-8 look at a dormant R2D2 and C3PO says, "Oh, there's no way Master Luke could have hidden the map in R2D2. He put him in hibernation before he left." Thanks for treating the audience like absolute idiots, and making a film for absolute idiots too. I'll have to read the books. I simply can't believe half the stuff in the film came from them.