I think I saw most of this in 1977

Rating: 8/10 (20 December 2015)

SPOILERS BELOW!
This movie felt VERY familiar. Of course, all of the Star Wars movies have a certain familiar feeling to them, from over the years. Let's face it - I'm old enough I saw Star Wars when Han shot first - before it got edited around in whatever kind of retcon was done with the fancy editing.
But I digress, I'm reviewing The Force Awakens. So we have the First Order and the Resistance - organizations formerly known as the Empire and the Rebel Alliance. No real reason to change the names, but whatever. Obviously on Jaaku where our new heroine, Rey lives, there's been some serious battles in the past. Wow, and Jaaku is a desert planet - where have we heard THAT before?
And Finn gets sickened because he has a moral conscience, and in the meantime, we have a droid carrying a map. Obi Wan Kenobi, you're our only hope ... oh, wait, we're hunting Luke Skywalker now, aren't we?
Our bad guy wants to be the bad guy his grandfather was - okay, that's new. He's not that well trained in the force, actually. But he wants to learn from the Emperor - er, Snoke ... what, we have Gollum from LOTR as a big hologram now? Sorry, the big baddie just didn't do it for me.
Do I dare mention let's fly X-wings through a trench? And blow the Death Star - er, planet, up from shooting at it from inside the weak point? That's already been done twice.
Now - from all my complaints about how I've seen this before, you'd think I didn't enjoy the movie. And you'd be WRONG. Was it the greatest thing ever made? Nope. But it was, on its own merits, a good movie. It's a solid 8.