Lazy blatant rehash with awful world building

Rating: 4/10 (22 November 2019)

Imagine you're in an alternate universe. You are watching The Lord of the Rings for the first time ever, having never read the books.
We start in the Shire, but this version of the film doesn't bother to explain what the Shire is. It also doesn't explain who Bilbo or Frodo are, or what Mordor or Sauron are. We're just told there is "some evil guy somewhere" and then the film cuts to someone walking around a lot over some mountains for hours.
The ring isn't mentioned until 10 minutes before the end of the film and someone keeps shouting about how important Rohan is but we don't know what that is either. You finish the film still wondering when the hell they're going to start explaining the actual plot.
The Force Awakens plot feels exactly like that. We start the film with a very basic, confused idea of what is happening and why it is happening and we end the film with the exact same feeling.
On top of that, the film doesn't even bother to make it's very limited backstory make any sense.
The Empire is dead, yay! Oh, but they're replaced by a "fledgling" group known as The First Order. Oh no!
This "fledgling" small group is quickly revealed to have an infinite number of spaceships and stormtroopers, and they've got the resources to turn an *entire planet* into a giant laser gun that can immediately annihilate solar systems.
Wait, excuse me, what? The evil Empire of old, which was apparently much more powerful according to the intro of this movie, barely managed to build one Deathstar spaceship. Even with their resources they didn't manage to hollow out an entire Goddamn planet into a Deathstar. WTF?
Then we have the Republic, a galaxy spanning government...which is destroyed instantly and with no explanation by one shot by said Planet-Deathstar. Yes, you got that right, this massive government that was the result of all the other movies gets instantly killed by blowing up a couple of planets.
They didn't notice the hundreds of thousands of First Order spaceships carrying materials to the planet in the same system being slowly turned into a huge gun. LOL.
This paves the way for the Rebels...oops sorry, the "Resistance"...a poorly funded and unsupported guerrilla group that our plucky heroes will predictably join.
Why are they poorly supported and funded considering they are helping the Republic government that presumably controls dozens of other solar systems? Why is no one else in the entire galaxy outraged by the destruction of a bunch of planets?
Errrr, no idea, let's just ignore that. PEW PEW LASERS UNDERDOG HEROES.
If this all sounds very bare bones and yet very familiar that is because:

The plot is extremely shallow, self-contradictory and there is absolutely no attempt made to explain anything at any point.

The movie is a lazy remake that relentlessly plagiarises the original Star Wars movies while pretending it's doing something new.

On top of opening with "Guys it's Star Wars 1 plot again, just go with it, don't use your brains, GIVE US YOUR MONEY!", the plot then introduces all our new characters...and then does nothing of note with them.
We have Finn, a traumatised Stormtrooper. This is an incredibly interesting opening for him - a man forced to serve evil people, do terrible things, and witness death and pain that he is repelled by. What will they do with his character?
Well, they turn him into the dumb comic relief. Again, WTF? The guy who's a traumatised soldier becomes the butt of silly jokes and even starts gleefully mowing down his old Stormtrooper buddies (most of whom are apparently innocent conscripts like him).
The fact that Finn laughs and cheers while murdering his own ex-brothers in arms is never commented on, again showing how little thought when into this film. But to any viewers actually paying attention to the story, it makes him seem like a demented psychopath. It also shows a jarringly inconsistent tone, something which carried over into The Last Jedi and ruined that too.
Then we have Poe Dameron. A hero who would be a solid character, if it wasn't for the fact that we never learn anything about him. He's just "cool generic pilot guy". Again, what's his background? Why is he a good pilot?
Many people say things like "There are background novels that explain these things" Well, I don't care.
This is a movie, it should be able to tell a narrative without the viewer having to spend time reading hastily-written background media designed to plug plot holes. You don't have to read 10 different books to understand The Godfather because the film isn't lazy.
Finally we have Rei. Rei is basically a female Luke Skywalker, even down to dressing the same and living on a desert planet.
In fact she's basically Luke if he was perfect at everything he did first time and had no personality. Like Luke if he was pushed into a generic food blender with some Spam and turned into a tasteless slurry.
Anyway I will end the review there. I won't bother going any further. We have Kylo Ren (bland Darth Vader rip off crossed with a dumb teenager), Snoke (why even bother talking about him when TLJ didn't bother?) and some old faves like Han Solo who are only in the movie to sponge off older fans.
If you're looking for a good Star Wars movie watch the originals. If you're looking for a good movie in general, watch something else. This one is good for effects and explosions and that's about it.