The force awakens. The audience is put to sleep.

Rating: Null/10 (3 January 2016)

"A New Hope" had a very gentle fairytale-like segway "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away..." that lulled the audience in. By contrast this film, which follows the original trilogy, feels very jarring and discordant with it. Wasn't the Empire defeated, after all? How did what must be a smaller force have the resources to build a much bigger, planet- sized death star? And why did it need to be bigger?
Stylistically, (other than BB-8) this is a very lazy film. Desert Planet. Ice planet/death star. Nazi iconology.
Plotwise, it is also very lazy. Other than the stormtrooper defecting (very humanistic, countervails some of the missteps of faceless, stakeless clone and droid armies), the rest of the plot is pure rehash, but much more filled with holes.
Princess Leia in her day was enough. Rey is simply heroine ad nauseum: a contrived apology to women everywhere. (Not that Star Wars needs to apologize) Not only does she need no rescuing; she even gives a sound thrashing to the guy who tried to rescue her. BTW, she is also a mechanical genius, a heck of a firsttime pilot, a jedi master (without any training or practice). Did I mention she knows droid, as well as wookie- speak? (perhaps just to move the plot along?)
The Emperor and Vader exuded subtle menace out of every pore. Our villains here don't. Ren needs to be angry and have hissy fits. Snoke's hologram needs to be gigantic.
Once again, the whole darn galaxy seems to revolve around the Skywalker family and the evil and good that it does. Once again, all we have is orphans and broken families. No real, functional, biological family. Remember when Han and Leia had a thing together? Well, it was really just a fling, even though they had son.
This movie is not, as some have said, better than RotJ. Philosophically, it is debatable if it is even worse movie than the prequels, which had at least one good new villain (Darth Maul), one good saber fight, and one memorable new score (duel of the fates). Thankfully, there are no midichlorians, yet there isn't much reverence for the Force: Rey is instant master. Gone too are the child actors destroying the mystery of beloved villains like Fett and Vader.
No one could say no to Lucas; someone should have said no to Abrams.