Really?

Rating: 2/10 (3 November 2016)

Now before I go on, let me just say that I am a huge Star Wars fan. I grew up with and enjoyed both trilogies (yes, both) and like a lot of fans have dedicated a rather sizable part of my life to the franchise. After all these years of waiting since the last movie, I was so excited to see the new Star Wars. In some ways, I'm still waiting for a new Star Wars.
This movie has new characters, new actors, and new special effects, but at the end of the day, what I value most about sequels to movies I enjoy is when they bring a new story to the table and expand the fiction, which is exactly what this movie did NOT do. The whole story is literally A New Hope all over again. Now, A New Hope is one of my favorite movies ever, and there seems to be a lot of people who praise the movie for recapturing the feeling of the "old Star Wars". But there are so many ways this could be done without mimicking the story of an older movie. I understand that no movie ever made has been completely original, but when a movie is so unoriginal that you can predict almost everything that's going to happen before it does, there's a serious problem.
I also had a big problem with the new characters and the movie's acting. I honestly didn't find any of the new characters compelling. I can't find Rey that interesting because the whole orphan living on a desert planet has already been used in this series, twice. Finn was, no joke, one of the most annoying characters I have ever been exposed to. In my opinion, he is even worst than Jar Jar. The soccer ball that I refuse to name was also incredibly annoying. Captain Phasma was particularly infuriating. After all the hype surrounding her surrounding her leading up to the film's release, after how big a deal all the marketing made about her, you'd think she'd be in the movie for more than a total of two minutes of screen time and would actually do something important, but no, this is not the case. The only new character who had the potential to be interesting in any way was the highly anticipated Kylo Ren, but he is played by such a poor actor that it's ruined.
Which leads to my next point, which is the acting. People are always complaining about the acting in the prequel trilogy, and admittedly even though I enjoy the prequels as I stated before, I do think that a few of that trilogy's actors could have done a better job (although I do not think it was anywhere near as bad as what most people seem to think). The acting in this one was SO MUCH worse, though. Adam Driver was the worst one. He had one facial expression that he wore for most of his unmasked scenes and spoke in basically a monotone for most of the movie. John Boyega was another actor who stood out with how bad he was (the scene where he yells Rey's name when she is captured is SO overdone). The rest of the cast isn't that much better. The new actors all do a poor job, even Oscar Isaac and Domnhall Gleeson, who are normally excellent actors. Gleeson's "End of the Republic" speech seriously hurt me. The only new actor who was somewhat decent was Daisy Ridley, and she played such a boring character as I said before that it didn't matter much in the end. Even the older actors from the previous movies didn't seem like they were giving it their best effort in this installment of the saga.
There are a couple of other things I disliked, but they were significantly smaller things than what I have already discussed, so I won't keep you any longer, assuming anyone's still reading at this point. I know you're probably tired of listening to people complain about how unoriginal the new Star Wars is, and I'm sorry I added to that, but this is how I feel about the movie. I was honestly in shock when I left the theater the night I saw it. I could not believe what I had just witnessed. It took a couple days for me to get over my shock, which was then replaced by anger, and I couldn't help but wonder if this is what the generation before me felt like when they saw The Phantom Menace for the first time.
The one thing that made me give the movie two stars instead of just one was Han Solo. Even if Harrison Ford wasn't giving his best performance ever, just the fact that Han Solo was even in this movie made it somewhat better.
I hope to God Episodes 8 and 9 are a bit more original with their stories.
2/10