It captures the spectacle of Star Wars, but the writing is just poor.

Rating: 5/10 (19 December 2015)

Warning contains spoilers.
This movie felt like it was written by an 8 year old. Its like they took the first draft and started filming it. Every scene is like "Hey remember this from the original trilogy." It just comes off as hackneyed and in some cases annoying, most likely to get a cheap, positive reaction from the audience. The ridiculous amount of call backs led to this movie looking like a carbon copy of a New Hope. I mean another Death Star (star killer)? Thats so original. The movie took so many plot points from a New Hope, it felt outrageous. The writers played it way too safe with the story. I mean at least the God awful prequels were some what authentic. It felt very rushed also. The pacing of this movie goes at ludicrous speed (Space Balls reference) thus making the the character development for our new heroes non existent. JJ took most likely a 3 hour movie and had to cut out a lot of the exposition that builds our characters and relationships to get to the battle scenes which I admit are impressive. The great visuals and battles though are wasted because we don't care about whats going on in the story. The great thing about the original trilogy is that it had the right amount of exposition and action. When the prequels came out there was too much (terrible) exposition and not enough action to keep us interested. And this movie just does the opposite of the prequels. In the span of about 30 minutes the characters start magically caring about each other and that just came off as a bit strange.
Also how does Rey beat Hayden Christensen.....oops I mean kilo Ren in a light saber battle. Its just baffling on how a Sith Lord trained by Luke Skywalker and that can stop laser fire with his hand can lose to someone who has never been trained before by a Jedi. Even Finn was holding his own against him for awhile. Rey even knows how to use Jedi mind tricks. In the OT Luke even with training by obi wan and Yoda didn't know how to use the force very well when he went up against Darth Vader. Luke's progression on mastering the force felt natural. Rey's just felt like lazy writing to move to plot along.
Look I can complain all I want about this movie, but its not gonna change anything. While the battle scenes and the spectacle is great, the writing is this movie's downfall. If you liked it good for you. But to me this movie is very mediocre.
5/10