Better than 1-3, but overall rather lukewarm.

Rating: 4/10 (21 December 2015)

First of all, let me start off by saying that I really REALLY wanted to love this movie. I was so excited for it, everyone said it was amazing, I was desperate to see it. Overall, I was rather disappointed. Though the film was very reminiscent of A New Hope, I personally didn't mind it. What I minded was the other part in this scene where we're introduced to one of our main characters, Fin, a storm trooper who doesn't agree with what the First Order does, and very suddenly just decides that he's good. Not exactly like that, but it still seems a little forced and out of nowhere, especially since we got literally no introduction to his character what so ever. Fin decides to help Poe, a captured rebel pilot, escape and they do so in a very '2015 comedy' fashion. I.E. whenever something cool happens because of the main characters, they have to stop and tell you just how cool it was. Why this doesn't work in Star Wars: Fin. Is. A. Storm Trooper. He should have had enough training in shooting and fighting for it to be second nature to him. Granted, the Storm Troopers could never hit the broad side of a barn door, (unless they're shooting at someone who's not a main character), but that's not supposed to be true within the story. Within the story they're supposed to be soldiers who are super cool and can hit anything.Then we're introduced to a young girl, Rey, who has been abandoned by her family. Now they never flat out say that Rey is Luke Skywalker's daughter, but it seems to be heavily inferred that she is. Rey's character is everything Fin's character is not. She is calm, collected, and doesn't have to constantly talk about how cool the things she's doing are. She lets the audience see and decide for themselves. Fin is clearly in the film to be a love interest and comic relief. He's basically Jar Jar 2.0, as his comic relief is clearly just there to appease the 2016 generation. Anyways, Rey and Finn escape from Storm Troopers who are trying to capture the droid BB8, the droid who has the final piece to a map leading directly to Luke Skywalker, and I swear BB8 is the epitome of being adorable. They fly away in the Millennium Falcon, escaping from the First Order in a flight battle where Rey shows off her pilot skills. As they start making repairs to the ship, they are captured and boarded by Han Solo and Chewbacca, whom have been looking for the ship for the past twenty years. As soon as Han Solo and Chewbacca enter the film, it instantly picks up. Harrison Ford you can tell is having a blast returning to the iconic character he once played, and he still brings life to it.Before going to rescue Rey, who gets captured by Kylo Ren, son of Han Solo and Princess Leia, who is supposed to be this film's version of Darth Vader. He even has the mask and voice and everything. The rebels find them, and we are once again introduced to Princess Leia. This once again brought the movie down, as Carrie Fischer does almost no acting throughout her entire plot in the film. Her dialogue is all said very slow and she brings no energy to the role whatsoever. Through expositional dialogue between her and Han, we find that Kylo he had been sent away to train with Luke Skywalker, but there was too much Vader in him, and he was seduced to the dark side. It seems almost as though Leia is trying to be hopeful that Kylo can once again be good, but there is no weight to anything she's saying. Even though they go into detail about what happened, it still feels almost passed over as though it's not that bad that their son has turned to the dark side and killed hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people. Without giving out too much of the rest of the plot, the whole thing just felt so lukewarm. There were a lot of missed opportunities with characters, and too many characters to keep track of. Almost nothing that happened in the film had any weight to it at all. No matter how many people were killed, (They literally killed off five planets at once at one point) there was almost no reaction to the characters. They showed us the people reacting as their planets were being destroyed, but it didn't really seem like our main characters cared too much about it. I would have liked to have seen more from Rey, Poe, and Kylo, as I felt for their parts, they were really well acted. Kylo has an emotional struggle and there seems to be a lot of rage and pain behind his character that I would like to see in the next film. Rey I feel has a lot of potential to go places, as she seems to be off to a very good start. She's interesting and has a good backstory, and her part is well acted. Poe I wanted to see more from because his character was so lively and enjoyable in the few moments he was there. Overall the film was just rather lukewarm and not amazing or terrible, especially with the character of Fin, whom I like to refer to as Jar Jar 2.0, who's clearly only there as the comic relief for the younger generation.