A lower quality remake disguised as a sequel

Rating: 3/10 (13 August 2016)

If you never saw a Star Wars movie, then you could find this movie fun to watch, despite its shallowness and flaws. If you see this movie while really, really high then you might think its great. If neither of these conditions apply, then prepare to be disappointed.
There are tons of great visuals and the special effect are top notch, which is why I didn't rate this a 1. However, as an almost scene-for-scene remake of the first Star Wars trilogy all mixed together, it is a lesser quality film than the originals.
Typical of JJ Abrams' films, nothing makes any sense; it is all about visual clichés and absurd cliffhangers. Not that the Lucas' films had great acting or depth, but this movie's characters and drama are even worse. If they had bothered to come up with original space ships and robots like Lucas liked to do with each new installment, I would have given points for that, but instead they just reused the same old icons. This movie takes absolutely NO risk whatsoever. If you programmed a computer to generate a film based on cheap visual gimmicks and trope, this would be the result.
On the positive side: I never felt like walking out of the theater and it was fun to watch in a very superficial sort of way. As I already mentioned, the special effects were fantastic. You may not hate it, or even feel like it was awful (as long as you don't think too hard), but this is not a very good movie.