Death Star part deux meets Vader pert deux-action action action!!!

Rating: 5/10 (1 January 2016)

Very minimal spoiler alert, but not very much. Let's start with the positive. Hmmm, well I tried. Oh- OK, the two new young lead actors are likable and have their hearts in the story. The problem with them is the same problem the movie has- there isn't much of a story. Also the action is exciting and entertaining, with a few pauses of a very basic story: boy meets girl, girl saves boy, boy saves girl, girl saves... aack! But I actually enjoyed watching the movie because it had enough twists and turns to make watching fun. Abrams did improve on the Star Trek hyper-action-no-personality-acting problem (found in ST) by allowing the two lead actors and Harrison Ford to talk enough to make them likable to the audience, unlike the plastic acting in ST. In short, the best news about this movie is that it is not the same degree of letdown as the new Star Trek movies (at least to me, but other reviews have said otherwise).
Well, that is my positive review part. By necessity a few problems have already been mentioned. The biggest problem is this is a rather exhaustive rehash, poorly done, of the first original Star Wars. As a result, it contains all of the problems, but few if any of the innovations of the original SW (episode IV). The MAIN POINT of Star Wars IV (the first original film) was the mythical allusions and references to other classic movies. Such an idea is TOTALLY missing from the new movie! Why? Would that be hard? Duh! A six year old could think of a few, but Abrams did not think of one. (Maybe I am wrong, and got distracted by all the action going on.) Instead, original plot elements of Episode 4 (the first Star Wars) are inserted in roughly the same order but without any new or old mythical references or allusions (that I could see; I will try again when I watch it someday without the horrible 3-D glasses that take out most of the color). The flight attack sequences are truly cringe-worthy due to the borrowed dialog from the first movie. This is unforgivable. The heroic trio are all that save this movie from being a disaster (Ridley, Boyega, and Harrison). Those three are fun to watch and listen to (in the few times they are allowed to talk). However, the premise of Boyega's (Finn's) conversion story, which makes up the first segment, is not really possible or rational; and no reason for this implausibility is given or implied. It just hangs there through the whole movie. But this isn't the actor's fault, just bad screen writing.
Other problems, the super-villain Sith projection "Supreme Leader" (to me he looks like a giant computer generated character very similar to Golem in LOTR) has no mystery at all, and the Vader replacement Kylo Ren is not much better as a story element (although the actor Adam Driver does some good acting). The only mystery about Supreme Leader is it is hard to figure out if he is supposed to be a giant projection, or a giant person, which has nothing to do with the plot; this question is only a distraction and a technical issue I would rather not have noticed.
It should also be noted that probably this movie will appeal to younger crowds because of the extreme action and computer generated game atmosphere. I can't be too sure of this, and hope I am wrong. There is a lot of nostalgia thrown in haphazardly which might appeal to some older people. It did not to me, but may be partly why I enjoyed this as an entertainment movie. Besides this being too much imitation, the other big problem is such small amount of creativity in the narrative. Star Wars is all about narrative- stories. This movie is missing that. I can imagine a hundred stories better than this for sequels, and I don't even write stories. This movie is purely about generating money, no other motive involved except for the new actors, whose hearts and enthusiasm with their parts saved this from being a bad movie, with the help from a good mentor Harrison.