Under-written, overproduced, and derivative

Rating: 1/10 (3 December 2018)

Continuing with the Lucas tradition of ruining Star Wars by nerfing violence and suspense with cartoonishness, this film is extremely CGI heavy, while ignoring the art, magic and realism of puppetry that first defined the essential exoticism of the Star Wars universe.
While the casting is generally very good, the villains are a collection of baby-faced incompetents who just strike poses and say their lines.
The writing seems to include pandering dialogue, as well as a dependence upon formulaically recreating the plot trajectory of Episode IV.
"We just bought the rights to Star Wars! Quick, get me 13 producers and the director from Star Trek! Oh, and make sure we use a focus-group driven approach to film-making - what's that? Oh, right. 13 producers should take care of that for us!"
I actually really love Star Wars, and I really like the director, Abrams. I just rewatched this after completely forgetting everything about it when it first came out, and now I remember why I purged it from my memory.
It might have just been my imagination, but I got the impression that the main resistance pilot was super into Finn, and it was incredibly distracting, whenever they shared a scene.