A virtual scene by scene steal of episode IV but without the originality

Rating: 4/10 (16 June 2016)

Some say that there are only three original stories, some say five and some say seven. In the case of the Star Wars franchise this is patently NOT true; instead we get the same old story churned out seven times in seven progressively worse parodies of what was, in it's day, an original film. In this new version we have a somewhat badly drawn and remarkably underwhelming universe in which a bunch of hardly memorable characters set out to recreate a simple rewrite of most of episode IV - but with somewhat better special effects. To say that you could see what was coming from scene one is understating the utter predictability of the story, but perhaps Mr Abrams decided that predictability would magically make the characters readily recognisable, thereby eliminating the need for character development. This lack of character depth made it impossible to engage with them in any memorable way, it also made the romantic interest very uninteresting and highly unbelievable. Although it is a somewhat cringe-worthy production, it is just about watchable.