'The Force Awakens'. More like 'The Force is Ruined - Again'...

Rating: 2/10 (11 January 2016)

What a complete and utter waste of time and money, and a total erasure of the excitement I had to revisit and enjoy even part of the magic from my childhood experience.
Garbage story. Bad character development. A couple of absolutely horrible casting choices and stilted performances. Loaded with clichés. Entirely derivative from A New Hope - except without any of the charm, mystery, and intrigue. I'm not going to waste time talking about droids with hidden information, hiding under Falcon floor plates, or Death Star channel runs and destruction. It's all far too apparent when you see the film.
Want to care about the characters and their stories? Impossible. Even the ones you used to are less than shadows of what they were. Sorry, Harrison, I love you. But aside from a couple of cool moments, Han Solo - one of the most beloved characters of all time - was just completely BLAH. It's an unforgivable insult that this is the drivel that was given to you.
Finn. Rey. Poe. Phasma. Ren. Why care about any of them? They are all ridiculously underdeveloped and utterly uninteresting. They are either too perfect (Rey), too pathetic (Finn), disappear and reappear inexplicably and in the most superficial way (Poe), or just not fleshed out whatsoever (Phasma, who really looked cool and could have been built up to something really bad ass - a new Boba Fett. But she was rendered completely insignificant and glossed-over).
Kylo Ren. This is our new villain? Seriously? Could he have been any less interesting or weak? He turned out to be nothing more than a tempestuous, troubled teenager. There was no compelling setup or background for his battle with dark and light. He even beared no resemblance to his parents, Han and Leia. And if you want to build any interest over a character with a hidden face and intimidating appearance, you do not unmask him in the first film, let alone have it be that kind of anti-climactic reveal.
General Hux. The worst casting of the entire film. The worst acting. And the Nazi reference was just gag-inducing.
The movie was ridden with non-sensical stuff. Star Wars used to make sense. There was a sensible lore. Force users needed intense training, or they stood zero chance. How about some scavenger - unrealised force powers or not - able to fly a totally unknown ship with such efficacy and impossible skill? She resisted powerful force mind probes. She could out force-grab a light saber. Rey was all but victorious over a trained and 'powerful' Sith apprentice? Finn - a SPACE JANITOR and rookie Storm Trooper - virtually holds his own against this trained Sith with a Jedi weapon he's never used before? Seriously?
And the incongruencies abound. Ren can deflect point blank blaster shots behind his back, but can't detect and defend himself from a distant shot from a wookie who screams and reveals his position? We're supposed to be impressed or scared of this guy? He displays awesome initial powers, but ends up almost totally inept, and little more than a tantrum-throwing teenager?
Han solo, one of the baddest and coolest good characters gets murdered over a touchy-feeling family moment and thrown into an abyss? What a fitting end. (rollseyes)
There are so many negative things to say about this movie. And the only positives are a few moments of wonderful cinematography and VFX. Even the score was sub-par, which is a shocker from the greatest of all time. Almost everything about TFA was abysmal. Some of the tone was there. But this was light years from the Star Wars we knew and loved thirty-plus years ago.
No wonder. No mystery. No lore. No build up. NO SIGNIFICANT, BELIEVABLE OR INTERESTING DRAMA. A complete failure to set up the most basic emotive themes like the first movies explored so successfully.
By the time I was halfway through the movie, I was repeatedly throwing my hands in the air. This is a horrid re-entry for a franchise that was supposed to be resurrected and freed from the incapable clutches of a next-to-incompetent George Lucas.
Well, we found out there are more incapable movie makers and IP owners. 4 billion dollars bought what we knew and loved, and the most bland product was funneled through the bowels of idiocy and incompetence. Yet it appears they are going to end up recouping it all and actually profiting. Such is the current state of modern cinema.
Shameful.
30 years we waited for this. I had so much hope this would be good with no Lucas. It would have been so hard for it to fall further from my expectations. I am absolutely gob smacked it's being received so well.
Has the bar been set this low?