90% unoriginal, but emotionally powerful ending . . .

Rating: 8/10 (17 December 2015)

This is the movie "you've all been waiting for", a grand, classic early 80s Star Wars sequel complete with analogue grain, and the exact same music, credits, shots, battle sequences, characters, plot devices and themes.
The movie also has some new spins, details and depth during the battle sequences, and luckily, it IS an emotionally powerful piece of drama, the third act is palpably effective.
Is it worth seeing? Well, in the 35 years or whatever since Star Wars came to the screen, there's been a lot of developments in making stylized, fx-heavy violence and spaceship battles on screen, so the movie mostly relies on expensive modern production values that look convincingly like the original Star Wars universe. Also, the story beats happen faster, which in a sense rob depth of a fantasy series that didn't have much in the first place, and often the action sequences smack of frames and stand-offs from the old series.
I DID SAY, however, that it has guts. The film feels real, and compelling, and has a sense of drama that relates to the real world, also its commendable that the film has a strong female lead and an African American dude is prominent throughout, although that's not in itself innovative in 2015, its still a nice idea to bring some diversity to the Star Wars franchise, also adds dramatic possibility, something George Lucas clearly had no grasp of in his "prequel" trilogy launched in the late nineties.
Anyway, writing about Star Wars is a bit like "dancing about architecture" to borrow a Frank Zappa phrase on the role of critics, go see it: if you like Star Wars, you'll love this movie. Older viewers, or really anyone familiar with the early installations will occasionally wince at the fact that the movie is nearly entirely a clone of some sort - perhaps the first big reboot of a popular series that's really a note-for-note remake.
Generally good acting though, and decent budget, as you'd expect from Disney/Lucasfilm megacorp.