This is not the Movie you are looking for

Rating: 2/10 (20 December 2015)

I was really looking forward to this movie. However, halfway through I was "please, stop!". This movie was painful to watch. It had all the nice landscapes, the Millennium Falcon some returning characters... and that's it. No substance, a copied plot, characters who feel like cardboard cut-outs and dozens upon dozens of ex-machina moments to keep this mess flowing.
***SPOILERS START BELOW THIS LINE*** Trouble begins at the wall of text right at the start. Apparently within a few decades of the victory, things have reverted back to ep.4: the Empire (under a new name) is as strong as it was before, the rebels (under a new name) are underdogs. Seems the could have been a really good movie or two to show how that happened, but no we are stuck with just getting that as fact.
The "things" which happened to the main characters from the original trilogy also sound like material for a very good movie we do not get to see.
Instead we get to see a reenactment of ep. 4, and not that good a re-enactment. The characters we are supposed to care about are bland at best. The Sith lord is even worse: an overcompensating giant hologram with the title "supreme leader" which makes him almost comical.
The movie fails to grasp that "bigger" is not "better". Even if the new "Not Death Star" is bigger, it makes no difference to the viewer. It's still the same thing: an OP super-weapon which we know will get destroyed because of some weak spot to keep the plot going. Likewise, even if it kills more people, it makes little difference since it kills off things so minor they barely got a few seconds of mention.
And finally, the biggest disappointment, the Darth Vader replacement. This one really hurts, because the guy start off really well in the first scene, calmly stopping shots in mid-air with force, ruthless, calculating... And then quickly degenerates to a hysterical kid with with comical outbursts. A stupid kid who makes the same "leave dangerous prisoner in a room with no CCTV and a single guard" mistake twice in one movie. And in the end the kid gets schooled in alight saber duel by people who never held light saber before.
Nuff said.