A paint by numbers continuation of the Star Wars universe

Rating: 6/10 (21 December 2015)

Not a huge fan of star wars but I have seen the original series many times as a kid and saw all the prequels in the cinemas upon release. My personal opinion on this movie is that it did not meet the hype that it generated - not even close and that to me is quite a disappointment.
The story is a bit too similar to what was going on in the original series - which is such a shame as the Star Wars universe is developed and mature and yet they went with a story that lacked imagination and creativity. The acting was decent enough but also quite poor in the serious dramatic moments. In the end the story was just a derivative of the original. The pacing of the movie also felt wrong - it was hard to connect to some of the characters and the drama involved because the story moved way to fast.

Death Star 3.0 .... I don't understand the point of this and to me this was the worst part of the movie. The revealing of this was also lackluster. They could have done with not having the death star at all in this movie - everything about this plot device was just wrong.

The rebels could care less about it - in under 5 minutes they already worked out how to destroy it - and who could blame them - does not matter how powerful this weapon is it has the exact same flaws as the previous two designs! The battle to destroy it was also so generic - I'd expect the first order to put up a better fight - this is after all their secret weapon it should have been an epic battle to destroy it - yet all it took was a small group of X-wing fighters to fly in rather casually like they are on a holiday cruise and blow it up without any real dramas.

Kylo Ren. Was menacing and imposing at the beginning and around the middle of the film. His powers were quite impressive but once he took his helmet off - for a quick second I thought I was watching spaceballs 2 - did not look at all menacing and I hate to say it but it looked like a confused teenager going through puberty who was pretending to play what is supposedly one of the biggest badass in the star wars universe.

Barely a resemblance to his father/mother. He is still kind of conflicted and not a total convert to the dark side yet which I understand but they should have shown his backstory a bit more so we actually cared for him when he unmasked himself. As mentioned earlier the plot just moved too fast for this happen and its unfortunate because I bet they could have made quite an interesting and compelling backstory for him instead of just casually mentioning who his father was as if it was done by two guys making casual chit-chat at a bar.

Hans Solo's death and how it was handled was almost done in montage style - so quickly did the plot move on from this it was not really treated with any respect to the character. Its as if no one actually cared - not even Leia. Han dies (in quite a disposable way) and all we get is a shot of Leia looking like she is trying to remember where she left her car keys and the new main characters screaming like they have just been grounded by their parents. In short for such a dramatic event it was quite melodramatic.

Rey's knowledge of the force. Rey is pretty much the only character with some character developing scene in the movie (though still minimal) yet she develops her powers at such speed and with pretty much no one to guide her.

I find this quite hard to believe considering all the previous jedi-wannabe's had to go through years of training with a mentor guiding them - they had to constantly be reminded of what the force is and how to use it and yet we have Rey who needs barely any help doing what she does in the movie.
Overall this was an 'OK' movie on its own merits as the special effects were decent but the story telling was quite poor and sadly way to similar to parts of the original trilogy.
However this is a star wars movie and considering how much wealth of information they could have used from the star wars universe they played it way too safe.