A Cinematic Travesty

Rating: 1/10 (4 April 2016)

I will never forget seeing Star Wars Episode IV for the first time in 1977. What an awesome film it was. I've been a fan of the Star Wars universe ever since. It was with great excitement I watched the latest episode VII.
As usual the movie began with the scrolling text laying out the current scenario. Already at this point it seemed a bit weak and very similar to previous plots.
It did not take long to begin predicting what would happen in many of the scenes. I often blurted out to my family, "don't tell me they're going to copy that scene from (insert scene from other episode) here." My wife would say "Oh no, they would do that." They did! I was able to predict events and even dialogue nearly verbatim because the movie continually reused the twists and turns of previous installments. My wife who is also a Star Wars fan agreed wholeheartedly with my ho-hum reaction. Our son (also a fan) left less than 30 minutes in.
I won't go into all the details of how the movie stole so much from the previous films as you can surely read them in other reviews.
I wanted so much to enjoy and love this movie as I did all the others, but honestly it was boring. Whereas I've watched each of the previous Star Wars films numerous times, I seriously doubt I will ever waste two hours watching this one again. I can't imagine how it was possible to take such a fantastic imaginative story like Star Wars and make it this boring. How is it possible that not one new idea sprang up in someones mind in the ten years since the last episode? There was no character development to speak of either. I really can't think of one takeaway from this film that would be beneficial to watching any future episode either.
Dull, unimaginative, and boring best describes the movie. I'm a little upset that more was not done with the opportunity to add to such a brilliant legacy. I'm not sure what JJ. Abrams was thinking and I can't understand how George Lucas allowed this cinematic travesty.
I have never been so disappointed in a movie before.
Edited to add: I have now gone and read some of the other reviews here. It seems that EVERY review I saw is rated 1 out of 10 with the odd 4 or 5, so how is it possible this movie has an 8.3 average??? Something smells odd here.