I didn't think they could do worse than Phantom Menace...

Rating: 3/10 (29 December 2015)

This movie felt like nothing more than something Disney made so they could take advantage of merchandising and licensing.
To start, the writing was terrible. They developed one character (Finn), and even resulted to flashbacks, as the previous six told backstories through the story of the movie.
The antagonist is an emo kid, who is apparently weak compared to the previous villains we've seen in Sidious, Maul, Dooku, and Vader. While wounded, he had a regular guy hold his own against him, and was defeated by a complete novice despite him supposedly being trained since childhood.
The hero, Rey, is servery underdeveloped. She supposedly sees Han Solo as a "father figure", after only really having one moment with Solo, where he offered her a job. She also seems to be introduced to "The Force" in ways we've never seen before, such as a lightsaber calling to her. Unlike Luke, Obi-Wan, Anakin, Windu, Yoda, etc, she seems to stumble on to being able to use the force without training. She can grab things with the force, uses the Jedi mind trick, and figures out how to wield a lightsaber WITH ZERO TRAINING. So why the heck is this girl even looking for Luke Skywalker? It seems like she'll master the force by the beginning of episode 8 at this rate, totally omitting the fact that people actually had to train to do these things in previous movies.
Po was also underdeveloped. I think the best way I can display just how underdeveloped he is, is for everyone to think of how many people they heard cheer in the theater when they found out Po was alive? I could hear crickets chirp in the theater when I saw this seen. He's supposed to be such a great pilot, but we don't really see his skills until the end. In Episode four, Luke claimed to be a great pilot, but unlike Po, Luke had to prove it.
BB8 was a something Abrams claimed he wanted created that was totally unique, but felt like a total rip off of R2D2, and lacked R2's attitude. I don't know why this droid was even added? Star Wars already has a droid who initially had to carry information, being hunted by the empire... R2D2. He just felt like a totally plagiarized character.
Finally, I'll talk about Finn. John Boyega's character was the best thing about the movie. He's a disillusioned Stormtrooper, who doesn't want to kill anyone. The character was humorous, interesting, and developed to the point we cared about him. In my personal opinion, Boyega was the best thing about this movie, but even Boyega's performance couldn't carry this movie.
All in all, if you want to be disappointed, go see this movie.