It's like a sprint through the gift shop

Rating: 4/10 (31 March 2016)

This is DEFINITELY a modern retake of the SW franchise, but it does not really deserve to be called a movie. It is more like a SW ride at an amusement park where you get to go through the entire earlier movies at a super-speed/snail's pace.
You are a fan-boy of SW magically transported to the SW universe and now YOU are the adventurer! Got your cutesy-pootsy North Korean-made R2D2 knock-off? Check! Got your light-saber from random alien number 152? Check! Got your North Korean-made Darth Vader "inspired" helmet that you don't NEED to BREATH OR ANYTHING? Check! Got the ORIGINAL Millennium FALCON left in a JUNK PILE after having been singly responsible for the VICTORY of the REBELLION against the EMPIRE?! Check!
A recap, 5 minutes after The Return of the Jedi, everyone goes their separate ways and comes into utter failure and ruin. Remember all that growth Luke had gone through? Worthless. All but one of the new Jedi he trained get slaughtered in the first few minutes, guess by who. Princess Leia and Han Solo's love to last the ages? Bah! We don't need no stinking happy ending! They split up for nearly the entire span that you don't see them in movies.
Oh, and now you don't need to LEARN the force, you can just WISH yourself into Jedi knighthood without one day of training. NO EFFORT required. That should make the 0-attention-spanned millennials happy.
If you were thinking that the characters might go through some kind of gradual reshaping over time, forget that too. They know everything already, Luke is a household name now, except the stuff that should appear blatantly obvious, such as Kylo Ren's true parentage.
And, lastly, the generic SUPER-SITH Snoke is a GIANT FWT!?! Did Kylo climb the BEAN STALK to learn the way of the DARK SIDE? And there's no IDEA why this monstrous apparition is lurking in place-unknown to reek havoc on the Skywalker/Solo clan. Just, "I'm your MASTER. I TRAINED you to be a mass murderer."
So, when Kylo Ren has a soul searching moment in movie 3, does he get a free pass from all the genocide like Vader did? I mean, the Nazi's should have said they had been turned to the DS by Hitler, and Hitler by some other previous jerk, and that now they had turned to the light side. That's how it works, isn't it? Turn to the light and its a free pass on being an abomination?