The force ignored

Rating: 5/10 (30 December 2015)

In context of the star wars universe, this movie is absolute garbage. There are too many plot holes that easily could have been plugged with epic and memorable lore-friendly explanations. This could also have built characters in a better manner.
Looking at the movie in a vacuum: The movie isn't terrible. It has decent introduction of characters, and they play out their designated roles decently, without further building but rather reinforcing their personalities. - Rey, the self sufficient girl that does what she has to do to survive, but waits for her long gone family. - Finn, the storm-trooper who couldn't kill innocents and deserted (fighting to survive) to get away.

BB8, the only character that actually has some sort of character development beyond the introduction.

The characters are played well, but the script is messy: the characters are too polarized from themselves, and their conflicts within themselves are not portrayed. There is some focus on Finn's issue with facing conflict rather than fleeing it, but it is primarily forced, and not confronted.
Further conflicts - like killing people for Finn, and facing danger for Rey - does not follow any sort of line within the characters personalities; and actually conflicts with it due to no further explanation/investigation.
Kylo Ren is perhaps the most messy part of this movie. There is no consistency to him other than his rage. And it is not the confusion he is met with that causes chaos, it is that he does not follow any red line. Perhaps it is an issue with how the J.J. Abrams attempts to only build characters with introduction: Kylo Ren is effectively introduced 3 times rather than built on as a character.
The CGI and acting somehow manages to keep the movie on its feet. I guess Disney had more patience with the filming than the manuscript.
The story is otherwise ridden with plot-holes and strange chemistry.
The story revolves around finding Luke, fair enough. The obstacle of the movie is finding the map, and the bad guys are attempting to steal it, fair enough. The bad guys suddenly have a death star, which is introduced haphazardly. It never feels like it was meant to be in the movie, before it suddenly is there. It is used mostly as eye-candy, and a tool to face the enemy. Rather redundant. Everything in the story is presented "cleanly" and unveiled. There is no mystery, there is no big quest, the movie revolves around character dynamic. Failing to that, and failing to present the plot in a "grand quest" scheme, the movie would have fallen if not for the acting and CGI.
At the end of the movie I was crossing my fingers that Finn was dead, so we finally could have some actual story from this movie; something to justify crying at the end.
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Back to the place of this movie in the universes of Star Wars. Rey, a young adult female, who is a scavenger, somehow knows how to fly. In the movie, something very similar to a holocron is presented in the form of Skywalker's light-saber. Rey could have learned things about the force and flying from holocrons in her scavenging, particularly the first scene would have been a great place to show this. Not only would this have introduced elements of the awesome star wars universe, it also would have removed at least 3 of the big plot holes: How she can fly, how she instantly can control the force, and how she is able to channel force through saber duel, and actually use a light-saber.
Then there is the issue of the main obstacle: the death star. Somehow Finn has knowledge of the base, intricate knowledge of a base we never before heard he had been on, and then only as medical personnel. The planet has somehow been rebuilt to store a mega weapon in 30 years, with an empire that has been devastated by not one, but two huge losses. The question is then: how did they manage to build such a weapon without the republic ever noticing? It would demand enormous amounts of resources and laboring power, but this was not noticed by the republic?
There are obviously many other plot holes in this movie, but those are possible to ignore, and merely question. Many of these have destroyed possibilities for future films