Extremely well crafted but without vision.

Rating: 5/10 (21 December 2015)

What a divisive film. First there was the pile-on to praise it as the greatest thing since ESB, then almost 24 hrs later a massive backlash (imdb, various comment threads) accusing it of overly stealing/honoring the original trilogy ("Darth Plagiarious" - LOL!). I personally have been swinging back and forth, not sure if this is a Mad Max Max Fury Road or a Superman Returns. Perhaps on a 2nd viewing I will enjoy it more after adjusting expectations. Or I may start counting homage shots. The Screen Junkies people don't even need to make an Honest Trailer for this one, it just writes itself.
I suppose time will tell, but I think this film was CRAFTED excellently (I laughed, I cried), and Rey was a great addition to the cast of characters. At the same time I miss George Lucas' sweeping vision and predilection for invention. It's immediately gratifying to see the X-Wings of old, but then I realize that that's all there is. It would have been nice to see SOME new ship designs. I suppose in a perfect world Kasdan and Arndt would have worked over Lucas' plot and Kirschner would have lived to direct it. I've never been impressed with Abrams, all of his films seem to be highly derivative of a "classic" film predecessor. In other words, Ep VII is to IV what ST:Into Darkness was to WrathOK (except the spaceships and actors are the same).
SPOILERISH BELOW
The plot issues being debated all have some merit I think. Rey becomes amazingly powerful and skilled much too quickly. If this were a pilot for a 12 episode miniseries, then I could accept these open-ended questions. But for a film? This is probably a symptom of the current trend of writing movies with franchise marketing driving the narrative. Sequels are nothing new - James Bond, Zatoichi, Godzilla, etc... But at least each entry in those franchises could stand on their own as a movie. This film clearly ends on a "TV cliffhanger", much more so than ESB. I guess since the future films are already in pre-production these films COULD be considered as literal "Episodes", but it did seem like a bit of bait and switch (especially considering that the 1st trailer had more Luke than the entire actual film). I am curious to see how the next film turns out. But if Finn gets frozen in carbonite and Rey has to face Kylo Ren in a "city in the sky"...then I'm out. Luke will be Yoda, that's already been pretty much telegraphed...