A New Hope with a paint job - A re-make and not a sequel

Rating: 5/10 (18 December 2015)

Minor spoilers at the end of review! being a 34 ys old guy who grew up with Star Wars, I so wanted to add this film up there with my favourites. Unfortunalety about halfway through this film it suddenly dawned on myself and my pals that this film is not a sequel, it is in fact practically a frame for frame duplicate of A new Hope.. and we found ourselves instead of being inrigued by what might happen next, we already knew how this story goes.
OK, it was absolutely stunning visually and this burger had no fat in it what so ever from start to finish, but for bringing the story forward and not backward, it just didn't deliver anything new to the star wars it had some great acting and comedy in it, even some body language from storm troopers had me laughing out loud in parts, and the banta between the characters was brilliant, although sometimes a bit far fetched for example when Ray never even questioned the fact the she suddenly found her self being one minute of a desert planet to being on a ship with a new friendly robot and a supposed member of the resistance, she didn't seem at all uncomfotable or vulnerable about that.
secondly her speed at which Ray - the nobody scavenger who has never heard of the force and just about heard of the jedi as a myth goes from being a scavenger to doing full blown jedi mind tricks halfway through the film is ridiculous IMO. Even Luke had to spend a month on Dagoba with Yoda before he could even pick up a rock! Not at all realistic which brings me to another issue I had which was that Han Solo and Chewie just happened to be flying around in the galaxy and just so happen to accidentally stumble across a space ship which happened to be the Millennium Falcon! Coincidence? BB8 just happened to be carrying the missing part of the puzzle that R2D2 was missing so the map that leads to Luke Skywalker. .. too perfect.
Hans death was no way for hero to die, and he deserved better than to be slaughtered by his psycho son. He should have had a heroes death and dyed saving some people. I still don't really understand why Kylo killed Han... it made no sense to me.. it didn't even make him seem more evil, it was just a thing that happened for shock value and in bad taste at that.
I knew Luke would have a small part in this film, but honestly i though they would give us some small dialogue from him, the build up to him coming on the screen was meaningless and nobody in the theatre could even be bothered to cheer when he appeared, it was all too predictable. He said nothing and then our hero started to cry at the site of his supposed daughter appearing before him holding his light saber, then end credits? Hold on, isn't there some things that could be said here? Like actual dialogue and stuff! Come on this isn't the Star Wars we signed up for.
the new sith lord was a deformed Avatar, not at all real looking or intimidating.
Overall – it's a great stand alone film for banta, action (all be it too much action) and a bit of comedy But its frame for frame A New Hope!