Visually Stunning With Muddled Storyline

Rating: 7/10 (18 December 2015)

I have seen TFA twice now. Both times I came away very impressed with the visuals. TFA is a gorgeous movie to watch. The practical effects mixed with CGI where necessary created a beautiful and believable backdrop for the movie. The fault with the movie lies in the somewhat muddled story that tries to combine the old with the new and doesn't always succeed.
The story is rightly criticized for being a rehash of ANH. Once again, the good guys are out-gunned and out-manned by a tyrannical regime and the savior will be a force-sensitive youth who unwittingly gets caught up in the action. I wish the writers had looked more toward real- world historical events as a guide for writing a story about the aftermath of the downfall of a powerful empire. As history tells us, winning the battle is the easy part; the hard part is winning the peace. When empires fall, there's usually a power vacuum that various entities try to fill: good- intentioned people trying to establish democracy; warlords of various persuasions; dead-enders that refuse to accept the old order's destruction; roving bands of unemployed ex-soldiers with deadly skills that can be put to use by criminal elements, etc. TFA should have been the original trilogy in reverse.
By that I mean that the trilogy should have been about a fragile "New Republic" that after, after 30+ years, is now threatened by a growing movement called the First Order, led by a mysterious agent of the Dark Side and his henchmen, the Knights of Ren. Instead, we see Han Solo, once a respected General and hero of the Rebel Alliance, reduced to being a haggard, down-on-his-luck small-time smuggler; Leia is still leading the rebels and Luke is a hermit hiding from the world and all its problems. I enjoyed the first act of this movie the best as it set up the new characters. The entrance of Han Solo actually slowed the pace and seemed forced and his character didn't really add anything to the overall story. His death should have been the climax of the movie but instead was almost instantly forgotten because the big light saber duel between Kylo, Rey, and Finn ensued immediately afterward and nobody even referred to Solo's death when the battle was successfully concluded.
I actually did like Kylo Ren's emo tantrums and I wanna by bad like my grandpa demeanor. Darth Vader was a late-middle aged man when we saw him in the OT; Kylo is still young and petulant. It will be interesting to see how his and Rey's story progresses in future chapters of this saga.