A decent movie, but ultimately forgettable

Rating: 2/10 (18 December 2015)

Going out of this movie me and my girlfriend had a conversation about what people must have felt like when they saw the first Star Wars. They must have had their minds blown was the conclusion. Because never before was there movie like Star Wars with its immense and intricate universe and state-of-the-art visuals. And we couldn't help but feel disappointed. We both knew that a seventh installment in the franchise couldn't be as mind-blowing, but still it was clear that we had both expected more.
The Force Awakens isn't a bad movie, but it's not a great movie either. The people rating it 10/10 should really think whether they would do the same if it wasn't a SW movie. People rating it 1 or 2 should watch The Room or Battlefield Earth to see what constitutes movies that bad. No. This movie is smack in the middle. The latest product of the mainstream blockbuster machine, only this one is set in a galaxy far, far away.
To me the best thing about it was the cast - I love almost all the actors added into the franchise based on their previous work and they don't disappoint here. The movie has a couple of funny moments which are always welcome, even if not all of them land. I found the human aspect of Kylo Ren to be mostly unexpected and fresh. Some people are criticizing him for being a confused young man instead of Darth Vader 2.0 and I find that criticism unfair since that's exactly what the movie is going for. The movie's overall pacing is good and the 135 run time passes quickly enough. There are some issues with the pacing of individual scenes, but there's no point in getting into that here. There's a larger problem in play.
Namely, the fact that the movie does follow A New Hope almost beat for beat. The entire movie reeks with lack of originality, but it's almost not its fault. I mean, I certainly can't blame the actors (who were all good) or the director (JJ Abrams did what he does and he showed again why he is Hollywood's top gun-for-hire type of director). If there's anything to blame, I guess it's the culture of today and the corporate logic which goes to assume that because people liked something for its uniqueness, it should be done again and again (and in the same way, without an attempt to expand upon the previous ideas) for maximizing the profit. The same thing happened with Marvel movies, the same thing is happening almost across the board in the movie industry. If the generic quality of this movie isn't the expression of the zeitgeist, I don't know what is. Whereas the people who saw the first Star Wars had their minds blown with its originality, we are left head-scratching and searching for an extreme (it was great vs. it sucked on every level) to cling to because deep down we know the cold truth.
We had seen this movie so many times before.