A Poor Excuse for an Original Star Wars Squeal

Rating: 2/10 (2 September 2016)

*THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS*
At no point in my life did I think it would be necessary for a squeal of the original trilogy to be made. Granted, when the new movie was release I was excited to see a new modern version of Star Wars with updated CGI and special effects; however, at the same time, I knew this movie would be do or die for the rest of the newly planned trilogy. The trailers for Episode VII were sick, I'll admit they got me more and more excited as they were released. As the months pasted, I went to the theater and saw the movie. Needless to say, I was disappointed beyond belief within the first 30 minutes of the movie. J.J. Abrams and the writers have out done themselves putting their time into making a remake of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.
**THERE ARE SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT**
Within the first 30 minutes of the movie there were already parallels between "The Force Awakens" and "A New Hope".
The first parallel that comes to mind is the plot of a droid chase. Wow. A small droid is given plans of about the Empire and is now the target of a massive chase by the Imperials to recover the sensitive material. It's not like that hasn't been done before.
The second has to do with the setting of the home planet of the main protagonist of the film. Oh look, we are back on a desert planet. But it's OK because the Skywalkers are from Tatooine, and this is kinda different, but not really.
The third: Helmets. Does the antagonist always need to have a helmet on? I get it Kylo Ren is Darth Vader's number one fanboy. He's got that secret shrine to him in his closet or whatever.
The fourth: DEATH STAR v3. But wait this time it's a planet so it's like bigger or something? So I guess it's not really the same as the original plot but does size really matter at this point?
The fifth: The siege and fall of the Death Star v3 planet thing. Flashback to Episode IV when Luke and his squadron made an assault on the Death Star. They do the trench run and he blows up the massive weapon all within the same movie. Fast forward to episode VII. There's another siege on the weapon (with x-wings and what not) and BOOM it's destroyed all within the same movie.
***BIG SPOILER***
As a little added bonus the SIXTH major parallel between the movies: In Episode IV Obi-Wan Kenobi was killed by Darth Vader. Keeping with the current trend, Han Solo was killed both on the super weapons as well. WOW major characters died by the main antagonists in both movies. Original.
***END OF SPOILERS***
If you think this is nitpicking or whatever that's fine, but you can go watch it and you'll see for yourself. This movie was nothing but a shameless remake of Episode IV, and Abrams tried to sell it off as an original squeal to the original trilogy. Let's hope that the next movies have at least some original content in it. What a poor excuse for a Star Wars movie.