A vast improvement to the sequels and a promising foundation for the next two films in the series.

Rating: 7/10 (18 December 2015)

The Force Awakens provided an opportunity for me and for all Star Wars fans: a chance at redemption for a series that more recently left a bad taste in our mouths. Like most Star Wars fans I accepted that it could not live up to the originals, but went in begging for it to be better than the prequels; the result was somewhere in the middle.
Characters/ Acting
Rey (Daisey Ridley): Daisy Ridley's performance turned out to be one of the highlights of the film for me and yet another example of how effective a strong female character can be on the big screen. Rey is an interesting character because of all the complex issues surrounding her: her desire to know and be reunited with her family, her admiration for Han Solo who she looks up to as a clearly capable and like-wise to scale the innards of fallen star destroyers for equipment which she sells for food to survive. Rey is an interesting character because of all the complex issues surrounding her: her desire to know and be e tough individual, her struggles to understand her relationship with the force while at the same time wishing she could reject her greater role. In many ways her character is far superior to that of Luke in A New Hope, who I have always found a bit bland and somewhat whiny, if only because she is playing the roles of Luke and Han Solo simultaneously. Ridley performance reveals a spectrum of toughness, compassion, and wit that has me looking forward to her next role.
Finn (John Boyega): I cannot blame him for some of the terrible lines he was given in the film such as "Hell of a pilot" which were not only cheesy but were often unnatural to the context of his situation, but I can fault him for his delivery of these lines as well as many others. His facial expressions, his speech, and sometimes his lack of engagement when other characters were acting left me disappointed in his performance. While going into the film I was interested in getting to know Finn's character, by the end I was asking myself repeatedly "why is his character necessary to this film?" The more I consider Finn's character the more I wonder whether the filmmakers themselves knew what to do with his character. Like Rey, Finn tries to serve many functions at once: he is the C-3PO comic relief, the love/friend interest of Rey, the side of Solo that doesn't want to be a hero but just wants to run, and sometimes he is the hero or at least makes an effort to be. Unlike Rey's character though which is strengthened by all these complex characteristics which mesh well together, Finn's is pulled in many different directions that glaringly contradict. How is the audience supposed to reconcile the fact that sometimes he is the haphazard, comic relief often in need of rescue himself, such as when he is carried off by the creature in the ship and saved by Rey, while at other moments he is trying to be the hero and go into the Death Star to rescue Rey (only to actually contribute nothing to her rescue). While there are functions that he serves as far as advancing the plot, the melting-pot of personal traits given to Finn did not blend well and was not aided by the mediocre to sub-par acting skills of John Boyega.
Story/ Writing
As much as I would rather not compare Star Wars: The Force Awakens to Star Wars: A New Hope, the fact that this film is in many ways a retelling of the first Star Wars film requires me to do so. From the droid which escapes an imperial force with data critical to the rebellion right up to the destruction of yet another Death Star, this film is littered with not just references but borrowed ideas from the original. Even the characters themselves are in many ways an obvious recycling of the past: Luke is Yoda the wise teacher who has gone into solitude and must be sought out for training, Han is Obi-Wan the wise, old guide who is there to provide direction for the characters until they become self-reliant at which point he is killed by Kylo-Ren who in turn takes the place of Vader the ambitious former Jedi struggling with the inner turmoil between good and evil. The parallels are not subtly introduced but are readily apparent from each character's introduction.
I am conflicted by how to react to Abram's decision to make the film so much like A New Hope. On the one hand it makes the film very predictable. For example, once you realize that the film is essentially A New Hope you can begin searching for each character's equivalent and plugging them into the storyline; for example, once it became clear to me that Han was Obi-Wan, in my mind his fate was sealed. But then again I am conflicted because this is Star Wars not Inception or The Usual Suspects; we don't see Star Wars for its intricate plot. Return of the Jedi proved to us that we could see the same old story and still love it because it's Star Wars (just so long as it actually had a plot, and acting, and characters we cared about, unlike 3 movies which are undeserving of the title of Star WarsÂ…) Abram's intent, much like the newer Star Trek movies, was to give us the nostalgia we have been craving so badly and in this he succeeded. So while some will bemoan that another Death Star was destroyed or that the plot was predictable, this is an instance where that's fine by me.
Conclusion:
A vast improvement to the sequels and a promising foundation for the next two films in the series.