Could have been a lot better if it was original!

Rating: 2/10 (22 December 2015)

As a lifelong SW fan I was really looking forward to seeing this. The idea of moving back to utilising practical effects and also the news that some of the OT cast were returning sounded great. I didn't rate episodes 1-3 very highly and thought nothing could be worse....I was wrong! Firstly the positives. 1. Daisy Ridley was very good and the opening scenes on Jakku were well filmed. 2. BB-8 was very entertaining in a similar way to Artoo. 3. Han and Chewbacca were amazing as usual. It was great to see the Falcon again. 4. The costumes and effects were great as expected.
So that's it for the positives.
The negatives.
1. It's a remake of A New Hope with parts of 5 and 6 thrown in. Very little originality whatsoever. 2. Kylo Ren is so whiny. He got injured by an imbecilic First Order janitor. 3. Finn is just a comedic foil for everyone else in the movie. 4. Captain Phasma was terribly underused and completely ineffective. 5. Snoke was terrible. Why the motion capture. Just get a real person and put them in a hood/mask. 6. Luke was only in the movie for about a minute. What a waste. 7. Artoo and C3PO were underused. 8. The pirate scene was just cringeworthy. 9. General Hux was badly cast and poorly acted.
OK I'm going to stop there. At least the prequels had originality if nothing else. With TFA they had a shot at making something truly amazing but blew it. George Lucas what have you done?