An Embarrassment to the Star Wars Series

Rating: 2/10 (21 December 2015)

As a long time fan of the original trilogy I was excited at the prospect of JJ Abrams bringing the Star Wars saga back to its roots of placing story before action. Unfortunately the new installment of the beloved series does nothing but disappoint.
JJ clearly did not learn a lesson from lost the viewers really do enjoy having things explained to them. I have never emersed myself in the lore outside of the movies, nor should that be an expectation in order to understand what's going on. The glaring failures here is him absolutely ignoring any explanation of the factions existing in the universe at the time. The Republic is wiped out entirely by the First Order. I'm fairly sure that the Republic was the good guys, but it's hard to be sympathetic when not a single second was spent trying to convince me of why I should root for them. Secondly there is no way to grasp the extent of the first order, or indeed what they are at all. Essentially they were embodied by their brand new (extra large, for originality's sake) death star, we see no other presence of them anywhere in the galaxy, therefore with the destruction of their planet I'm going to jump to the conclusion that they've been destroy, which were this the case, would leave essentially no tension for the next film. Lastly the importance of Luke is not discussed, we know everyone is searching for him, but what if they found him? What if he managed to train two or three new Jedi? Does that save the galaxy from some evil that apparently exists but Abrams has not given the time to explain it? Overall the film had mentioned confused, by not properly explaining the setting and politics of the universe it was difficult to associate with the good guys or hate the bad guys, and beyond that it just felt like these aspects were skipped over so they could reach the next battle scene.
Another of the most upsetting parts of the film was the absolute lack of tension. Every serious situation in the film had the atmosphere spoiled by Abrams' need to throw in some joke. For example, when the Rebel pilot is captured by Kylo and is being tortured for information, how can the gravity of the existential crisis faced by the resistance possibly be appreciated if instead of meaningful line, the pilot makes a smart assume remark. It is an extremely upsetting trend in modern movies to see this smart ass humour be so prevalent. It's as though the directors are afraid that if they don't have comic relief at every moment of tension they're bottom line will be hit because they younger members of their audience will be scared. Imagine if in episode VI, when Luke has his final encounter with Vader he would snarkly remark that 'maybe they should just hug it out', that would be absolutely pathetic, yet not something I wouldn't expect from Abrams.
Finally there was an absolute lack of creativity, it seemed as thought Abrams had a checklists of things to put in a star wars movie, and put exactly those things in and nothing else. The plot was essentially episode IV, it really is embarrassing that no originality went into this film.
Overall, prepare yourself for disappointment. This movie cannot invoke the incredible emotions brought on by the original series. It has utterly failed.