The cast is excellent, however J.J.Abrams shouldn't have borrowed most of the plot from A New Hope, he should have done an original story instead. All tease and no explain

Rating: 5/10 (15 August 2018)

The cast is excellent, both new and old. Star Wars like The Lord of the Rings, is more of a bible level blockbuster, and this treats it more like a brainle blockbuster and it sort of work, except that it doesn't.
However J.J.Abrams shouldn't have borrowed most of the plot from A New Hope, he should have done an original story instead. You get Jakuu a Dessert Planet like Tattoine, in everything but name a Death Star but whithout the backstory or mithology behind A New Hope's Death Star, which was so huge that inspired Rogue One.
All tease and no explain, it feels like an unnecesary prologue and retread of the original film. They should have started with the original story and just skipped all this. As someone who got into the previous films, and the animeted The Clone Wars and Rebels, before this, after seeing weekly a new story, to jump into the the film expecting a new story, to instead get a rethread, felt totally creativity.
Next year's Rogue One, where peolpe died to get the Death Star plans, just makes J.J.Abrams rushed plan to Starkiller base, which was destroyed without anyone getting any plans, in a completely rushed attack, seem even more lazy, in that here they just explode it. Also it necesary to highlight that this film includes Captain Phasma, who easilly is the worst and most poorly written character in all the film franchise, due to renouncing to her ideals at the mere sight of a gun pointed to her head.
However, the robots, aliens, ships, sets, the props creativity is there, and J.J. Abrams wasted everybody's talent in telling a story that had already been told, and better than Lucas. To give this film a fresh rating would be to endorse laziness and to endorse other sequels, to copy/paste the previous best moments of the previous best films of their franchise. The cast deserves all the more praise for doing magic, out of very very thin air.
Rian Johnson did turned The Force Awakens characters, into separate persons from their original trilogy , and gives answers, were J.J. Abrams gave teases, motivations instead of misteries, that;s why ian Johnson gets a fresh rating where J.J. Abrams doesnt. The five star are entirelly for the cast, the five absent star are for J.J. Abrams, lazy story-telling. Some Lawrence Kasdan's touches here and there, and the cast does magic from nothing, but are not enough to save the film from the derivative story.
It deeply saddens me to give this film a low rating, specially since I'm a big Star Wars fan, and since in a crazy real-life story, the main lead of this film used her social media, to try to get me a date for this film.
Still, 100% worth a watch because the cast old and new, are excellenta, because the sequel called The Last Jedi, is actually pretty good and against all odds redeems this film, with its interpretation of it.