A complete waste

Rating: 4/10 (17 December 2015)

The Force Awakens is the latest victim of what I call Nostalgia baiting. Other movies of same genre are Star Trek Into Darkness, Terminator Genesis, Spectre, etc. It's a rushed poorly constructed movie filled with iconography from the past to make you forget about how bad it is.
The Force Awakens is all pay off, no set up. Nothing is set up properly. The movie just follows 1977 Star Wars plot structure without any characters having any motives to follow in Luke's path. Finn is a stormtrooper who decides to betray Order for no reason. He has little backstory. Rey has no backstory at all. She's also has no flaws. New Deathstar randomly appears in the middle of the film. Rebels have to fight it for some reason. These elements of the movie are completely forced. We know nothing about new Death Star, nothing about Order, nothing about some planets that got destroyed (they show them for 1 second), we barely know anyone, but we have Death Star battle. We know those old characters, but they don't even act like themselves and they are 30 years older! You have to reintroduce them, not just throw on screen HEY LOOK IT'S LEIA REMEMBER HER?.
Speaking of following A New Hope plot. Important character has to be sacrificed to mirror Obi-Wan's death. It's so clumsily written, so poorly acted out, so forced and needless it'll hurt the heart of every true Star Wars fan.
Movie doesn't really disintegrate immediately. First half is alright. The whole Jakku part. There's some effort to introduce Rey and Finn's characters. They have a bit of chemistry. Then something goes off and you'll notice it immediately.
The Force Awakens has some of the poorest world building ever in sci-fi. Which is terrible for Star Wars movie. The prequels had excellent world building with all those unique looking planets, politics, real sense of time and space. The Force Awakens has NOTHING. In fact it doesn't feel Star Wars at times. All its locations are too Earth like. New planets feature dense forests, one looks like Lord of the Rings location and Jakku is just another Tattoine. It sometimes looks more like Harry Potter or some family fantasy film than Star Wars.
I don't want to go into detail about how the final lightsaber battle makes no sense and betrays Star Wars canon. I think it's pretty obvious.