A hodgepodge of elements thrown together to elicit nostalgia of the original trilogy.

Rating: 2/10 (29 January 2016)

Recently saw the latest "Star Wars" (7) exploits, and although it was not quite as disappointing as I had feared, it left much to be desired as a stand-alone film. Through the first 15 or 20 minutes or so, there is really no story whatsoever, just a bunch of unrelated characters jumping around doing things that are also unrelated. In fact, by the time you get to the end of the film, you discover that there was really no story in the first place, only the THREAT of a story based wholly upon the original "Star Wars" saga, and what there might be to come. There are some interesting action scenes in the film, which are well-done, but if you remove all the action scenes, you've got about 10 minutes of anything that tries to resemble a coherent, sensible story - maybe. If you never saw the first "Star Wars" movies, you would wonder why anyone made this film and what it was about. You have characters you don't know and don't care about doing things you don't understand and don't care about for reasons that are unexplained and you don't care about. It's like one big trailer for some future movie, which it no doubt is - all about the money it makes, and it's made plenty - because everyone was sucked in by this shadow of a "Star Wars" story due to its name and the chance to see the original iconic characters in action once again, which you really don't. They could have put the "Star Wars" name on anything at all and it would have sold big, which is pretty much what they did. After you SEE the movie, you are left with more questions than before you saw it. Why is there a First Order? Didn't those guys get tired of having their buts kicked twice from the original saga? Don't they know everybody hates them and doesn't want them in power? Why would anyone want to start up another group of power hungry morons? And then, why would anyone follow them? Why does Kylo Ren seem to hate everyone, when he was obviously raised as a person of privilege? Why would Rey want to get involved in this fight, when there is nothing in it for her? And from then on, you can pretty much question why everyone does ANYTHING in the movie, because you never know. Characters run around feeling and doing things that are related to nothing, and we're supposed to get involved in that, except we can't because we have no idea why they're doing it! Everybody GUESSES at who these characters are and why they're doing what they're doing, but we never know! Altogether, this is a hodgepodge of elements thrown together to elicit nostalgia from the audience about the original superbly-done trilogy, but unfortunately this doesn't even come close to that standard. The only credibility it has is in its REFERRING to the original saga, otherwise, on it's own, it's not much of anything.