Star Wars in name only.

Rating: 1/10 (17 December 2015)

***SPOILER ALERT!!!***
I just came back from watching this movie and must confess it made me feel empty inside. I'm a big Star Wars fan (of the original trilogy), but didn't feel like The Force Awakens added anything to the mythology or universe of George Lucas' creation. If anything, the Star Wars universe of J.J.Abrams feels a lot smaller, a lot less interesting and with a lot less in it. It also feels a lot less believable. Had it not come with the Star Wars tag attached, I think most people would wonder what the point of the entire ordeal was.
First of all, there's not much of a story. We don't get much information about the previous 30 years (since Return of the Jedi), or any explanation of who the bad guys are, where they come from and why the ending of Return of the Jedi apparently counts for nothing. There's still an Empire of sorts (now called The First Order), ruled by someone we learn nothing about, but who is a badly conceived CGI character that looks like the kind of CGI characters we saw in movies 10 years ago (LOTR, Harry Potter, I am Legend etc).
His Sith apprentice is a completely non-intimidating weakling, whose path to the Dark Side seems as plausible as that of prequel Anakin Skywalker: Puberty-related anger issues or whatever.
He also manages to get his ass kicked by a girl who learns the Force by closing her eyes for 2 seconds. Because reasons.
As for the plot of the movie, it's a dumbed down rehash of A New Hope. While the new Death Star is like 500 times bigger than the old Death Star (because it's now a whole planet - BIGGER IS BETTER!), the new "Empire" feels smaller and less menacing. While The Empire of the old trilogy was loosely modeled on The Roman Empire and Pax Romana (peace through conquest and assimilation), the cartoonish evil of The First Order seems mainly based on a desire to destroy for the sake of destruction. We don't get to know why they hate The Republic so or what their objectives and motivations are. They are simply evil for the sake of evil. As for The Republic, we see it for about 5 seconds when the bad guys destroys it with their Death Star on steroids. And to add insult to injury, not only does the solar flare gun of the Starkiller Base (yes, that's the name) not obey the laws of physics (the solar beam splits up to hit multiple planets at once), but the entire Republic is apparently visible from planet Takodana - because our heroes, who are there, look to the exploding planets on the sky and yells "it's the Republic".
It's so utterly ridiculous, you'll just have to see it to believe it.
All in all, there seems to be very little respect for the laws of the Star Wars universe, while simultaneously a lot of sucking up to fans by superficially referencing the original trilogy whenever possible. One of the most important rules of good storytelling, is an internally consistent world. Once you set up rules for how things work, and make sure your story never strays beyond those rules, the audience will generally be willing to accept all kinds of bizarre and impossible world constructions. But the moment you break those rules, it ruins the suspension of disbelief. You no longer believe in the story.
This happened to me all the time throughout watching The Force Awakens. At no point did I feel immersed in the story. At no point did I forget that I was sitting in the theater, watching a movie. It remained distant to me and I was unable to lose myself in the world or the story; A world that never really feels like the world of Star Wars, and a story that is as unengaging as it is devoid of substance.