Star Wars VII: This Failed Abysmally

Rating: 1/10 (7 January 2016)

This will contain spoilers... Thankfully I went to the theater before noon and only paid $6 too much to see the most anticipated movie of 2015. As I watched it, I felt that I had sort of seen this before...oh wait, I did see it back in 1977. Also, I spent much of the movie confused because key characters from the past weren't behaving in a manner consistent with their core beliefs/values and new characters were able to do magical things such as Rey's very capable command of the force without prior training. Another reason for my confusion was that I was unaware that Disney cast aside 40 years of Star Wars Expanded Universe canon, so I was anticipating a story from the Expanded Universe timeline. Add to this, Disney/Abrams apparently raided the EU treasure chest before heaving it overboard because they utilized names, character profiles and weaponry from the EU. Example: Ben is Luke Skywalker's son in EU, here he is Han and Leia's son. Rey exhibits the characteristics of all three of Han and Leia's EU children. Even though I managed to set my expectations and confusion aside, this movie was still a huge disappointment. All of the hype surrounding Captain Phasma was a joke since she had roughly 3 scenes, two of which portrayed her as a complete wimp. The new Empire's guidelines for promotions must be extremely lax for her to achieve the rank of Captain. She added nothing to the story line. CGI was average at best. Kylo Ren/Ben made Anakin seem happy,angelic and generally well adjusted. Plus, Kylo Ren was not feared as previous dark side users have been, essentially it seems the troops are somewhat embarrassed for him and his emotional outbursts. The scene in which General Hux channels Hilter and the troopers respond with a Nazi salute was in very poor taste. In reading other reviews here I realized I was not alone in feeling the need to watch it again simply to see if I had maybe imagined it was so horrible. It was poorly written,felt forced and was completely disrespectful to previous Star Wars story line,characters and fans. The Force Awakens sucks only slightly less than the Maw Black Hole Cluster in the Kessel Run.