It's Star Wars for new generation.

Rating: Null/10 (24 July 2016)

That's what I told the guy sitting next to me in the theatre in South San Francisco off of 280 when he and I exchanged some thoughts on the then new Star Wars film.
It was fun to see, but Disney's film is handicapped by the following; this film didn't come on the heels of 30+ years of ultra- serious dramas or very corny musicals, where sci-fi was a thing given to kiddies or the "brainiacs" or "nerds" who liked to engage in technical and scientific things, but who didn't date much (note the sexual undercurrent in a lot of sci-fi from the 50s and 60s).
Star Wars, the original 1977 feature film, had that benefit. There was 2001 Space Odyssey, Logan's Run the year before with its awful miniatures, and the Star Trek TV series that had been canceled a few years before, but effects technology at the time was more miss than hit, and the genre itself, other than classic Star Trek, really wasn't taken all that seriously. So when Star Wars hit the screen people were blown away by it.
The Force Awakens, or more specifically the people who made it, know they can't repeat those conditions that gave the 1977 film that "wow effect", so it steers more towards a graphic-novel like presentation, complete with emotional intrigue among the characters to try and compliment that large SFX wizardry that's presented on screen.
But that's kind of the draw back to The Force Awakens. It's a victim of its own circumstances where we have lots of effects heavy films in the Superhero genre and other tangential scifi sub-genres already tumbling out of Hollwood studios, one after the other. Therefore any visual bedazzlement from The Force Awakens needs to be fairly spectacular to compete with and against the other films. Do we get that? In some respect. The effects are impressive, but the story elements they're meant to accentuate, at times, seem a bit odd.
Storywise there's a real attempt to re-invent the basic story for the whole saga, taking some cues from graphic-novel story conventions. Which in turn gives the film a very 2000's kind of look and feel. The visual presentation and interweaving romantic- tension subplots is a very post 80's story telling style, of which I am not a fan. It is my opinion that the story is the story. A romance or sexual tension can be part of that story, but today is meant to run parallel to the main-story as a backdrop thread to appease those who have interests in such matters. The final summation implies that the romance is just as important as needing to defeat the bad guys or overcome the harrowing situation. And, to be brutally honest, both men and women know that that is not true in any situation where this is the setting.
And ultimately this is why I liked the film as a Sunday afternoon kind of affair; couch, summer-Sunday, window open, maybe the fan running slightly in the background, maybe your dog sleeping next to you or in a cool spot of the house, and you have this thing on at a low volume as you lay back and watch it with nothing else to do. To me that's the kind of movie this is.
It lacks grit, uses conventional modern Disney story telling styles to recirculate the death star plot from the 1977 feature film. And where 1977's film prepared my generation for social and personal challenges in a world that would increasingly rely on tech, this film posits more romantic and interpersonal preparation for a multi- ethnic world. To me that message is many days late and several dollars short.
The exit of a major character, the under-exposition of classic characters, a reliance on a plot already used, doesn't really add up to neither an outstanding nor poor film experience, but one that just happens to be. It's almost like a social commentary on what already is, and a warning against the regurgitation of past ideologies.
My last observation is that this is aimed at the teen-aged children of the teenagers and pre-teens who saw the film way back in 1977. Which I think makes for an odd film making and directorial style, because we're not exposed to classic film making here, but someone's idea of what today's teens want to see. That includes that exit of a major character, which seemed hammy and nearly anti-climactic; i.e. no "disturbances in the force" was felt because of this. A dramatic moment that felt like a real over the top story point that had no emotional impact, as it should have.
I guess the best one could say is that if Disney had produced Star Wars, then this is the result we would get. I think that's the fairest statement anyone can make, and all that it implies.
Watch at your risk, but maybe relax while doing so.