Good but lacks what the original(s) had in abundance...

Rating: 6/10 (14 January 2016)

Which was originality along with a sense of realism, wonderment and awe.
Although a good effort from JJ, the criteria bestowed upon him by Disney is very present here. Watching it in the theater, my 8 year old nephew turned to me and whispered 'this is more like a comedy!". I was already well sunken into my seat by that point. It was simply too cartoonish and felt incoherent with the originals that were so much more grounded and realistic with just enough humour to round out the characters.
For the record my nephew didn't want to see The Force Awakens a second time. I did, but not immediately and although it was much better the second time around it's unoriginality was clear throughout.
The dialogue and action is good but staged and coincidental, much like a US sitcom, it was farcical. It's pacing is very fast, there are no moments where the camera doesn't move, track or zoom. Its frenetic from start to finish and this diminishes the scenes that should have a real impact. The story is unoriginal which surprised me the most seeing as Kasdan was involved.
Return Of The Jedi ended with the rebellion victorious and so you'd expect to see the new republic in all it's glory with the uprising of a 'new rebellion', The First Order. Instead we have a fully operational Empire 2.0 already set in place, only bigger and seemingly more menacing. Wait did we miss something??? Of course we did, thats what JJ wants, huge gaps in the narrativeÂ…. And so our heroes 'The Resistance' now have to destroy an even bigger more destructive version of the Death Star in similar fashion to what we saw in A New Hope and Return Of The Jedi.
A great story was waiting to be told but instead we get a neatly packaged but over condensed movie that pulls from the original trilogy, leaving everything open to interpretation and speculation, a tact Abrams has built his career on. To me this shows a lack of any original ideas and plays on the manifestation of the audiences own thoughts. This in my opinion is lazy and cynical movie making.
Admittedly Abrams has to adhere to the modern day audience and not that of 1977-83 but when my nephew, who has watched the originals since he was 3 tells me "It's not like Star Wars" then you know whats up.
Granted TFA is miles better than the prequels, with interesting characters and some great moments but it still falls well short of the originals. I can't help but feel TFA has been manufactured to suit a youngling audience with no prior recollection of the original films while taking us willing fans along for the ride.
I hope we get something to really invest in with Ep 8 and 9. If history does repeat itself then perhaps The Force Awakens will be the lesser of the new trilogy much like ROTJ was to the originals.