Only loosely based on the Star Wars setting

Rating: 1/10 (14 March 2018)

The special effects and cinematography of this movie were superb, but it takes more than this to make a great movie. Rey's first meeting with Luke encapsulates the movie's handling of the entire Star Wars franchise. Much of the previous movies, canon, and characters, are ignored or gracelessly used or disposed of. This movie plays like a Star Wars fan fiction written by an author that did not love or really understand, the source material. These characteristics made it hard for me to enjoy what the movie did have to offer. In my opinion, this movie is a typical and somewhat competent work of its time. The evidence for this assertion shows in the writing, handling of some of the male roles, and the plot twists. In the end, I would have liked this movie more, and rated it higher, if it had been set in an entirely different time frame from the previous works, allowing them to be either distant history or future.