Kylo letting his anger loose seems to be little more than trashing whatever room he is in. He never really goes on a spree. He kind of seems like Anakin 2.0 – just another stroppy youth with a laser sword.

The issue with the sequels is not that they’re flawed, you can pick holes in almost any story even the original trilogy. It’s that they’re and full of poorly written characters. And as part of a saga, like the prequels, they actually spoil the story. The prequels might have had failings but they were original and the characters were much more enjoyable.

I still maintain to this day that Star Wars didn’t need a sequel. Return of the Jedi was the fairytale happy ending, good triumphed over everything; no more story was required. Disney should have started an entirely new story, only tangentially related, if at all, to the original films. But Disney don’t have the stones for that.

None of the villains in the sequels are in any way villainous. None of them seem intimidating or scary in the slightest, not even close. At no point in the film does it feel like any of the Villains is going to do anything of any real consequence, you never feel like they’re going to lose it and kill a load of people. You always got that impression from Vader.

Based ONLY on episode IV vs episode VII (because episode VII was so dreary my only venture into star wars since then has been Rogue One), compare Tarkin and Vader to Hux and Kylo. Like everything else about TFA, the new characters are just pale imitations of the old.

Hux looks like the kind of guy whobgets bullied for his lunch money in Star Killer base canteen. Every. Single. Day. And when he gets angry it seems more like a tantrum than genuine rage. Where Tarkin comes off as arrogant and is defeated by Hubris, Hux just appears childish and incompetent. I don’t think it helps that the actor looks too boyish, they should have cast his dad in the role.

Kylo Ren looks like a wannabe Darth Vader but ends up more like Anakin Skywalker. And despite the efforts to play it up, at no point was I ever convinced he would convert to the light side.

And that’s just the two Villains. I could be here all day bemoaning the good guys. There are precisely zero good characters in Force Awakens and as a result the story suffers beyond its own inherent problems.

Episode VII was the first star wars film I haven’t revisited on DVD after seeing it at the cinema. Episode VIII is the first star wars film I didn’t bother watching at the cinema. I won’t say Star Wars is ruined but the main Saga is certainly well past saving and its failure begins with Force Awakens. Had the characters been better written, it may have been possible to overlook the flaws in the story because I would have wanted to know what happened to them. But they were so utterly uninteresting and 1 dimensional that I left the cinema not caring about any of them at all and thus not really bought into the sequel story. It’s now gone from must see viewing at the cinema to case by case basis viewing.

Star Wars isn’t about 1 dimensional characters. The original story had characters that developed and grew, even within a single film. The Force Awakens didn’t. It had little miss perfect, Rey, mister nervous breakdown, Finn accompanied by some past their sell by date characters from the original films. Even the returning characters from the original films were awful.

Beyond the characters I haven’t made any real criticisms of the actual film, Force Awakens, itself. Indeed it would be very hard to make a criticism of that film that would not also be applicable to episode IC seeing as it is a blatant rip off of that film. And that’s where the Prequels trump the sequels. They may have had some corny dialogue, they may have had some wooden acting at times. However they were telling an original story. At no point did I feel as though I had seen it before. It is possible, on the other hand, to write a fairly detailed plot synopsis of Force Awakens that is equally applicable to A New Hope.