Movie review: Star Wars: The force awakens (spoilers)

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Its funny how our expectations work. I went into watching the latest star wars with reasonably high expectations,  based on the hype, the promise this installment would b e jar jar free and JJ Abrams involvement. Whilst more a classic star trek fan, you cannot argue that he revitalized that franchise pretty successfully so the odds were good.
And yet after 2 hrs 15 min, im left feeling a little like im still waiting for something to happen.
The Movie does well to build the characters in a reasonably short space of time (im particularly impressed with rey, although she does seem a little too close to the typical skywalker story...desert planet, poor etc) and set things up for the series, but there just doesnt seem to be any payout. We have the resistance attacking a death star style weapon (and the movie goes to great lengths to emphasise how much bigger and more impressive it is compared to the last one) and winning 'again',  a new hero emerging,  a vanquished villian considerably less intimidating and well a fairly predictable death.
All in all, whilst the usual impressive feast of visual effects, characters and music, theres not too much original in this story.
Verdict- 2.5 stars