The first Star Wars movie, "Episode III: A New Hope," set the pattern, characters, plot, and setting for all subsequent "episodes." With "A New Hope" being by far the best of the lot, it made sense for the producers, after losing sight of what made that such a fantastic film (great visuals, not taking itself too seriously, classic good guys vs. bad guys, action-packed climax, etc.) to try to go back to that winning formula. The new story has a lot of "in jokes" which someone who hasn't seen Episode III wouldn't get. It also has certain character roles repeated with slight twists, i.e. social misfit who's real adventurous and skilled with weapons-Luke Skywalker in the first movie, Rey in this one - except Rey is female. Death Star as center of villainy in the first film, super giant Death Star in the same role this time. X-Wing fighters blowup Death Star using plans smuggled to them by a cute droid: R2D2 in the first film, BB-8 in this one. The list goes on and on, but at least the script and editing are good enough to make the story entertaining, if somewhat repetitive. Many inconsistencies bothered me but one in particular. When someone is handing a light saber to another person, shouldn't it be handle first? That rule applies to guns, knives, and other dangerous elements but that doesn't stop Rey from handing the weapon blade-first to Kylo Ren. (I think Han Solo should have thought of that also when he was trying to get Kylo Ren to switch sides, with disastrous results, for Han.)
