Just to start this off his defense is based solely on the fact that they didn’t copy A New Hope. I do not think they copied JUST A New Hope but parts of all movies and put them together again into one.
1. Have you seen the original? This pulls more from the prequel trilogy
You have? Great. Just wanted to make sure. Because that means you know it doesn't start with the massacre of a small village of innocents (like when Anakin kills all the children ep 3), doesn't end with the surprise discovery of a galactic hermit (Hmm you mean like Obi Wan hiding in the desert) , doesn't have a vision sparked by a lightsaber at its exact centerpoint, right (Woo one new item so far)? I'm wondering in what way you see those plot-crucial moments existing in A New Hope. (Look beyond just A New Hope)
Did we follow the daring escape of a random Stormtrooper in Darth Vader's legions (No because why are you humanizing the Stormtroopers? Also why would someone trained from birth to follow order and that is all, all of a sudden decide to break that? They would know nothing else in the world. Also why would the First order freak out and chase this guy, they have shown that their troops are expendable so why is a janitor so special) ? Because I don't remember that, either. Nor do I remember a woman in virtual serfdom being the main protagonist and focus of the Force (Not a woman but I do remember Ani being in serfdom actually worse, a slave to the Hutt). I do recall the bartender at the Mos Eisley Cantina being a thousand-year-old mystic who can see into your soul and drives the plot forward in important — no, wait, he was a surly dude who was racist about droids.
2. How well do you know Darth Vader?
Vader isn't the well-developed villain you remember in Star Wars; that only started to happen inThe Empire Strikes Back. When filming in 1976, George Lucas was embarrassed by Vader. The scuba mask breathing of Ben Burtt and the deep rumbling tones of James Earl Jones were still unimagined. Lucas feared that his lesser villain (intentionally ranked below Tarkin) was not scary, and even asked the writer Alan Dean Foster to kill Vader off in the first post-movie novelSplinter of the Mind's Eye. (Thankfully, Foster kept him alive at the end of the novel.)
Vader, edited out to within an inch of his life, is on screen for less than 10 minutes. Don't believe me? My favorite way to demonstrate is simply to screen The Vader Sessions, an immortal piece of YouTube comedy genius that dubs other James Earl Jones movie lines over literally every single Vader line in A New Hope. You'll notice how quickly the makers ran out of material and had to resort to Billy Joel.
Kylo Ren, on the other hand, is front and center (It’s called the art of suspense. Just like when you do not see the wampa in the original release of Ep 5. When Lucas edited the movie he made is so that you could see it early ruining the suspense). We see him on screen, either masked or maskless, for a good quarter of the film, more than anyone but Rey. He is no Vader, and that is the whole point; though he worships his grandfather, he's much more complex and tortured, caught between poles of light and dark (You mean like when Ani/Vader was torn between the light and dark in ep 3 or when he was torn again in ep 5 and saves luke?). (So much so that some people seem to think, based on little evidence, he may even be a Resistance spy.)
Beset by temper tantrums (Vader choked people who displeased him), afraid of Rey (Vader was afraid of Luke, afraid he would swear allegiance to the Emperor and let his daughter die or not turn at all. Hence why he sacrificed himself.), Kylo manages to be both powerful and powerfully weak. Vader was just this guy in a killer helmet, you know?
3. Bro, do you even Star Wars?
You may rightly call many elements of The Force Awakens derivative. When it comes to Starkiller Base, I'm with you — simply making the same superweapon planet-sized and sun-powered is the source of all that is uneven about the last hour of the new film.
But when we do that, we also have to acknowledge that the entire Star Wars series is intentionally derivative of itself. This goes back to The Empire Strikes Back (Oh now you want to look at other movies besides a new hope), which reprised Luke's Jedi training with Obi-Wan — using a creature who grew out of a version of the "Ben Kenobi" character in the third draft of "The Star Wars," as it then was. The derivative version ended up being better, and darker, with Luke's vision of facing Vader springing out of it.
Lucas learned a vital lesson: Keep iterating on the same ideas and you'll strike gold. (Besides the Death Star I think the original 3 were pretty unique of each other)
So the nods and echoes and rhymes began, and they never stopped. Return of the Jedi gave us the second Death Star, with a slightly more intricate path to its destruction. The prequels "rhyme" an insane amount with the original trilogy, to use Lucas' preferred word, and much criticism of those controversial movies can be put down to the attempt to make too many scenes rhyme. (not sure what he means by “rhyme”. If he means canon, of course they had to be canon. If he means similar I think they differ quite a bit from the originals, part of the reason they were so despised)
Say what you like about J.J. Abrams, but there is no greater imitator of George Lucas than George Lucas.
4. Bro, do you even Joseph Campbell?
Campbell, the world-famous scholar of myth and high priest of the principles on which Lucas grew the franchise, famously declared that there was only ever really one story on which every epic in world history was based. He dubbed it the hero's journey.
So when you say "remake," given all of the above, I have to think that it's because you're simply seeing two people, Luke and Rey, on the same eternal journey. (For that matter, you may be seeing parallels with Finn; The Force Awakens gives you two hero's journeys for the price of one.)
So yes, both Luke and Rey happen to be orphans on a desert planet who encounter droids. Both refuse the call to adventure, a key Campbell component, and it takes shocking murders (Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru for Luke, the entire Hosnian system for Rey) to scare them into it. But there the similarity ends; they take different paths on the same journey, right from the fact that one has family while the other has to live in a rusty AT-AT and scrub bits of machinery for food. (Ani lived in a mud hut and had to scrape bits of machinery for food)
Spoiler alert: Every Star Wars trilogy is going to follow the arc of the hero's journey. As did every work of fiction from Gilgamesh to the Hunger Games. As will all the spin-off Star Wars movies.
Hey, I did warn you this story was full of spoilers. (Following the hero’s journey is fine it the reuse of plot points and character stories for new characters that are annoying)
5. Have you seen 'The Force Awakens' more than once?
Because it gets better. The callbacks fade away. Many questions are answered. You're watching in a more relaxed fashion. A lot went by in two hours and fifteen minutes, and it really takes more than one viewing to process.
This is quite intentional — and part of the reason for the ongoing success of this franchise. James Bond movies may recycle their plots to the director's content, but they're also far less likely to bring viewers back a second time. (When in doubt direct focus to something else… good ploy)
The moment you go back to a Star Wars movie, you start seeing it in a different light. So perhaps it's time you got started.
Originally Posted by Mattrick
They are the definition of over saturation and they continue to be huge films. Almost every single one of them. The Tolkien movies came out every single year and did not have issues either. The stand alone films might not be as huge but the main episode line every two years will most likely be wildly successful.
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