A lot of the similarities were intentional homages that worked just fine. ANH was itself filled with homages to past films and TV shows. That's not a criticism, but the Honest Trailer postured it as such for TFA, which is why it was dumb.
Absolutely this. I mean, I get when something like this can be seen as a negative. I really do. The Force Awakens means more to me than just Rey finding her powers, or Kylo fully turning to the dark side. It's also about vanquishing that terrible prequel era. And I mostly like the prequels. What I didn't like was all the negativity. "It's terrible, it's not like Star Wars." The Force Awakens to me was made to show that Disney/Lucasfilm care about the property and wanted to show people that they "get" Star Wars. Most people think Awakens is far better than the prequels. The writing, acting, directing all certainly are.
Having similarities is fine. We want to be familiar, we want to know what it is we're watching. I loved the aesthetics of the prequels-- the art direction, set design, the elegance of it all. I really dug it, despite being part of very problematic films. But here we have something much closer to hitting all the reasons why Star Wars took off in the first place. And it works, because the prequels took place before the originals and before the empire took hold, so it makes sense that the galaxy feels a little different in those. Awakens takes place after the originals, and the content, the characters and aesthetics of those makes sense to be in place for Episode VII, following Episode VI.
I'm not saying this couldn't have been done without doing this and relating everything and having characters and said aesthetics carry over; but what I will tell you is that as this is VII, it's an
episodic series that is
very closely related, it makes since for VII to be a sort of bridge into the new trilogy, just as Episode III was a bridge into Episode IV; you look at Lucas' imagination with Episode III and how that story started to bridge with IV, introducing elements such as the Tantive IV, Tarkin, and other things. It was still its own film and story, but it started to bridge the mold.
The Force Awakens, then, is a bridge but sort of in reverse to Episode III. Elements, characters, unfinished character arcs, developments, etc. have to be accounted for. In the home release features, Harrison Ford talks about how he didn't
want Han Solo to die, but that after the first movie he made friends and came back to help, then in the second movie had further development, then in the last movie he... honestly really didn't do anything of significance, that he felt as though the character wasn't going anywhere and was at a development standstill.
I agree with Ford, Abrams and Kasdan 100% with what they did in that regard. It finally feels as though Han Solo was given proper closure rather than the roses and wine closure of Episode VI, and you just simply see him as a fully-rounded and closed-off character now. Having VII address things like this while building into a new story with new characters is fantastic, and I honestly would not want it any other way.