I argue that they are
I'm reminded of Potato Jesus. Totally the same, right?
only superficially similar, but that The Force Awakens doesn't have the substance. I have a lot written on this subject, but it might be awhile before I fully get it all posted to this page...
There's a Death Star, so it's the same right?
The "Star Killer Base" thing is out of place. Why was it written into this movie? Why is it wasting our time? It's just a chore they have to do. An interruption of the story.
Not that the story being interrupted is better (in fact it's even less interesting): "find Luke". I could rant about that one for a while.
But notice in A New Hope, it made sense for screen time to be taken up by the fight against the Death Star. The story was literally about Luke wanting to matter in life. And in destroying the Death Star, he succeeds! And gets a medal! Such a perfectly composed story.
Then there's Rey, who is just sorta excellent at doing stuff. Yay for her? Again, the similarities are superficial, the meaning and function is nowhere to be found.
More superficial similarities on this point that make no sense in TFA:
- bad guys have a death star, but this time it makes no sense because they aren't a vast powerful empire who can build such mind bogglingly huge things
- a small group of x-wings takes it down, but this time it makes no sense because the galaxy isn't under the control of a giant empire against a small band of rebels. This time, entire fleets of good guys should be showing up for the fight. No, "all the fleets got blowed up" doesn't make it better, because it isn't believable nor meaningful for that to have happened. It's a cheap excuse.
The main character is from a desert planet, so it's the same, right?
One of the main strengths of the original Star Wars was its characters. And not just their lively acting or expressive "personality", I mean their actual moral ideologies.
TFA has what I’d call “energetic/fun social-interaction stuff”, like jokes, quips, behavior, and so on. I hesitate to call them “characters”, because they barely had any character imo (in stark contrast to the original Star Wars). The original Star Wars has clear and comprehensible moral ideologies that cause the characters to do what they do.
Luke is on a desert planet as someone with humble beginnings who has dreams of a better life, of mattering.
Rey is on a desert planet and there isn't any discernible meaning to it. It would be random, except the previous movies exist so it's obviously trying to look like them.
The droid has vital info, so it's the same, right?
The vital info in the original Star wars made sense. Shall I list the ways? Do I need to?
- Detailed plans of the Death Star, very useful if you want to attack it.
- Getting secret plans is something that regularly happens in wars, or at least war movies. So we get it.
- The fact that the huge evil empire has such a weapon and the rebels need to defeat it? Yup, all makes sense.
Compare to "map to find Luke":
- Why does anyone care if Luke is missing? Is finding him that important? (And even if he was so important, if he was so able to defeat the bad guys, the Luke we know would not run away from that respoinsibility...)
- Why is there a map to find him? How is there a map to find him? That isn't a thing that ever happens in real life or in movies. You don't get maps to find people who are missing. It's weird.
The map to find Luke is the Potato Jesus version of the Dearth Star Plans. Superficially similar, but completely ridiculous in every way that the Death Star Plans aren't.