For Density:

1 - After opening up to credits and some scenes where someone gets shot and dies, we eventually cut to the male lead/love interest of the movie learning about the plot of the conflict and special person they to find from someone who’s supposed to die, leading to him finding and recruiting the female main lead of the movie, who’s somehow related to the conflict, into this whole debacle.

“Someone is shot in the beginning of the movie, then we meet one of the main characters and some expository dialogue, then this character meets another main character, who has something to do with the plot.”

An absolutely blank description that fits a hundred movies. Should they start the movie without any exposition at all? Should our main characters be completely detached from the plot?

2 - Female main character who’s an orphan and grows up in a harsh lifestyle that makes them seem like they’re a loner when in fact they got a heart, and who doesn’t initially want to be involved with the situation of the galaxy.

This is actually a similarity.

3 - Includes flashbacks which show the main female lead being separated from her family as a young child.

How the flashbacks are handled in the movies is completely different. RO has actual flashbacks, while in TFA it is a vision of past events.

4 - Male lead/love interest is part of a paramilitary organization and purposefully lies to the female main character, only to later unveils their lie near the end of the 2nd act, and who has been trained to fight since childhood.

Two movies that are about wars in space have both a character who is a fighter? Shocking. And they also tell a lie? Wow, that never happened before.

5 - There’s a scene in the first act where the female lead appears to be in immediate danger, so the male lead tries to step in to help, but stops and watch like an idiot as the female lead beat up the grunts, showing she’s supposed to be good with a melee weapon.

That’s a common way to establish that a character is able to defend themself.

6 - Two male characters (one of which has been credited as everyone’s favorite character) who seem to be best buddies and are the subjects of god awful shipfics.

I covered this already, but again: “The movie has two male character, who are friends.” That’s even more vague than the first point.

7 - There’s a tentacle monster in the first act which has no relevance and impact to the rest of the movie whatsoever.

While I’m not a fan of either of the monsters, you have to admit that they are very different from each other and serve completely different purposes.

8 - There’s a connection between the female and male leads, which seems to hint at a romance near the end, but doesn’t really bloom into anything other than a camaraderie.

Because every movie with a male and female character has to end in a romance?

9 - There’s an droid character who provides most of the movie’s humor, which can include electrocuting and/or hitting the male lead.

Wow, funny droids in Star Wars, I have never heard of that.

10 - The movie tries to harken back to the original trilogy by including tons of fan service, with recognizable characters and places that are almost identical to those places in the OT, so much to the point it’s more up in your face than being endearing.

We already have three Star Wars movies that were visually distached from the OT. I’d rather have too much “fan service” than no visual connections to the originals at all.

11 - The designs of some of the Imperials troopers are more variants of the typical OT Stormtrooper, with different color schemes and helmet changes, as opposed to the overall departure of the prototypes in the PT.

Both movies take place closer to the OT than the PT, so why should they rather have PT designs?

12 - In the first act, the pilot of the movie’s ship tries ridiculous ways of entering hyperspace, without carefully calculating their trajectory or ensuring that they have a safe way out.

I don’t even know what you’re talking about here. Could you be more specific or would that reveal how little the scenes actually have in common?

13 - First half of the movie puts emphasis on finding this one dude who may change the entire fate of the galaxy, then sets up the next half for infiltrating the villain’s stronghold while the movie’s main villain is inside, at first completely unaware of the heroes’ presences.

Different circumstances, in TFA they try to find Luke, then Rey gets captured, so they go to Starkiller Base to free her and then continue the search. In RO, they try to find Saw and they succeed, then they go to the archive because they need the plans.

14 - There’s this evil Sith dude in a black mask with a cool red lightsaber, who has this one awesome scene in the entire film, but what they do in the rest of the movie doesn’t seem to match that.

Wow, a Sith with a red lightsaber, that certainly only happened in RO and TFA.

15 - By the halfway point of the movie, there’s a short battle, in which our heroes being separated and doing their own things, until X-Wings come in to eliminate the Imperial forces and bring our heroes straight to the rebel base.

“There are battles in both movies and our heroes don’t stay together for the whole time, but they eventually meet again.”

Also, you need to be more vague, here. Technically, the Resistance are not rebels. You should have used something more bland, like “good guy’s base”. Hey, I just found another similarity, there are good guys and bad guys in both movies, I think you overlooked that one.

16 - Final act consists of main heroes and a small task force sneaking into and around baddies’ base, which includes lowering the shields for our rebels to come in for assistance and deliver some damage to the baddies’ base.

Wow, so “infiltrating the villain’s stronghold while the movie’s main villain is inside, at first completely unaware of the heroes’ presences” includes sneaking around and disabling the base’s defences? Who would have thought…

17 - Both the female lead and male lead/love interest immediately come into a confrontation with the main villain, which has the male lead/love interest getting injured by the main villain while trying to help the female main lead overcome the main villain.

“The main characters confront the villain and one of them gets injured” This is truly unique to these two movies.

18 - This is the only time in the SW films where a Sith dude in a mask has ever used his red lightsaber to kill side characters, who have never really appeared in any SW medium before this point and whom we actually feel sorry for.

You have to specify “in a mask” here in order to not include Dooku or Palpatine or Anakin here. So what you’re really saying is, “there are two Siths with masks” and we had that point already. Also, you have to specify “who have never really appeared in any SW medium before this point” to not include OT Vader. So you’re just being vague enough to make a connection but specific enough not to include all these other examples that would ruin your narrative.

19 - Though the movie’s final battle may have been won, it comes with great costs to our heroes, and it is only the beginning, as the movie ends on a cliffhanger.

Yeah, a final battle being won with no effort at all would make for a really engaging movie. Also, a movie planned as the first part of a trilogy and a movie directly leading into another movie both end on cliffhangers. Very surprising.

If you’re only vague enough and ignore anything that doesn’t fit your narrative, you can make almost any two movies look similar. And when you pick two movies from the same franchise, you can make them look almost the same. All these points only prove how much time you put into it and how creatively you can describe these things. If you say “RO is the same movie as TFA”, you also have to say “ROTJ is the same movie as Star Wars”, or even “all Star Wars movies are the same”.

Just for fun, here’s how Harry Potter is the same as Star Wars:

The main character, whose parents were killed by the villain, lives with his aunt and uncle.
The main character seems to be a nobody, but it turns out that his parents were important.
The main character has to work a lot and isn’t particularly happy.
A man with a beard reveals to the main character that he has magical powers.
The main character gets invited to go away and learn more about these powers, but his aunt and uncle don’t like this idea.
Aunt and uncle are forced to let him go.
The main character and the bearded man, who revealed the secret, go to a bar full of weirdos and later to a market.
The main character meets the male support character, who is accompanied by a furry creature.
The male support tries to impress the main character with empty words.
They travel.
There is expository dialogue! OMG!
Main character and support meet the female support, who is a bossy know-it-all, and there is some initial tension, but they will all become friends in the end.
A means to traverse a horizontal/vertical gap doesn’t work the way our characters want to and this gets them into trouble.
In the end, the main character fights against the villain and has help from his friends and his new magical abilities.
The main character is naturally gifted at flying, just like his father, and this also helps him to defeat the villain.
The main character defeats the villain by using a weakness that the villain didn’t know about.
The main henchman gets killed, the villain can barely escape.
There is a big party in the end where the main and support characters are honored.

Bonus points:

The mentor is an old wizard, who was friends with the main character’s parents.
There is a mean guy in a black cloak.
A tentacle monster grabs the main character.