I don’t think TFA borrows all that much from ANH.

ANH is about stopping the Death Star. TFA is NOT about stopping Starkiller. TFA is about finding Luke Skywalker. We know this thanks to each episode’s crawls.

It is Starkiller that messes everything up. It makes no sense within the story, and feels like it just happened out of some “obligation” to recapture the success of the OT.

Up until Maz’s castle is attacked the film’s focus is entirely on finding Luke Skywalker, which is a brilliant focus because it a) takes out Luke who would otherwise detract from the focus and b) plays right into our emotions because we also want to see Luke. But then the “Hosnian” system is destroyed and we are distracted to a subplot no one cares about.

Everything else is different from ANH. There are many visual callbacks, but the context is entirely different. Yes, there’s a droid with a macguffin, but instead of the Death Star plans they are the map to Skywalker. Yes, there’s a hero stuck on a desert planet, but Rey is a scavenger who wants to stay on Jakku rather than leave Tatooine. Yes, there’s a cantina, but it makes sense in the story that Han’s friends would be in a cantina.