They did introduce new characters and there was no way they were making a sequel trilogy that omitted all the characters from the OT. Why even bother making an episode VII if it isn’t going to have any relation to the previous installments?
I don’t see how the story makes the OT unimportant. Did you think that there weren’t ever going to be any more bad guys in the universe after the Emperor died? Wasn’t the idea of some sort of an Imperial Remnant already thought of in the EU anyways? It seemed logical to me then and still does in TFA.
It didn’t require any of the original cast, in fact it would have been better without them in it to create more interest in the back stories of the ‘new’ characters all be it the Force strong characters had to be related but we didn’t need that spelling out in the first act. People who say it’s not a rehash of the OT are blind. The female version of Luke ‘Rey’, the Vader rip off ‘Ren’, palpatine clone ‘Snoke’ even an R2 rip off, BB8. Finn could even pass as a new Han? Bringing Chewie back (who seemingly hasn’t aged at all, they could have made his fur grey or something, anything) is purely to sell more bloody shit. Concentrate on depth of script/direction instead of Box Office takings and merchandise, which is why I assume the re-designed storm troopers? Rant off, I could go on for hours just how wrong this disappointing film was for an OT junky .
I didn’t mind them using some of the old cast, but the problem is how they used them. I personally didn’t like that Han Solo became a smuggler again. It ruins the ending of Return of the Jedi. Makes it seem like it was all for nothing.