The thing is, Star Wars wasn’t ripping off itself.
So ripping off isn’t bad so long as it’s you’re ripping off stuff from other films?
It wasn’t original, but it was paying homage to it’s bases
But where exactly do you draw the line in the sand between paying homage and ripping off?
Nobody ever said that Star Wars was original in the first place.
That’s not true and you know it. Not only do people claim STAR WARS was groundbreaking and original a lot of those people also say that the PT has a leg up on TFA in some regards because it was original as well even though TPM mirrored STAR WARS in a more overt ways than TFA did.
EDIT:
And some of those characters are filling old roles in a blatantly obvious way.
Well Rey is set up to be the new Jedi of the series (but they might turn her to the Dark Side so that role may change) and the new captain of the Millennium Falcon and Poe is just a resistance pilot. If there’s any role he’s blatantly taking at this point it’s Wedge’s and Finn…we don’t know where Finn is going to go specifically.