What TFA’s detractors seem to refuse to take into account RE: originality is the fact that it was the seventh film in a franchise coming almost four decades after the original on the heels of three movies that were absolutely panned for not matching the vibe of the old ones (along with being terrible movies, but that’s neither here nor there). People wanted to go back to the spirit of the original. From the outset TFA’s mission was to bring the tone back into familiar territory and rebuild some of the bridges George burned in the prequel era, and the powers that be deemed recycling story elements to be the most effective way to achieve that. You can say that was the safe decision and that they could have taken more risks, but at the end of the day they had an incredibly entertaining movie that hit so many of the right notes for an amazing amount of people. Will I be pissed if VIII and IX follow suit and hew this close to the OT? Of course, I don’t think they can or should get away with this kind of thing more than once. But as far as the series up to TFA is concerned, I needed a course correction before a Great Leap Forward, and I’m happy to have got one.