I get that there's some fans of the prequels here, which I suspect speaks more to the ages of the people posting on this forum, but whether you are a prequel apologist or not, try to understand the reality that the prequels damaged the prestige of the Star Wars franchise. They were Mediocre movies at best and there was significant backlash that they weren't as good as the originals and that aspects of the originals were missing. They felt different. George Lucas was so shamed by the the amount of the backlash that he realized he had to sell the rights to Star Wars. The general population was not hyped by Lucas doing more Star Wars. There was already too much bad vibes there from his mediocre prequels and his "ruining" the originals with his completely unnecessary "special editions".
Episode 7 was a direct response to that. It's a re-launch of Star Wars. Yes, it borrows heavily from the original movie, but it wasn't accidental. They wanted to prove they could capture the joys of the original. They wanted to pass it on to a new generation of young actors. So yeah, you get a bit of a paint by numbers rehash of the original. It's intended to regain confidence in a franchise with wounds in it. They have succeeded. People are hooked again. We are going to get a Star Wars movie every year from here on out. They obviously felt like they couldn't take any chances with this one.
Here's the good news: Rian Johnson is very creative. If you've seen "brick" and "looper", you'd see that he's very good at defying expectations within specific genres. Disney apparently has a lot of confidence in him, because he's writing episode 8 and 9. He will be directing episode 8 (Colin treveror will direct episode 9). I would be flabbergasted if episode 8 simply follows a blueprint of "empire strikes back". They wouldn't have hired Rian Johnson if that was the intention. The original idea from Disney seemed to be to let exciting young directors with creative vision take the helm of these projects. You can feel free to be cynical and skeptical about it, but Disney had given some leeway to writer/directors of their marvel projects. JJ was hired with the task of reintroducing us to this world in a familiar way. I have a lot of confidence that Rian Johnson will put his stamp on this heading forward. Hiring him was a bold choice. You don't make bold choices if you just want a rehash.
I've heard that the script for episode 8 is pretty great. Read an article that JJ Abrams himself was so impressed with it that he wished he had written it.
Lots of criticism in this thread about how the new movie is just a rehash. It wasn't a mistake. Say what you will, but Star Wars is officially back. The general audience is hooked again. It's already made a billion dollars and the general consensus is very positive (which makes this thread kind of confusing to me since its slanting so negative). It's going to be fun to see where it goes from here.