Star Wars: The Force Awakens has been in cinemas for several weeks, so if you are yet to see it, you should be aware that this piece contains spoilers. 

While the movie is continuing to do well at the box office ($1.6 billion worldwide and counting) and has received almost unanimously positive praise, one of the criticisms leveled at the movie is that it often feels like a beat-for-beat remake of the original Star Wars movie, A New Hope.

From a droid concealing vital information happening across someone on a desert planet who doesn't realise that they are filled with The Force, all the way up to a giant spaceship run by bad guys who want to destroy planets, there are a lot of similarities to be found in the two plot-lines.

When asked about this in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, director and co-writer J.J. Abrams tackled the subject head on:

“I can understand that someone might say, ‘Oh, it’s a complete rip-off!’. What was important for me was introducing brand new characters using relationships that were embracing the history that we know to tell a story that is new — to go backwards to go forwards.”

“I knew that, whatever we did, there would be a group of people - and I was just hoping and praying that it would be smaller than not - that would take issue with any number of things. [...] But I knew we weren’t making the movie for any other reason than we believed that it could be something meaningful and special and entertaining and worthy of people’s time”.