Was The Force Awakens Too Much Like A New Hope?

If you are among the many people that felt that The Force Awakens was too similar to A New Hope, well...there's a reason for feeling this way.  JJ Abrams was recently interviewed by Chris Rock at the Tribeca Film Festival and explained why the stories were a lot alike.  Here's what he had to say:

“This movie [The Force Awakens] was a bridge and a kind of reminder; the audience needed to be reminded what Star Wars is, but it needed to be established with something familiar, with a sense of where we are going to new lands, which is very much what 8 and 9 do. The weird thing about that movie is that it had been so long since the last one. Obviously the prequels had existed in between and we wanted to, sort of, reclaim the story. So we very consciously — and I know it is derided for this — we very consciously tried to borrow familiar beats so the rest of the movie could hang on something that we knew was Star Wars.”

He went on to say:

“All the characters – the Stormtrooper who turns, Finn played by John Boyega, and Rey, the character that Daisy plays, the Scavenger, Kylo Ren, the son of Han and Leia, and Poe the pilot – all these were characters and sort of their roles in the story needed to exist in something that predates them.”

I have a problem with this explanation.  The original Star Wars movie is one of the most watched movies in cinematic history.  I find it hard to believe that there's anyone out there that needed to be reminded what the storyline for A New Hope was.  Even younger viewers of The Force Awakens had to of seen it on DVD at some point.  What parent out there wouldn't want to share this movie with their children?  What seems a little more plausible is that after Michael Arndt left writing duties for the film and it fell to Abrams to complete, he followed a formula that he knew worked so he could complete the movie on schedule.

Now, I don't want to take anything away from the movie. I really enjoyed it, as did a lot of people judging by it's box office take.  This is just my personal opinion on the matter.  Am I right?  Probably not, but it makes more sense to me than the explanation that Abrams gave.  What do you think?  Do you think Abrams explanation is sincere, or is it just an excuse given after hearing the complaints from fans that it was just an updated version of A New Hope?  Let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.