To be honest, I think Abrams went about making original trilogy parallels the wrong way. Instead of blatantly copying the originals in terms of story, characters, et cetera, he should have made the general aesthetic and vibe the movie gives more like the originals, that being a sort of 'alien sci-fi' vibe where everything is quite mystic and interesting. I personally think the feeling of the originals was a really large part of what helped make them what they are now.
Anyway, speaking of copying the originals, I think Abrams followed the story far too closely. Look, it's the death star but bigger(complete with singular weak point)! Look, your sort of mentor person everyone looked up to and liked got killed by the second-baddest villain! Look, our villain has temper tantrums when he's told bad news, too! Look, we have a cantina! Et cetera... I get that you want to show that it's similar and you want to capture the magic of the originals, JJ, but that's not the way to go about that - it's the way to look like you're just plagiarizing them because you're too lazy to put your own twist on the series, especially since the way you fill in the gaps is horrible(see: R2D2 activating again for no reason, Maz Kanata(orange cantina lady) having Anakin/Luke's saber for no good reason(that I can remember, anyway; if there was an actually decent explanation, feel free to correct me), etc).
Also, the new characters and groups are pretty flat; at least, the new ones. The First Order feels like it's being run by kids and not seasoned professionals, considering most of the officers look like they're under 30; meanwhile, we barely see the new republic at all and they get blown to forget, and the resistance is a flat copy of the rebellion. The new characters are just cookie cutter emotions except for the older characters - Finn wants to run away for 2/3rds of the movie, Rey wants to go home for 2/3rds of the movie, Captain Phantastic is an even stufftier Fett, and Kylo Ren is consistently an angry, edgy, somewhat perverted kid. Hell, the fact a stormtrooper who nearly beat the forget outta Finn is more adored by the general public than any of the new main characters says a lot about that.
But most of that is just my opinion. I realize it'll never live up to the originals considering how amazing they were, and, for what it is, TFA is a good movie(Certainly better than the prequels, anyway) in it's own respects. I liked it, but not enough to want to watch it twice.
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