After Star Wars: The Force Awakens' release, I wrote that it was something like a cross between fan-fiction and a straight-ahead remix of the original trilogy. Filmmaker Kirby Ferguson expands on some of these ideas here:
Ferguson's "Everything is a Remix" series is extremely popular. To get a taste for them, check out his short video essay on the Star Wars franchise suggesting that George Lucas' fantastically inventive space fantasy was little more than a sci-fi-tinted mishmash of Campbell and Kurosawa, aerial dogfights and hot samurai action.
I'll be honest, I'm not really sold on the idea that all culture is just a remix of previous stuff*. But I did quite like his new short video, and not just because it quoted me. He rather perfectly explains the difference between J.J. Abrams' and George Lucas' "borrowing." Whereas Lucas used visual inspiration to create a wild new vision, Abrams' Force Awakens is littered with recycled story elements. Lucas painted samurai gear black on the way to creating the most fearsome villain film had ever seen; Abrams brought us another orphan and another cute robot and another Death Star and another old Jedi to be found and another Mos Eisley and ... you get the idea. Ferguson also highlights some of Abrams' borrowed plot points that probably shouldn't have been borrowed.**
Anyway, you should check the video out. Not everything is a remix. But The Force Awakens certainly was.
*I've always liked Freddie deBoer's arguments against this concept, articulated here.
**Seriously, Nux = Hitler was so dumb.