The Force Awakens is its own roller-coaster ride of sci-fi fun, and Abrams knows how to pilot a ship through that sandbox.
But if Han had been introduced in a cantina… yeah, I could see how critiques of “copying” might have been savage.
Personally, I don’t subscribe to that notion.
One could actually make the point that, if J.J. Abrams had chosen the above route that is suggested in the concept art, that he’d be giving the trolls even more ammunition to rail that The Force Awakens is just a carbon copy of A New Hope, and that the director merely worked in service of a replica of a beloved movie.
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Star Wars: TFA - Han and Chewie back on the Millennium Falcon