I actually agree, but I think that’s because Rey and Finn actually split *a lot* of characteristics from the cast of ANH, with a lot of their own stuff as well, which is part of the reason it works - and that Rey, Finn, and Kylo are actually mostly best seen as “inversions” of Luke/Han/Leia and Vader rather than just explicit paralells.
- Finn inverts Han and Luke disguising themselves as stromtroopers, has a personal arc that most resembles Han’s in terms of how he gets actualized and in his strengths as a hero, but as you noted, completes most of the Hero’s Journey in one film, and Rey has more of the street smarts than he does (though he mimics Han in being shockingly good at improvising successful strategies and being cunning.) But he’s also defined by the horror of realizing what he was meant to be, which is unique to him.
- Rey inverts Luke’s conundrum at the start of ANH by being obsessed with staying on Jakku and ignoring her wanderlust in favor of denying she was abandoned, has some greater alertness about the Galactic situation like Obi-Wan, has street smarts like Han, but also has a string “raised by wolves” element to how she interacts with others, and begins her Hero’s Journey in TFA.
(For comparison, I’d say Finn made it about 3/4s of the way through a Hero’s Journey in TFA, while Rey’s cleared her first quarter only, but was clearly aligned as the main protagonist… and then TLJ desperately wants to ignore both of those because of how it impacts Kylo.)
There’s also a difference in terms of how Wells and Johnson approached the elements.
Wells, as we’ve discussed, is a big believer in making sure that the “sacred status quo” can never be truly disturbed, and even seemed to deliberately play up his own changes as being temporary, enough that the facile and shallow nature of the story becomes a frustratingly “accommodating” flaw of the story; Wells is so self-aware that his story is shallow and temporary that he’s consciously lazy and impatient, because he expects his run to not matter as much when it’s over. It’s “accommodating” in that it limits the long terms impacts of his story, but frustrating in that he has identified why his philosophy is shallow, but ignores it.
In contrast, Johnson was playing with a “hard continuity” in Star Wars where change is expected as a matter of course, but mostly seemed more focused on “course correcting” what characters where in what place and in shocking the audience while completely ignorant that he was approaching everything in a shallow way. He made choices that thoroughly screwed multiple characters from multiple generations, and screwed up plot lines from the OT, OT, and TFA… but seemed to not notice or think that was even an aspect of the story.
Wells was going “We NEED the story to be shallow and focused only on the short term, because otherwise we’ll deal with the horror of change! Ah!”
Johnson was going “Pssh, this is a kid’s movie, change doesn’t happen, and I’ve gone deep for Star Wars because it has no depth, right?”