“good artists borrow, great artists steal.”
Pablo Picasso
Steve Jobs
Igor Stravinsky
and many other greats have said this over the years.
Heck George himself stole most of Star Wars from many sources, not just took inspiration, but directly stole the ideas. For example the Death Star trench run was taken directly from Operation Chastise from the 1954 WWII film The Dam Busters. Not to mention you can see Kurosawa all over Star Wars. Plus much much more.
Point is not to take anything away from George, but to show that even great artists like George create work that is derivative of what came before.