You speak of the Hero's Journey. The original Star Wars trilogy worked to that format, in fact the films made it quite famous. Abrams is on record as not particularly being a fan of Star Trek and preferring Star Wars instead. I'm not saying that Abrams directly copied from Lucas' opus, just that Abrams'-Trek is the Islam to Star Wars' xtianity; the same basic story in a new suit.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
