Actually Rodriguez was trying to pay homage, he just sucks apparently. Also, he was trying to correct the "mistakes" of the first one. The scene you mentioned with the Yakuza being similar to the Indian guy is a perfect example. As you say its exactly the same, same setup, same music, just different outcome. This was his way of paying homage, but also correcting the originals errors. If you remember in the original, you don't see the Indian get killed, you see him prep for it and then you hear his scream. Rodriguez thought that was a cop out, so he decided to show you his version of that fight with the Yakuza and the Predator. As most people seem to agree that Predator was far superior to Predators, I think we can take Rodriguez's judgement with a grain of salt.
Aside from that issue, I hated that the film had to have NEWER, BIGGER, BADDER predators. Not only that, they had to trash the original by showing the originally designed predator as the weak one the newer ones had captive. If you can't make something work within the established parameters, then you probably don't have anything worthwhile to begin with.