JJ Abrams is a ****ty director. Not a given that this will be better than the prequels. I'm still holding out hope for Rian Johnson's films.
He a good TV director who makes very average films. He does have one thing going in that his meh TV writing is far superior to anything in the prequels.
Who makes average films. My bad. His shtick is great for network television where the bar for quality is pretty low. His films are like really expensive TV episodes. Very average. Nothing special. Just meh.
The Star Trek movies were done fine... most people who enjoyed the original movies were pleased with the subtle nods/tie-ins and the reboot. As was just said, won't be hard to top the prequels... and that will literally be the measuring stick for these movies.
Gonna have to disagree. All of his films have been thoroughly enjoyable and more than just average. Every one of them has gotten pretty high ratings on all the major review sites and they've made pretty great returns. The Star Trek reboots were by far the most successful financialy of the franchise. Only exception may be MI3 which had the weakest gross but still got favorable reviews. He can make good movies, and I trust Star Wars in his hands a hell of a lot more than other directors.
Is he even a good TV director? I feel like he has this reputation but it's largely unsubstantiated. Alias was bad and Lost was pretty good but largely not his creation. Fringe was average at best. His movies are also average at best. Star Trek 1 was decent, the second one SUCKED. Super 8 was okay (the second half was downright awful though). I'm not convinced that this film will be better than the prequels. The one hope is that Lawrence Kasdan wrote ESB and RotJ. Here's to hoping the screenplay is written by mainly him.
Spock got angry and punched people in the face a bunch. Plus a bunch of strangers decided they were all best friends for the hell of it.
