We don't always agree, but we can both unite under a common cause.
I'll never forgive him for undoing Rian Johnson's work on Star Wars. Johnson's take was more on line with Lucas'.
Exactly. TFA was great! But it was just a rehash of ANH at the end of the day. Abrams set up a bunch of questions in a trilogy that was going to have different directors.
Then Johnson gave some answers, as you'd expect. And however you feel about TLJ, Abrams actively made things worse when he was brought back for RoS. He said fuck those answers, I'm going to ignore that whole movie and "somehow, Palpatine returns" instead and redo RotJ.
Even worse he fucked up the whole series with his force healing and resurrection. A monastic warrior order focused on peace somehow forgot about the iron fleet using the force to heal people. He invented force dyads, which are somehow more powerful than someone who was fathered by the Force. Kylo and Rey can resurrect each other, but Anakin couldn't resurrect Padme? He fell to the dark side over a possibility he could've totally fixed?
Abrams basically said Anakin wasn't the chosen one and that he was insignificant. That's a far bigger sin than anything Johnson did.
I mean... the "chosen one" thing was really something the series didn't need in the first place but I agree in all other points.
He deserves a lot of the blame for fumbling that landing badly, but I also suspect he didn't have the kind of freedom that Johnson had, and he had to keep the studio happy above all. I can't imagine the pressure and interference he must have had to deal with on that film. I can only hope that the studio learned a lesson from that that when you squeeze your artists too hard, all you get is shit.