I grew up both a Trek fan and a Star Wars fan. What canon did he destroy exactly? He added to the canon in both but I can't think of anything he actively destroyed. Trek 2009 was fantastic in my opinion. It was an updated, shiny new Trek but it was really well done. He didn't write that, he directed it. He's not a Trekkie so he did what he was hired to do and he did it really damn well.
With TFA, he co-wrote it with Kasdan who wrote Empire Strikes Back. Nothing they did fucked with the canon. And once again, JJ's directing was great. Nevermind the fact that he took his time with the characters for the sake of character development - something Rogue One failed at spectacularly well. Rogue One was pretty at the end but I didn't care about any of those characters. JJ is good at character development but does struggle with endings, I'll give you that. But again, his directing is never the issue. I never had an issue with the pacing of his films either. The only film I actively dislike that he did was Into Darkness and that wasn't because of his directing. He didn't write that one but it's the story I have an issue with.
I know "Fuck JJ Abrams" is the go to edgelord /r/movies response and for some reason that's without exception upvoted even though the comments often show inconsistencies with the commenter's statements ("He fucked up Lost" ... dude only worked on the first few episodes of Lost...he had nothing to do with it past season 1).
He's not the greatest director we have today but he's damn good. Even better as a producer (10 Cloverfield Lane and Westworld being great examples). His RT scores of the past decade have all been fresh and all his films ended up being critically acclaimed. If anything, that's a fucking talent taking a mediocre to downright bad script (Into Darkness being a good example) and do it well enough so it's critically acclaimed despite the story being a complete piece of shit.
After seeing comments like these over the years, I decided to look at his scores, films and interviews last month and have come to the conclusion that the bandwagon/hivemind thing on reddit is actually a thing and it's mindblowing how fast false information actually spreads.
So with all this said, I've no issues with him doing IX. I've no reasons to not believe him when he says he's fully aware of VII's issues and that he has learned from the mistakes he may have made. I had my issues with VIII but overall loved it. But I'm glad Rian isn't doing IX. I do prefer Abrams over him right now...
I get that this will pinch a few nerves; that I'm not singing the /r/movies hivemind hymn; that it's trendy to hate on him and most cringe of all: that comments that go against the hivemind are labeled as /r/hailcorporate or the redditor labeled a shill or whatever but goddamn, for the love of god, just for a second can we have an honest discussion and allow other opinions? Can we for a second stop this copypasta mindset and look into things before we speak? I feel and felt indifferent about the guy but the attitudes here seriously rub me the wrong way because /r/movies should be discussed in a more original, more individual manner.