JJ Abrams Movies Ranked

A competent director who seems to specialize more in nostalgic adaptations than orginal works.

6. Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker
2019
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A movie so muddled and noisy that it makes TLJ look like a good movie.

5. Star Trek

2009

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It has some strengths:  the design of the new Enterprise, Karl Urban’s McCoy, Michael Giacchino’s excellent score, and the first use of good CGI in the Star Trek movies.  Still, it’s an utterly uninspired movie with a bland villain that doesn’t do justice to the franchise.  Abrams made it clear that he was more of a Star Wars fan, and it shows.  It was obvious that he was settling for Trek until he got his opportunity when Disney bought Star Wars.  The attempt to make Star Trek more like Star Wars worked about as well as George Lucas’ attempt to do the opposite with the prequels. 

4. Super 8

2011

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The free-range children trope is not one of my favorites, but I found these kids very likable.  It still doesn’t compensate for this movie’s being not much more than a nostalgia-fueled E.T. wannabe.

3. Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens

2015

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While it was a rehash of A New Hope, it at least demonstrated that Abrams got Star Wars better than he did Star Trek, even if not enough to make a creative story in the universe.  It’s a fun, well-directed movie, and the one thing that stands out as great in it is Kylo Ren, who really does did hold up as a villain. 






2. Star Trek into Darkness

2013

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I seem to have had the opposite reaction everyone else had to the Star Trek reboots, since I thought this was by far the most watchable of the bunch.  This probably drives home that Abrams is not much of a Trekker if his only entertaining adaptation is based on II.  Khan was whitewashed, but he was still a more interesting villain those bozos from the other two movies.  I understand, however, that the movie is overdependent on fanservice and repeats too much from Wrath of Khan.  I would have liked it more if Khan ended up being an ally in this continuity, since it looked like that’s where the plot was headed.

1. Mission: Impossible III

2006

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The best Mission Impossible movie since the first one.  Just as underrated as Ghost Protocol is overrated.  Complex twists, creative stunts, anything you could want in this series.  The late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman is a welcome inclusion, as well.