You didn't say perfectly watchable, you said as good or better then the stuff in the Abrams' films.
And it is just as good. It's very high quality
and pleasing to the eye. It isn't harsh and light-blasted. It isn't overrun with lens flares. And it doesn't make you want to lose your lunch with barrell-rolling camera moves that lose all sense of either weight or direction in the scene.
And thats just wrong on every single technical level, you absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
I know very well what I am talking about: a quality scene that is pleasing to the eye, effective, and doesn't wave it's "style" in your face like red-flagging a bull in the arena.
I don't give a crap if YOU think it's shoddy VFX, those films are constantly praised in the VFX industry for their excellent integration of live action and CG.
Done and done well well before Abrams. Nothing new there, no matter how much you and your insider friends want to pat yourself on your collective backs for being cleaver.
Those films accomplish photo real composites and element creation, this Axanar footage does not compare in anyway, nor should it honestly. Your comparing it to the Star Wars prequels is in no way a compliment, since those films are commonly used to show an over reliance on green-screen and CG integration.
They were visually spectacular, aesthetically pleasing (esp ROTS), and they conveyed the material Lucas wished to convey effectively. Win win win from the audience PoV.
What you forget is that film is not made for the artiste. It is made for the
audience. And audiences flocked to the prequel films regardless of the sneering from the "how it was done" crowd.
For what it is, and for what their budget is, it's really really good work, excellent even. But it's not photo real, which, even when you have a massive budget is still extremely hard to accomplish, especially when you are doing an entire environment as a CG asset.
And it doesn't have to be. It just has to not detract from the final product, which it does not. Couple that with vastly superior acting and writing, and the product blows JJ's Hipster take on Trek from here to Orion and back.
That last percentage of compositing, getting it from looking good, to photo real is the hardest part of the job (trust me, I would know since I do it every single day). Thats the reason that ILM and WETA are paid the big bucks, and it's hard to do massive CG environments on a smaller budget, especially if you are integrating live action people.
And the boys at Axanar accomplished that just fine, at a fraction of the cost of ILM. Seems to me that a lot of the push-back against this project from the "industry boys" is really motivated by fear that their huge price tags might not be needed to produce quality product.
Which is good news for the fans, because cheaper productions are more attractive to content creators.
Another analogy for your argument comes to mind: I used to watch drum and bugle corps competitions on tv. One finals a school from CA came out and did a routine based on the Beach Boys. Music, beachwear uniforms, folding chairs instead of flags and staff, the whole nine yards. Audience ate it up. BIG huge applause at the end. Judges gave it the equivalent of a D+. Took five minutes for the audience to stop booing. Commentator yammered on and on about esoteric technical standards in drum and bugle, etc etc.
Next school comes out and does a straight from the book traditional drum and bugle program. Pitch perfect and dull as mayo on white. Got a semi-polite applause (people were still pissed about the first team being snubbed). Judges gave it a perfect score.
Which one was better? You would argue the technical perfection of the 2nd team. I argue the connection of the audience and the value
they place on the entertainment provided.
Robin Williams put the point better in
Dead Poet's Society:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpeLSMKNFO4
