Was he really a star wars fan? or did he always say that because star wars was...is seen as much cooler than star trek in the public domain and JJ Abrams wanted to be in the cool crowd.
Considering jj abrams made a complete mess of star wars (far more than the mess of star trek into darkness) and episode 9:The Rise of Skywalker was a film I found very insulting and disrespecting both to the prequels and original movies. I doubt first just how much jj knew about star wars, before I wonder how big of a ''fan'' he was.
How did he insult and disrespect
Star Wars? By copying plot beats from the 1977 original as a template? One could argue he
may (or may not) have been insulting some fans, but not the movie -- also, the characters created were the saving grace despite the plot beats. He nailed the feel and tone of the franchise better than the prequels - it's still possible to keep a feel of something while expanding on its universe. Case in point: "The Last Jedi" felt like Star Wars in a way the prequels hadn't (to me, anyway, YMMV.) If anything, I'd give TFA a pass only because fans will have wanted something familiar and he was playing it safe (because the prequels weren't as fantastic as all that?). Perhaps he was being too safe, if anything?
"The Rise of Skywalker" was backtracking to fix a mess the makers made in 2017 and 2015 by letting other people do their own thing in the trilogy - indeed, Rian Johnson was going to be caught in the middle either which way. He had to continue with what was put out in 2015 and apparently was given carte blanche. So it's not all on him, nor should it be. That aside, I like "The Last Jedi" the most of the ST, but if there was a major nitpick then it's that he was arguably too busy defying expectations for expectations' sake rather than for a point in the story. TRoS had to get around all that then continue onward, which didn't help...
...all that said, TRoS had something rather clever in putting compacted Death Star technology into the larger Star Destroyer class warships -- now THAT should have been done in the 2015 film instead of characters drily lampooning "yet another death star" (something already done to death by 1983...) Did they need another clone of Palpatine moohahaha'ing around? No. A clone of Snoke would have been more compelling...
It's like reading a book. Chapters 4-6 were written first, then 1-3. If you're reading 1-2-3-4-5-6, it'll feel jarring in the middle. Then you get to the next chapter a few years later and you'd swear it's a lot of deja vu. Then you remember it was all done in chapters 4 and 6 already.
As for Star Trek - he got the basic superficial characteristics and crowd-pleasing rubber stamp points down: McCoy's snarky and bickers with Spock. Kirk does it with green chicks. Chekov's from Russia. Etc. Etc. Some TOS episodes were fairly shallow too. Is his 2009 movie memorable? Not really, it's just popcorn action schlock. Again, so are a number of TOS episodes. But he was cashing in on nostalgia. The inevitable sequel had to deliver. He made the (IMHO) mistake of thinking that more catering to nostalgia with a popular name alone would do it. Especially when the villain as "John Harrison" already seemed a strong enough character and presence to not need to be revealed (complete with lame OTT acting) as "Khan," though the revised backdrop for his origins was pretty decent. But was it necessary at all? (Maybe not as unnecessary as going to Qo'Nos for a picnic or role-reversal with the death and the parody of the "KHAAN!" scream (never mind "magic blood"), though if any one biological being were to have the strength needed to kick a misaligned big metal object designed to channel so much power into place, it'd be Khan while on steroids and adrenaline boosters. Any old person kicking it into alignment-- even TOS didn't stoop to such generic action shlock levels. (Doesn't mean I hate the film, there's a lot I liked but was disappointed with the other aspects.) A lot of 21st century sci-fi has often seemingly been more a mixed bag than anything a more fully step-up anyway.
