No offense to anyone who enjoyed it for what it was, but just remember the credit should not go to J.J. Abrams -- not even half of it. The film had a barely known writer, who's been working his butt off on shows like Buffy, Angel and now Lost, named Drew Goddard. The film also had a director.
J.J. does jack shit. He's a hack who draws in publicity for God knows what reason. I guess because he did "Alias" he was loved by ABC because it drew in ratings, even though it sucked more than anything I can think of, especially for using Jennifer Garner, who's probably the worst highly paid female celebrity. Just awful! Terrible, terrible show. J.J. wrote it, cast it, and composed the awful theme music, too. He hasn't really written anything since on anything he's credited with. Maybe a bit of the "Lost" pilot, which felt mostly like an action story. He's weak on character and shouldn't ever get all the credit, but constantly does for his shallow, lazy work. There are real hard-working writers like Ira Steven Behr out there who do their best and don't compromise so commercially as Abrams, and they get no respect! Commercial lapdogs like him get all the power, even though others deserve it more.
Ira Steven Behr revolutionized Star Trek with -- you got it -- political insight and never got to push it as far as he ultimately wanted because of Rick Berman's commercially-driven formulaic interference.
Eric Jenderson of "Band of Brothers" had a totally new conception of a Star Trek movie and spent a year writing it, and the whole thing was scrapped at Paramount when things changed at the top and J.J. was given carte blanche to do his gimmicky nostalgia trip.
Now, Fox is producing a J.J. Abrams series about Homeland Security agents investigating paranormal activity; sounds like The 4400, which Ira Steven Behr worked on, too.
Go to hell, J.J.!