My issues with TREK '09 are legion. However, admittedly, the vast majority of them stem from a script that is unfit to even be used as toilet paper. The writers, thoroughly incapable of coming up with an exciting, fun, fresh story which would have fit in with 40 YEARS' WORTH OF ESTABLISHED CANON, and instead decided to outright lie to fans (How many interviews did I read where they insisted vehemently, "Oh, we're TOTALLY respecting what's happened before, we promise we won't trash the universe that so many people love!") and then proceeded to put together a story which shat on and kicked out pretty much EVERYTHING which had been established before that with cheap plot gimmicks (Time travel? AGAIN? Really? And a villain from the past bent on revenge? AGAIN?). The characterization of Kirk and Spock were horrendous - they were NOT the characters I had known and loved since I was 11 years old. The production design veered from brilliant to bizarre (Engine room that looks like a brewery instead of a nuclear power plant, plastic meat locker curtains in the shuttles...?) and more plot holes and outright strange developments placed in solely because they wanted to give the visual FX team stuff to cream their shorts over trying to do. It was a bland, brainless, soulless, generic action film for a generation of people ("This is not your father's STAR TREK!" crowed the ads. Yeah, you got that right. I liked my dad's STAR TREK just fine, thank you.) who don't care about things like, oh, I don't know... Stupid stuff like coherent plot, consistency with established franchise history and established characterization, and trying to stay true to the spirit of the original.
In other words, it was a perfect script for someone like Abrams to film.
With REAL writers at the helm of EPISODE VII, I have hope against rational hope that at least the story will be good, and not dumbed-down like TREK '09 was. Besides, considering that TREK '09 was a wannabe SW film dressed in TREK's clothing, perhaps we can consider it Abrams' trial run before tackling the franchise he REALLY wants to do (...but just lied explicitly about it to the press to throw them off. Sneaky, sneaky little man!).
Look, I'm under no illusions here. STAR WARS ain't CITIZEN KANE. It's not some great literary work. It's melodramatic space opera. It's popcorn-munching fun. But it was based upon great mythic underpinnings - the Hero's Journey. EMPIRE STRIKES BACK especially honed the performances and story and a solid film was crafted around that. I just hope that Abrams is capable of swallowing his ego and thinking about the story first.
But I won't hold my breath 'til it happens.