JJ Abrams and Star Wars: I've got a bad feeling about this

Please, please, please don't wreck it

Now the keys to the Star Wars car have been handed to JJ Abrams, who is directing Episode VII: The Ancient Fear.

Starry-eyed: Abrams and his crew aren't giving away anything about the latest film

Abrams has become Hollywood’s go-to man on sci-fi, getting the job of helming not only the latest Star Wars instalment, but space fans' other touchstone, Star Trek. How this happened is not clear. It can only be through Abrams' persistence in mining the genre, as he has actually brought very little to it that's new.

Fans – as fans are wont to do when somebody takes on something they cherish – are concerned that Abrams will somehow trample their film, thus devaluing and discrediting it, and consigning it to the dustbin of history. Abrams knows this and has gone on a soft offensive, saying: "Everyone is doing their best to make the fans proud."

I don't worry that Abrams will damage or destroy Star Wars. I'm actually rather optimistic. But my optimism doesn't come from a belief in the quality of Abrams' work, quite the opposite. I expect his output will be so dire it can only embellish the original films and enshrine their legend.

Abrams isn't known for original ideas. A glance over his credits as director, scriptwriter and producer will show you that.

Armageddon, the disaster film for which Abrams wrote the screenplay, was one of many in the long line of asteroid disaster movies that just happened to came out at almost the exact same time as that other asteroid disaster movie, Deep Impact.

Cloverfield, which Abrams produced, was Godzilla from space set in New York with a cast of forgettable young Manhattanites who had absolutely no redeeming features. Meanwhile, Abrams has gone back to the sequels fountain on Mission: Impossible – not once but twice, with a third in the offing for 2015.

Khan!!!!!

Armageddon was flat-footed and cliché-ridden, the plot so thin that it scored a pitiful 40 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes – and it helped shove Bruce Willis into winning a Razzie. Abrams’ screenplay was also nominated for a Razzie but lost to An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn.

Nor can Abrams see a story through to a convincing conclusion - he's all setup and no payoff.

His TV programme Lost limped on for years through ever more ridiculous theories, with a climax, which was six years too late, that was about as original as "I woke up and it was all a dream."

2011's Super 8, which Abrams directed, produced and wrote, started with suitable menace but turned soft and fuzzy as it became clear that the film's train-destroying alien was looking for its kid.