Why do people hate him so much?

he's honestly not that bad of a director as people make him. His Star Trek movie was the only one that actually convinced me to watch a Star Trek movie for the first time ever.

More weak arguments to support the weak sexism argument.  Quit giving examples of people who took years of training to even get close to mastering combat/powers.  Or in Neo's case, he had to have the combat training uploaded into his brain and not til the end of the movie did he fully overcome his doubt about being the One.  If we followed TFA's example, the second Morpheus told Neo about the Matrix, he would start doing reality bending moves without any training programs.  And he wouldn't have failed the jump from building to building. 

Harry Potter is the REAL reach, though.  You give an example of someone who had to go to school over 6 years to get as good as he is.  If it was TFA, he wouldn't even need to go to school to learn magic, it all just started to come to him naturally after Hagrid told him at the beginning of the movie he was a wizard.  Of course, in that series Hermoine is the better student, so I guess that example fails on two counts.

They totally knew: before that interrogation, Kylo talked to Snoke about "the awakening" on Jakku. After the interrogation (before the escape), Kylo talked to Snoke about her defeating his mind reading attempt, as she "was untrained, but strong with the force." In essence, everyone knows she has the force, and Ren admits that (with no training) she is stronger than him.

As a superfan, it was very apparent to me that Rey is a force savant, just like Anakin was. The child was a super pilot at 6 or 7. Since Rey has heard the stories and knows they are true, she knows what force powers are and can do. She also was an orphan that had hand-to-hand combat skills (shown in the movie) and piloting skills (shown in the movie); Luke only had the latter (not shown in the movie, but known to fans: shooting Womprats with his T-16 Skyhopper). SW:TFA, as a whole, was very cohesive, especially given the old and new ground that it covered in 2h17m. It was also better-executed than any Lucas film, which says more about the evolution of the art, audiences' mature expectations, and Abram's skill than it does about Lucas' shortcomign as a director (of which there are many).

I actually like what he did with Star trek. He never went bat-shit crazy sci-fi fantasy on those ones. But Star wars is so difficult to swallow. I think he has thrown me from a star wars fan to a trekkie.

Star wars was not only a copy of episode 4, but its super weapon and character developments were incredibly more breakful of the suspension of disbelief. It made episode 7 very difficult to enjoy. You literally had to throw everything you knew about SW and science out the window to enjoy this new nonsensical and isolated story. If you had removed the old characters (Han, Leia, Luke, Chewie) and replaced with new ones and said this was the old republic, we wouldnt be any the wiser. Thats how little context we got.

I think they've been hitting the nostalgia bottle a little too hard: Abrams directed a Star Wars movie that was better than any Lucas Star Wars movie, and I grew up devoted to Star Wars.

Didn't watch the star wars movie. I actually don't know much about star wars at all(doesn't interest me).

He did make me interested to watch a Star Trek movie though. I mean, with a movie about science fiction, giving a bit of CGI will usually help of movie. I watched a bit of one of the old Star Trek series, but it felt hard to watch from how outdated it had become.

Alright, there are 16 pages here and after the first 8-10, I stopped reading as the conversation seemed to have shifted to sexism and whether Rey could do what she did. I'm gonna kinda move back towards the heart of the original post and apologize if I'm re-hashing anything that had already been addressed after I stopped reading every single post.

I thought the move was alright; not great, but alright yet I couldn't help but be disappointed even though I wanted to like it. It didn't actually occur to me how similar it was to the original, though once I read the post and article, I could definitely see it. I've read some of the books and have at least a general awareness of the expanded universe as it pertains to the books, though not fully comprehensive. Still, with the knowledge that I do have, I was completely struck by how similar the movie was to story lines told in the various EU novels. This story has been told; Leia and Han had multiple children including Jaina and Jacen Solo. Both train to become Jedis and Jacen ultimately ends up becoming a mystery Sith Lord who ignites a civil war. Guess who has to take a central role in stopping Jacen. Jaina of course. Ben existed in the expanded universe as well, though he was Ben Skywalker and not Ben Solo. Lukes disappeared and had to be located although that in and of itself isn't really a major shocker of a similarity. Then of course there are questions that could and in some corners have been asked about the knights of Ren, Ren's appearance, and possible similarities to Old Republic lore but that's something separate still, too. Like I said, the movie was alright and I probably would have enjoyed it more if I wasn't making these connections but I couldn't bring myself to not be disappointed. Struck me personally as a little cheap to axe the expanded universe and then, to my eyes, cherry pick elements from that universe and jam them together in the movie. Not surprised that it happened but was still a little disappointed. The fact that so many similarities are being pointed out with the original doesn't help that feeling.

Beyond that, I don't know how pseudo or quasi official the expanded universe really was anyway. As I understand it, Lucas kept a pretty tight rein on all of that storytelling to try and ensure continuity in the universe. I didn't personally see a lot that was grossly contradictory throughout the expanded universe.

To be honest even for those who have a giant problem with this ... it becomes a non-issue with three lines in Episode VIII that say she was trained as a child and had those memories repressed for her own safety.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, in fact it's pretty implied with what we saw in VII. No one said you had to have every answer to every thing in Episode VII. Obviously there's something about her past, and she appears to have been at Luke's Jedi training whatever. She's probably his daughter in which case she's had several years of training quite possibly and Jedi instruction embedded into her memory. 

This is different from the prequels where they had like 10-15 major problems. 

I also would say I don't think the general movie going public really had any problems with the Rey character at all. She is a common hero fantasy archetype of the "chosen one/golden child who appears to be a normal person but isn't" whatever that we've seen fifty times before in this type of film (Neo, Luke, Harry Potter, heck Lonestar from Spaceballs lol, etc. etc.).

It's people who are obsessed with things like the Star Wars video games and expanded universe that have a problem with it mostly because they took at the stuff in there to heart and basically the Force is this video game like power-up that you "level up" with rather than being some mystical life force. 

Yeah, there was that as well.