He always has been. He didn't approach Lost, or Star Trek, or Star Wars by saying "I have a story I want to tell." He approached them as "I have a setting with no resolution I want to give you." That's why he loves his mystery box approach. There doesn't need to be a beginning, a middle, and end, and a resolution when he can just say "here's the mystery, you figure it all out." Where did Luke's lightsaber come from? Dunno. How did Palpatine manage to return? Dunno. How did Leia know about Rey in TFA? Dunno.
Welcome to Modern Hollywood.
It's not JJ that's the problem, it's the entire culture that shapes guys like him. The utter lack of care for details. The ignorance of the fine art of good storytelling. The condescension with which they approach franchises that millions of fans have loved.
Movies and other works of art have become less about substance and more about spectacle, especially as technology advances. Some works are still substantial, but the Hollywood culture is full of directors who are all about spreading a shallow message wrapped in spectacle. I mean, just look at the Michael Bay Transformers movies. They're fun as standalone films themselves, but as movies based on the Transformers, they failed. They spend less time on the titular robots and more time on comic relief humans, the once all-loving robot messiah Optimus Prime is converted into a ruthless anti-hero who makes Shadow the Hedgehog look like a hero for a Christian Bible cartoon, and the plot is a convoluted mess, but the people don't care, because they got to see robots killing each other, and that's always fun.
Hell, sometimes some directors complain that the messages they try to preach is lost in the spectacle. Gundam director Yoshiyuki Tomino once complained that the messages he was trying to preach with Gundam got buried in an avalanche of mecha fans just hyping up giant robot battles. Hollywood takes that up to the next level; wiping away any message that isn't liberal propaganda, and filling up the empty hole with spectacle. And audiences fall for it.
Just look at how many people think that Thanos from the MCU is a deep, compelling villain; a villain who kills one half of the universe to make more room for the other half, even though resource or space shortages was never a problem that needed solving, and Starlord's dad even talked about how empty most of space is. Thanos would've been more consistent if he snapped his fingers with the Infinity Gauntlet to make manna fall from heaven so that all the starving hobos have enough to eat.
It's the same crowd that tried to paint the Sequels as groundbreaking or deep in its message, when really, the only thing the Sequels were trying to sell is that having a pussy is better than having a dick. Oh, and something about fascist man bad, even though the PT and the OT did that way better over the course of six movies. The movies that, by the way, the ST made worthless by just retreading familiar ground.
So, the next time you complain that some Hollywood punk like Michael Bay, JJ, or Ruin Johnson fucked over something that millions of fans loved, don't be surprised. They've always had a contempt for geek shit like Transformers and Star Wars. They've always looked upon the smelly nerds as a necessary evil to make profits at best, and at worst, the nerds are practically seen as lepers by these Hollywood people who see them as disgusting freaks.
Oh, what's that, you don't like having M-rated sex jokes inserted into a robot war franchise that's supposed to be for kids? Tough shit, here's some robots humping Megan Fox's leg. Oh, what's that, you've been waiting decades for Luke Skywalker to return to the big screen since the fuckin' 80s, to come back as the Jedi Master that he was meant to be? Tough shit, here's some random bitch who's KK's self-insert; have fun with Luke being relegated to background scenery in TFA, or turned into a loser in TLJ, drinking green titty milk, fiddling while Space Rome literally burns thanks to the Empire 2.0 firing their new Death Star shotgun at an entire solar system.
