JJ Abrams is more the second coming of Aaron Sorkin than Spielberg. Both are fantastic when it comes to engaging dialog and attachment-worth characters, but flop when the plot calls for more than that. Abrams is a gifted camera man, and a good editor, but he ruins every project in which he is the major creative force.
Pretty much everything amazing about Force Awakens can be reliably credited to someone other than Abrams, and often instead to the writing team headed by Lawrence Kasdan.
Abrams can be awesome and amazing, but only when others are controlling things tightly enough that he can't call the shots. In short, he's awesome when he's the executor of someone else's work, but only when.