During a recent conversation with Variety, J.J. Abrams addressed the fact that he’s no longer a Star Wars director.
In particular, he definitely seems bother by the fact that he doesn’t get to be the director to work with Mark Hamill when Luke Skywalker says his first on-screen line in decades.
Although he appears pleased with the current state of the entire Star Wars universe, part of him regrets not being involved as the director of Episode VIII.
This makes plenty of sense to me; movie scenes really don’t get more iconic than that.