First off, the good. It's a good, entertaining action movie with pretty visuals. It's set in space so it fulfills some of the expectations of Trek and sci-fi. The first part of the movie especially felt like old Trek, and I appreciated that. Did I say it was pretty? It was very pretty. And the voice of Benedict Cumberbatch, oh my lordy lord, so good. So deep and deceptively calm, like an evil mastermind's should. I simply have to check out the new Sherlock Holmes series now.
Right, then the bad. As I mentioned, this was an action movie with a flair of sci-fi. The plot, in my opinion, lacked depth or innovation. I suppose this was to be expected. However, I was surprised, after the first movie so firmly established itself as AU, that this movie didn't have the guts to stand more firmly on its own.
The role reversal Soma referred to in later comment I found trite. I find myself agreeing with hawk's comment of fanfiction, because to me that scene has "hey, wouldn't it be cool, yeah, if we did that thing from a previous movie, yeah, but reversed!?" kind of scripting stamped all over it. I was really torn for some time after that if it was meant as a clumsy homage or an honest plotpoint they wanted to make. I can get the intent behind the homage, but I would've been happier to see new kind of thinking.
Add to that what Toxicity said, theWingnut wrote:though some did get far too cheesy and call backy to TWoK instead of doing their own thing and/or lines.
Spoiler
get-out-of-death-free card had been dropped early enough in the movie to remove any fear/hope of a dramatic named character death. Like Toxicity said, at least the original series had to jump through a few hoops to get Spock back. In this movie getting Khan's blood was just an additional 30 minutes of elaborate CGI fighting added into the movie where nothing noteworthy happened anymore.