spoilers

It could have been a very good film, there was a lot there that could have been excellent if done just a bit better, so not bad, but kind of disappointing.

That said, this film has way too much contrived stuff for the plot, which was okay in the first edition because you had to introduce the characters, homage and explain the discontinuity, and still get a film in. No excuse this time and they did more of it.

The whole opening scene on 'Nibiru' was dumb, it makes no sense, especially in a film hinging on interstellar teleportation a sudden drop of teleporter ability from million of miles to about one mile. There's a whole bunch of other dumb bits in that sequence, and so it feels very contrived.

Magic Blood: That was like this film's 'red matter', and I'd wave it aside if it weren't that it serves only two purposes, explaining the attack on section 31 and setting us up for that crappy homage piece.

Alka-Seltzer Ring: I'm just going to go ahead and assume the ring that guy had was actually a magnetic bottle full of anti-matter, a gram of that would be parallel to a 50 Kiloton nuke so that's fine and Trek uses anti-matter a lot, so no problem there, except all this assumes Khan needed an inside man desperately to pull this off. Implying all sorts of security measures and tech he can't defeat and simply plant a bomb on someone or transport one in or just drop a bigger bomb... that's fine, but then one assumes the admirals meeting would be pretty secure too, especially right after a bombing. This also would have been a great chance to delve into the dual wonder/horror of high tech, how the same things that let you feed billions with ease and ecological safety and throw ships light years also let's someone easily create and disguise nuclear weapons that fit into your hand. It could have meshed well with Khan as a wonder/horror of genetic science, and so on.

The ST: II homage: Yeah, that did not go well, it wasn't horrible but it definitely wasn't good or necessary.

The attack on the admirals: Okay, every SF series is guilty of having high-tech weapons that are considerably weaker than modern or even early 20th century stuff, and I always like when a show/film finds the budget for something in the arsenal in between handguns and doomsday devices. Still, that thing was pitiful compared to a modern military helicopter. Very contrived, especially when the guy has the ability to teleport between star systems right from there, why not "Sent us up the bomb" and be done with?

Also, crappy plan via its success: Any 'military geniuses' you want to take out who hold unprotected conferences at a known location right after a secret installation gets bombed - and have it planned to do so in advance, rather than as an oversight in haste and urgency - are better left alive, since random selection for replacements from among the frickin cadets would supply a more dangerous adversary.

"Gentleman, we have high-tech communications, transporters, and an enemy who knows the location of our secret places, shall we meet for video conference, transport to a secure location picked at near random at right beforehand, or just go to Headquarters for a conference meeting that could be held anywhere? Headquarters? Okay, now in light of the bombing, should we increase security... by which I mean have any at all... or... okay no increased security."

I mean I know Starfleet isn't supposed to be a military organization... except for whenever the plot finds it convenient... but come on!