Cumberbatch played the role well, but the role was not emotional complex. They do achieve some anti-hero flavor, he's not 100% unsympathetic villain, but he comes close and having his entire crew be auto-evil like that was a serious cop-out.

The problem was homages worked well in the first film, as did minimal bad-guy-development, because everyone wanted and expected it from a reboot. You had to jam in their character intro, new universe intro, 'avengers assemble', and a plot, plus "yes, this is Trek, remember this?" homages and 'Explosions!!! Lots of fucking explosions!'.

That just doesn't work for a second move, the connection to the old series is firmly established, the characters are known, their deviation from the old is known, give us plot.

Now I'm an uber-geek so a homage is never going to bother me, I get the reference and approve of the hat-tip to the original, I think many are lost on newer audiences though and while this film avoided it you can go beyond homage into the zone where you're wondering why C3PO and R2D2 are in the damn film and so obviously shoehorned in.