It suffered from the kind of flat, no-depth-of-field, impossible-to-parse visual effects that you see when the effects are rendered with 3D in mind. I hate 3D so much. It ruins the look of movies even when you watch the flat version because it leads to terrible cinematography decisions. The Ringworld starbase was just ridiculous.
Was anyone else distracted by the fact that CV Dazzle Ninja Woman had the same accent as Helena from Orphan Black? I kept expecting her to talk about her sestras.
But anyway, the good news is that Star Trek Continues is now up to 6 episodes. It's a fan-made set of new episodes of TOS and it's pretty well done. It's goofy in almost exactly the same way TOS was goofy. Playlist here. You should just watch this instead.
I took Star Trek Beyond as pastiche* -- Simon Pegg's chance to write a whole movie with classic Star Trek action figures. I mean, Pegg is a giant TV nerd, makes that clear in Spaced+ so he's aimed for a crowd-pleaser and it's safe summer cinema.
Abrams set the tone with the reboot that they're Star Trek action movies. I don't expect much more than that.
*: fanfic, with MontgoMary-Sue Scott etc. etc.
+: which might be a bit British but, for the 1990s, it's a good antidote to Friends
K3ninho
I'm generally a 3D apologist but agree that the 2D version of this was not very good looking, I didn't bother to try seeing it in 3D. You'd think that something that is mostly digital onscreen would be able to create the 3D correctly, but I'm wondering if digital + live-action forces compromises during post-conversion.
The only good 3D I've seen lately are films that were shot with a 3D rig. Prometheus, Hugo and Coraline come to mind. Worth noting that those three films were directed by pretty capable directors. I'd hold Coraline up as the torch-bearer for what 3D can be when a director makes the effort to design sets, shots, blocking etc. with 3D in mind. The problem is that probably less than 5% of directors producing 3D movies do the same. I'd venture to guess that some of them might not even know they're filming a 3D movie at the time they're doing it.
Oh man, thanks for that Star Trek Continues recommendation, those made my weekend.