As RLM said in the Into Darkness review, Kirk and Spock would not be friends, and that's because 09 established their relationship as contentious from the start. It's only because of Old Spock insisting that they're destined to be friends that they're together. But remember, "this movie kicked off the franchise really well."
You have to understand that Mike was coming from the perspective that Star Trek was languishing after you had fifty bazillion series and films. The most recent ones began to fuck up Picard's character after all the arcs were resolved in the series, and JJ Trek was looking to be a fresh take on the franchise. It was rough and creaky, but it was also exciting and brought in a new audience that could have revitalized the franchise. Star Trek in 2008 was the show for weirdo nerds, in 2009 it was a franchise growing in a new direction. You have to remember the recent ST films were failures too.
There's also nothing against Spock and Kirk being friends solely because Spock is the straight man without emotion. He's half human, remember? Kirk gradually earns Spock's respect in the first film because of his ability to resolve dangerous situations with his intuition and seat-of-his-pants dealings. He doesn't like it, but it works. Star Trek '09 definitely did kick the franchise off well. It was exciting and made you want to see where the characters went next. Of course Into Darkness destroyed any hope you had, but this was not true in 2009.
Star Trek 09 was action set piece to the next action set piece, but that's fine in Plinkett's opinion because it's hyper charged. "So what if the plot is a dumb revenge plot?" is his argument. Except it's the breakneck pacing and constant escalation of explosions is what caused the JJ Trek movies to burn out so quickly. Lo and behold, that's what happened in the Disney Wars too. Five planets get blown up in TFA and a few years later, Star Destroyers have Death Star lasers and threaten to blow up the universe. All JJ decisions and were absolutely foreseeable in the JJ Trek movies. In insisting upon the difference between science fiction and action, he created a false dichotomy between character and spectacle when good character-driven Star Trek movies like Wrath of Khan and The Undiscovered Country exist. As Nimoy said, "I don't mind action if it's organic and vital to the script. If it makes some kind of interesting or meaningful statement [...] But as a way of relating to people? As a means of solving problems? No." 09 absolutely uses violence in a shallow way because the primacy of action mattered more than the characters.
As far as Nu Trek goes, '09s action was pretty grounded. It also used the setting well for the scenes that occured, incorporating the vacuum of space and the teleporters into the action itself. That's quality stuff, it shows a recognition of the craft by JJ to create fun action scenes that make sense in context. As far as anyone knew in 2009, Star Trek was a one off film. It was a fairly big gamble. Breakneck pacing in that context is perfectly fine. It just doesn't work with sequential films that need fifty things to keep the pace up. Something like Wrath of Khan is also not going to be successful today to a wide audience. CGI has progressed far beyond where it was thirty/forty years ago and audiences want fifty spaceships flying into each other.
You also rely to much on the genius of Captain Hindsight. Yes, it's very easy to point and laugh at Mike thinking the guy who created a fun action space movie would be great for Star Wars now because we know the films are shit. It's especially easy when the Last Jedi was made the way it was with zero input from JJ. Mike was talking ten years ago, just as Star Wars was actually sold to Disney. I'm not going to blame JJ for not writing the perfect script for the Rise of Skywalker because he probably had a general outline in his head and then had to deal with 90% of his plot elements disappearing because of the weirdo manlet who directed TLJ.
As they explained in their Force Awakens review, it wasn't amazing but it served a purpose of getting people excited again, introducing a few new characters and plot elements, and so on. Most people enjoyed TFA. The backlash to TFA occured
AFTER Last Jedi and Skywalker released. As far as directing a film for a specific purpose, JJ was probably the best choice for TFA.
What he's done is lowering the standards of storytelling in a torturous attempt to fit a thesis statement that Star Trek 09 was good when it really wasn't. They did the same with TFA and the same with Kenobi. None of them are good, especially when they gave Rogue One a hard time for being nostalgia bait. Their opinions are radically inconsistent and people are picking up on it.
Again, you're completely missing their point.
ST '09 and TFA were both introductory films meant to catch an audience in preparation for future developments. ST '09 was far more contentious in grabbing an audience that TFA. Both served their purpose in being soft-reboots that took characters you knew and either slightly changed them for a modern audience or used them to coast you into a new cast with new ambitions. Both were smashing successes, both were fairly exciting, both brought new life into the respective franchise.
RO and Kenobi are not tent-pole movies that are supposed to start a revival of the franchise. RO was released directly after TFA and showed that Star Wars was creatively bankrupt, as Rich put it. They weren't prepared to go anywhere new. Say what you will, TLJ was definitely the most unique (as well as derivative, paradoxically) film in Star Wars history. RO was just nostalgia. There were no characters, no new scenes, nothing was achieved but action for action's sake with old elements we've all seen before. Kenobi is not getting praised by RLM. I don't know how anyone can take this view. It's also not as nostalgia bait with RO. It's not a contradiction because a) their opinions are actually given an explanation and b) the purpose of the films/shows are completely different so their opinions are going to be different.