Except that, "critically", beyond also got worse reviews compared to the first two TOO, so it clearly wasn't just a matter of box office results. Even critical response wasn't as good as the first two (even if it's good in general for sure)
Sites like rotten tomatoes make lists divided by genre about the best movies from the last 10 years (they combine critics and votes from the audience) and just look at how little attention and recognition Beyond gets compared to stid and St09. Even in terms of more official awards and noms.
I dunno what kind of facts can be used here to establish beyond was the best of the 3 by a "wide margin" (of what?).
Like others said, the problem is that the movie isn't memorable and many didn't care. Some liked it because it's funny and more safe than stid (I myself like some aspects of beyond more than stid), but generally not enough people cared.
In a sense, it's as divisive as stid was but it's divisive in a more subtle and "not caring enough to create real debate" (dangerous) way.
Honestly, I think this movie gets a pass on some issues people criticized other movies for because to some, any movie would automatically be better than stid or what jj did. In that, pegg&Co were a bit lucky to have jj's nayers as by-default allies.
Bad promotion had a role for sure but people should stop, IMO, blaming it all on promotion. People got an idea of what to expect from the early reviews, and even the most positive reviews didn't give many a reason to hurry and watch this movie asap or, later, buy every DVD release like they did for the first two. Also, the so called bad promotion was still..honest in terms of what you could expect, and the fact they were pretty much ignoring the first two movies, especially the aftermath of stid, which in my humble opinion backfired like crazy.
While the "made by tos fans for tos fans" appeal (confirmed by early reviews) could attract reboot haters, it possibly alienated the fans and general audience (who obvioustly are the majority) who liked the first two precisely because they were "not your grandfather's trek".
Getting a new team already created some trepidation, and then the new team made it worse. Instead of reassuring people that what they liked was in good hands and they respected what the original team did, and really wanted to give them the continuation they were hoping for, Lin&Co more or less were the cliché of the new team coming in and making it seems they were doing their own thing and ignoring what the original team did. They also seemed to be, let's be honest here, on a mission to tell reboot haters/trek purists who hated JJ: "give us a chance, we are tos fans too we will FIX this and restore trek to the origins" - which, unfortunately, only translated into them going backwards about the new things, and unique aspects of the alternate reality, and thus sidelining Uhura (and downgrading Saldana from third top billed status in favor of a dude), the romance and the new trio just to restore the 3 white guys status quo from tos, and give more screentime to Urban and Pegg. That's not "trek", that's caving under the bias and desires of some trek fans who want it to be stuck in the past under the guise of nostalgia.
In short, it just came across as them trying to placate the fans who were whining about things like "Uhura replaced mccoy" and every, basically, contemporary aspect of jj's trek, instead of them truly making a movie that fit so called trek ideals more and provided a more original and optimistic story.
I mean, a lot of people were complaining we didn't see enough of the five years mission and them being explorers, or that we were stuck in earth. And what they do? destroy the ship in the first part and then make the characters spend most of the movie on a planet without even really exploring it, without adding wonder and mystery, make us see its people. Even their goal to explore "new" dynamics by separating the group was fail because there are no new dynamics there. The only dynamic explored is the tos homage spock/mccoy banter (who are literally stuck to each other for most of the movie in a way that inevitably downgraded spock from being the co-protagonist of the first movies to being nerdy friend of hero interacting with other friend of hero, again). Again, a safe "tos conservative fan pandering" move. Sulu/Uhura were more a new dynamic, but they end up being just pair the spares and get no development as duo, and neither did kirk/chekov. . And Pegg makes his character interact with the original character the most, of course (how reassuring it is for some fans to have a female character who doesn't interact with kirk or spock a lot, let alone have any dynamic with them, and who in no way can be a 'threat' to the original trio and bromance)
Point is, even in terms of listening to the fans and making a "trek" movie, they seemed to only placate the ones who complained about Uhura , the romance and the white dudes status quo getting challenged by JJ a bit.
I honestly don't really trust what some people on the internet mean when they preach about how a movie is more "trek" or not trek because, for the most part, they seem to just disguise their own bias and personal fannish preferences as a completely different thing. Hence the inconsistencies in arguments, and the giving beyond, for example, a pass for stuff that the same had criticized the first movies for (or giving beyond a pass for failing to deliver what people expected the first movies to deliver).
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