I actually really like the other two movies. Super 8 was great too. I just got done watching this one and the intro to this one was annoyingly filled with propaganda that sort of soured the tone for me right from the get go. Abrams needs to get out of his ideological echo chamber and actually think before he starts yammering on about energy shortages. There are a million different things we would do to produce energy if we ran out of current sources before wasting a bunch of it launching hundreds of tons of hardware into space and feeding it unprecedented amounts of more energy (1000x CERN!). Then there was the anti Russia crap that just had me shaking my head.
After it got past that silliness and the real SciFi started it was actually a very enjoyable movie. I always like the alternate reality multi dimensional storylines. It's a great tool to write a story around and make things more interesting.