Part of it was because they shoved in superfluous characters to make feminists happy.
No, that wasn’t it. They were trying to incorporate as many “The Wrath of Khan” elements as they could, and the extra characters came with that. But it just came off as a bunch of hodgepodge elements thrown together, with none of them very fleshed out. Or even making any sense (the magical tribble?). Not to mention, The Wrath of Khan’s already been done.
I don’t think anyone’s going to seriously rate movies based on this, but even the concept is weird.[…]…you find all kinds of people expecting that if your favorite movie doesn’t pass the test, just dump your Blu-rays in the bin!
The concept being female characters universally not being developed beyond their association with other characters? Definitely weird. And like I said, the point is not to rate the media in question, or label it as “no good” and throw it out. I’ve seen it pointed out that almost all of Pixar’s movies don’t pass the Bechdel test, and I don’t think anyone would say they are no good because of that. I certainly don’t. Because that isn’t the point.