The rebooted Star Trek series heads Into Darkness... and not in a good way.

After turning it over in my brain a bit, I think I've come up with an analogy for why Star Trek Into Darkness proves so disappointing as the second entry in J.J. Abrams's rebooted Trek film franchise. Bear with me a moment while I set this up: (Warning: Spoilers Follow)

We critique all the big movie ads that aired during last night's big game, from Iron Man 3 to World War Z.

J.J. Abrams and his cohorts from Bad Robot Productions were in New York this week to ostensibly promote their new Fox series Fringe, but we couldn't resist trying to squeeze a few dilithium crystals of scoop from them about their Star Trek film when we met them at the premiere party for the show.

TWoP: What was it like to be on the set when William Shatner showed up for his top-secret surprise cameo?

Brett Ratner must really hate me. Of the top three simple pleasures I enjoy in everyday life -- food, wine and movies -- the man has to take some kind of sick pleasure in ruining at least one of them every few months. As I haven't seen him at any L.A. restaurants in a while, I suppose I wasn't that surprised to read that he's setting out to ruin yet another movie franchise that I love. I reported last week that the man who in slaughtered the third X-Men movie had just signed on to helm the 4th Beverly Hills Cop film, which will once more star Eddie Murphy. That alone was enough to put a damper on my day, but now he's revealed the icing on the cake: He's aiming to gear the film toward a PG audience.