I recently linked to a Movies.com article about the upcoming Brad Bird Disney project Tomorrowland, in which Erik Davis discusses the speculation — which originated with Disney historian Jim Hill — that Tomorrowland might be about Disney’s work with the Air Force in the 1950s to make a TV show about UFOs. I thought that was all very interesting, but mostly it just alerted me to the fact that Brad Bird has another movie coming up, and I’ll watch that no matter what it’s about.
But I am not an ordinary movie geek, apparently. Cuz this Drew McWeeny piece at HitFix left me a bit mystified. From Exclusive: The secret of Brad Bird’s ‘Tomorrowland’ is not what you think:
I remember when I broke the first information anywhere about “Cloverfield,” before anyone was even aware there was a project called “Cloverfield.” … I laid it out pretty plainly in that first article, and then the infamous teaser trailer arrived, and suddenly people started speculating about what the film was going to be. And despite me having given the game away up front, people began to speculate, and speculation was eventually misreported as fact, and for months, I just sort of marveled at how invested people got in information that was never right. People argued over every single little clue, especially things that turned out to have nothing to do with anything. Until the day I die, I’ll never understand how a certain percentage of people managed to convince themselves that “Cloverfield” was an elaborate cover story for a “Voltron” movie.
What I’ve noticed in the sixteen or so years that I’ve been doing this online is that when people accept misinformation as truth, they tend to get very angry when the eventual film does not match up with that misinformation. People get angry when fake spoilers turn out not to be true because they’ve had time to get attached to the untrue rumors, and if that sounds crazy, that’s because it sort of is crazy. And yet, when you’ve got angry fans, it doesn’t really matter how or why they ended up that way.
Disney obviously wants “Tomorrowland” to be a major tentpole movie, and I think the notion of Brad Bird directing with Damon Lindelof writing is very promising. The whole “mystery box” set-up that they’ve been playing out in the media is fun, but now that people are starting to publish detailed pieces about what they think the box represents, they’re getting into that territory where expectations are being established, and people may be setting themselves up for another moment where they end up sitting in a theater opening day and, for reasons that seem perfectly rational to them, get angry that they didn’t just see “Voltron.”
That’s a long excerpt, and yet it’s only a taste of the piece, because McWeeny goes on to share in great detail the information he has received from his sources about what Tomorrowland is actually about. You can click over if you want to read it, but I won’t discuss it here. What I want to know is this:
How much does a sense of mystery surrounding a movie impact your desire to see it?
Secondarily, how did we get to a point where film fans get so invested in speculation about a movie that it overshadows their enjoyment of the actual movie itself? And is this situation helped by film writers — like, ahem, McWeeny — who seem to take such pleasure in crying “First!” and spoiling things so far in advance?
Image above by Greg Maletic, and available to download and print yourself.
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“Negatively”.
These days I assume that buzz before a film’s been seen is orchestrated by the marketing department, because it usually is. And if I enthuse about something, I’m only setting myself up for disappointment (Prometheus, anyone?). I can wait to see the thing, and then decide what I think of it.
I engaged fully and enthusiastically in nearly all of the speculation concerning Star Wars: Episode I. I was a regular visitor of Corona Coming Attractions, AICN (back when they actually used to post spy reports and stuff), and the forums on TheForce.net. After the way that movie turned out, I generally avoid speculation and spoilers, at least for films that I know I’m going to have a significant interest in seeing. So yes, I do like to preserve some mystery.
Complete aside: That Tomorrowland poster is terrific! Where did you find that?
The artist is linked at the bottom of the post.
D’oh! So it is. How inattentive of me.
When I keep hearing that a movie has a “surprise plot twist,” I feel a burning need to look up spoilers online, and, when I see how stupid the surprise is, I avoid seeing the movie.
Mystery is a mixed bag. I watch lots of good movies more than once, when there’s absolutely no mystery or surprise at all. Even after I get nothing else now out of the film, I can still enjoy smart writing, spectacular scenes, fine acting and a strong soundtrack.
For movies with interpersonal embarasment-based comedy (especially of the “someone’s got a secret” variety), I actually enjoy them more the second or third time around once I don’t have the physically uncomfortable sensation of wondering when everything is going to collapse.
My rule of thumb probably points the other way: I agree with you that a good film’s worth seeing more than once, and the more people say “you must come to this cold” the more I’m inclined to think it really won’t have more than one viewing in it.
Then again, sometimes it’s The Cabin in the Woods, which I’ve watched several times, but I still think I enjoyed it more the first time for not knowing what was coming.
There’s a lost art to movie/video cover art in the age of Photoshop. Working in video stores back in the day of VHS switching over to DVD, it was so eerie to see all the sterile, unimaginative DVD covers staring back at me, when the VHS covers had so much life and imagination exuding from them. With VHS, covers were designed (to a certain extent) like album covers–that’s part of why going to the video store was so much fun. With DVD and Blu ray covers, often the movies just sort of ran together. Better looking picture quality within, has come at the expense of interesting cover art without. *sigh* Why can’t we have both?
As for this particular poster; I have a “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Part Deux” vibe coming from it.
Boy, I have a strong (and useless) distinction.
I don’t know what a correct amount of mystery is, but I know it when I see it.
I think about movie trailers that I’ve hated for giving the whole move away (“Castaway,” “What Lies Beneath”), but there are others that I hated because they didn’t give any true sense of what the movie was like (“Fight Club.”)
And, of course, that’s only really relevant when you’re deciding whether to see a film a first time. As Jonathan wrote, I watch a lot of good movies more than once.
The McWeeny piece is another aspect of modern film-going, in that there are a lot of gossip-obsessed idiots (though I think that’s more Harry Knowles than McWeeny) who are more interested in finding out everything about a movie before they see it than in seeing the movie itself. To me the only point is that I’m hoping to see something wonderful. I couldn’t care less about the inside-baseball naval-gazing that seeks every possible spoiler.
I will say that about the most effective trailers I’ve ever seen were the two teaser trailers for the original “Men in Black.” They didn’t show even so much as a single line of the movie, but they gave you its taste, and they made me want to see them. (Though I do regret they didn’t use the scene in the film with Tommy Lee JONES introducing themselves as agents with his driest possible deadpan of “No, ma’am–he’s Jones. I’m Smith.”)