For Your Consideration: Adam Prosser Interviews Warcraft Director Duncan Jones

Similar to the last time I did this in March, this feature is meant to provide a brief look at what’s been happening on the internet this week [but without the typical commentary and criticism you’ll find around here].

A few short days ago BBC journalist Adam Rosser interviewed director Duncan Jones about his film Warcraft, which premiered in North America one week ago today. The interview was for Rosser’s show Let’s Talk About Tech for BBC 5Live, and given that he works as a freelancer he uploaded it to his personal YouTube account. A copy of the video can be seen below:

The original version has since been taken down due to it being shared on the Battle.net forums for the game the film is based on. That forum post has in turn also been removed as the negative reaction to the interview unsurprisingly, and it’s depressing that it’s an expected response, spawned death threats. Rosser himself comments that:

While many fans [which I’ll remind you is short for “fanatic”] will always react viscerally to the criticism of that which they hold dear, there’s also something to be said for the way in which Rosser actually conducted the interview.

He starts off by asking “Should this have been one film?”, a question which forces Jones to defend the way his movie was created from the get-go. Even more telling is the damning “Were you the right man to write the script but the wrong man to direct the film?” To Jones’ credit he navigates each of these queries with aplomb, expressing his commitment to and passion for the work he’s responsible for.

The clincher for many was how things wrapped up, with Rosser ostensibly being told that his time was up off-camera. He thanks Jones for his time twice, to which the director responds amicably, albeit awkwardly, and shuffles off.

As far as what the two men have had to say about the interview themselves, Jones appears to hold no hard feelings about what occurred.

On the actual episode of Let’s Talk About Tech which featured Rosser’s interview [which only has 19 days left to listen, as of this writing], he shares a  bit more about where he was coming from. You can skip ahead to around 6:29 to where it begins.

“Now I’ll give you [Duncan’s films Source Code and Moon as ones he enjoyed]  as a piece of context because I’ll be honest, I probably don’t deal with disappointment very well. I can get angry [sic] a bad film, impressed by a good film, I just don’t like it when something disappoints me, and it may be that coloured the interview I did with Duncan every so slightly.”

While some are saying that he shut down both his YouTube and Twitter accounts following what happened, the latter is clearly still online. Rosser is upfront about the response he’s received, sharing that:

He also admits, just as in the podcast, that he was not in fact trying to be rude to Jones:

I’ll leave what Rosser’s actual intentions up to you. At the end of it all this is a fascinating glimpse at criticism and commentary and how the internet can affect them.