Tag Archives: teaser

The Problem with Leaks [And the People Who Want Them]

Posted on August 21, 2015 by | 3 comments

So I missed my window with last month’s Comic-Con, but there’s always something going on and thankfully the D23 Expo, a biennial Disney convention, this past weekend has given me a chance to take another stab at this topic. I’m too lazy put any effort into coming up with a pun involving plumbers, but today I’m going to be discussing leaks.

Here’s an image to kick things off:

To provide a little context, the screenshot up top is a tweet from Marvel Entertainment that was posted shortly after the trailer to Avengers: Age of Ultron leaked last October. Hours to minutes later they released the official trailer themselves, days earlier than originally intended.

The second screenshot is the text that accompanied the full trailer to Warner Bros.’ Suicide Squad that was posted to the film’s Facebook page. It was penned by Sue Kroll, the President of Worldwide Marketing and International Distribution for the company. Similar to Marvel Entertainment this was done after another leak, though in this case the source was an unknown individual who had illegally recorded a trailer screened at Comic-Con.

As you might be able to tell by the way the image was put together, the internet populace in general thinks much more highly of one reaction than the others. While the context surrounding each leak is important I’m going to be discussing why at the end of they day it’s all the same, and how I think the entire attitude surrounding this sort of thing is weak and selfish and I don’t respect it. Continue reading →

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Be Thankful For Your Three Seconds of Star Trek

Posted on October 5, 2012 by | Leave a comment

This is going to be a fairly short post, you guys. I leave for a college reunion in about an hour, and am running a little short on time. Maybe stay tuned for a longer one tonight, though.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while [and really, who has?] then you probably know how I feel about movie trailers and previews. I was more excited than anything for this year’s The Avengers, but the amount of content they put out before its release was almost enough to rid me of a lot of my excitement for the movie. 

On last night’s episode of Conan brought in director J. J. Abrams, and with him a clip from the sequel Star Trek into Darkness. Fans all over America huddled in front of their TVs in anticipation, only to see this:

The clip is all of three frames long.

Understandably viewers were  more than a little disappointed. Honestly, I was as invested in the franchise as the average Trekkie, I imagine I would be too. Abrams lets us know leading up to the teaser that this is a scene where Spock is in a suit of some kind and is also in a volcano. Cue scene, cue outrageous applause from audience.

That might’ve been great for the studio audience, but not so much for people in their homes. Still, it’s good that a 2013 film has the restraint to not start bombarding people with footage.

And speaking of restraint, it seems like that’s what anyone who’s into film needs nowadays. It was my own fault that I found out exactly why the armour Stark wears in Iron Man 3 is the Mark XLVII. Do not look it up, it is a huge, enormous spoiler that will let you know a major plot point, as well as cause you to curse your need to know more and more bitterly.

With the way internet and the media work today, spoilers and leaks abound. It’s up to the viewers who want to preserve their theatre viewing experience to keep a modicum of self-control and not constantly keep checking comic book movie sites [this is more a message to myself than anything else].

What I’m trying to say is, be grateful, Star Trek fans. You have over half a year until Into Darkness comes out. Three seconds should be enough to tide you over for at least another month.

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The Avengers and New Footage Fatigue

Posted on April 10, 2012 by | 4 comments

Mild spoilers, if you’re not constantly watching for comic book movie news [like I do].
                                                                                                                                                                      

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still going to see The Avengers this summer. The thing is, I may as well be watching it for the second time.

Joss Whedon’s biggest directorial experience to date will hit in a little under three weeks with a running time of 155 minutes. After all of the trailers, previews, and TV spots I’ve seen I think that only leaves me about half an hour of footage to experience in the theatre for the first time.

Seriously, though, today I found out that Maria Hill and Nick Fury will have an argument of some sort. I don’t know exactly what it’s going to be about, but I know that it will happen because of an interview Cobie Smulders [playing Hill] did with David Letterman. I also know that Captain America will tell the Gamma-Powered Goliath to smash something. At some point in the film I know that Black Widow will soundly thrash a general and his cronies, because a 43-second clip was released by Marvel.

I don’t mind that Marvel has been advertising this film with everything from Dr. Pepper to Wyndham Hotels. Pixar’s Cars made something like $462 million in the box office, which isn’t bad. What’s even better, though, is the $5 billion they made in merchandise. Movie tie-ins that include toys and such are not at all what worry me. What worries me is knowing too much about the movie before I see it on the big screen.

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty was what the summer of 2010 held for me, and while waiting for in the ’09-10 academic year I spent a great deal of my free time trying to find out more about the game. In the process I became privy to information on seven or eight missions. That’s about a third of the game. Not only that, but I also perused a site that had posted unit models, robbing myself of experiencing them in the game first-hand.

We live in a world where information is at our fingertips, and leaks and spoilers of any kind can be found within seconds. At this point in time I have no idea what the image on the right is of, only that they are part of Loki’s army and the primary antagonists in The Avengers. I don’t want to know what they are until I see the movie, and it’s getting harder and harder to when I daily visit sites such as ComicBookMovie.com, ComicsAlliance, and io9 [the latter even has a daily feature called Early Morning Spoilers].

From this point on I refuse to watch another TV spot for The Avengers. There’s only so many seconds of new footage they can cram in there before I’ve seen more of the movie than I wanted to. I’m going to see if I can hold out until May 4, and I hope that when I finally see it in theatres I’ll be able to enjoy every second of those 155 minutes like I’m watching them for the first time.

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