ultimatefan
The Batman must come back
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I read his Weekend Warrior column this week and I noticed he wrote about the fact that some movie websites indeed often seem to have an agenda, for whatever reasons, against or for certain movies. I thought it was an interesting opportunity to get an analyst´s opinion on what´s going on with AICN´s bashing of X3. Here´s the e-mail I sent him:
Hi Mr Douglas,
I´m a big movie buff, with a curiosity on box office performance - I root for the ones I like to do well, not just because everybody should see a really good movie, but because I know that´s what keeps talented filmmakers getting work... So, I was reading your column and I agree with you that certain websites often seem to have an agenda for whatever reasons against this or that movie.
You mentioned Aint-It-Cool-News, and right now I suspect a movie I´m highly interested in is suffering from some of that "let´s screw up this movie" thing. I´m also a huge comic book fan, so you can imagine I´m excited to see X-Men: The Last Stand. I had a lot of doubts about this because I love Bryan Singer´s work and I never thought of Brett Ratner as an outstanding director - to be honest, I never saw more than a few pieces of the Rush Hour movies on TV, and I think Red Dragon is decent, and I like Prison Break, that he produces, but that´s it. I´m actually surprised to see that, from all trailers and MANY spots and clips I have seen, it looks to me like he pulled it off, like the tone and style match that of Singer´s and it might turn out a worthy installment of the series. That´s the vibe I´m getting from most X-Men fans I talk to in message boards - and it´s a lot, I visit SuperheroHype! - and from the first few reviews I seen.
But that´s NOT the vibe you get if you go to AICN. The site seems obsessed from the start to calling the movie crap, Harry Knowles reacts negatively to everything he sees, like the next Batman & Robin is coming... Worse, when someone posted a positive review, he was quick to dismiss it as fake and said the site was, and I quote, "not post any more POSITIVE fan reviews of X3", that´s right, he said positive ones, not just fan reviews in general, and there´s a lot of these fake ones out there on both sides. When they posted a negative one, the poster made a claim she had pics of the tickets to prove - an important evidence considered how many fake reviews show up online - and Harry didn´t post the picture with the lame excuse that "it´s an ugly ticket". Not that I´m saying they´re not entitled to dislike the movie, but the site keeps giving away the impression that it´s gonna be the bomb of the year when it´s not what fans and critics have been saying so far.
What could be their agenda? I know that they don´t like Fox, and I gotta say I agree with them in a lot of cases. I know Fox has been giving low budgets and short running time to pretty much all their comic book projects, with the exception of X2. There´re lots of stories about how much studio executives like Tom Rothman tried to screw up the first X-Men, how they thought it was going to bomb, did as little effort as possible for the movie till it opened and clicked, then cut off almost half an hour of Daredevil, including crucial character and plot points, how they give a piss-poor budget to the potentially epic Fantastic Four and cut about 17 minutes of important character moments and emphasized even more the lame sitcom tone the movie ultimately had in its theatrical release.
But still, the first X-men still turned out a good movie, despite the short time that clearly damaged it. The same might be happening to X3. It was indeed a rushed production, but looking at the product - and I´m saying it cuz I seen A LOT of stuff - it looks like it will turn out a decent movie, to say the least. It doesn´t deserve to fail or disappoint because some website has a grudge with the studio.
Thanks for your attention, keep up the good work!
All the best,
Alex
Here´s his response:
Hey, Alex! THanks for the comments.
Yeah, the case of AICN and X-Men: The Last Stand is a great example, because they've been bashing the movie as soon as Brett Ratner took over from Matthew Vaughn. They're also comic book fans and I'm sure like all of us, they have a vision of what they expect the movie to be like, but if I remember, everyone was questioning Bryan Singer before the first movie, and personally, I think that X2 remains one of the best comic book movies ever made (including Spider-Man, the original Richard Donner Superman). Me, I decided to wait until I saw it before commenting or having an opinion. I didn't want to set my expectations too high or too low cause I knew I'd end up being disappointed. I'm not completely against Ratner cause I liked Red Dragon, hated After the Sunset and never bothered with Rush Hours, but I knew that the appeal of the movies was really about the actors and writing at this point.
What annoys me about AICN is that they're completely unable to give anything they think is going to be bad a fair chance. You hit the nail on the head. When that Quint posts positive reviews of movies he expects to suck, he introduces it by bashing the review and claiming it to be a plant and stuff like that...this is without even having seen the movie himself. Unfortunately, almost every studio still sees AICN as the model for the fan-driven entertainment sites (which ComingSoon.net started as) and it's hard to convince them otherwise.
Edward Douglas
The Weekend Warrior
ComingSoon.net
www.comingsoon.net/weekendwarrior
Hi Mr Douglas,
I´m a big movie buff, with a curiosity on box office performance - I root for the ones I like to do well, not just because everybody should see a really good movie, but because I know that´s what keeps talented filmmakers getting work... So, I was reading your column and I agree with you that certain websites often seem to have an agenda for whatever reasons against this or that movie.
You mentioned Aint-It-Cool-News, and right now I suspect a movie I´m highly interested in is suffering from some of that "let´s screw up this movie" thing. I´m also a huge comic book fan, so you can imagine I´m excited to see X-Men: The Last Stand. I had a lot of doubts about this because I love Bryan Singer´s work and I never thought of Brett Ratner as an outstanding director - to be honest, I never saw more than a few pieces of the Rush Hour movies on TV, and I think Red Dragon is decent, and I like Prison Break, that he produces, but that´s it. I´m actually surprised to see that, from all trailers and MANY spots and clips I have seen, it looks to me like he pulled it off, like the tone and style match that of Singer´s and it might turn out a worthy installment of the series. That´s the vibe I´m getting from most X-Men fans I talk to in message boards - and it´s a lot, I visit SuperheroHype! - and from the first few reviews I seen.
But that´s NOT the vibe you get if you go to AICN. The site seems obsessed from the start to calling the movie crap, Harry Knowles reacts negatively to everything he sees, like the next Batman & Robin is coming... Worse, when someone posted a positive review, he was quick to dismiss it as fake and said the site was, and I quote, "not post any more POSITIVE fan reviews of X3", that´s right, he said positive ones, not just fan reviews in general, and there´s a lot of these fake ones out there on both sides. When they posted a negative one, the poster made a claim she had pics of the tickets to prove - an important evidence considered how many fake reviews show up online - and Harry didn´t post the picture with the lame excuse that "it´s an ugly ticket". Not that I´m saying they´re not entitled to dislike the movie, but the site keeps giving away the impression that it´s gonna be the bomb of the year when it´s not what fans and critics have been saying so far.
What could be their agenda? I know that they don´t like Fox, and I gotta say I agree with them in a lot of cases. I know Fox has been giving low budgets and short running time to pretty much all their comic book projects, with the exception of X2. There´re lots of stories about how much studio executives like Tom Rothman tried to screw up the first X-Men, how they thought it was going to bomb, did as little effort as possible for the movie till it opened and clicked, then cut off almost half an hour of Daredevil, including crucial character and plot points, how they give a piss-poor budget to the potentially epic Fantastic Four and cut about 17 minutes of important character moments and emphasized even more the lame sitcom tone the movie ultimately had in its theatrical release.
But still, the first X-men still turned out a good movie, despite the short time that clearly damaged it. The same might be happening to X3. It was indeed a rushed production, but looking at the product - and I´m saying it cuz I seen A LOT of stuff - it looks like it will turn out a decent movie, to say the least. It doesn´t deserve to fail or disappoint because some website has a grudge with the studio.
Thanks for your attention, keep up the good work!
All the best,
Alex
Here´s his response:
Hey, Alex! THanks for the comments.
Yeah, the case of AICN and X-Men: The Last Stand is a great example, because they've been bashing the movie as soon as Brett Ratner took over from Matthew Vaughn. They're also comic book fans and I'm sure like all of us, they have a vision of what they expect the movie to be like, but if I remember, everyone was questioning Bryan Singer before the first movie, and personally, I think that X2 remains one of the best comic book movies ever made (including Spider-Man, the original Richard Donner Superman). Me, I decided to wait until I saw it before commenting or having an opinion. I didn't want to set my expectations too high or too low cause I knew I'd end up being disappointed. I'm not completely against Ratner cause I liked Red Dragon, hated After the Sunset and never bothered with Rush Hours, but I knew that the appeal of the movies was really about the actors and writing at this point.
What annoys me about AICN is that they're completely unable to give anything they think is going to be bad a fair chance. You hit the nail on the head. When that Quint posts positive reviews of movies he expects to suck, he introduces it by bashing the review and claiming it to be a plant and stuff like that...this is without even having seen the movie himself. Unfortunately, almost every studio still sees AICN as the model for the fan-driven entertainment sites (which ComingSoon.net started as) and it's hard to convince them otherwise.
Edward Douglas
The Weekend Warrior
ComingSoon.net
www.comingsoon.net/weekendwarrior
