I'm going to try something with the Iron Man movie...

[DawnWarrior]

I remember back when I first saw the Matrix, I had already watched a ton of behind-the-scenes stuff on MTV and HBO and stuff. Remember the part where the helicoptor crashes into the side of the building, and it makes that humongous circle of broken glass before it explodes? Yeah, after seeing it a bunch of times on TV and watching the Wachowski brothers talk about how hard it was to do, seeing it on the big screen just didn't have much impact. I've never forgotten that.

I'm wondering if it's possible to go into a big tentpole release without having seen ANYTHING, and if the movie would be more enjoyable for it. Maybe I'll know who's in it, or have seen a couple of stills, but that's it.

So for this little experiment, I'm choosing the upcoming Iron Man movie. I've seen the still of the Mark I armor, the Mark III armor, and the shot of Robert Downey Jr. working on the faceplate while his pacemaker glows on his chest. That's it. I'm going to try to keep it that way; no trailers, no TV spots, no promotional shots, no interviews with the director or the cast, no MTV News behind-the-scenes stuff, nothing for a whole year. Maybe a poster or two. I want to see if I can avoid all the hype and see the movie cold.

Maybe it won't work, maybe all that stuff will just be too unavoidable, especially in this age. But I want to give it a try.

 

[the reel chris]

That's a difficult proposition, but I absolutely applaud you for trying. So much of fandom is about picking apart what we're given or find, and generating our own notions of the way things should be. Naturally, we set ourselves up to be disappointed when the final product unspools. I hope to see this thread revived in a year's time to see how successful you were.