For Every Action There Is A Redaction

CRUISE FUNDRAISER UPDATE: 98/100 prints are sold!  Only 2 prints remain! I am expecting delivery of the prints any day now and they’ll start shipping as soon as they arrive.

I made a new eBook/iBook! It’s called “Sorry I Ruined Your Book Vol. 1” and it has over 180 pages of HE book 1 preorder/artist edition sketches with commentary on every drawing! Donation subscribers get it free and it’s also available to anyone for a one time “pay what you like” donation.

hijinks-ensue-sorry-i-ruined-your-book-vol-1-cover

Welcome to my life in a 24 hour geek news cycle. I remember when I was a kid and we weren’t able to know ANYTHING about movies or tv shows until we saw the trailers or commercials. Even then the message was very carefully controlled by the studios and producers. The stars never went on Carson and dished on who they beat out for the role or how many times the show runner got fired. We just took our geek media as it was presented without the burden of behind the scenes knowledge. Often times, shows I liked would get cancelled and I wouldn’t even know until it just never came back the next season. You’d read a one sentence blurb about a new Batman or Superman movie in a Wizard Magazine, and then… nothing. No idea where it went or why it never materialized. Of course, the irony of it all is that NOW you can find the answers to all of those questions online. I know exactly why Nicholas Cage was never Tim Burton’s Man Of Steel. Honestly, I’m just grateful for that one. We, as geeks, dodged a Batman & Robin ’97 sized bullet there.

I say the intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the media I choose to consume is a burden, but I really do enjoy it. I like the anticipation that it builds, and the satisfaction of being “in the know.” The burden part comes in when too much familiarity with the “sausage-making” process of geek pop culture can lead to unrealistic expectations and eventual disappointment, either from getting your hopes up too high based on 100’s of blog posts, interviews and YouTube clips, or from prejudging a project based on any of the aforementioned data distribution methods.

All in all the lowering of the barrier to information is overwhelmingly a good thing. As consumers we now have nearly as much privilege to information as would have been reserved for the people that actually worked on the projects themselves. But there was a (now lost) purity and innocence in finding out about a movie for the first time when you saw the trailer or the poster, and then not knowing anything else about it until you were in the theater 3 months later. I think it was easier to just like things back then without having to be an expert on them.

COMMENTERS: What’s you biggest “OMG IT WOULD HAVE BEEN SO COOL IF THAT PERSON HAD DONE THAT THING OR THAT THING HAD EVEN HAPPENED AT ALL” geek movie/tv situation disappointment?

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21 Comments

  1. My own personal "What If" is when Billy Wilder told Cameron Crowe in the book "Conversations with Wilder" that he had tried to get the rights to "Schindler's List" but Spielberg had already grabbed them.
    Personally, A Billy Wilder version of "Schindler's List would have been kind of awesome. Also, it would have meant that "Buddy, Buddy" wouldn't have been his last picture.

  2. Broderick "Godzilla", not needed, Tim Burton's "Planet of the Apes", not needed, Quentin Tarrantino directing Natural Born Killers, instead of letting Oliver stone crap on his screenplay, needed.

  3. I wish this conversation happened in the writing room of Battlestar Galactica:

    "You know how every episode will start off with a little recap of the situation and end with 'and they've got a plan'?"

    [general noises of agreement]

    "Does anyone know what the Cylon's plan is?"

    [silence]

    "We should figure out what that is before we write one more goddamn word."

  4. My biggest problem with following io9 is when a friend offhandedly mentions "Oh, I heard they're making a new Star Trek" and I can rattle of the entire production schedule, the plot outline, casting rumours and production issues. Cue the looks of fear/wonderment.

  5. Mine's got to be Ninja Turtles 2 when they teased at introducing Bebop and Rocksteady to the big screen and instead went with Tokka and Rahzar. Turns out they WERE going to bring the cartoon baddies into the script but Laird (and/or Eastman) didn't like how dumb they were portrayed so wouldn't allow the rights to use them. So it was a crushed childhood as a huge TMNT fan only to be explained years and years later by the wealth of Knerd Knowledge abundant on Teh Interwebnets.

    • I remember even being in the theater and thinking, "OK so are the turtle and the dog going to be Beebop and Rocksteady? Are they just changing the animals for some reason?" All the way up to the reveal and afterwards I was just wondering what the hell was going on.

      To be fair, I also thought it was the best move I had ever seen in my entire life because I was 10.

  6. Mine has to be Guillermo del Toro directing The Hobbit. The entire time he was attached to the film I'd just get giddy imagining the creature designs he/his team would've cooked up…

  7. Sean Connery as Gandalf. Honestly, I just want to hear “Though Shall Not Pass” in his accent. Still though, the fact that he was originally approached for the role…wow, it would have just been a completely different movie.

  8. There were trailers online for a movie wherein dead Nazis started washing up on the beach around Europe and walked the earth like zombies. I was so excited to see that movie – until I was told it wasn't really going to happen.

    I STILL want to see that movie.

  9. I'm pretty sure some geek news sites throw partially cooked spaghetti at a dartboard and redact the stories the noodles fall off of. At least that's what I'm picturing and now I hope I can share my bizarre mental image with you.

    I have no good "what ifs", so I'm just gonna say I want to see the movie DuckAmuck is talking about also.

  10. Yesterday all of my friends on Facebook posted that one entertainment blog says that Abrams will direct Star Wars Ep 7.
    I linked them to this comic, to give them some perspective.
    Although today it appears that Entertainment Weekly has independently verified it.
    So: woot!

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