Part One: Expectation
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| A world of possibilities, and no way they can all be fulfilled. photo courtesy of http://www.prometheus2-movie.com/ |
A few years ago I was in the theater to see a movie with friends, and I saw the trailer for a movie called Prometheus, directed by Ridley Scott and heralded as being in the same spiritual vein as the 1979 classic Alien, if not a more or less direct prequel to the same. And it was one of the greatest trailers I've ever seen.
Generally speaking I am not a horror fan, and oddly enough though I'm a fan of science fiction, I'm not a fan of most science fiction film, but that's another story. Yet the trailer, which was premised solely on proving that the movie it represented was both solid sci-fi and horrifying, made me want nothing more than to sit and watch the whole thing that instant, if I could have done so.
Sadly I could not, as its theatrical release date was three months away. So I asked my friends after the movie we were there to see, "How about that Prometheus trailer though, right? Right?" I seemed to be the only one who thought it was something particularly special. The movie wasn't out yet, and thinking about it wouldn't really be productive. So I attempted to put it out of my mind.
When I got home I immediately Googled and viewed the trailer again. This was not the best first step. It was mesmerizing. I watched it again, and then also another time. It became embarrassing, so it was private. And as it seeped further into my mind, the thing that is to be dreaded most about my personality began taking shape. I started talking about it. A lot.
My wife is a wonderful woman, and she puts up with a great deal of childish behavior from me with good humor and grace. Several times, at least six or seven by my count, in our relationship she's had to put up with me passing through one of these obsessive phases. I observe a thing, and I like it, so if I can I observe it again, on repeat, until I essentially have a copy of it in my head that I can play back at any time. You know, because I like it so much.
The thing is, I never seem to be content to just observe the thing, I want to sort it out in some way, to enfold it, and make it part of my waking life. This generally means that if I'm given the opportunity to promote a choice of conversational topic, the things that I say are going to drift towards that one thing time and again. It gets a little wearing for everybody.
"I really like the Prometheus trailer," I said more than once. "That movie wasn't really on my radar before, but now I think I might want to go see it." "I know honey," she assured me. It started getting worse.
More production materials started coming along, including an extremely odd video intended as a future TED talk by the founder of The Corporation from the Alien franchise, played by the usually excellent Guy Pierce. Meanwhile I found and listened to the entire Making Of documentaries for both the original Alien and Aliens. I started checking the Prometheus movie website (which I almost never, ever do), and I read several blog posts and an uncounted number of board comments dissecting the trailer and speculating as to what was seen there. Ideas started to form in my mind, expectations of what would be revealed.
It's at this point that I'd like to make plain my first point in relating this anecdote: that the worst thing you can do when looking forward to seeing a movie is to form any expectations of it whatsoever.
This is, however, absolutely impossible to do.
It's especially difficult when there are known elements involved (filmmakers for instance whose work you're familiar with), but the better you can do at shielding yourself from the hype and the hope that what's Coming Soon will be a life-changing event, the better off you'll be.
Why is this?
In the 21st century, ads are more prevalent than anywhere. We carry movable-type billboards in our pockets, and everywhere we go there's space for sale to the companies fighting for a share of our ever-scattering attentions and paychecks.
In the movie business, worldwide renown is more often than not a deal-breaking requirement before the show even hits the big screen. If they don't know your movie is coming out, and don't know what to expect from it, odds are they'll miss it in the flood of ads for everything else.
The new Holy Grail of marketing is the viral campaign; word-of-mouth has always been the best source of success for truly successful works, and in the digital age it's become a near-quantifiable asset. How many million views has your latest trailer had? Are any news outlets picking up the "story" of your campaign's popularity?
Generally speaking I am not a horror fan, and oddly enough though I'm a fan of science fiction, I'm not a fan of most science fiction film, but that's another story. Yet the trailer, which was premised solely on proving that the movie it represented was both solid sci-fi and horrifying, made me want nothing more than to sit and watch the whole thing that instant, if I could have done so.
Sadly I could not, as its theatrical release date was three months away. So I asked my friends after the movie we were there to see, "How about that Prometheus trailer though, right? Right?" I seemed to be the only one who thought it was something particularly special. The movie wasn't out yet, and thinking about it wouldn't really be productive. So I attempted to put it out of my mind.
When I got home I immediately Googled and viewed the trailer again. This was not the best first step. It was mesmerizing. I watched it again, and then also another time. It became embarrassing, so it was private. And as it seeped further into my mind, the thing that is to be dreaded most about my personality began taking shape. I started talking about it. A lot.
My wife is a wonderful woman, and she puts up with a great deal of childish behavior from me with good humor and grace. Several times, at least six or seven by my count, in our relationship she's had to put up with me passing through one of these obsessive phases. I observe a thing, and I like it, so if I can I observe it again, on repeat, until I essentially have a copy of it in my head that I can play back at any time. You know, because I like it so much.
The thing is, I never seem to be content to just observe the thing, I want to sort it out in some way, to enfold it, and make it part of my waking life. This generally means that if I'm given the opportunity to promote a choice of conversational topic, the things that I say are going to drift towards that one thing time and again. It gets a little wearing for everybody.
"I really like the Prometheus trailer," I said more than once. "That movie wasn't really on my radar before, but now I think I might want to go see it." "I know honey," she assured me. It started getting worse.
More production materials started coming along, including an extremely odd video intended as a future TED talk by the founder of The Corporation from the Alien franchise, played by the usually excellent Guy Pierce. Meanwhile I found and listened to the entire Making Of documentaries for both the original Alien and Aliens. I started checking the Prometheus movie website (which I almost never, ever do), and I read several blog posts and an uncounted number of board comments dissecting the trailer and speculating as to what was seen there. Ideas started to form in my mind, expectations of what would be revealed.
It's at this point that I'd like to make plain my first point in relating this anecdote: that the worst thing you can do when looking forward to seeing a movie is to form any expectations of it whatsoever.
This is, however, absolutely impossible to do.
It's especially difficult when there are known elements involved (filmmakers for instance whose work you're familiar with), but the better you can do at shielding yourself from the hype and the hope that what's Coming Soon will be a life-changing event, the better off you'll be.
Why is this?
In the 21st century, ads are more prevalent than anywhere. We carry movable-type billboards in our pockets, and everywhere we go there's space for sale to the companies fighting for a share of our ever-scattering attentions and paychecks.
In the movie business, worldwide renown is more often than not a deal-breaking requirement before the show even hits the big screen. If they don't know your movie is coming out, and don't know what to expect from it, odds are they'll miss it in the flood of ads for everything else.
The new Holy Grail of marketing is the viral campaign; word-of-mouth has always been the best source of success for truly successful works, and in the digital age it's become a near-quantifiable asset. How many million views has your latest trailer had? Are any news outlets picking up the "story" of your campaign's popularity?
If this is what they want us to do, why does it go wrong?
I can't really afford to see much more than ten to fifteen new movies in a year, between theater prices and the decreasing availability of rentals. That coupled with my above-described quasi-obsessive personality means when I latch onto an upcoming project, it gets most of my attention most of the time until I see it and can release.
Because I'm comparatively underemployed and have too much time on my hands for zero-pressure thought, my participation in the hype that I become bathed in is to inch my guesses and expectations higher and higher each day, until my anticipation of a piece is far richer, more detailed, and stranger in contradictory what-if snatches of idea than any one movie could ever hope to be.
This is not to say that I create a better movie in my head than what comes out; more often it's the opposite: I manage to confuse my ideas of what I want to see more thoroughly than any one aspect of the marketing campaign could hope to do.
There's a final, and perhaps more important, aspect to all this that will come into play with more relevance later. When I'm in the grip of a hype, there's a strange sense in which I come to identify with the thing that I'm looking forward to. I feel like it belongs to me in some strange way, that it is some part of the kind of person I am just then.
This is the only way I can think of the little thrill of excitement and connection I feel when, for instance, I am scanning an unrelated article or watching an unrelated thing and I see the object of my temporary insanity mentioned in the margin. Or worse yet when I believe it to be, or some aspect of it that I've come across in my research, indirectly alluded to, and I still feel a little shock like someone in the room unexpectedly said my name.
Why is this? I say "I am a fan," and it makes me happy. Of what need of mine is this worship of the idea of an artwork in surrogate?
I do not know, but I have learned to resist it if I can.
Prometheus' release date drew near. I stopped looking at the website as much as possible, to prevent spoilers, and I also kept away from Rotten Tomatoes, so as not to inform my evaluation ahead of time. Nevertheless, I had already formed several extremely convoluted theories as to what might, and at one point should, happen in the movie.
"I think it should be about the origin of life on Earth, out of non-biological material," I told my wife one evening, apropos of nothing, "and about how to replace non-biological material with living material, in order to bridge the gap between artificial life and the real thing. If it doesn't talk about those it's not worth seeing."
"We need to stop talking about this," was the essence of her reply.
"I think it should be about the origin of life on Earth, out of non-biological material," I told my wife one evening, apropos of nothing, "and about how to replace non-biological material with living material, in order to bridge the gap between artificial life and the real thing. If it doesn't talk about those it's not worth seeing."
"We need to stop talking about this," was the essence of her reply.
I did my best to keep further speculation to myself, with mixed success.
Eventually, we went to see the movie.
It did not live up to my expectations.
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