Wow…
Seriously, calm down, people. It’s like watching people step on a bunch of rakes over and over again and never figuring out that you need to stop putting the damned rakes down on the ground like that.
Standard Fan Overreaction 101
Keaton is Batman!?! The movie is ruined!!!
(Steps on rake.)
The movie was great! Well, greatish. But Keaton was great as Batman!!!
Alfred Molina is Doc Ock?!? What kind of villain is he going to make? How is he going to come off as threatening to Spider-Man?!?
(Steps on rake.)
Whoa… Molina was amazing! That was a great take on the character!
Robert Downey Jr. is Iron Man? The film is ruined! He’ll destroy the film with his mugging and smirking! What was Marvel thinking?!? And, really, Iron Man??? Barely anyone cares about Iron Man. Marvel needs to use one of their a-list heroes for their big tent pole film, not some second stringer! This will bomb! Downey sucks and no one outside of the hardcore Marvel geeks cares about Iron Man!
(Steps on rake.)
Oh my god… Iron Man was awesome! Downey can’t leave the MCU!!!
Heath Ledger is the Joker? What the hell is wrong with Nolan?!? That’s not the Joker! What were they thinking with that design?!? That looks terrible!!! Nolan blew it! Nolan blew it!!
(Steps on rake.)
OMG! Heath Ledger was amazing as the Joker! He made the film! Ledger better get a posthumous Oscar for that work!
The pre-release leaked photos from Thor look horrible! Asgard looks like it’s made out of plastic. The Destroyer looks ridiculous! Kenneth Branagh is ruining Thor! What was Marvel thinking?!?
(Steps on rake.)
Asgrad looks amazing! the Destroyer is awesome! Thor kicks ass!
I don’t know… Josh is an okay creator, but he’s not a big picture, big action movie kind of guy. Him doing Avengers?!? I just don’t know that this is going to work out that well.
(Steps on rake.)
That was the best superhero movie ever. E-V-E-R, people!
First Class? They’re totally messing up continuity. A reboot?!? We don’t need a reboot!!! This will suck worse than Wolverine: Origins did!
(Steps on rake.)
The best X-Men film to date. Hands down. Dripping with awesome sauce.
Guardians of the Galaxy?!? Who? What? Marvel’s Star Wars/Firefly? Ah man, this is going to be Marvel’s first big bomb. This is going to be Marvel’s first big misstep. No one cares about a team that they’ve never heard of. Marvel thinks their stuff doesn’t stink and they can just slap the Marvel label on anything and people will see it, but this one will backfire on them big time.
(Steps on rake.)
This is the best movie of the year! This is the best Marvel movie they’ve made other than Avengers! OMG was this movie filled with awesome sauce!!!
Daredevil looks strange in black. OMG, have you seen the last minute ad with the final costume? That looks so cheap! I’m not sure this show is going to be as good as the Marvel movies have been…
(Steps on rake.)
Daredevil set the new bar for superhero shows. This is better than Arrow! It’s out-Batmaning Gotham!! The actual Daredevil outfit when he finally dons it looks amazing!!!
Look at these leaked photos of Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad! We have no idea when and where in this film these are from! We have no context for the scene these are from! But, my god, they’ve completely f’d her up! This sucks! The film will suck! I hate them! I’m not seeing this film! They’ve ruined the character! They’ve ruined the film!!!
(Steps on rake?)
Well, too early to tell really, but come on… Leaked photos from who knows when in the film’s story and under who knows what circumstances for the character with rumors that were already out there that Harley (amongst other characters in the film) may sport more than one look. Are the photos we’ve now seen her in her primary outfit? Are they from a scene where Harley is snatched up while in her home/lair and she grabbed whatever she could grab quickly? Were these photos taken from the beginning, the middle, or the end of the film? We have no idea or context for what we’re seeing.
But, dear lord… Last night’s social media feed was filled with some of the most ridiculous and overwrought fan gnashing of teeth and carrying on about how the entire film is ruined and they’ve gotten Harley completely wrong. I mean, there were people that were writing like they were seething with fury and demanding that anyone who might like this design cannot be “real” fans of the character or of comics. And everyone absolutely knew that these out of context, zero real info photos meant that the movie was blown, ruined, and horrible.
You know, just like Keaton was going to ruin Batman. Just like Downey was going to ruin Iron Man and no one cared about seeing a second stringer like him on the big screen anyhow. Just like Thor was going to look god awful as a film since all the sets looked like plastic and the Destroyer looked so terrible. Just like Ledger was a disaster waiting to happen as the Joker. Just like no one cared about the guaranteed bomb/first major misstep by Marvel that was Guardians of the Galaxy. Just like… Well, you get the idea.
And I could easily make a list fifty times the size of the one above.
Geekdom, calm it down a notch or three. Seriously, it would be one thing seeing this from geeks in their early teens, but this is coming from geeks old enough to know better and who have stepped on all or almost all of the above rakes over the years. Look, I know we suffer from First World Problems to the nth degree sometimes, but, guys, seriously, for your own good, calm down. Some of you look like you’re literally jacking your blood pressure through the roof and blowing your gasket over photos that you have absolutely no contextual knowledge or information about whatsoever.
And, in some cases, some of you can’t even seem to figure out if you’re gripe is the costume or not. It’s the costume! Well, wait, I’m changing that due to responses! It’s not the costume, it’s the hair and tats! Wait… It’s… uhm… The movie will suck! I haven’t seen the first scene of it, but my crystal ball knows!!!
Yeah…
Relax guys. We’re geeks. We’re supposed to be the smart(ish) ones. Learn from past jumping of the gun mistakes already. There are only so many times you can engage in uninformed, zero information gnashing of teeth and rakes to face activity before it’s one too many times to take anything you say on matters like this seriously.
And, really… Complaining that they got her costume wrong when Harley has been in more of a flux state with regards to her costumes in her (relatively) short existence than just about any other character that’s been around since she was created AND her costume for the film (or at least what’s she’s wearing in the scene shown in the leaked photos) looks like a mix of several of her existing costumes? Are you trying to look goofy?
Look, I’ll grant you that a lot of studios haven’t exactly earned themselves the level of fan trust that Marvel has (yet people once again gnash teeth over Ant-Man as they did with Guardians of the Galaxy and some did with Iron Man and Thor) with regards to superhero films. If anything, yeah, a few studios seem to be working at giving us reason to wonder about them. But, guys, wondering or being cautious with expectations isn’t the same as losing your mind and carrying on for ten-plus hours or more on social media about how angry you are that they’ve ruined the character, ruined the film, totally blown it, and just pissed you and the “real fans” off while having (essentially) absolutely nothing to base that on. Again, for your own mental health, calm it down a notch. Feel free to temper your expectations a bit. Feel free to cite concern over the appearance of the initial direction of the film from what we’ve seen so far. But the seething hate/rage from the last 24 hours in some quarters? It’s a film. It’s not worth getting your blood-pressure up so high over such a small amount of actual, in context information. Stop being a Sideshow Bob already.
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