Come On… Quit Toying Around
When did dolls become considered movie news?
Darwin had it wrong. We're not evolving as a species. Visit a Wal-Mart, listen to a Sarah Palin speech, or watch Ben Lyons on "At the Movies" and you'll see all evidence pointing to a free-fall state of devolution. Nowhere else is it more prevalent than on the web, and in this example I am looking at the movie "news" community. How else do you explain grown men fetishing over toys from their childhoods? It's one thing to get gooey-eyed over a childhood teddy bear, but obsessing over movie-length toy commercials about robots morphing into cassette players or closeted soldiers and ninjas battling is a sad statement about the wretched depths human existence can sink to.
Of course, I realize there is a strong correlation between fanboy fetishes and Internet traffic — go figure. However, as newspapers fade into oblivion these websites have the opportunity to soon become the prime destinations for movie opinion, but it's going to be a hard sell trying to convince people the same person searching for film clues in a plastic robot doll is the person we should listen to when it comes to an opinion on Revolutionary Road. I realize it is fun to get excited over giant robots and classic characters from your childhood getting their very own movies, but there is a line that must be drawn.
Most movie-news websites function as bizarre, back-alley infotainment porn, feeding into the fanboy machine when it comes to comic-book or action-figure inspired entertainment. It's perfectly legit to cover these live-action toy commercials (and there's nothing wrong with enjoying them too, I dug Transformers). They are projected in movie theaters and that's what we cover — plus stories on Transformers 2 or G.I. Joe attract hits like Michael Phelps's bong. It's a necessary evil to discuss such movies in order to survive in this business.
Yet, when a site posts "stories" revolving around oh-so dynamic pics of kiddie toys for a movie and occasionally examines them for plot clues, the site is no longer reporting on the movie. The writer is pandering to fanboys in a shameless grab for hits. Seeing so many recent postings of toy images makes me long for the days when the hot item was a fuzzy cell phone pic of an in-makeup actor strolling through a studio back-lot. During my daily morning surf, I come across article after article focused on leaked pictures of dolls (seriously, action figure is just a euphemism for doll and your Millennium Falcon fighter vehicle is nothing more than a fancy doll house).
Yesterday it was toys for the Star Trek reimagingbootequel. Hey look it's the Enterprise and it looks more or less like… the Enterprise. Next it's the main villain from Transformers 2, and my favorite — from a few weeks back — blurry scans of the cardboard backings for G.I. Joe movie toys crept onto several sites and almost murdered the Internet with the heavy traffic. I'm ashamed to say I browsed these so-called articles simply to write this editorial, but I now call that shame "research" and sleep much better as a result.
I may sound angry, but I think it is better described as upset. The reason I am speaking in generalities here is because I see no reason to name-check any particular website, especially since most of the websites following this pattern are sites I read and respect, which is what has me so peeved in the first place. When I see writers I respect writing up articles about spoilers they have assumed by looking at the picture of a toy from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull it is hard to read that person again and have the same level of appreciation. I feel cheated. I feel as if the person I had been reading all this time has somehow deceived me.
You may say looking at toys is along the same lines as looking at images of pre-production art and sculptures. Wrong. Pre-production art often conveys tone, scale and detail. Images of cheap pieces of Hong Kong plastic, Photoshopped into a white void gives no real hint of a filmmaker's intention. It's akin to shadow puppets on the wall. You learn the basic shape and that's about it.
So, I beg you. For the sake of humanity, please don't make posting pics of movie-based toys a common practice. It will only help us all in the end.
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