> I think these people have lost the whole point of going to a movie.
>You'll find purloined tidbits about the movie: plot outlines, production photos, leaked reports from the set, stolen images from the SFX department. News, news, news has been posted from people who want to be the First to scoop.
>
> What will happen to these people when they go to see the movie? They'll already know the plot outline of the movie. They'll already have seen what most of the big effects-laden sequences look like. They'll already know the twist at the end. They'll already know pretty much everything the movie has in store for them. Of course they're going to be disappointed. "Is that all?" they'll ask as the credits roll.
>

I had this exact experience with the Michael Keaton /Batman/. I was in about fifth or sixth grade during its theatrical release, but i didn't never actually saw the movie until a few years later. The hype having long passed and having read the entire plot on the collector cards my friends and i were nuts over, i was totally devastated by the fact that not a single scene was one i didn't know about.

Of course, the fact that i have NEVER seen any work by Tim Burton which i have enjoyed probably didn't help.

> I view the upcoming Harry Potter movie somewhat skeptically. ... Now these same people are going to see a movie adaptation of the book -- and they all know who did it!

I view it with more than skepticism. I view it as a waste of time, because of an article by some Yale English prof on how horrible the woman's righting style is. I realize how ignorant it is to base one's opinion of something on a single source, but i didn't WANT to be interested in the icon of Harry Potter (even after i realized i look a lot like him when i put on round spectacles, except that i've got blonde hair and am not a British orphaned cartoon). So i won't see that movie until forced to, any more than i'll read one of the books before every other book on the planet (Harlequin romances excluded--those don't count as literature, not being as purposeful as classics like "The Stinky Cheese Man") is burned.

I'm so excited about the upcoming /Lord of the Rings/ trilogy that i need to change my shorts. I haven't looked up anything on them in months, but i did do some reading last year on the Net.

I understand the draw of such a flick, because it is the reader's chance to test one's own vision of the story against that of those involved in the film. One can feel knowledgeable enough about a story, with one's own conception of characters and scenes, to critique the movie in a fashion not otherwise possible.

And with /Lord of the Rings/, no matter how bad this version of the story is, it could always be worse (see Dave's review of the bad, bad, bad, bad effort in the late '70's.

What i don't understand, other than as a $$$-making ploy, is why, when a movie is made from a novel (as with the work of John Grisham or Tom Clancy), a movie-version of the book will then be released which is an abridged version of the original or an adaptation of the screenplay. Why would i read a movie? I'll read the book. If i want the movie, i'll watch it.

Penny*probably should have made a separate post out of some of this rant*stamp