Comic-Con And Movie Studios Have A Fan Entitlement Problem
Art by John Mattisson
I won’t pretend I didn’t watch the latest round of leaked movie trailers. I’m human, and it’s always interesting to get a peek behind the curtain of your favorite franchises. However, I would be lying if I said that this most recent turn of events didn’t also annoy the piss out of me. I’ll try and spare you a sermon on a soapbox, but ultimately this comes down to an aura of entitlement. With all the technology at our disposal, the current culture and attitude tends to be “if we can, then we must,” and that just doesn’t hold up. As Jordan Crucchiola states (via Wired), “this philosophy of 'because I can' is as lazy as it is damaging.” I tend to agree.
Movie studios rake in an enormous amount of money. The actors involved don’t have to pinch pennies either, at least typically, and no one is necessarily saying you have to feel sorry for them, but you do need to at least recognize that the thing you love talking about, sharing memes of, and dissecting over an hour-long podcast is simply not yours to do with what you wish. They made it, financed it, and took on all the risk if it flops. We do nothing but either gush about it on our social media and websites, or rant and rave about how bad it is and what they did so wrong. We have no skin in the game and yet expect to be treated as if we do. We then have the nerve to get irate that someone asks us to politely set aside our weird perceived sense of ownership of this thing (that isn’t ours) and not share it with the world before they are ready.
Most companies, regardless of industry, let people take a look at things in active development, but not without some sort of NDA attached. Until now, all Comic-Con goers have had to do was come to terms with a simple gentlemen's agreement. No signatures in blood or threatening of legal action necessary. Sadly, we couldn’t even handle that.
It's not yours, it's theirs. I hammer this point home because evidently people do not get it. We scream about “just release it already” (quote from quite a few comment threads), and “well someone’s going to get it, so just put it out there yourself.” How asinine is that, to think that just because you can’t have something, right now, when you want it, that the company is somehow at fault for that? If it were your intellectual property, that you invested tons of money and effort into, and you invited someone into your home to see it, you might not be so gung-ho about that sort of ambivalence to someone's ownership rights. It doesn’t matter if the publicity it garners is positive or negative. That is inconsequential. They had a plan, and they decided to show comic-con goers something cool before everyone else, and someone had to go and blow it.
They really aren’t asking much. Maybe if we got over ourselves and how “important” we are, we could agree to their terms. See something before anyone else, just don’t splatter it all over the internet.
Not that complicated, so stop making it so damn hard.
Want another viewpoint? Check out Susana Polo's article on Polygon. I disagree, but still worth a read. Also check out the above mentioned article by Jordan Crucchiola via Wired.