As if the problems with Fox’s “Avatar Day” promotion weren’t enough, the marketing of James Cameron’s Avatar continued to hit snags today with the faulty debut of the film’s trailer. Despite there being a literal countdown until its premiere, at 10am EST this morning Twitter was abuzz with complaints that the thing not only didn’t work, but that it was a massive failure on the part of Fox, Apple and whoever else was responsible. Not helping matters was the fact that while we waited for the thing to be available on Apple’s site, we looked around the page and noticed the embarrassing copy that reads “FROM THE DIRECTOR OF THE ‘TITANIC.’” Meanwhile, others found they could view the trailer on a French MSN site.
Then came the biggest fail of all: the trailer was a disappointment! Derivative visuals aside, the movie looks to be a letdown in terms of its responsibility to be a groundbreaking work of cinema. Of course, there could have been no other reaction coming off so much hype. And it is indeed possible that the backlash will turn back around once people see some of the film as its meant to be seen, in 3D. But that’s just the problem of this marketing blunder. While some are saying the trailer shouldn’t have hit the web before “Avatar Day,” I think this particular trailer shouldn’t have been made, let alone released, at all. As I wrote earlier this year in anticipation of Avatar’s marketing, “You really don’t need to show one second of footage. Because we’ll be there no matter what.” However, now that I’ve seen a disappointing mess of CGI and familiar-looking footage, maybe I won’t be there after all — unless I hear legitimate reason to bother (fortunately, I’m sure I will hear one).
Check out what the rest of the film blogosphere has to say about the trailer’s failure — or success — after the jump:
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Maybe this really is the year of “product suggestion”, a term coined recently by Risky Biz blogger Steven Zeitchik after noticing the subtle hint of a McDonalds logo on the driver’s helmet and race car in Speed Racer.
Following that, we now have Pixar suggesting iPods and other Apple products through its new animated film Wall-E. If you take a good look at the sleek robot character Eve, you might be reminded of the typical Apple product design, and apparently it’s not so coincidental. Wall-E director Andrew Stanton told Fortune magazine of Eve’s development and the benefit of having Steve Jobs as your umbrella:
“I wanted Eve to be high-end technology - no expense spared - and I wanted it to be seamless and for the technology to be sort of hidden and subcutaneous,” Andrew Stanton, Wall-E’s director, told Fortune. “The more I started describing it, the more I realized I was pretty much describing the Apple playbook for design.” It is, of course, not the first time a product has inspired a film character - think of the murderous HAL 9000 robot in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” based loosely on big IBM mainframes of the day.
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Apple has reportedly struck a deal with several major studios to release downloads of their films on the same date the titles are released on DVD, and I can’t tell whether or not Jeff Wells is being facetious when he says that this plan will “obviously…really hurt DVD retail, which will in turn diminish the sense of community we all get from going to DVD stores and poking around the aisles and talking with the checkout guys.”
This is not a facetious question, I actually want to know: Is that an experience that anyone has had recently? Assuming you don’t live in New York and frequent Kim’s? It’s been my understanding that for awhile now, most people get DVDs from a) Netflix; B) a chain store like Best Buy, Virgin or Borders; or C) any number of online retail sites. So the idea that this could damage an existing sense of DVD store community seems wrongheaded, because that hasn’t that “community” already long ceased to exist?
As for the idea that this will hurt DVD sales considerably, the Apple downloads will carry Apple DRM, meaning they’ll only be playable on iPods, Mac computers, and AppleTVs. There are an awful lot of home theater junkies who will refuse to watch movies on computer screens, and I’m just not convinced that most of those guys own AppleTVs. I am the only person I know who owns an AppleTV.
So Wells had to be joking, right? To quote Chris Matthews, as Wells himself has been known to do: “Ha!”
I’m a big fan of my AppleTV, and I was super supportive of the recently-announced AppleTV Take 2, which allows all 12 of us who have one to purchase music and movies from the iTunes store directly from the TV, with no computer required. I finally got around to installing the software a week or so ago, and rented Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night (yes, seriously) without incident.
But apparently, I’m one of the lucky ones––or, maybe it’s just that I have a newish (although kind of a shitty) TV which I connect to the AppleTV via RCA cables masquerading as component cables. BoingBoing passes along a report that iTunes movie rentals won’t play on some TVs, because of a DRM called High Bandwidth Digital Content Protection, or HBDCP. HBDCP apparently blocks rentals from being played on monitors that talk to the AppleTV via a DVI or HDMI connection––basically, anyone using a video projector or computer monitor, and pretty much anyone using a flat-screen TV purchased before 2005.
So, essentially, Apple’s DRM is so constrictive that anyone who hasn’t bought a new TV in the last three years will be forced to do so in order to rent iTunes movies. As BoingBoing’s Cory Doctrow points out, this punishes consumers to the point where it becomes hard to see why anyone would go the legal way when DRM-free films are easier to get.
Remember that episode of Growing Pains when little Ben decides he should carry all his possessions around with him so that burglars won’t get them? (If not, watch it here). Well, more than twenty years later, Ben is probably carrying a lot of his possessions around with him, at least his music and some of his movies, via his iPod. But if you know anyone who has been mugged in New York City, you know that it’s now easier to be robbed of all your possessions. Unless you’re still holding on to your CDs or have your iTunes purchases backed up on your hard drive, once you lose that iPod you’ve lost everything.
But now, following yesterday’s announcement that iTunes is renting movies, there’s nothing to worry about. We can do away with possessions altogether (as Carol suggests — hair dryer excluded, of course). And we can begin by throwing out all our DVDs and VHS tapes (you still have VHS tapes?). Who needs to own when you can rent whatever movie you’re interested in watching whenever you want to watch it? And you don’t even have to travel around looking for a local video store (if you even still have a local video store). Some people may have even already given up on possessing movies when Netflix came out. I, for one, stopped buying movies when I first subscribed, though I still haven’t thrown out the few DVDs I already own. Within the year, I may very well clear off those movie shelves and replace the DVDs with books.
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I’m refreshing a couple of my favorite tech blogs every few minutes to glean the movie-related news from today’s MacWorld keynote. Here’s what I’m learning, in real time. Keep refreshing for new stuff.
12:21: It looks like watching video will become more feasible on the new version of the iPhone, which is set to ship in late February. From TUAW: “New features rolling out! Maps with location for iPhone. Webclips. Customize home screens. SMS multiple recipients. Chapters for video. Karaoke mode! (Lyrics displayable)”
12:29: The IPhone video updates, including subtitle options will be “available today as a free update for all iPhones.” [TUAW again]
12:32: ITunes sold 7 million movies last year — better than every other movie download service, but still below expectations.
12:33: “We think there’s a better way to deliver movie content through iTunes. So today, we’re introducing iTunes Movie Rentals.” [Engadget]
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Remember last week, when that guy at CES asked the guy from Netflix why their Watch Instantly streaming service doesn’t work on a Mac, and the Netflix guy was all, “It’s totally Apple’s fault,” and I bought it, and a million Apple fanboys wrote in to tell me that I was wrong? Those were heady times. But now it looks like there’s a new kink in the works, which puts Netflix and Apple’s reticence to get together in a new light.
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If you, like me, are both a Mac user and a Netflix user, then the fact that the latter’s Watch Instantly movie streaming service is incompatible with the former’s devices is probably one of the banes of your existence (unless you have a life beyond movies, and your computer, and watching movies on your computer. Must be nice.) I’ve always just assumed that Netflix was responsible for the so-1999 decision to ignore the growing market of Mac users and keep the platform PC-only.
I was, apparently, wrong.
Hacking Netflix has linked to a CES interview with Netflix’s Steve Swasey, in which he responds to the “why can’t a playa watch a movie on a Mac, y’all?” question rather defensively:
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New Line has sent Michel Gondry on a tour of indieWIRE events at Apple Stores to promote Be Kind Rewind. But is actual, physical globetrotting even necessary in today’s wired world? I thought it was kind of ironic that on the first stop of the tour, which took place last night in San Francisco, several of my Bay Area-based Twitter friends were essentially live micro-blogging the event––no doubt in some, if not all cases, using Apple devices.
So several days before Gondry’s tour is scheduled to come to my city, I was eating dinner in New York, and effectively getting a play-by-play of the San Francisco version of the event via Twitter updates on my cellphone. This morning, I woke up to find that Jackson West (who, in addition to being a Twitter followee, is a colleague at a site that I freelance for, NewTeeVee) had uploaded audio of the event and was making it available for download by anyone who reads his Twitter stream.
All of this says something about our new global-cultural-techno-econo-sphere, I’m sure of it; I’m just not sure what it is.
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Apple is on track to triple sales and rentals of movies on iTunes this year. Their business got a shot in the arm when they began selling new releases early last month, enabling untold numbers of McConaughey addicts to get their Fool’s Gold fix on the go.
