Commentary: Know It Alls

I go on many movie sites, always looking for information on current and upcoming movies. Most of the sites I go to have some sort of forum or message board for members to post opinions and comments. Naturally, there are many types of people at these sites. Smart, stupid, funny, annoying, clever, nasty, among others. The ones that annoy me the most, are the "know it alls". These people put forth an image of a person who knows all there is to know about movies, they are never wrong and if you disagree with them, you are just a fool who doesn't know as much as they do. The reason I am writing about this is because of a thread of comments over at Aintitcoolnews.com regarding the trailer for the 2009 release of JJ Abram's "Star Trek". There has been much secrecy surrounding the movie, but we were finally given a full blown trailer this past week, and the reaction has been mostly positive. The trailer itself is only about two minutes long, and doesn't really reveal much as far as plot, but gives us a lot of cool images. I would have liked to have seen a bit more, and the trailer was edited at a very fast pace. But it is the most footage we have seen thus far, and although it was not much it looked pretty promising. Any fan of movies knows that trailers are not always a true representation of a movie's overall quality. They tend to show what the studios feel are the films best qualities, what they feel can lure audiences in. We have seen many movies that had great trailers and what was shown in the trailer turned out to be the best parts of the film, the rest being mediocre, or even bad. But regardless, it is almost impossible to judge if a movie will be good or bad based on two or three minutes of footage. I, like many others, have formed an opinion of a movie based on the contents of its trailer. But I always reserve final judgement after I have seen the finished product.

This brings me to the subject of my commentary. In the thread of commentary over at aintitcoolnews.com, there are many members who have already decided from two minutes of footage that "Star Trek" will be a worthless, steaming pile of crap. There are others who are saying that it doesn't look good, or what they have seen is crap, and that is fine, opinions are just that opinions. But it is the group of individuals that have already decided that the movie is going to suck that really bother me. I don't know what their reasons are, maybe they hate Star Trek, maybe they are Trek fans and hate what has happened to Trek in the past 20 years or so, perhaps they hate JJ Abrams and feel he isn't the right man for this project. The only thing I can understand is Trek haters, and their opinions really don't mean all that much to me anyways, although there were a few admitted non Trek fans who did say the trailer looked pretty good. But it's the ones who like Trek in some form that have already decided this movie will suck that bother me. When you try to have an intelligent discussion with these fools, all they do is tell you over and over how you are wrong and that the movie will suck and that's it. Sometimes they give reasons as to why they think what they do, and even so, things change from trailer to final cut. The funny thing is when they do give reasons, they come across as so arrogant and all knowing it is hard to take what they say seriously at all. They just come across as thinking they know everything there is to know about movies, and that their opinion is the only one that matters. If you argue with them you are wrong, you don't know as much as they do as far as they are concerned, and you will never be able to change their mind or even consider a different view no matter how good or convincing your argument may be. They are so convinced of their superiority that they will most likely go to see the movie they claim will suck, and no matter how they actually feel about it, they will return to the website they ranted on and say things like "It sucked just like I said it would" just to prevent themselves from looking like a total fool. They insult you, going so far as to telling you what kind of movie fan you are, or even the kind of person you are. Obviously these are incredibly insecure people who find some sense of self worth by doing and saying what they do, because what kind of person has a need to make themselves feel superior to a bunch of strangers, people they don't know but need to feel superior too. Regardless of their reasons, this group of people are annoying and their opinions are worthless, because all film is subjective, no one opinion is the right or wrong one, unless of course you talk to one of these self proclaimed geniuses.