Early this morning I wrote a somewhat critical report of Aint It Cool News’s attempt to debunk the recent round of Peter Jackson to direct The Hobbit rumors. Their scoop was vague and formless, presented as if we’re supposed to believe everything they say just because they’re AICN. Apparently this wasn’t an aberration, but a trend, since their recently posted, supposed first ever Cloverfield review suffers from the same problem.
Yep, AICN claims to have a review of the much wondered about Cloverfield movie on their website. So you’d think now we’ll finally get an answer to all the stuff JJ Abrams has refused to tell us. Stuff like, what is that thing attacking the city? Well nope. Their review is as vague and formless as their attempt to debunk that Hobbit rumor. The entire thing is filled with excuses not to say anything about the movie, it reveals nothing. It’s as if they were simply looking for an excuse to write an exciting headline, and this is the best thing they could come up with to put under it.
Well the site has a lot of exciting headlines today, most of them with exclamation points. In the case of this one though, I don’t know how they can claim it’s a real review. The guy says nothing about the movie. Anyone could have written it. I could have written it in about 60 seconds myself, and I haven’t seen the movie. The review is filled with such exciting tidbits as the revelation that the monster is “it's humongous, it's ugly” and that “the scares are of the "gotcha!" variety”. Come on AICN, this guy did not see the movie. The closest he comes to describing anything in the film is rehashing the trailer. How can they not know this review is fake?
I don’t mean to run around bashing other websites, we’re hardly perfect here at Cinema Blend and everyone has their down moments, and I’ve always had the best possible dealings with the great guys over at Aint It Cool. But like it or not, AICN is the standard by which all the rest of us are measured, and they tend to get all the credit for just about everything movie-related that happens on the internet whether they had anything to do with it or not. So I think it’s fair that they take a little criticism too. If we’re going to regard them as the top dog, shouldn’t the top dog have higher standards than the rest of us? Of course they’re AICN so they’re always going to have weird writing and giant purple text, but they’re known for getting the big scoops. They should at least be better than the rest of us at getting those right.
