This process (of false news or kneejerk reactions to minor details) has been repeating over and over lately, as the media blows up any hint about the content of major movies into a frenzy of speculation, and usually approbation. Anger comes so naturally on the Internet that it feels as though people enjoy being offended. And it’s true that the self-righteous, superior burn of, “I know how to do this story right, and the people who are making it don’t” can feel clarifying and satisfying. But at some point, it becomes counterproductive, especially when it distracts from actual movies. At some point, outrage fatigue has to set in. It’d probably be better for movies—and especially for journalists and journalism—if that happened sooner rather than later.
Because the demand for details about upcoming movies—even wrong or fake details—is so vast, it pushes outlets to report on the faintest rumor or wildest speculation, blowing theories out of a single set photo, or an anonymous tip dating back to an outdated story meeting, or a celebrity’s flippant, “Sure, why not?” response to a highly leading question. When the movie in question comes out, and the rumors are all proven false, the invective moves on to the next target with no apparent sense of irony—or betrayal at having been fed a thin gruel of half-invented facts and thin-skinned moral superiority.
It’s worth looking at some of the after-the-fact rumor round-ups that examine past news stories for any hint of truth, which often isn’t there. For instance, Collider’s Avengers rumor recap, which points to old stories promising the Skrulls as the movie’s main villains, with the Kree fighting them, and a primary focus on Captain America’s perspective. Or What Culture’s Dark Knight rumors collection, which has Ellen Page as Batgirl (based on a faked photo), Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the Joker, and Bruce Wayne’s series-ending death. Examining these kinds of guesses in the wake of the actual movie coming out shows exactly how flimsy they were all along—but in their moment, sometimes with the actual movie years away, some of them seemed plausible. Movies—particularly gigantic tentpole movies involving characters with decades of continuity to sort through for ideas—evolve a lot from conception to screen, and it’s even possible that some of the rumors on those pages were actually true at some point, for a hot minute or two.
But that’s one more reason to wait for the actual screen version before getting frothingly angry. There’s nothing wrong with speculation, or trading theories, ideas, wish lists, or worries. It’s fun to spend the ramp-up time while waiting for a movie by talking to other people with shared interests and possibly different perspectives. But the tone of the reactions is so often shrill and hysterical. And later, when all those rage-inducing pre-facts are demonstrably proved untrue by the film, that somehow never seems to blunt the next wave of unsubstantiated, unnecessary anger. The "how dare they!!!" never seems to get replaced with "wait, never mind, they didn’t on anything like the same scale."