If you haven’t seen my other posts, check those to make more sense of the spoilers.
If you’ve read anything about it on my site, you know that I find Lost intriguing but that I wish it had more Heroes quality to it. J. J. Abrams copies stuff. Plain and simple. At least Heroes makes nods to their sources and their geek audience (the NCC-1701 on George Takei’s license plate).
I am interested in 1-18-08, especially since it sounds more like gods at war instead of a Godzilla clone. But the EthanHaasWasRight site is a huge rip-off. Yes, I’ve seen Myst. Everything rips off Myst. Check out Ocular Effect. Notice anything similar? This was used to promote another ABC show, Fallen. Now I’m not as impressed. Sure the site is set up well, but Ocular Effect did it a year ago. This rumored funky Slusho site looks very much like the Hanso candy bars from Lost. I just think Abrams is obsessed with things named “Dharma”.
And those secret movies? Majestic-12 or Command and Conquer. (I think it’s forgiveable to copy Blair Witch to try that technique again.)
Paramount actually released the trailer on Apple. At least they’re not trying to stop the Tube of You (or YouTubes).
Update: I had already read that Ain’t it Cool reported the other sites as fake. I don’t know the people there, so I don’t know for sure. Here’s my guess. They’re having some fun, putting their own little chase into the hypemonster to get people to Google naughty words. If they got a letter/e-mail from J.J. Abrams, then cool! Congrats folks on a site that has grabbed the attention of a big-time director. But what better way to build intrigue than for official sites to look unofficial? This is the allure of viral marketing. Does anyone remember when Sony paid people to graffiti how much they loved their PSPs? It’s much cooler to have unofficial unions, to be a part of a secret group, than to be a part of a commercialized fan club. Everyone wants to belong to something special, and the marketing firms are making money off of your God-created desires.
1-18-08 is making their own browncoats without having to create a season worth of genius episodes (like the train robbery…man, Jayne’s hat rocks!).
Will I watch the movie? It still looks like fun.
Semi-related posts:
It’s already been confirmed that the only website related with the new J.J. Abrams project is 1-18-08. Ethaan Has sites have nothing to do with Bad Robot; here’s the statement:
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/33261
Might want to correct the post.
Did you notice what words were in CAPS in the post? Do you think they may be having a joke?
Thanks for your concern, though.
aintitcoolnews is a very reputable news site when it comes to movies, Harry Knowles runs it and is actually quite known around hollywood. I’m sure JJ Abrams did contact him regarding the movie since Abrams is obviously well tuned to the internet buzz. Although it could just be another ploy by Abrams to throw people off, like he did with lost when he said the hanso sites were fake…. guess we’ll just have to see.
Thanks for the heads up. I didn’t know if it was a satire site like bbspot or The Crazy Apple Rumors Site. (Which both have hilarious “real” articles a la The Onion.)