Tomorrowland (Brad Bird and George Clooney)

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blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/damon-lindelof-says-fanboys-will-be-too-cynical-to-admit-they-liked-tomorrowland-20150520

Damon Lindelof Says Fanboys Will Be Too Cynical To Admit They Liked 'Tomorrowland'

It's turning into a rough week for fanboys. Simon Pegg worried about the "dumbing down" of culture thanks to the obsessive seriousness with which comic book movies and the like are treated (he also expanded more eloquently on those thoughts later). And now, a longtime target of fanboy rage, Damon Lindelof, is arguing that the community has become so cynical — which he sees as some kind of cred traded among geeks — they won't be able to actually admit they enjoyed his upcoming "Tomorrowland".

"There's this great thing in all of us where we want to hope, we want to believe. But then what happens? We saw that hope with Obama's first election … and then, with the second election, the cynicism sets in. We all want to be activated, but...it's so easy to default back to cynicism," he explained to Vulture. "Which isn't to say that you have to love everything — obviously, we have to open ourselves up to some level of criticism. But when we all took this on, people were saying, 'You can't make an original movie anymore, and you certainly can't make an interesting Disney movie. If you make a Disney movie named Tomorrowland, it's gotta have Space Mountain, and you basically have to sell tickets to the amusement park.' "

"Now, I don't want to start a war, but as a self-identified fanboy, I think that with this movie, it's gonna be really hard for fanboys to say, 'I really enjoyed this movie. It made me feel good,' " Lindelof continued. "God forbid you tweeted something like that! What would happen to you? You'd lose your readership! 'You sold out!' "

And "Tomorrowland" star George Clooney agrees with Lindelof that the trend of being mean has taken hold. "Listen, we're at sort of a cynical time in society," he said. "Don't ever read comments on anything! People can live anonymously, and I honestly think that when they were talking about freedom of speech in 1787, the theory was that you had to own your speech. It had to belong to you, and you actually had to take some responsibility for it. Now you can just sit alone and say horrible things, and it becomes fashionable to be shitty to people."

It's perhaps easy to understand Lindelof's own cynicism, given that he probably saw the worst of fanboy culture when he was on Twitter. But that said, it should be noted that geeks and fans are the first to champion something, very loudly, when they see something they like (see the frothing adoration for "Mad Max: Fury Road"). But what do you think? Is the culture so caught up in finding fault they can't dare to recognize something of value? Let us know below. "Tomorrowland" arrives on Friday.

Being a Contrarian has become an American tradition.

But as long as the arguments are thought out and presented with a form of easily followed logic, I don't see a problem. One sentence reviews really shouldn't bother guys that much, especially guys like Clooney. DL I can see can being a little more defensive, he only writes it (for better or.... more often worse in my opinion) he has his own vision for what it may look like so he has no more creative control beyond the base script.

I think Pegg is dead on though. I am a victim of it myself obviously (if you think you aren't, you are delusional), but I also have to blame the world market as well though. They have to dumb it down a bit to make it more universal and 'inclusive' (as Pegg alludes to being asked to make the Star Trek script) and therefore make more money. And I do see the infantilization of society as a whole but we are also the most informed society of all time, there might be something to be said about the Brave New World style we take in information (and doctor prescribed medicine...) that it is just too much to keep outrage at a level that will incentivize the populous to act.

Wow, talk about being proactively defensive.

Hah, good job on the Comingsoon title, Fanible.