\u201cStar Wars: Episode VII\u201d recently resumed production after taking a two-week hiatus to allow Harrison Ford to heal. Rumor has it that the Han Solo actor broke his leg when a hydraulic door of the Millennium Falcon was dropped on it. But other rumors say it wasn\u2019t the Millennium Falcon\u2019s door but, rather, the door of another spaceship altogether, the identity of which would likely constitute a spoiler for the much-anticipated sequel.<\/p>\n
The Internet has no shortage of similar Star Wars spoilers. If you believe everything you read, you can piece together a workable plot of the film, despite director J.J. Abrams\u2019s notorious penchant for on-set secrecy. (There\u2019s a poster in his production offices that says \u201cLoose Lips Sink Starships.\u201d) Tight security notwithstanding, you can, with just a few Google searches, find out where Luke Skywalker has been for the thirty years since \u201cReturn of the Jedi,\u201d as well as who this trilogy\u2019s bad guy is and what he looks like. You can even see what Han Solo will be wearing in hot and cold weather.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s all presuming, of course, that these rumors are all true. And they\u2019re not.<\/p>\n
Of course, that doesn\u2019t mean that all of them are wrong. The Han Solo costume designs look particularly legit, and surely there are some nuggets of truth amidst the gossipy dross. But big genre movies like these tend to bring out the Internet trolls, many of whom spread disinformation just for the cheap thrill of getting away with it.<\/p>\n
Trust me. I speak from experience.<\/p>\n
The year was 2008, and \u201cIndiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull\u201d was getting ready to hit theaters. That meant that a bunch of movie sites were publishing \u201cadvance reviews\u201d that warned that the movie was going to be awful. There were dozens of them, many of which were poorly written, and I started asking how so many illiterate nobodies were given access to what was the most hotly anticipated film of many a year. I concluded that most of these reviews were bogus, and I wondered what it would take to write such a thing and get one of the sites to pick it up.<\/p>\n
You can see where this is going.<\/p>\n
Yep. You heard it here first. For no good reason, I churned out a piece of nonsense that was essentially a \u201cgreatest hits\u201d melange of all the tidbits I had found in other articles. I submitted it to AintItCoolNews.com using the silly pseudonym “Languatron’s Bane,” and I waited to see if they would take the bait.<\/p>\n
They did.<\/p>\n
\u201cA more positive, yet far more damning, review of INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL comes in…”<\/a> the headline screamed. The piece was peppered with such bon mots as \u201cthat\u2019s not to say it\u2019s a bad movie. It\u2019s just an unnecessary one,\u201d and \u201cThis is the \u201cFree as a Bird\u201d of Indiana Jones movies.\u201d Despite the fact that I got a crucial detail wrong – I claimed that the movie included the line \u201cIt\u2019s not the mileage; it\u2019s the years,\u201d and it didn\u2019t – my error wasn\u2019t enough to expose the fraud. Indeed, my review was quoted by a number of other publications, including the UK Telegraph. That\u2019s right – my piece of hooey made it across the pond! I should have been ashamed of myself, and I probably would have been if I could have kept myself from giggling every time someone else fell for it.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a lesson here. Writing fake reviews and making up phony information about movies isn\u2019t something people ought to do, but people still do it, because it\u2019s fun and because they can. Be wary. And look for my exclusive advance review of the next James Bond movie in my next post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cStarWars: Episode VII\u201d recently resumed production after taking a two-week hiatus to allow Harrison Ford to heal. Rumor has it that the Han Solo actor broke his leg when a hydraulic door of the Millennium Falcon was dropped on it. But other rumors say it wasn\u2019t the Millennium Falcon\u2019s door but, rather, the door of ... Read more<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3391"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3392,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3391\/revisions\/3392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}