Pop Culture Websites Are Garbage Trash
Suddenly folks are steaming over a newly-posted synopsis of the live-action adaptation of Akira, with Screen Rant, ComicBook, CBR, Heroic Hollywood, and Bleeding Cool all stoking the fires of fandom ire over a description published in Production Weekly.
When a young man’s telekinesis is discovered by the military, he is taken in to be turned into a super weapon and his brother nuts [sic] race to save him before Manhattan is destroyed by his powers. Kaneda is a bar owner in Neo-Manhattan who is stunned when his brother Tetsuo is abducted by Government agents lead by the Colonel. Desperate to get his brother back, Kaneda agrees to join Ky Reed and her underground movement who are intent on revealing to the world what truly happened to New York City 30 years ago when it was destroyed. Kaneda believes their theories to be ludicrous, but after facing his brother again is shocked when he displays telekinetic powers. Ky believes Tetsuo is headed to release a young boy. Akira, who has taken control of Tetsuo’s mind, Kaneda clashes with the Colonel’s troops on his way to stop Tetsuo from releasing Akira, but arrives too late. Akira soon emerges from his prison courtesy of Tetsuo as Kaneda races to save his brother before Akira once again destroys Manhattan island as he did thirty years ago.
Had even just one of these pop culture writers taken sixty seconds on Google, they’d have learned that this synopsis dates back to August 2011during an earlier phase of Hollywood trying to make the Akira production happen. It resurfaced that November with purported casting information.
Instead, pop culture sites and Twitter are awash in claims not only that this is a new synopsis but that it’s specifically Taika Waititi’s synopsis–one claim being false and one claim having no evidence.
While the worldly impact of cable news obviously can be worse than that of any constellation of pop cuture websites, this is a perfect example of what used to drive me crazy when I blogged regularly about pop culture: the jouralistic practices of pop culture websites are absolutely, resolutely terrible.
I don’t even care about Akira, especially. But I am–and this annoys me as much as it probably does you–like a dog with a bone when it comes to garbage pop culture reporting.
This is what happens when pop cuture websites and their writers behave as little more than third-party publicists: it’s about making sure you’re sharing whatever’s out there about this or that product as quickly as you hear something, and almost never about making sure what that you’re telling people is true.