If there’s one thing that annoys me more than anything, it’s sensationalist journalism. In Indonesia you can find it everywhere – newspapers, magazines, online sites that claim to be reporting the news – and it really does piss me off when it happens.
Earlier today I opened the local cinema website to check out new release schedules and something caught my eye on the left side of the page, which was this headline: Jeremy Renner Tidak Menyukai Perannya sebagai Hawkeye di The Avengers (exact translation: Jeremy Renner doesn’t like his role as Hawkeye in The Avengers)
This headline made me wrinkle my nose because well, my job being what it is and me being an Avenger fan, I would have heard if Renner said that he didn’t like being Hawkeye. In fact, I would’ve probably ranted about it and called him an ungrateful S.O.B. because that movie raised his profile as an actor to high heavens, more than Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol did. But no, I have not heard of this. Although I did know he recently talked to one of the US websites about how he thought he wasn’t given much to work with in The Avengers.
So I searched the interview and found his recent interview with LA Times Hero Complex: ‘Bourne Legacy’ star Jeremy Renner on ‘Avengers’ action and more
And this was the part that apparently got quoted by a million of other news outlets:
HC: In “Avengers,” you sort of get to play both sides. What was that like?
JR: At the end of the day, 90% of the movie, I’m not the character I signed on to play. I’m literally in there for two minutes, and then all of a sudden… All I could really work on was the physical part of it all, because that didn’t change. That was just the biggest challenge to overcome in playing the guy. Also, we’re pretty much introducing a new superhero character to everyone in a movie where there’s a thousand superheroes. So there’s not a lot of back story or understanding we can really tell about who Clint Barton is, or Hawkeye, and is he working for SHIELD or not. There’s a lot of unanswered questions, even for me. And I was OK with that. At least I was still in the movie. And I was glad for that. The closest thing I could really link to was Scarlett [Johansson’s] character, Black Widow, because they have a history. And that definitely plays in the movie, I think. And obviously, you can’t go into too much just because there’s so much story to tell, but you definitely get a sense that they’re connected, and that there’s something really, really important that ties them together. And I could try to summarize it, but it can go a lot of places. That excites me, though, that there’s room for other things.
Very diplomatic, wasn’t he? As an actor Renner probably did feel like his talents were wasted because there wasn’t really enough of anything for him to do. Even when Barton went rogue, he really was mostly acting every inch the action man. The heavy duty emotional drama is left to Tom Hiddleston, who was pulling out everything in his arsenal to piss a lot of people off. I could understand if he wasn’t at all satisfied with that as an actor but my point is, he didn’t say, “I didn’t like playing Hawkeye.”
The 21 Cineplex website mention Contactmusic.com as their source and here is their original article on the piece: The Avengers – Jeremy Renner: ‘I Didn’t Like Zombie Hawkeye In The Avengers’
To me, that headline was also very misleading. The article’s first paragraph that stated that Jeremy Renner hated playing ‘zombie Hawkeye’ was also misleading. Because, once again, he didn’t say it.
HC: Did you prefer playing evil Hawkeye or good Hawkeye?
JR: I prefer the good, because if we go to the evil part, or hypnotized or whatever the heck you want to call it, it’s kind of a vacancy. Not even a bad guy, because there’s not really a consciousness to him. The interesting part was being guilty about the bad things I did do when I was hypnotized. I think he’s already an interesting enough character. To really kind of take away who that character is and just have him be this sort of robot, essentially, and have him be this minion for evil that Loki uses. Again, I could just focus on the task. I was limited, you know what I mean? I was a terminator in a way. So yeah, fun stunts. But is there any sort of emotional content or thought process? No. That doesn’t exist in that time [that he’s hypnotized]. It happens to be for most of the movie.
HC: Are you disappointed?
JR: You know, there are a lot of people in that movie. And a lot of important characters. And my character, I felt like if I can help serve story, then I did my job.
I have no idea where these people who recycle other people’s stories could claim that a certain actor hates something, hates playing something or hates playing in something, without actually conducting the actual interview themselves. Did Contactmusic.com meet up with the Hero Complex folks and actually ask them, “Hey, did Renner sound really bitter and like he was really hating on The Avengers?” (It could happen but I doubt it.)
I just wonder about how it is possible for someone to take an actor’s words out of context and spin it into something that has highly damaging implications. No wonder some actors don’t like interviews. They could so easily be misquoted.
Maybe I’m being naive and idealistic again. After all, this is Hollywood. (Also, it’s just about Jeremy Renner and Hawkeye, not world peace or some shit like that.) But it really is a shame that this practice is common everywhere. There are only a handful of sources that we can really trust for reporting actual news and even then you still have to take everything with a grain of salt. We just can’t believe everything that we’re being told about. There’s always the chance of what is being said has already been recycled and when that happens we need to look for our own facts before you start influencing others.
My complaint here is really for 21 Cineplex. First of all, I am mostly unimpressed by their website. It looks fugly with the clutter and huge-ass graphic. I need the website for one thing and one thing only: find out movie schedules. I don’t need the news part of the website, unless it’s about special promotions and important announcements regarding their operation of the cinemas.
Secondly, since they insist on having news, I thoroughly dislike the way they present the news from recycled sources. Their writing is shitty (again, it’s an example of Indonesian tabloid-style sensationalism) and I don’t trust the content. Case in point: their reviews.
21 Cineplex website has a review section that is often very spoiler-y. I can hardly click on a review without finding out what the movie is all about, down to the last scene of the movie. I hate the fact that they call it a “review” section because all they do is outline the plot synopsis from beginning to end. There’s hardly any critical analysis of the movie. And there shouldn’t be any because it’s not their job to rate movies, but to sell them. The nature of their business beats the purpose of having reviews on their website. If they insist on having reviews, then they should stop calling it ‘reviews’.
And finally, considering their equally crappy and highly inconvenient online ticketing system, M-Tix, I have no idea why they don’t focus on improving it instead of hiring people to write second- and even third-hand news instead. (I may have another post coming up outlining my problems and dissatisfaction with M-Tix but I still don’t have sufficient data so that’s for later. Much later.)
I don’t know why I’m annoyed with this whole situation. Maybe I’m just bitter that people click on this website more often than they buy my magazine that actually contains better, more credible news. Maybe I’m sick and tired of meeting and talking to so-called movie buffs who regard themselves as ‘experts’ by reading news from dodgy sources and then dare to behave like they know better than me. Maybe today is just a really bad day and I had a very bad morning and I am looking for ways to channel my frustrations out.
Whatever it is, this situation is aggravating me and I will continue to complain about it until it changes. So I’m bitchy and a total nitpicker but I simply can’t shut up about it.
Ma Vie En L'Air 