When Opinion Matters – The evolution of action
The other day I saw a commercial for 28 Weeks Later, the sequel to the sci-fi horror movie 28 Days Later.
I’m not a big fan of the zombie genre, but I enjoyed 28 Days Later enough that I took note when I saw the trailer for the sequel.
I sought out some online coverage of the new movie, and found a review by Kevin Williamson from Sun Media. The headline – 28 Weeks Later highly infectious - was a big reason why I read this review.
The review gave the movie a 3.5 out of 5, and said it was generally worth seeing. But I still wasn’t completely convinced.
Motivated by the review, I sought out more reviews from rottentomatoes.com. I love this site. It essentially provides quotes and summaries from the more mainstream media, as well as a good or bad rating for each movie. The good and the bad are then weighted and averaged, giving you a percentage out of 100. 28 Weeks Later has received a 74 per cent rating so far. Not too bad. Furthermore, rottentomatoes.com lets visitors to the site leave their own impressions, and some people did leave feedback I found useful.
A scene from ’28 Weeks Later’.
At this point I was still undecided: was this a must-see in the theatre, or could it wait until it came out on DVD? My mind was made up when I searched various blogs and came across a posting at giantmag.com. The headline for the post was ‘This Weekend’s Best Movie Bet: 28 Weeks Later’, and had a full-featured trailer from Youtube that was more in-depth then what I had previously seen on TV.
Some of the scenes looked truly terrifying, and as I mentioned I’m not a huge zombie fan, but this movie looked like a quality film that was worth seeing in the theatre.
So what does this have to do with Turning News Into Knowledge, or understanding the nature of media?
In this case, I was touched by each different medium. Every time I read or watched something, it encouraged me to dig deeper at some other source for more information. I think it’s a great example of how and why traditional media is being augmented by new and social media, such as blogs and specialized sites like rottentomatoes.com.
That said, it should not be forgotten that I was originally made aware of 28 Weeks Later by traditional media.
Furthermore, the various headlines, ratings, and trailers had an immediate effect to how I was influenced.
So, was it worth seeing, or was the hype just that?