With regards to the latest news over the leaked online version of Wolverine, Patrick Goldstein, in his Big Picture blog, seems to take a curiously emotionally distant, wrongheaded and naive stance in his reportage on the matter, saying “until now (emphasis mine) 20th Century Fox has never adequately explained how co-chairman Tom Rothman could say 10 minutes of
footage were missing when the [107-minute] running times for the pirated version and
the theatrical version were the same.”

The only apparent reason for his qualifier from Goldstein? This explanation from Fox’s senior vice president of corporate communications, Chris
Petrikin: “There was no ‘fibbing’ involved — that would imply that we were so
on top of things that we anticipated having one of our biggest films of
the year stolen and had time to concoct a plan to purposefully ‘spin’
wrong information. Remember, Tom gave this
[Entertainment Weekly] interview a day after we learned of the theft. A
lot of information and misinformation was flying back and forth then,
and there was no way to sort it out quickly or definitively. In fact, I
think I told Tom that there might be 10  minutes missing from the
stolen version, based — obviously — on misinformation I was given or
misinterpreted. The real issue is the scale of this crime, and that the
film was not finished when it was stolen.”

Jesus Christ, this reminds one of Scooter Libby, Karl Rove and the whole Valerie Plame situation. Of course Fox would/did/will lie about compromised product in an effort to protect their investment, and goad fanboy audiences into shelling out money for something they’ve already downloaded illegally online. Is anyone remotely connected to the film industry really shocked by that? Or any thinking person in general? The motive is clear, and understandable. But to accept as somehow satisfactory the explanation for a massive factual error — from a vice president of corporate communications — that simply “a lot of information was flying back and forth” is simply retarded. Huge, multi-national corporations do not make uncalculated moves, or shoot from the hip, or send co-chairmen out to talk in crisis situations with scant outlines of a situation. The original lie needed a face/name to give it heft, hence Rothman’s aggressiveness; the walking back of the lie will begin (and possibly end?) at lower levels, so Petrikin, dutifully playing the Scott McClellan role, gets to get an early start on his career in creative fiction. Whatever, I get it. I’m just more irritated, actually, with the notion that anyone would accept this argument on face value. It’s ridiculous.