The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - Official Site (http://www.benjaminbutton.com/)


I am very confused by the official site for the Curious Case of Bejamin Button. This is magical movie, directed by David Fincher, starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, already nominated for awards...etc. etc. etc. I go back to "magical" for a second here - I expect MAGIC from this site. I want to know why he ages differently. I want to know where on Earth he lives. I want to know how he affects history. I want to know more about the friggin' story - at the least - in one place.

But the site is a mish mash of oddness akin to scattered papers on a desk.

The first thing I see on loading of the site is this undefined quote area:



It quickly loads the latest reviews (which makes me think it's powered by some back end Javascript or XML files) which is fine... but the placeholder text could be a little more interesting. On my end it took about 15 seconds before a real quote filled this placeholder and in that time I was scratching my head.



Next I enter the official site (that's why I'm here after all) and it takes EONS to load. Not only is it taking eons but I'm not actually sure where the loader is since it's clearly a time line relating to the story and not a traditional loader. The text on this loading screen is about as interesting as the site gets (in my opinion). Finally I've loaded all the data but nothing changes... only after a few moments of puzzling do I realize that the text "continue" has been added to the bottom of the screen (you'll have to scroll down if the site doesn't fit perfectly above the fold in your browser). (Of course I hadn't noticed that it appeared because I left for coffee while it loaded!)



I'm in the site finally and suddenly it's Where's Waldo starring Brad Pitt. Giant black and white pictures pull in to Benjamin Button at various ages amidst cityscapes or crowds... which might have been interesting as a site intro but this IS the site. The time line seems to be progressing as the pictures zoom in... that doesn't even make sense. Just because we're now zoomed all the way to Pitt does not mean 10 years have passed!?! And having seen the movie - I don't even see how they relate - except in the obvious way (Benjamin Button getting younger as the fashions/architecture get newer).



But maybe there's more? No, not really. The only things on this official site are the giant zooming pictures (the pictures had to be huge in order to zoom in to Pitt without ugly pixelization ... thus the huge download size I guess... but was it worth it?), an audio track and a gallery.



The gallery just sits on top of the giant zooming pictures (which continue to zoom) creating an "interesting" contrast. It might look amazing if it were still but as the picture in the back is still moving... it's distracting.



So what about watching the trailer or reading about the cast/story/etc.? You might expect to find these things on the official site, right? But no! When you click on "View Film Info" we're taken to a NEW site... MSN Movies ?!?! That's where the bulk of the data on the cast and story is. Including the trailers.

But then if I were to click on "Watch Trailer in HD" I'm instead taken to the Apple trailers site... even though the trailers were already on the MSN page.




Find Tickets and Showtimes takes me to 3 different movie ticket buying sites but that's not shocking. Apparently the Benjamin Button site isn't an information provider but rather a hub... a hub that takes too long to load to be a hub. Overall... pretty and atmospheric. But there's no magic.

Labels: movie site review