Letters: Yonderland, Geeks Vs Loneliness, spoiler-y trailers

Our latest letters page, where we chat about Ted 2's trailer, the lack of Yonderland, and getting a job here.

Our monthly letters page returns! This is our outmoded, outdated and yet thoroughly regular bit of the site where you write to us, and we reply. Who needs comments, right? Ahem.

Find details of how to contribute below. And in the meantime here’s the new round-up of your correspondence…

Where’s Yonderland?

Your site is often the only place on the internet for both [redacated] geeky news, reviews and an [redacted] community. So imagine my surprise when, on Tuesday morning, I failed to find a review on Sky 1’s great Yonderland. Just wondering, do you guys watch the show and, if you do, what do you think of it?

Don’t take this the wrong way, I still [more nice comments about website redacted, as we’re still shy]!

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SamWest Yorkshire

Louisa writes: We’re big fans of Horrible Histories and the Yonderland gang on Den of Geek (and particularly looking forward to Bill). You’re absolutely right, the lack of series two reviews is an omission on our part – apologies for that. As a UK fantasy show, we should be right behind it. Boringly, it was a question of balancing budgets and time. We’re a small bunch of people and can’t stretch as far as we’d like to sometimes. More than sometimes, if we’re honest.

We’ll do our best to catch up with series two soon. If it helps, we did do a series of interviews with the cast and creators before series one, which you can find here.

Geeks Vs Loneliness

I have been reading your Geek Vs… features with great interest as like your now sadly departed owner, Felix Dennis, I too have been being treated for cancer too since 2012.

I have had ups and downs as I was being made redundant at the time too on the day I saw my local GP in April 2012 and was hospitalised the same day. I also had set-backs such as treatment not working as well as it initially did or getting a chest infection during daily radiotherapy also weight gain and insomnia from huge doses of daily steroids also life choices to make such as having my spleen removed or not. Incurring permanent nerve damage (Peripheral Neuropathy) from chemo drugs in my toes and feet too

When my treatment was finally over three years later in March 2015 – I had my post-treatment CT Scan at the end of June – there was no fanfare or certificate just less things to do such as organising your time around going to hospital to see consultants or for treatment or for scans or for blood tests. Less time spent in waiting rooms from turning up early and incurring delayed appointments. Less visits to the chemists to get your month’s supply of drugs.

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This is one of the best articles I have read on feelings after medical treatment stops and it may be something you wish to cover in a future article: http://www.peterboroughbreastcancersupportgroup.co.uk/images/pdfs/AfterTreatment.pdf

Mark Pledger

Simon writes: Many thanks to you, Mark, and to all who have supported our Geeks Vs Loneliness pieces. They’re hugely important to us. All the best to you with your personal battle, and keep in touch with us.

How Many?

I was just wondering: how many people are there working on Den Of Geek’s articles full time? How do I find out when there’s a job opening?

Lee Baker

Simon writes: Very few! The core team of Den Of Geek’s editorial, and the only near-full timers, are myself, Ryan Lambie and Louisa Mellor. Everyone else is a freelance contributor. Apologies if that shatters the illusion of some huge glass fronted Stark Tower-alike building somewhere with our logo on it!

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As a consequence, we very rarely have a full time opening, but if one comes up, we’ll post it on the site. In the meantime, if you’re interested in writing for us, this post has a few more details.

Trailers That Reveal Too Much

Was wondering what Den Of Geek thinks of trailers for blockbuster films nowadays?

I was at the movies last week and saw the trailer for Ted 2. What struck me the most was that the trailer was like a short film itself. It looks like it tells you the best bits in the film, leaving out the actual ending. Seeing as it is a big Hollywood film, I can kind of guess the ending too.

So what exactly is the point in paying money for seeing the film? (It has to be said I found the first one to be quite boring too, thanks largely to a trailer spoiling it and Seth MacFarlane’s one track mind when it comes to humour).

I remember going in to watch films in the 80s and 90s where they told you very little about the film itself. The trailer would often either only hint at the film, or at most show one or two important images. They also regularly used scenes that didn’t actually make it into the film itself. It whetted your appetite and made watching the film a lot more exciting.

Keith Edwards

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Ryan writes: I’ve always had a soft spot for those teaser trailers that were shot specifically for promotional purposes, like the superb one Stan Winston made for Terminator 2.

It showed a T-800 rolling off the production line and emerging from the smoke as a stern-faced Arnold Schwarzenegger. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to get young cinemagoers like me all in a lather. Or what about the quaint one for Total Recall, which was just Arnold Schwarzenegger’s head slowly rotating around some 90s computer graphics?

Contrast those with a 2015 Schwarzenegger trailer: this summer’s bludgeoningly disappointing Terminator Genisys, say. The promos for that film seemed strangely keen to provide a point-by-point account of the movie’s plot – including, infamously, some developments we’d rather not have known about beforehand. It should be pointed out that the Genisys trailer’s quite unusual in its spoilery-ness, though, but it could be read as an indication that making really exciting trailers that give us a flavour of a film without giving away the story itself have become a bit of a lost art.

So while some recent trailers have done their job exceptionally well – the first one for Mad Max: Fury Road immediately made me want to see it – I do share your longing for less spoilery trailers. Mind you, they didn’t always get it right in the 80s and 90s. Check out the Free Willy trailer that (spoiler alert) basically gives away the whole story from beginning to end…

And that’s it for this month’s letters! Keep ’em coming, and we’ll have another round-up in a few weeks…

Send your letters to denofgeek@yahoo.com. Or write to Den Of Geek, Dennis Publishing, 30 Cleveland Street, London W1T 4JD. Please enclose a stamped addressed envelope if you want us to send you your letter back once we’ve read it.

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