And if you've been keeping up with the news (or even just the geek news), you know which is which.

While Paramount Pictures and Aint It Cool News managed to arrange a suprise premeire for a core of rabid Trek fans in Austin this week, Fox suffered the ignominy of a leaked workprint of their Wolverine movie which was missing some effects work (bad) and some scenes (worse) which were specifically shot to make the movie not suck or at least suck a little less (worst). And now the FBI has opened a criminal investigation (no, that's worst). Also, a writer for the Fox News website downloaded the pirated movie, said it was great, and encouraged other people to pirate movies before being publically fired and humiliated (no, no, this is definitely worstest).

So where Paramount was able to release their movie in a controlled way to fan raves, Fox lost control and was met by apathy and even antipathy by their target audience. And the FBI thing. And the guy getting fired.

One is tempted to invoke karma to explain what's happened. Good things happen for good movies. Bad things happen for bad movies. And there might be a little bit of truth to that. Maybe Wolverine got leaked because someone connected to the picture was upset how it was turning out. (In this case, criminally upset.) Maybe the fact that Star Trek didn't leak (despite being in the can for months) is a testament to how everyone who worked on the film was so devoted to it, and to how jealously they guarded it.

But let's be real here. In the grand scheme of things, bad things happen to good people just as often as they do to bad people. Here we have examples of everything going right for one picture, and everything going wrong for the other, but it could just have easily gone the other way.

Someone could have been so proud of Trek that they leaked it early. Folks could have been so embarrassed by Wolverine that they kept it under wraps till it premeired.

Ultimately, though, a controlled release of a crappy movie is still going to go over crappily. Leak a great movie, and it's only going to build fan excitement.

And let's not forget that no one has seen a completed version of Wolverine yet. The buzz seems to be that it's mediocre to bad, but with the reshoots they completed since that workprint was made (and with the effects finished off and with last minute editing), the film may actually turn out slightly okay. It could happen.

And maybe Trek is only so-so, and the buzz is a byproduct of Paramount's savy rollout. Maybe "two star movie" + "Leonard Nimoy comes by to introduce the movie" equals "slobber, slobber, fan joy".

But probably not.

As you may know, I'm a big comics fan and a big Trek fan. At this point, I will probably be seeing Star Trek on Imax on opening night, and I will probably not be seeing Wolverine until it's free on the HBO. If then.

There's one last contrast to be made between these two films. Star Trek was shot during the writer's strike at the end of 2007 and the beginning of 2008. There was plenty of time for reshoots, and I was even hoping for them, not having heard any of the buzz yet, because writer's weren't available during filming to do on set rewrites, because of the strike.

But even with all that time, they didn't need to do reshoots, because they managed to get it right the first time.

Wolverine was apparently beset by difficulties from the beginning, not the least of which was a sub-par script. It's good that they kept working to make it better, but there's only so much that you can do to polish a... um... wolverine.

So today's life lesson is this: If you do it right the first time, you can rest on your laurels. If you have to clean up after your failures, you invite mockery, no matter what the end result.

Call it "The Inverse Tortoise-Hare Law."

Or maybe it's this: Marvel is screwed, because the way they structured their deal with Fox, they are never getting the film rights for the X-Men back, and Fox is going to keep putting out crappy X-Men films for ever and ever.

If I had to think up a new word to describe this phenomenon, I would call it being "Watchmened."

Or maybe it's this: It's April 8th, and it's currently snowing outside my window. When it comes down to it, anything can happen, so the best anyone can do is (a) not be a jerk and (b) have a sense of humor about it.

"What? My terrible movie has been leaked and the FBI is investigating and someone has already lost their job over all this? ZANY!"