Fuck Fandoms

Unless you've been living under a rock or paying attention to the actual important things going on in the world lately, you know there's a new Star Wars trailer out. Yes. Even though the film doesn't come out until next December, we got a trailer now, because Star Wars is just the kind of thing people need to be reminded to be excited about.

And while most of the feedback has been pretty level-headed, you DO get a certain subset of backlash over silly things like the very minor changes in design to the Millennium Falcon:

Or the three-pronged, vaguely cross-ish lightsaber we see:

Because apparently a fictional sci-fi universe can't deviate at all from its own rules when a new chapter is made like 40 years later – or maybe just 15 if you're counting the prequels, which I personally don't as they were terrible. Honestly, it just baffles me. These things are problems now? They're little tidbits in a 50-second trailer for a movie that isn't coming out next year. A movie which we know very little about so far. I didn't know you could glean information about the quality of the whole product from a few minor details that haven't even been explained to us yet. You must be psychic. Please, tell me my fortune, too!

I'm just going to come out and say it: if any of those things bothers you, you need to go outside. Just...put down the laptop and go outside, and breathe some fresh air for a second, because you have a problem.

And I'm going to go on a special tangent on the backlash against the black Stormtrooper we see for like a second, which was pronounced enough to get a reaction from CNN.

We see this black dude in a Stormtrooper outfit for like, a split second, which was apparently enough for people to start whining and crying about that too. Oh, is it because all Stormtroopers were “supposed” to be clones of Jango Fett? I'm not even a big Star Wars guy and even I know that doesn't have to be fucking true – and hell, maybe he just snuck into one as a disguise like Luke did in The New Hope. You don't know shit yet. Why would you get mad about this?

Oh yeah – it's because you're secretly a racist piece of trash and trying to cover that up by pretending to care about the franchise.

Some people will also complain about deviations from the “Extended Universe” novels, as apparently some kind of official voice has spoken and said the “EU” no longer “counts” and the movies will be the only official canon. I'm sorry, but what's the problem? You can't just ignore that bullshit and pretend your favorite books are what counts? Who gives a fuck if some multi-millionaire out-of-touch-with-reality movie studio tells you what's what? You like what you like and you make your own canon! That's why it being a fictional universe is cool. I read some of those Star Wars “EU” books – some of them were pretty fucking good! But I just don't see how the studio making a movie that disregards those storylines is so offensive. Unless they're sending Stormtroopers to your house in big black vans to collect and burn all your Extended Universe books, I don't see the problem.

All this just points out one important factor to me that I feel like I just have to say plainly – Star Wars fans can be real nitpicking whiny babies about this stuff.

Not to exclude fans of any other big franchise or fantasy world. Lord of the Rings fans, Harry Potter fans, Doctor Who fans and many others can all be like that. Over the last year or two, I've liked hanging out with people less and less who are super obsessed with movies and TV shows, especially with ones that are big multi-verse fantasies like Star Wars. Which sounds weird, given what I do on here and how invested I can get in a good movie or show, but hear me out.

When I say “emotionally invested,” I don't mean you just can't care AT ALL about these things – certainly you're supposed to get into what you're watching; that just means it's done a good job telling its story. I myself get very much into certain movies and shows and can find them immeasurably powerful. However, there's a certain point when it just gets too far. I think that point is when you start actually referring to yourself as a member of a “fandom.”

If you're not familiar with this term, it's best summed up as a cultlike fanaticism around certain popular series – Harry Potter. Star Wars. Lord of the Rings. Doctor Who. The list goes on – some people are just really, really into that stuff and call themselves part of the fandom. This just means they're super big fans of it. Fine. Yes. OK. I've got plenty of friends who love these things and I have nothing against them for that. If you just really like something, that's cool with me and you're not who I'm talking about here.

The problem though, is that for a disturbing amount of people, fandom seems to be an excuse for “I take this way too seriously and will get mad about changes to it, and then get in pithy overly emotional online debates about it.” Because, frankly, that's what the Internet is for I guess – stupid arguments over fandoms.

So I'll come out and say it – fuck fandoms. Fuck them forever.

I'm just tired of it. Tired, tired, tired of the endless bickering and shit-flinging over what should just be good entertainment. People will go on about this shit for days on end if you let them about how the world of the fiction of their choice is a sacred, real thing and everything in it should be a part of continuity. It's kind of a strange argument because it strangles the hell out of actual creativity. Which is why they like their preferred fandom to begin with (whether they have the articulation to realize that or not) – that big, expansive, fantastical universe the original creators made up that they can dive into and forget their own lives for a little while. It's fiction! You can do whatever you want with it! The Star Wars universe is basically the modern equivalent of a whole mythology, it's got so much you can do with it. Why would you care if someone new who has new ideas made a few changes?

I guess I also just don't get it because honestly, even if the new Star Wars sucks and totally shits on the established franchise and books and what not, why do you care that much? Just acknowledge that it sucks, and then go back to reading and watching the stuff you actually like. Pretending like a fictional universe like Star Wars can be "disrespected" in some way is the dumbest thing ever. Even if the new Star Wars movie is full of rapping Jar Jar Binks, Ewoks everywhere playing competitive sports and Han Solo turning gay, you can still just ignore it and go back to watching the movies or reading the books you actually like.

The only exception to this would be if you are like me and want to lampoon shitty things on a blog for humorous purposes and don't actually let it affect your real life. Then you're totally okay and, since you're like me, are probably an Adonis-like God figure and should be worshipped and showered in gifts. But I digress.

I'm not really talking about one person or one fandom in particular; it isn't just about Star Wars. I have seen this stuff all over the place, from many different people and many different subjects. This stuff should be fun. It shouldn't be some kind of incentive to go to war with people you don't know over stupid shit that doesn't matter. It's escapism – it should be something that makes you happy.

Bottom line is this – if you get mad or upset about anything in a fictional universe changing with the times, you probably need to take a deep breath and just leave the room for a while until you calm down. Seriously. It isn't really a big deal.

P.S. The new trailer actually makes me excited for that new Star Wars movie. I'll go see it.

Images copyright of their original owners; I own none of them.

Dear Hollywood: Stop Planning Ahead

Movies in the last few years have become a little too homogenous for my liking. It seems like every single movie coming out – at least during the summer blockbuster season – is some kind of sequel, remake or adaptation of something else. Now, this is not something new to any of you reading this blog or most moviegoers who have been awake for the last half-decade – I'm not becoming Captain Obvious on you here.

But I do think something has to be said for the sheer level of planning ahead Hollywood is doing with these – it isn't just that they're making these superhero sequels, book adaptations and spinoffs of popular franchises, but that they're also planning them ahead of time to ridiculous amounts more befitting of a tiger mom planning out her four-year-old's doctorate degree years and years in the future.

You want proof? Well, how about the fact that the new film based off the Harry Potter spin off book Fantastic Creatures and Where to Find them will actually now be MORE THAN A TRILOGY. Keep in mind the original book was like 80 pages and served as a fun little extra add-on to the main series. And now it's going to be like six more movies. If we're lucky.

Look, I get it – people love Harry Potter. I remember reading the books as a kid and have very fond memories; they were great books and they got me more interested in reading books when I was young. That's fine. I know people love the movies too; that's also fine – go wild and love them more than anything if you want. Obviously the movies had to be made as the books were so successful and people wanted to see the characters and events on screen – that happens any time a book gets popular; I have no problem with that.

What I do have a problem with is the absolute ridiculous lengths this is being taken to with this new series – more than three movies for an 80-page book? Are you serious? That's insane. They didn't do it this way back in the 80s. Notice how we didn't get a trilogy for each segment of the Back to the Future movies explaining how the various alternate timelines came to pass. There was no Indiana Jones prequel trilogy where we got to see three movies of him as a kid learning to jump off shit and lash with a whip. Though, honestly I hesitate to say that, as I'm afraid of what might happen next.

It's just too much. The best stories aren't great because they never end and have spinoffs made about minuscule elements of the story – they're great because they end at the right time. The traditional story arc is a beginning, a middle and an end; not a beginning, middle, end and then a billion little side-stories, anecdotes and addendums attached on and forced on the population like a kid who won't eat his veggies with his mouth held open. That's not a real story; it's just not being able to let go of something at the right time. It's no different than a shitty TV show dragging on for twelve seasons long after everyone's done watching.

And it's quite insidious how they hook you in – the persisting argument in favor for these endless spinoffs, rehashes, sequels, is that they're showing us something we need the answer to, or that they're showing us the backstory of something. It's a quite devilish marketing ploy that's really just a thinly-veiled excuse to keep making money – oh, we need to explain this one thing from the original series, so we're throwing billions of dollars and plenty of talented actors, backstage guys and more to GIVE YOU THOSE EXPLANATIONS. Never mind the buckets of money pouring into our pockets and the general dead-eyed cynicism of the rest of the public. It's to answer our questions!

I realize I'm kind of in the minority on this, but I'm going to say it: The best stories don't need tons and tons of explanations. If you can't draw us in with your characters, world-building, plot twists, social commentary or whatever other elements you wanted to convey, and you have to explain pages and pages of exposition and facts and tidbits and then go on to make prequels where you explain your explanations...you probably need to re-work your narrative a little bit. If you can't convey whatever you need to do in your beginning-middle-end story arc, you probably don't need to be making money in Hollywood. But alas – they are anyway.

Aside from that, do good stories need EVERYTHING explained? Can nothing be ambiguous or left to the imagination? I'm not saying everything has to be a Lynchian escapade into the depths of the soul and have all kinds of artsy abstractions, I just think there's something to be said for the power of mystery and of telling a story over explaining every minute detail. The whole matters more than the cogs and gears that make it up, if you know what I mean. Get an emotional message across, and have a point to what you're doing. Then worry about explaining the technical details. But that's just me. Apparently some see it differently, and that's your own prerogative I guess. But even so, there comes a point when explaining and more explaining is just a bad storytelling form.

On the other hand of this two-forked road to hell we have DC and their upcoming “I wish we were as cool as Marvel” attempt, also known as Batman vs Superman. I'll also accept for the name “We forgot what was cool about The Dark Knight and instead accentuated its worst elements.” The Dark Knight was great because it finally gave us a comic book movie that took itself seriously, and no I don't mean in the way that it was gritty and violent. I mean it was serious in that it was an actual movie. It took characters we loved from a different medium and worked them into a real movie with those characters in adapted roles because Christopher Nolan actually understood that film is a different media than comics and you don't need to have everything exactly the fucking same all the time.

These days, you don't really get that. I dunno, but I get the idea a lot of these comic movies are seriously afraid of the batshit "HOW DARE YOU CHANGE A THING FROM OUR HOLY TEXT" crowd on the Internet, because comic movies since then have never reached that same level of cinematic quality. As good as some of the early Marvel movies got, there was always a pervading safeness to them, where it just felt like the sole purpose was for the audience to go 'hey, there's that character I liked! There's that thing I wanted to see happen!' Maybe some people feel differently, but that's kinda what I keep getting from those films.

They have a shitload of other superhero tie-ins set up for the next six years until 2020 – well, bravo. You guys do realize we don't really need every single movie to be lined out for us, right? I mean goddamn. You're already sitting on a ton of money. It's not like peoples' interest will wane if you don't shovel the information down our throats every damn day. Just chill the fuck out!

This whole thing is just out of hand as well because, as many before me have said, WE DON'T NEED THAT MANY SUPERHERO FILMS. Do you guys really think peoples' favorite movies lists are going to be comprised in 15 years of just Marvel and DC adaptations? I wouldn't be complaining if these films were made by genuine fans who just wanted to convey the story, but for the most part, these movies are made just to keep the conveyor belt moving to make more movies after that, whether it's sequels or 'collaboration' films like Avengers or Justice League – that's the only reason they're doing all these separate films, which is a shame because I'm sure under different management, we could get some really gripping and powerful stories out of them. If you're a huge die-hard comic fan, you could probably go further than me here and list off some of the emotional conflicts, drama and social messages that could possibly be tackled, which DC will definitely not do and we'll deservedly hate them for it.

Marvel tends to fare a little better on this aspect, as their films are at least entertaining enough to watch in theaters – but even that is going to wear thin, and probably pretty soon. They got lucky with Guardians of the Galaxy being such a fun, emotional movie, but I just don't think they can keep it up for much longer. People are going to get tired of these films. The comic geeks will stick to their comics and the casual fans will start to move on and go “hey, I really feel like watching a nice drama or a gripping detective mystery.”

"Hmmm...on second thought, Pride and Prejudice sounds good about now!"

It's just the endless stream of sequels and connections – yes, it was an interesting idea, but it's too much now. It's overcooked. There are too many options and people will get burnt out. If you're just making movies that will only exist so you can make more movies, it becomes a cannibalistic process. There eventually won't be any reason to go see more, because you'll just be worn the hell out of all of it. Superhero films are reaching the oversaturation point. It's coming fast, and soon the bottom will drop out and the whole thing will be fucked. Nobody really wants THAT many big-ass movies full of explosions and guys shelling out witty quips. It might sound great at first, but just like that time you ate too many of your grandma's fudge brownies and then spent the rest of the night moaning on the floor in the bathroom – you'll soon find it wasn't what you wanted. It was too much and you got sick of it.

I started this thing weeks ago and more shit keeps coming out that I feel like I could add to it. A Toy Story 4? Really? Granted, the other three are near-flawless kid's movies, so logically I should be excited, but...the third one was such a fucking perfect ending. Why make another? You can end on a high note! It isn't too late! You can still cancel the project before it goes too far down the rabbit hole!

Granted, this is the only part of this article I'm going to say might turn out OK. I mean, yes, I would've rather it ended with the third one. But maybe, just maybe, there's a chance it could be okay - despite my worries of it turning into another sequel-marathon down the road...

I guess really it all boils down to one thing – are these movies going to be good? After all, that is the main consideration when talking about any kind of art – does it succeed at what it wanted to do, and is it quality? It may be presumptuous of me to say so, and some of you may not agree, but I'm going to say no, they probably won't be – at least not as good as any one of them individually might've been, if it was made purely out of a love for storytelling, moviemaking or anything else.

The movies I mentioned in this article, for the most part, are being made just to continue shoveling out more movies after them. They're machinations in a conveyor belt, not integral, impassioned stories. With the sheer volume of crap just lined up to come out years and years from now, planned out as meticulously as a trip itinerary for a busy lawyer, is ANY of it going to have even a little bit of a point to it? Any slightly good ideas in these movies will be lost in the constant static-noise of the rest of them all cluttering up the box office every week. They already have so many big plot elements and events planned out that there won't be any room for actual creativity in the process. Where's the spontaneity, the twists, the original creativity that directors and actors will get to bring to the table? It's incredibly telling that Idris Elba, while working on the last Thor movie, called the process “torture” while he would've rather been working on a more personal project.

But alas – this is just echoes in the wind. What I've said here won't change anything in the big picture. That will have to be left to Hollywood once this whole thing blows up in their face.

Images copyright of their original owners; I own none of them.

When Movies Become More Than Movies

Movies are changing in so many ways, one of the most overt being the way they are presented to us. The old days gave us movies straight – just a stand-alone hour and a half to two hour flick, no adornments, no extra stuff attached, just the straight film as it was. Now, though, that’s different. Now, it almost seems like the traditional forms of movies just aren’t enough to please moviegoers anymore. Movies are going interactive.

DISCLAIMER: Most people who watch movies are not this attractive. Picture from movietwatch.blogspot.com.

That sounds like a rather extreme conclusion – obviously plenty of movies today are still very traditionally done, and people enjoy them fine. However, a large portion of the big movies in theaters now don’t seem content with just being movies. They have to try to be something else – like, say, a comic book. The most blatant example of what I’m talking about is Marvel’s Avengers series.

For the whole two of you that aren’t up to date, they’re basically reconstructing the entire way we see movie franchises, sequels and tie-ins. They’ve taken their four big box-office draw superheroes – Thor, Captain America, Hulk and Iron Man – and crammed them into one big movie in The Avengers. They’re also making individual films for each one, and sequels for all of them, in between each Avengers movie. The effect is a constant whirlpool of hype and – somewhat cynically so, perhaps – box office dough.

Hot chick in her underwear destroying everything? That's two cliches in one. Picture from businessinsider.com.

By doing this, Marvel has changed the way we watch movies. We have to keep watching each one as they come out if we want to keep up with the storyline that will eventually be shown in Avengers 2 in 2015 or so. The little clips and easter eggs they sprinkle in after the end credits in each individual hero’s film only makes it more necessary to see each one if one wants to get the whole story.

The style of marketing has made the series of films play out more like a series of comic books. We get multiple films that act as “comic book issues” for each character, then a big multi-spanning tie-in adventure with all of them in one. Which is appropriate, seeing as all of these tights-and-spandex crusaders originally spawned from the ink-pen page anyway. Things are coming full circle with the way these Marvel movies are playing out. Back to the roots – which is a trend all its own.

This was a natural outcome. Naturally films are changing in style and approach. As the world has grown more interactive, movies have changed in approach – this all reflects the 24/7, interconnected mentality going on. Everything has to be at full-speed all the time. There’s no room for downtime anymore in the news and the hype-train has to keep going at full speed, no stops until Bedlam, miles to go before sleep. Hype has to keep going. As cynical as it sounds, that IS a big part of why movies are so inter-connected and span so many various titles now. Money!

You can see more examples of movies trying to be other things in how we do young adult movies now. Three huge Y.A. franchises – Harry Potter, Twilight and the upcoming Hunger Games: Mockingjay – split up their final films into two movies, so as to make more money---cough, cough, I mean, preserve the integrity of the stories. You know. By making sure you see all the details the author of the book intended. That's why they had to stretch out The Hobbit into three movies, you know; because otherwise it just wouldn't have integrity. It wasn't about making money at all.

Picture from thewrap.com.

Personally I like movies better when they’re movies. The way these franchises are making out, it’s like they think they’re making books with visual accompaniment. The Hunger Games and Harry Potter films are structured like books rather than movies. They have chapters and cliffhangers, and people want to keep watching because they’re unsatisfied until they can see the rightful end of the story. That’s not how movies used to work (not all the time, at least, like now) – it’s interesting that they’ve changed to become this way.

"But...I wanted to see the rest!" Picture from vampirediaries.alloyentertainment.com.

It’s also interesting that so many book-to-movie transitions have gone so well these days. Between comic book adaptations like Watchmen to the aforementioned Hunger Games as well as more contemporary novels like The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, filmmakers are trying harder to keep true to the source material when they adapt into movie forms. For die hard fans, that’s a great thing – if you really, really wanted to see a visual representation of Lisbeth Salander slicing up some pervert with no changes from how she did it in the original book, the movie will work perfectly for you – either version, Swedish or American.

Picture from stevenspielberg.wordpress.com.

Call me a heretic, but I always enjoy seeing a creative, visionary director make changes to a story for the silver screen. I find it interesting to see different interpretations of a story. Of course, many of them are crap, but you do get gems such as Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining here and there – that’s worth it.

Jack's happy. Why can't you be? Picture from blogs.indiewire.com.

Most scriptwriters or directors won’t go that route – with the increased Twitter and Facebook communication between creative artists and fans, it’s easier to know what fans want. Thus, there’s no excuse for dissonance between an artistic personality and his or her fanbase anymore – there should be no confusion. Though, I admit I could be partaking in some wishful thinking here.

Overall, the way movies are done now – in a more interactive format for the fans – isn’t good or bad, it’s just different. We will always have traditional, movies-for-movie-fans films, but now we have something else. Now we have movies that interact with the audience and sprawl into larger creations, becoming more than just a self-contained film. The Avengers movies are parts of a whole, and they act like issues of a comic book series. The Harry Potter/Hunger Games movies are visual reflections of their respective books – they have multiple chapters.

Movies aren’t just a fourth wall between the makers and the audience anymore – we’re not just consumers anymore. We play a more active role now. We commit ourselves to these sequels and we’re suckered into seeing all of them, even when we don’t like some of the ones that have come out. Movies are becoming a larger thing now – as they evolve, movies are experimenting with the format of filmmaking and release, and becoming something more epic and immersive in scope, if not necessarily in storytelling.

I hope the storytelling can reach the same quality as the effort put into arranging these films over multiple years, franchises and directors. That would be great. Right now though, things are in the hands of the people making the money. That can’t be denied. Personally I just hope this kind of experimentation with how movies are released doesn’t just degenerate into pure commercialism, as there are plenty of good films still coming out under what I’ve talked about here.

Case in point: Captain America: The Winter Soldier is an amazing movie that everyone should go see. Get on it now! What the hell are you waiting for, the fucking second coming of Christ to tell you to go see it?! Isn't my word good enough anymore?

Picture from fansided.com.