So, fandom in general…what is it? Well it’s an avid interest which can
sometimes boarder on obsession on a single genre, character, or body of work. DC
Comics fandom exists in very broad strokes and can encompass hundreds or
thousands of characters, comics, novels, movies, cartoons, television shows and
video games. Those that ascribe to this
fandom have a vast and sometime oddly specific encyclopedia of knowledge
concerning the body of work that encompasses DC Comics properties.
That can of course be narrowed down. Maybe you are an avid Batman fan and thus
might as well have a Master’s degree in all things concerning the Dark Knight.
Or perhaps you are a Transformers
fan and thus have spent years, or perhaps decades devoting your free time to
the property in all its incarnations.
Regardless of your fandom, whether it is to a publisher,
property, or character, you have a vested interest in all media related to your
fandom, and thus you take it very personally when you see it mistreated by
Hollywood.
What sets fans apart from the general audience is simple,
passion. Fans have a passion for the
characters, the story, and demand nothing but the best from the studio. The general audience wants to take their
dates on something that will kill two hours without having to resort to actual
conversation. And eat popcorn. But do we, the fans, shoot ourselves in the
proverbial foot when it comes to our expectations.
I’ve personally had the privilege to be on many sides of the
spectrum during my professional life. I’ve
been a supervisor, a writer, and artist, an editor, and a fan. It’s really as a supervisor and an editor,
however that I’ve gotten the best perspective of how the whole equation
works. You have to dissociate yourself
from the body of work, not only pick at the nuances, but the piece as a
whole. I can tell you if the whole of a
story is great and then in the same sentence says “However in chapter 6, paragraph
4, and line 8 you use the word “burrito” as a verb and that can take a reader out
of the scene.” I’ve defended my employees’
actions and decisions before those casting judgement, and then once the situation
is over I’ve reprimanded them for making the wrong choices or using poor
judgement. So I tend to analyze and
sometimes over analyze a body of work, and I try to do so objectively from all
points of view.
Take Transformers:
Age of Extinction. I’ve been with
the franchise since 1985 when the toys hit my local K-Mart. I’ve been with the robots in disguise through
thick and thin, and so I had expectations as a fan when I heard the Dinobots
were to grace the big screen. I heard
the outcries: Optimus was too violent,
the movie was too Michael Bay, the Dinobots had little to do, there were too
many humans, etc. I shared many of these
viewpoints. I was not pleased that
Optimus was so willing to turn his back on humanity. I was disappointed that no Dinobot got called
by name or spoke. I did feel the
Transformers had little screen time.
Then I had to look at it from the general audience point of
view. I read the reviews from the
critics, but the film still did amazingly well at the box office. If it was such a bad movie, why were people
throwing their money at it in droves? Was it because people like bad movies? Or was it a better movie than we gave it
credit for because it didn’t appeal to our sensibilities?
If they made the Transformers
movies just for the transformers fans, then they probably wouldn’t make their
money back. Changes had to be made to
appeal to a wider audience, ones who weren’t familiar with thirty years of back
story, by my count at least 20 independent animated series (counting the
Japanese iterations since often story lines differed) and more comics than I
care to count right now. There was no
way everyone was going to be satisfied with the end result.
The same thing happened not too long ago with Superman Returns, which was set in the
same cinematic universe as the Christopher Reeve Superman films, at least the first two, with the latter two
apparently excised from continuity. The
film harkened back to those old films, and avid fans of those films, myself
included, loved the movie. Yes we could
pick out problems with it but we were still pretty entrenched in the nostalgia
that we could look past it. Yet the
general audience and many of the broader DC
Comics fans demanded more. “Why can’t
we see Superman get in a fight with someone?”
In Man of Steel they got their wish, and immediately came the cries “Superman
doesn’t kill! Why did half the city need
to be destroyed?!”
Because Zach Snyder looked at the Superman mythos and
decided to up the ante. There was a call
for Superman to fight someone, but that kind of fight is going to have an
effect on the environment and for the most dynamic fight scene, you need a
dynamic environment. Why did Superman
kill? Because killing Zod fit with the
tone of the story.
So looping back around to where this all started…did the
movie makers ruin the film, or did the audience ruin it for themselves? With everything art related, there isn’t a
right or wrong answer…it’s all subjective.
Art, beauty, entertainment in general is all in the eye of the
beholder. I can criticize bad movies,
but I can also appreciate them. Batman and Robin was probably one of
the worst comic book based movies ever created, and it bombed at the box
office, and I hate it, but I can also appreciate it from a certain point of
view. It’s stupid beyond belief but it’s
a harmless stupid. It’s something I can
pop in with friends and we can riff on.
I can watch it alone and view it through the same lens that I view the
Adam West television series. If I don’t
take it seriously, then it’s not that bad.
Just to clarify, it’s still bad, but in the same way the
Adam West series was.
So do I shortchange myself when I expect too much from
Hollywood? Probably. Should I stop expect the very best product
they can make? Absolutely not. Yes at the end of the day Spider-Man, Superman, Batman, the Ninja
Turtles, and Transformers, these
are all very silly concepts but that doesn’t mean they should be done sloppily,
but maybe I should curb my criticism a little because before I know it, they
will roll out with something else. Maybe
the next iteration will be better, maybe not, but at least we can enjoy the
ride.
Thanks for reading.
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