WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH FANDOM?

Do you know what I love? The idea that we have all this entertainment. We live in a society where creators are making art. They are creating stories left and right that will soon inspire and entertain the masses and they will create them in different mediums:

Film. Television. Literature. Music. Comic Books. Video Games. 

The best part about these mediums is that after a long, rough day at work someone can just kick back and escape into another universe beyond their wildest dreams. Pure imagination up on the screen or page. The best ways to escape. Now the worst way to escape can be the outlet in which trillions of users can intensely discuss their thoughts and feelings...

THE BLEEPING INTERNET!

Granted, you can find beautiful, inspirational, and hilarious things online, but others would be blind not to see how toxic and depressing users can get online. Let’s face it. We live in a society where the art that we enjoy are treated as products since they are being sold to consumers by major corporations. Even though we can enjoy the craft of these pieces, in the end, it’s about a business thriving and these things cost money. 

For anything we buy, any service we buy we have an expectation in place for how we want these things to be. A household appliance, for example, the way our food is served and tastes at a restaurant can be one thing, but how we as consumers want our art to look and feel. How we want it to affect us. In the big event films and TV series I’ve experienced as of recent, I couldn’t help, but see how the expectations for these artistic creations have been blown out of proportion by the people who have seen them. The consumers, or customers, who want to be satisfied with their product, yes? 

And don’t get me wrong. Expectations aren’t always necessarily a bad thing considering when I go into something like a Marvel movie, I expect it to feel like a Marvel movie in the very least. The same could be said for any upcoming sequels of franchises I love. Even if the story could feel potentially different than the other movies in a franchise like Phantom Menace being a small-scaled political space movie instead of all-out adventurous war movies in the original trilogy. The tone, feel, and look of it still felt like Star Wars to me. It’s just blowing out of proportion what someone thinks the story SHOULD be and having the movie made up in their head. More on that later.

When it comes to these mediums of storytelling, the big event movies, TV shows, and video games, boy, can the fans have their voice heard! We have the Internet as an outlet and anyone can express their feelings being positive and negative. And let’s face it, society now, ain’t sunshine and rainbows. We live in a time filled with political ideologies and cynicism that it’s gratefully affected our society in more ways than we realize. I mean sure every period had its cynics and critics. I mean, heck, John Lennon saying The Beatles were “Bigger than Jesus”, made citizens burn Beatles records. It’s always been crazy, but we have the Internet now and people can be more vocal than they ever have in the history of...well, history.

So the big event movie is about to be released. The next sequel to the biggest franchise of all time. The FINAL season to one of the greatest shows of all time. What happens? How do we fans react? Well, the excitement for these things is real! When The Phantom Menace released in May of 1999, the fandom was bubbling with excitement. A new movie in the franchise they fell in love with. How can you go wrong? And if you see reactions from news broadcasts back in the day it was rather positive. But as we all know the more people thought of it and revisited it, they found it to not be the Star Wars movie that THEY wanted to see. But when you think about the people who were jazzed after seeing the movie, some would think they were simply trying to convince themselves it was amazing. But I feel that there had to be fans out there who accepted the film for what it was and enjoyed it.

The same could be said for The Last Jedi in regards to how after fans saw The Force Awakens it excited them enough to see what would happen next. And then what was expected by some fans didn’t exactly come to fruition and when it turned out to be more along the lines of an epic that had beautiful character studies and broadened the fantasy elements, it upset fans greatly. Or the final season of Game of Thrones HAD to resolve character arcs and story conflicts perfectly and if it was done differently, it wouldn’t fly with fans.

You see, fandom can be a mess and the problem isn’t so much that these specific shows and movies or any other stories have to be universally liked. There may be something you see in something that you just don’t enjoy engaging with and that’s totally fine. There are certain movies where I’ve come to the conclusion that I just didn’t prefer how it panned out. Like for example, I didn’t LOVE the direction the Jurassic World movies went. 

Jurassic Park is one of my favorite movies of all time and I really loved its sequel, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, and thought it was the perfect epilogue to the first movie. I was content with how it ended there and didn't engage with the other sequels after that. While I felt this new direction felt too much like a comic book movie franchise, I find in retrospect that the first World movie can be enjoyable on its own. And if there are fans of the new direction I can see why, but I don’t find myself wanting to go to my local cinema to watch another Jurassic Park movie. 

I’m sure there are others out there like me who prefer certain aspects of the franchise more than others. I love that the first two Jurassic movies have things to say about the consequences of how we as humans toy with the natural order. It made the story of the first movie so good and elevated the action, but what was also so amazing about it was that it felt grounded in our reality. Jurassic World to me felt like they shifted the tone a bit, to give the movies a more fun, entertaining blockbuster vibe and I can honestly enjoy the first movie for that reason, but would I call it as thought-provoking as the first? 

Definitely not. I just didn’t find myself invested with the story that shifted into Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. But I feel the difference with the Jurassic franchise that lost me as opposed to something like Star Wars and Game of Thrones was that Jurassic was in our reality whereas Wars and Thrones were in fantasy worlds where any choice made, to me, didn’t feel off-kilter like character choices, dialogue, or even story.

I feel the difference there is that in fantasy or science fiction writing, the possibilities for world-building and character depth are endless. But if it’s within our reality that was set up a certain way like in Jurassic Park or even Indiana Jones and changes into a different movie like with Fallen Kingdom feeling more like a comic book movie in terms of tone or Kingdom of the Crystal Skull like a science-fiction movie, then it just doesn’t gel with me. 

They don’t feel like the movies I fell in love with and the same could be said for Star Wars in terms of its prequel and sequel trilogy or Games of Thrones in the last few seasons where it wasn’t purely adapting the novels or JJ Abrams' Star Trek movies not feeling like the original series. But where I can forgive franchises like Star Wars is because the stories coming off of the original trilogy, to me, had to feel different because we were dealing with different time eras that still gave viewers the impression they were still in the same fantasy universe but had to have a different type of story and look aesthetically different to differentiate itself from the other movies.

Game of Thrones had the show-runners maintaining the difficult task of adapting merely outlines of George R.R. Martin’s upcoming novels, but still trying to tell a story that still felt tonally consistent with the previous seasons and would be able to leave an impression on viewers based on how it told the story. The final season to me had pretty spectacular surprises that felt in line with the unconventional character-driven story I’ve been used to and where I see the criticisms about it feeling too cliché or out of touch with certain character motivations I found to be a bit odd. If viewers wanted something to happen so badly to have a sort of pay-off like in other epic fantasies, wouldn’t that make the show just as cliché as people were already claiming it to be? Or if anything does it warrant replying or making a 10 point Twitter thread about why something is “ruined” feel justified about what was given to us?

Seriously, you were probably told this to you where you were younger, but if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything. Like I said earlier I may not LIKE the Jurassic movies now, but I don’t go and blab about it on social media. I’m not gonna tag Colin Trevorrow and tell him how wrong he was to make the movie he wanted to make as a creator or call out the people who were wrong for liking it. I have no problem with people being positive over the stuff I don't like. Heck, I was even teased for liking “bad” movies like the Star Wars sequel trilogy or DC movies and I don’t even think I feel like talking to people about certain franchises unless I know they remain positive about them or if I’m writing about it right here on my blog. And it honestly kills me to not be able to talk Star Wars with people because I LOVE this franchise with every fiber of my being and sadly a majority of people do not like these new movies and have the same mindset as I do.

Like what’s so wrong with surprises and subverting expectations? It’s NOT lazy, it’s just a fun way to tell the story and allows someone to analyze what the director was trying to communicate with the audience. You don’t have to like the movie. I’m just saying rather than having the knee-jerk reaction and viewers let things marinate instead, it’ll probably make for more of a positive way to look at these stories differently. 

Another reason why I don’t feel some franchises are worth talking about is that I know some things can lead to a pointless debate. It’s like trying to argue politics like you’re not going to convince someone who’s strongly right-wing, left-wing’s beliefs and get them to magically agree with you. Some things can take time to think over and someone may be so set in their beliefs that the argument is just pointless and you’re fighting with a brick wall.

Also, if someone wants you to defend something and try to convince you otherwise why it’s wrong (and this isn’t how I would go about things, but in this case) SCREW ‘EM! It doesn’t matter and who cares if everything has to have meaning in the stories or media we love? Can’t we just enjoy it for what it is and also enjoy the visual beauty of it? Think about it like this, when you’re watching a sunset you only have to worry about it being a lovely sunset and don’t have to worry about the significance of it. Do you know who said that? George Lucas. 

To paraphrase, he said that like a sunset you watch a movie and you enjoy it because that’s what entertainment is. However, I do love to read into how the director communicates the art to viewers. I think that can be very fun, but in the end, the experience of watching a movie or a show is supposed to be fun. Playing a game is fun. Reading books is fun. When the original Star Wars was released, it was meant to be an escape from such a crummy world. Lucas wanted viewers to feel uplifted, but the reason why the movies felt so deep and elevated was that viewers made them out to be that way. It’s the viewers that made the art feel deeper than it already was. The art we love doesn’t always have to line-up or be deep. Life is short. Be more positive. Enjoy for what it is or if not just drop it.

In all this, I think it's important to enjoy the entertainment that we're already given and if you don't like it there's always the next thing. And if this negative talk is bothering you as it bothered me, just take a week off of social media or talk about anything else with people. There is more to life than entertainment or if you know anyone who can be positive and shares your passion then engage with them. If you surround yourself with positivity in that light and don't look to get in an argument, you'll feel a lot better about the world around you. I didn't mean to be all deep about this. I just wanted to communicate my thoughts here and offer perspective about the stuff I was going through about fandom and the conversations I've had and what we can do to have a better outlook and open our eyes to these things. 



So if you're struggling, just focus on the good and take a deep dive. Break down what's making you upset and take action. If it means deleting social media apps on your phone, muting or blocking people, or removing yourself from conversations about stuff like Star Wars or Game of Thrones, then do it. You'll feel a lot better when you do and when you watch that movie or show or read that book or play that game, just remember how it affects you. Remember the beauty of it and how it touches you. I even found when I'm watching a movie I love I can ignore the noise and have a great time with it. So please do enjoy the stuff you enjoy and that goes for any type of hobby. And remember in the end it's all about the escape and having fun.

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