So IGN's Tyler Robertson put out a piece on about fan
influenced movies recently and how it's not looking good. So this seems like as
much of a good jumping off point as any to talk about the idea of changes in a
piece of media or franchise and the issue that brings.
Did you know there has been fan feedback in films for years and films are shaped by such feedback? One of the earliest examples is the rumoured reaction to Mel Brook's Blazing Saddles where studio executives saw it and didn't laugh once during the famous beans scene.
However Mel Brooks and his team convinced the executives to do some test screenings and at the moment of the beans scene had said executives look into the theatre to hear roaring laughter from the audience and so the scene got to stay. This is an example of the audience helping keep a directors creative vision intact.
Hell while IGN argues the #Snydercut is the audience trying to influence change it could just be that they actually want to see the original creative vision of the director. I've heard that apparently Batman vs Superman's extended cut was a far better version than the theatrical version. I've recently watched Suicide Squad Extended cut, a film I saw in cinemas and I can go through Red Letter Media's review and list of criticism about the film and cross a good 50% of the problems off, as they just don't exist in the extended cut. The plot elements are more cohesive; we don't get introduced to the character seemingly multiple times; We get more development between Harley and Joker and we get a stronger running theme throughout the film of oddly enough love. Sure Jared Leto's joker is still one of the worst version and the plot is dumb overall and certain characters could have done with maybe actually being fleshed out but the extended cut is a better version. People want to know if the Zack Snyder's actual vision worked, I mean it probably won't work that well but it could have done.
With the Sonic movie the re-design of the game character's look for the movie just looked awful, people know what Sonic looks like. It also means the studio can take some existing sonic toy designs and slap "Sonic the Movie" on them to try and sell some merchandise. I mean was anyone really wanting to see the Sonic movies with the abomination version of Sonic for anything other than "Hipster Ironic" value?
The true problem of the modern age is being able to understand what feedback to listen too. It sounds dumb but some people just want to seem in on a trend and part of the double edged sword of the internet is with the readily available information it's easy for people to pretend so they can seem trendy. When some-one is yelling online about how Nintendo should make Zelda a girl to appease long terms fans you can readily laugh at the obvious show of how said person is lying about being a long time fan.
Examples like the Mary Sue mixing up the spin off Dead or Alive Extreme Beach
Volleyball 3 with the core fighting game series are also equally obvious to most people but the writer tried her best to pretend to be one of the
long time fans of the fighting game genre and Dead or Alive series. Their piece was
likely compiled with looking round the internet at the kind of core complaints
around the series to appear more legitimate in their complaints and objections rather than them genuinely knowing about said stuff.
Part of this is determining who you deem part of your core fanbase. As was seen with Reylo shippers when they caused a storm on social media recently and others on twitter were reporting on actions of Reylo shippers in actual showings. Are Reylo's the new core Star Wars fanbase? Who knows. Companies might also only care about who they deem most profitable and the question has to be asked even if you say Reylo's are the new core fanbase as other Star Wars fans have left, what room does that give Disney to sell stuff? Rey and Kylo Ren can't go on forever and Disney can't merely rely on just selling versions of Rey and Kylo marchandise forever and only telling those stories. The idea of not being able to go anywhere with stories could be said to be a big issue where shippers become the main fandom but that's a blog for another day.
The question for companies has to be who to listen to and who cares for the vision and the best version of the product, vs who wants things to change because they want to make the series into a basis for something else. Be that political messaging or just playing out some certain romance story they want to see happen or just to be able to claim they've "taken it away from those toxic fans" then calling for changes out of spite, because they weren't fans and hate the property now being popular because of the actual fans. Most fans really will want what is best for the property and what fits in best rather than ruining things just for a surprise twist or to make an impact. I wonder what kind of series would be stupid enough to do something that dumb eh?
Did you know there has been fan feedback in films for years and films are shaped by such feedback? One of the earliest examples is the rumoured reaction to Mel Brook's Blazing Saddles where studio executives saw it and didn't laugh once during the famous beans scene.
However Mel Brooks and his team convinced the executives to do some test screenings and at the moment of the beans scene had said executives look into the theatre to hear roaring laughter from the audience and so the scene got to stay. This is an example of the audience helping keep a directors creative vision intact.
Hell while IGN argues the #Snydercut is the audience trying to influence change it could just be that they actually want to see the original creative vision of the director. I've heard that apparently Batman vs Superman's extended cut was a far better version than the theatrical version. I've recently watched Suicide Squad Extended cut, a film I saw in cinemas and I can go through Red Letter Media's review and list of criticism about the film and cross a good 50% of the problems off, as they just don't exist in the extended cut. The plot elements are more cohesive; we don't get introduced to the character seemingly multiple times; We get more development between Harley and Joker and we get a stronger running theme throughout the film of oddly enough love. Sure Jared Leto's joker is still one of the worst version and the plot is dumb overall and certain characters could have done with maybe actually being fleshed out but the extended cut is a better version. People want to know if the Zack Snyder's actual vision worked, I mean it probably won't work that well but it could have done.
With the Sonic movie the re-design of the game character's look for the movie just looked awful, people know what Sonic looks like. It also means the studio can take some existing sonic toy designs and slap "Sonic the Movie" on them to try and sell some merchandise. I mean was anyone really wanting to see the Sonic movies with the abomination version of Sonic for anything other than "Hipster Ironic" value?
 |
| Image from IMDB |
The true problem of the modern age is being able to understand what feedback to listen too. It sounds dumb but some people just want to seem in on a trend and part of the double edged sword of the internet is with the readily available information it's easy for people to pretend so they can seem trendy. When some-one is yelling online about how Nintendo should make Zelda a girl to appease long terms fans you can readily laugh at the obvious show of how said person is lying about being a long time fan.
 |
| I've censored the name because people took the piss out of them enough at the time |
Part of this is determining who you deem part of your core fanbase. As was seen with Reylo shippers when they caused a storm on social media recently and others on twitter were reporting on actions of Reylo shippers in actual showings. Are Reylo's the new core Star Wars fanbase? Who knows. Companies might also only care about who they deem most profitable and the question has to be asked even if you say Reylo's are the new core fanbase as other Star Wars fans have left, what room does that give Disney to sell stuff? Rey and Kylo Ren can't go on forever and Disney can't merely rely on just selling versions of Rey and Kylo marchandise forever and only telling those stories. The idea of not being able to go anywhere with stories could be said to be a big issue where shippers become the main fandom but that's a blog for another day.
The question for companies has to be who to listen to and who cares for the vision and the best version of the product, vs who wants things to change because they want to make the series into a basis for something else. Be that political messaging or just playing out some certain romance story they want to see happen or just to be able to claim they've "taken it away from those toxic fans" then calling for changes out of spite, because they weren't fans and hate the property now being popular because of the actual fans. Most fans really will want what is best for the property and what fits in best rather than ruining things just for a surprise twist or to make an impact. I wonder what kind of series would be stupid enough to do something that dumb eh?
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