Fanboy influence on hollywood: Good or bad?

[larryfilmmaker]

Sweet article about us fanboys and fangirls and our influence on Hollywoodland and the direction it's going.

http://www.fanfilmfollies.com/index.php/2010/07/28/the-fanboy-influence/

 

[Octoberist]

It's both good and bad.

The problem with fanboys is that 1/4 of them are highly opinionated and ill-informed people. The rest are reasonable people, so I would say it should be based on the consensus.

The studios just need to use their best judgment.

 

[Figs]

It's both good and bad.

The problem with fanboys is that 1/4 of them are highly opinionated and ill-informed people. The rest are reasonable people, so I would say it should be based on the consensus.

The studios just need to use their best judgment.

I don't know, looking at talkbacks I would say 1/4 are reasonable people.

 

[danoyse]

So basically....all movies for the last 10 years have sucked? X2 was bad? Harry Potter movies are awful?

I don't know, for every crapfest I've definitely seen quite a few good movies too.

 

[TNC9852002]

Spider-Man 3

 

[Octoberist]

Pretty much, studio just have to be smart about it. Just have a creative spark and go from there. Get the right people who respect the material.

 

[Mrs. Sawyer]

I would probably say %40 perfect are misinformed, and %60-%70 perfect of fanboys are just plain nitpicky.

 

[larryfilmmaker]

Pretty much, studio just have to be smart about it. Just have a creative spark and go from there. Get the right people who respect the material.

I agree with you, but respect for material doesn't always translate into dollar signs, and that's what studios care about.

 

[comicfan4Life]

I agree with you, but respect for material doesn't always translate into dollar signs, and that's what studios care about.

That is true, it's all about the all mighty dollar. The stuff at comic-con and other conventions are nice, but they know they need to get us excited by saying, "See what we did, it's just like the book, page for page, pose for pose!" and all so we can go, "Yes they nailed it, I'm going to see it when it comes out!". Yes, you do have directors and others in Hollywood that care for the fans (not just because they make their living off of us) and there are those that are actually fans of the source material (not because they're making the movie and need to be ready for Q & A sessions), but money is still a factor.

Case in point, Raimi didn't want venom. We did. Sony knew they could make bank, so they wanted venom too. He was added to fit into the story and then we got Topher Brock, jazz dance Parker, and I hope sorry for everything I done Sandman was apart of that too.

 

[Leenie]

I think it's both good and bad.

A good result of it would be The Dark Knight. The director did his own thing but also respected the source material, and boom: We have a fantastic movie.

A bad result of it would be Watchmen (in my opinion). While I don't think the Watchmen movie flat-out sucked, I DO think that it could have been so much more. I think the fanboy pressure affected the film negatively. We have many panels from the comic duplicated in the movie; most of the images were there. The problem? I never once felt that the movie understood what those images meant, thus making the film feel a little bit hollow.

 

[Heretic]

The problem with the article is...OF COURSE the movies are just skimming the surface! Comic books have years to tell a story and develop characters. Movies have 2 hours. Lord Of The Rings, as long as they are, are not the totality of the novels and the characters are severely short-changed in comparison. Because the novels have more space to deal with characterization. Movies like X-2 and Spider-man 2 are good, cool movies.

However, we saw in films like Spider-Man 3, X-3, Wolverine and many others that they started with the idea of "what would be cool enough to get people's money?" and then built from there. They should always be starting with the natural evolution of the characters and filling in action scenes around that.

 

[larryfilmmaker]

The problem with the article is...OF COURSE the movies are just skimming the surface! Comic books have years to tell a story and develop characters. Movies have 2 hours. .

There are plenty of non-comic book movies that have delved deep into multiple character stories while tying them all up into one brilliant narrative along the way. It's not that there's no time. 2 hours has been enough time to make people laugh, cry, and geek out more times than anybody can count. There's no shortage of time. It's that doing so in a comic book movie alienates a large portion of the audience. The portion that just wants a dumb 2 hours of cheese and explosions. If you sell a poster of a giant robot truck standing in front of an explosion, you lose half your audience the moment an intelligent story starts creeping it's way into the movie.

 

[Ghostvirus]

Horrible. Fanchildren who bag groceries, spent 2 weeks studying film. Shouldn't be allowed to tell the big boys how to play.

 

[Apollo]

"Rami...The kid fans want Venom...They love venom..I know what the kids want....I WANT VENOM! "

 

[El Payaso]

Fanboys having a word in a creativbe process will be always a bad thing.

If they're going to screw it up, let them do it on their own, not because fanboys thought/didn't thought this/that way.

I think it's both good and bad.

A good result of it would be The Dark Knight. The director did his own thing but also respected the source material, and boom: We have a fantastic movie.

A bad result of it would be Watchmen (in my opinion). While I don't think the Watchmen movie flat-out sucked, I DO think that it could have been so much more. I think the fanboy pressure affected the film negatively. We have many panels from the comic duplicated in the movie; most of the images were there. The problem? I never once felt that the movie understood what those images meant, thus making the film feel a little bit hollow.

He respected the source material to some extent, pretty much like every director does. Nolan - thank God - hasn't taken influence from fanboys or we would have getting Robin and a Superman cameo. And of course less realism and more colorful spandex.

I totally agree about everything you said about Watchmen. Snyder makes great visuals but bland movies.

 

[chaseter]

Spider-Man 3

SM3 was the fault of Avi Arad and Sony.

 

[Doctor Jones]

The thing a studio needs to do is hire the right director. He doesn't need to be a fan though. Just make sure he is passionate and understands the material and wants to respect it, and does it, read the comics. Fans shouldn't be involved. They're opinionated and nitpicky and we all know this. If a filmmaker followed a request of one fan than it would only cater to their wish. Just make something everyone can like and is accessible.

Respecting the source material is also respecting the fans at the same time. That's how I see it.

 

[Heretic]

There are plenty of non-comic book movies that have delved deep into multiple character stories while tying them all up into one brilliant narrative along the way. It's not that there's no time. 2 hours has been enough time to make people laugh, cry, and geek out more times than anybody can count. There's no shortage of time. It's that doing so in a comic book movie alienates a large portion of the audience. The portion that just wants a dumb 2 hours of cheese and explosions. If you sell a poster of a giant robot truck standing in front of an explosion, you lose half your audience the moment an intelligent story starts creeping it's way into the movie.

That's because you have nothing to compare it to. No one is wondering why they didn't include little bits of personality traits and deep seeded childhood reasons why they think certain ways because all we see of the characters is in 2 hours. Some comic book movies accomplish this as well...but as comic readers we are aware that there is more to the character, and therefore nitpick things that non-comic readers would never notice.

 

[larryfilmmaker]

but as comic readers we are aware that there is more to the character, and therefore nitpick things that non-comic readers would never notice.

I don't think one has to be a fan of the original source material to tell that something is missing a strong heart or original narrative.

I wasn't a Transformers fan as a kid, but I still knew the movies were empty and soulless.

Off topic a bit.... sometimes the "depth" is totally phoned-in.
I think Batman is a character who is easy to use to trick the audience into thinking they've witnessed something deep or thought-provoking even if once the audience actually THINKS about what they just witnessed, they realize it's really not. He acts pretty emo and says poetic things so it sounds like there's more content than there sometimes is. I love Batman, just using a random example of fake character study. X-Men's another easy one to fake. Just mention equality and prejudice a few times and people think they just got a heart-felt message.

 

[Doctor Jones]

You don't know that. Things effect people differently.

I have no problem what The Dark Knight handled. Being that the films were given a more plausible approach or more grounded and believable, the themes can easily parallel what we are witnessing in real life. The Dark Knight was about a large scale response to a terrorist. Something that could easily parallel 9/11 or terrorism. But I don't think Nolan and co. sat down and said, "let's make a political allegory."

Why can't comic book films take on more serious subject matter? I think if they can touch into real world issues more and use it in their own films and how they handle that subject matter in context with the comic book element itself, why not? I think it makes the characters and story more endearing. And not just something we can look out of for escape. It can be escape, but it can also be confrontation. We can participate and discuss. X-Men uses prejudice and equality and the fight for the right of everyone. As in the comics. It is also something we are dealing with in real life. It's not the question of comparing these similarities, it's about people relating to them and understanding. It makes the story more involving and the audience would understand it more. And not just some mindless action film that comic books and its films have come under criticism for. Of course, have the comic book stuff we all love, but as clever filmmakers have done, tell a story that is mature. There's a level for kids to love and also for older audiences can look as well. It doesn't always have to be mindless fun. It can be, but not for everything. It depends on the nature of the characters. It fits the nature of Batman and X-Men, so use that. Spider-Man is fun and more light, but that doesn't mean they can't tackle more mature issues. Yet still falls in line with the spirit of what the comics were. SM2 did this. It was a serious film but had the comic book elements of fun and action. But it also told a great story that people could grasp onto.

 

[Original Spawn]

watchmen sucked because it wasn´t original, it was a mere copycat of the graphic novel

 

[danoyse]

The problem with the article is...OF COURSE the movies are just skimming the surface! Comic books have years to tell a story and develop characters. Movies have 2 hours. Lord Of The Rings, as long as they are, are not the totality of the novels and the characters are severely short-changed in comparison. Because the novels have more space to deal with characterization. Movies like X-2 and Spider-man 2 are good, cool movies.

They also have various incarnations of the material and different fanbases to deal with as a result. Some of these comics stretch back more than 50 years, so you have young and old fans who all want to see the version of the character that they grew up with. You have people who grew up with an animated or live-action TV series that may have taken liberties with the comic and has a fanbase who wants to see that in a big-screen version of that instead of going back to the original source material. If it's a sequel, then the original movie likely generated a new fanbase that only knows what they saw in the first film.

Studios need to make the film marketable to an audience that isn't just the fanboy crowd (who really only makes up a smaller portion of the audience) to make these movies marketable - sometimes they make the right choice and many times they make a horrible choice.

 

[Original Spawn]

well said and Brian synger and christoper nolan were not trying to trick the audience, brian didn´t like comics but made x-men because he could explore the theme of racism while chris nolan is somebody that knows what to do.

 

[Doctor Jones]

watchmen sucked because it wasn´t original, it was a mere copycat of the graphic novel

Which the fans seemed to absolutely love yet a year after its release it sucks. Execution is one thing, but they should have called it out before and had concerns of this. Now it suddenly sucks and is hollow.

I can guarantee you, if Snyder didn't do this and took more departures and shortened things and took whole scenes out and condensed it more, he would come under the same exact scrutiny. People would cry foul and say he didn't understand the comic and ruined it. He was damned either way.

 

[danoyse]

Off topic a bit.... sometimes the "depth" is totally phoned-in.
I think Batman is a character who is easy to use to trick the audience into thinking they've witnessed something deep or thought-provoking even if once the audience actually THINKS about what they just witnessed, they realize it's really not. He acts pretty emo and says poetic things so it sounds like there's more content than there sometimes is. I love Batman, just using a random example of fake character study. X-Men's another easy one to fake. Just mention equality and prejudice a few times and people think they just got a heart-felt message.

But in both cases they made those issues relatable to audiences. Nolan's Batman films dealt with terrorism, the consequences of vigilante justice, and who has the right to work above the law - and as someone who was in NYC on 9/11, I thought it was very geniune. It became as much a crime thriller as it was a superhero film and appealed to a much broader audience.

As far as X-Men, I'm thinking this author spent far too much time lamenting the loss of yellow spandex to see how well they made their own issues appeal to a mass audience. It took a genre that had been all but destroyed by Schumacher's Batman films and made it relevant again. Was it deep? No, but it humanized the superhero struggle, which made it work as a film and not just a comics adaptation.