Is fandom scaring away top talent?

[DarkKnight88]

Fandom = [YT]O4AfA_lebIg[/YT]

 

[P Supreme]

I would say so if you believe some of the stories Disney couldn't get anyone to agree to do episode 9 until they had to ask JJ to help them out

but I rather up and coming guys get these gigs who at least will treat the material with respect and eager to make a name for them selves

 

[Aximili86]

Which hasn't worked out well for Lucasfilm. Three times. Their successes have been with the Big Gun types in Abrams and Howard, and a more indie-yet-well-established guy in Johnson.

 

[Kahran Ramsus]

That's such a bull**** statement, the "we've always been this way as a society" thing.

People weren't sending death threats to Marquand and anti-little-people mail to Warwick Davis over "Return Of The Jedi was for babies and you're all going to hell for Ewoks! Especially you, Lollipop Guild!".

Dekker wasn't getting harassed for 6 months over Robocop 3. The Superman III & IV guys weren't getting jack beyond bad critical reviews and a mild comment or two at a convention or film festival or whatever.

Yes, social media's a big part of this. But pretending basic civil interaction hasn't deteriorated over the last 10-15 years or so is pretty willfully friggin' ignorant. EpI seems to have been a pretty big watershed moment as far as fan backlash, but now we've advanced to death threats & longtime harassment over the Facebox & the Tweeties.

These people are basically Christian Bale in meltdown mode on the Salvation set, but 24/7, as actual people.

Yes, it was that bad back then. Ask John Lennon.

 

[Aximili86]

So, clinically-looney wackadoodle future-funny-farm inmate equates to hordes of supposedly-sane fanboys.

It's just the same thing.

Clearly nobody said society never had problem people. The assertion was there's never been big basically-accepted/mainstream lumps of people harassing directors, throwing racial slurs around, and threatening to kill directors over a sequel they didn't like. That's new.

If there were a few thousand other Chapmans out there in 1980 wanting Lennon dead, and specifically over a song or an album they disapproved of, sending correspondence en-masse and encouraging anyone to boycott any music he put out in future, you'd have a point. Very clearly they're not apples-to-apples situations, but you knew that when you posted it.

 

[Kahran Ramsus]

The fans were so bad towards Stephen King in the 80s that he wrote Misery because of it. That wasn't just a lone nut.

You can go back much further than that too. In 1913, Stravinsky's Rite of Spring caused riots in Paris.

 

[TheVileOne]

People should just delete their Twitters, Instagrams, and Facebooks. Don't engage with the toxic fanbase.

 

[Aximili86]

Come on now. King's said he wrote Misery to get back to horror because the fans didn't like him straying out of it with his previous novel. Not that he wrote Misery because psycho fans were threatening him.

He's also said his drug abuse and a weird dream he'd had around the time informed it.

As for Rite Of Spring, not personally familiar with it, but a few articles on google here are saying there's conflicting takes on what actually caused all that, among them class struggles between the fancy opera types and the weirdo misbehaving arty types. No doubt the piece was new & different and weird for the time, but it's still not a 1:1 comparison even if it was the cause. An equivalent would be "Stravinsky was getting threatening & harassing mail 6 months later and the local venues were being intimidated into never letting him conduct a performance there again".

 

[Fincher]

Frankly, I love comic books and movies, etc., but I would never call myself a nerd or a geek. I'd be ashamed to. Because of people who go to such ridiculous lenghts to display their hatred.

If that's what fandom is about, nerds deserve to be depicted as sad, pathetic losers who live in their mother's basement. Time to grow up and express passion in healthier ways.

The fundamental flaw here is the idea that people do this because they're nerds/geeks. It ignores, for example, sports fans who get into fights at games or riot when their team loses. Or parents at their kids' sporting events who are confrontational despite the lack of anonymity, even though it's just a game. Or people who trample other people because a store is having a sale.

 

[terry78]

Because sports is viewed as more "normal." Going nuts over a movie or TV show or video game is viewed as weird.

 

[jmc]

I couldn't agree more, but tell studios to give up hundreds of millions or billions in cash, especially when these tentpoles fund the entirety of the studios' slate for the rest of the year.

They don’t have to. They just have to curb thier expenses. Yeah, it means having to do some actual work, but as far as I’m concerned that’s a good thing.

 

[Da-Scribe]

The fundamental flaw here is the idea that people do this because they're nerds/geeks. It ignores, for example, sports fans who get into fights at games or riot when their team loses. Or parents at their kids' sporting events who are confrontational despite the lack of anonymity, even though it's just a game. Or people who trample other people because a store is having a sale.

Eh the thing with your example is they're all measurable to some degree or another. You score points in sports and work your way to a championship. I don't agree with anyone going nuts over a game, but I can at least get it. Because your team actually has something to win/lose and you can actually argue via whatever stats that your team is objectively better.

Even with people trampling each other over sales, there's a limited commodity at stake. There's something to be achieved. A status marker, because you now have something that others don't at a price that others will likely never see again. I don't agree with it, but like I said, I can get it.

But with movies, what's the end goal here? TLJ was a critical and box office success. Fans still went rabid. And that's why they're considered toxic and crazy. Because there's no real way to please them unless you make the movie exactly as they want you to and that is an impossible achievement.

With sports, at least the ask is simple. Score more points so you win. With products even; get this thing before it runs out. But with movies? Make this subjective piece of art the best art possible in the exact way that I, someone you have no clue even exists, expects you to make it.

Like that **** is insane.

 

[moviedoors]

Because sports is viewed as more "normal." Going nuts over a movie or TV show or video game is viewed as weird.

Which baffles me. "Toxic sports fans" have caused way more destruction than the nerds.

 

[Fincher]

Eh the thing with your example is they're all measurable to some degree or another. You score points in sports and work your way to a championship. I don't agree with anyone going nuts over a game, but I can at least get it. Because your team actually has something to win/lose and you can actually argue via whatever stats that your team is objectively better.

Even with people trampling each other over sales, there's a limited commodity at stake. There's something to be achieved. A status marker, because you now have something that others don't at a price that others will likely never see again. I don't agree with it, but like I said, I can get it.

But with movies, what's the end goal here? TLJ was a critical and box office success. Fans still went rabid. And that's why they're considered toxic and crazy. Because there's no real way to please them unless you make the movie exactly as they want you to and that is an impossible achievement.

With sports, at least the ask is simple. Score more points so you win. With products even; get this thing before it runs out. But with movies? Make this subjective piece of art the best art possible in the exact way that I, someone you have no clue even exists, expects you to make it.

Like that **** is insane.

Even if you want to distinguish art from sports, there were death threats because of the actors cast in Fifty Shades of Gray, not exactly known for being a nerdy property. Selena Gomez received death threats because she dated Justin Bieber. It isn't a nerd thing, it's an unstable/amoral thing.

 

[Da-Scribe]

Even if you want to distinguish art from sports, there were death threats because of the actors cast in Fifty Shades of Gray, not exactly known for being a nerdy property. Selena Gomez received death threats because she dated Justin Bieber. It isn't a nerd thing, it's an unstable/amoral thing.

I'm not saying it's a nerd thing. I'm saying that I get why people see arts/entertainment fandom in a worse light that they do sport fans. There's no discernible end goal other than what each individual wants personally and it's impossible to keep every individual happy.

Like imagine if sports fans got mad even when their teams won, because the team didn't get enough turnovers or their weren't enough tackles or enough points or because the friggin' uniforms changed from how they looked in the 70s. That's currently how fandom looks in the arts/entertainment world. A bunch of people shouting and threatening creators because it wasn't how they wanted it to be.

 

[Spider-Aziz]

The fans were so bad towards Stephen King in the 80s that he wrote Misery because of it. That wasn't just a lone nut.

You can go back much further than that too. In 1913, Stravinsky's Rite of Spring caused riots in Paris.

At least now with social media outlets for raged fans, riots should be lesser.

At least.. I hope this is not one of those pipe dreams.

 

[samsnee]

Yes but in sports, fans generally get mad at a team, unless it’s your name is Bill Buckner.

The more recent internet outrages seem more personal.

 

[moviedoors]

As bad as fanboys can be, they have yet to literally riot the way sports fans have done repeatedly throughout the years.

 

[samsnee]

That’s because the open air is hell on their asthma.

 

[jmc]

I think part of the issue also is people are engaging with bad fans which does nothing but make the situation worse. It’s like people have forgotten the old saying ‘don’t feed the trolls’. All these articles on fandom and twitter arguments in all honesty do more harm than good, mostly because the lump everyone who doesn’t like where a franchise is going together generating more anger. The sooner people remember there are arse holes in this world and start ignoring them again the better it will be.

 

[Drizzle]

I would say so if you believe some of the stories Disney couldn't get anyone to agree to do episode 9 until they had to ask JJ to help them out

If that's true, I don't think that had to do with the crazed part of the fandom. JJ was announced as the Episode IX director three months before The Last Jedi release and thus before the backlash against that movie. Both of the new Star Wars films up to that point were more or less embraced by the general public, including the majority of fans. If anything, that would have had more to do with the firing of Phil Lord and Chris Miller from Solo. I could see directors being reluctant to play ball with Lucasfilm because maybe they thought they wouldn't have that much creative control.

 

[Thundercrack85]

Oh my God....



THIS is the problem. You didn't like 'The Last Jedi'? Big deal, dude. Get the **** over it. I didn't like it too much, either. Doesn't mean I'll develop a hatred for Rian Johnson ('Brick' and 'Looper' are awesome, BTW).

You're angry about his 'undeserved wealth and fame'? Why don't you try to become a filmmaker so we can see how someone who deserves his wealth and fame actually looks like, instead of whining on a freakin' forum?

This pure hatred directed at human beings for not making the movie you were dreaming of is the problem with today's fandom.

Frankly, I love comic books and movies, etc., but I would never call myself a nerd or a geek. I'd be ashamed to. Because of people who go to such ridiculous lenghts to display their hatred.

If that's what fandom is about, nerds deserve to be depicted as sad, pathetic losers who live in their mother's basement. Time to grow up and express passion in healthier ways.

Filmmaking is not my passion or career. I enjoy my career. If I was as bad as Johnson I would be fired, or at least not picked to direct films with a 300 million dollar budget. I'm not even a Star Wars fan at this point. But I still think what he did to Luke Skywalker is a disgrace. That character deserved better.

That said, I can assure you if you gave me 300 million dollars I would make a superior film. I would just hire better writers and a better director.

I am not going to pretend that that movie was anything short of a disaster to spare some rich *******'s ego. I'm just glad the wheels are coming off this franchise. Disney is turning it into Call of Duty.

 

[Thundercrack85]

TLJ is the 11th highest grossing movie of all time and the 8th highest grossing domestic with very positive reviews from Metacritic, imdb, Cinemascore and the RT critics. In other words, five out of the six standard metrics of audience reception say that movie was a smashing success, ******** fan entitlement notwithstanding. The idea that SW has been ruined in any way outside your own personal fantasies is moronic.

Meanwhile, at the box office...

 

[Thundercrack85]

Even putting Rian aside, what about the actress who played Rose? She certainly didn’t sign up for the level of hate and vitriol directed at her social media accounts. I didn’t like her character but she’s an actress. She didn’t write the conceive of or write the character. I highly doubt she was paid millions for the role.

People deserve to be treated with respect, even when you disagree.

Well, that's more them being racists than **** talking a bad film. I don't condone that. Granted she did play a terrible character, but still. You can be civil while criticizing someone.

I personally just write negative reviews, and rant about how bad it was on forums.

 

[Da-Scribe]

Filmmaking is not my passion or career. I enjoy my career. If I was as bad as Johnson I would be fired, or at least not picked to direct films with a 300 million dollar budget. I'm not even a Star Wars fan at this point. But I still think what he did to Luke Skywalker is a disgrace. That character deserved better.

That said, I can assure you if you gave me 300 million dollars I would make a superior film. I would just hire better writers and a better director.

I am not going to pretend that that movie was anything short of a disaster to spare some rich *******'s ego. I'm just glad the wheels are coming off this franchise. Disney is turning it into Call of Duty.

Why would you be fired for creating a critically and commercially successful product?