In April, the first trailer dropped for Sonic the Hedgehog, an upcoming family comedy based on the
long-running SEGA video game franchise. Immediately, it was a sensation for its
bizarre and off-putting rendering of the title character. Following the
creative pattern in Hollywood recently of taking a hyper-realistic approach to
media properties ill-suited for it, Sonic bore little resemblance to the game
character fans loved, with a dogs’ nose, white fur at the appendages in place
of gloves, and those human teeth the internet couldn’t get enough of. There was
enough of an outcry that Paramount felt obliged to put the film on hold so they
could go back and completely reanimate the character. The second trailer
sporting the redesigned Sonic (so close to the classic look it might as well be
from one of the games) released just this month to acclaim from those very fans
who’d earlier decried it. And the rest of us couldn’t care less.
This should not have happened. And the fact that it did is
worrying.
Sonic did not look good in that original trailer –that’s
undeniable. But when you think about how the redesign added an extra 5 million
to the films’ budget, how the animators were likely overworked to complete the
overhaul in seven months so the film could meet its new release date, and how
the finished product is likely going to be no better and probably lose money in
the long run, you have to ask if all that is worth a slightly more familiarly
animated Sonic. Worst of all though, it emboldens the fanbase’s arrogance in a
time when fandom is already way too entitled. It’s proof that studios will cave
and pour extra resources unnecessarily into a project if “fans” make a big
enough fuss about it.
It’s the greatest problem of modern fan culture and the root
of why so much of fandom is toxic: that feeling that they own the art they love
and that the creators of that art are responsible for delivering to them that
satisfactory product –and it is a product to them, not a piece of art or
culture or storytelling. Most of the time, the filmmakers and film studios who
manufacture the franchises these audiences consume are smart enough not to
acquiesce to fan demands, but every so often they will make a drastic change to
counter a complaint of the fanbase. Sonic
isn’t even the first movie this year that underwent such an alteration: The Lion King remake originally wasn’t
going to feature the “Be Prepared” song, but decided to work it in after an
outcry from Disney fans. The result of course was a pretty pathetic half-song
that most unfortunate enough to see the movie would rather have done without.
Yet regardless of whether or not they make for a better film, these examples
give fanbases a power; proof that their complaints can make an impact, perhaps
even the multitudes of complaints made in bad faith.
What a lot of fans don’t get is that these movies aren’t made
for them; they’re made for the general public. The popular IP is chosen in the
hopes that audiences have a passing recognition of it rather than a devoted
attachment –familiarity rather than knowledge is what the studios are banking
on. Sony’s target demographic for Sonic
isn’t the twenty and thirty-somethings who have played every game, know the
deep lore of the character and world, or have opinions on each change the
franchise has underwent in its twenty-eight year history. It’s the people
who’ve maybe played one game, or caught a little of one of the TV shows, or
have seen some of the merchandise or understand through cultural osmosis that
Sonic is a blue hedgehog who runs very fast; and children –primarily children.
People who don’t so much care how Sonic looks, certainly not to the degree of
pressuring such extensive and expensive reshoots from the people making the
movie. And the same applies to just about every other major studio movie or
franchise based on existing material. Fandoms don’t actually account for a high
percentage of viewers, so why should they be catered to?
It’s also true that a lot of fans don’t actually know what
they want from their movies or more often want the wrong thing. This is
especially the case with the most toxic sections of the Star Wars and (most recently) Terminator
fandoms, whose expectations for ideal installments involve concessions to their
personal fantasies over what’s best for the actual story. And they reject
anything new or different –the greatest crime of a popular franchise film is to
take a risk- regardless of whether or not it evolves the series and its art.
I
can’t speak to the Terminator issue
as I haven’t seen Dark Fate (and
honestly am pretty cynical about the series, even where the first two movies
are concerned), but
it’s exactly why a portion of the Star
Wars fandom hates Luke Skywalkers’ ambivalence and evasion of typical
action hero badassery in The Last Jedi,
yet loves the fanservicing Darth Vader killing spree at the end of Rogue One. The former is a choice that
supports the story and greater themes of the universe, while the latter is an
extraneous moment designed to pander to a particular kind of fan. And I’m still
a little worried the vocal bellyaching to many of the choices in The Last Jedi, which bizarrely still gets
so many people worked up two years after its release, are going to have an
impact on J.J. Abrams’ direction of The
Rise of Skywalker.
This isn’t to say studios and filmmakers should ignore fans
(it’s kind of impossible these days given the cinematic significance of Comic
Con after all). But it’s crossing a line when they are pressured to make a
change to appease them, because doing so lets the fans in on the creative
process, which isn’t good for the film. Artists need to have some distance when
making a movie based on a popular IP from that IP if they are to do it justice.
They have to be able to look at it objectively, think about outside viewers, consider
the limitations and compromises that are necessary, and not get too bogged down
in details most audiences won’t care about. The most aggressive of fans don’t
understand this.
Of course a big part of this is the fact that the movie news
cycle is much more regular, popular movie developments higher publicized, and
marketing ramped up considerably compared to decades past. This whole Sonic thing would never have happened
had the trailer not dropped when it did. And it’s this omnipresence of
transparency that fosters the notion that fans have a say –they’re paying
attention to casting and directing news, they’re watching every trailer and
T.V. spot, following cast and crew on Twitter in some cases. Popular movies
aren’t allowed to be made behind closed doors anymore, fewer secrets can be
kept. To use another video game movie example, had fan culture and the internet
existed in the way it does now and had movie marketing been as constant, the
reaction would’ve been no different to the infamous Super Mario Bros. movie of 1993 –a bad movie to be sure, but one
that is fascinatingly bonkers and has found a second life as a nostalgic guilty
pleasure for a whole generation. Sonic was
never going to achieve that, with or without its animation changes, but it
should have been allowed to just be what it was, as its filmmakers, producers,
VFX artists, and yes, even SEGA intended.
Because at the end of the day, these movies aren’t going to
matter all that much if they’re bad. The thing you love is still the thing you
love and you love it for a reason that a bad movie can’t take away. You always
have the choice not to see it if it doesn’t look like something you’ll enjoy.
And you can always criticize it if you do see it and it doesn’t live up to your
standards.
This isn’t meant to disparage fandom as a whole, or the good fans
out there who understand that sometimes a bad or personally disappointing
iteration of whatever they like will be produced, and can accept that without
engaging in useless boycotts, embarrassing online petitions, or entitled
whining about changing something professionals put so much work into. Being a
fan of something should always be more about loving the thing than hating it.
And it should also be something engaged in in moderation, without attaching
ones’ identity to a pop culture artifact to the degree it provokes such outrage.
Because in those outrage-focussed, far too serious and negative corners of
fandom is where those who decry female, non-white, and LGBTQ characters lurk,
where those who complain about “SJWs” and political content thrive, and further
where the kinds of people who will dox creators or harass public figures off
social media create a home. And I shudder at the precedent this sets for them
to have some amount of control over major motion pictures.
The original Sonic animation
was weird, but it wasn’t cheap, and it was certainly something we could have
lived with (we did with the 2004 Garfield
animation after all). But now at the cost of excessive labour, higher
expenditures, and a smug sense of victory for fans who pathetically believe
they’re owed something by Hollywood, the Sonic
movie now due to come out next Valentine’s Day boasts different fan-approved
animation. The quality of everything else looks about the same as it did
before, i.e. generically lame storytelling, characters, and humour that are
outdated by about twenty years -typical of many a poor kids’ movie lately. Ultimately
the new animation is going to do nothing: it’s not going to attract anyone who
wasn’t going to see the movie already, it won’t save the movie from most likely
underperforming, and it won’t have any impact on the critical reception
whatsoever. All it did was make the production that much more inconvenient and
make it even harder for the film to recoup its budget. Because fans didn’t like
the way an anthropomorphic blue hedgehog with super-speed intended for children
looked. What a world!
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