Movies Shouldn't Appease Fans and Here's Why

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!

Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/JordanBosch
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jordan_D_Bosch

Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/jbosch/