2021 has been another difficult year both for people and for the movie industry. Studios weren’t really confident in their own movie’s ability to pull in an audience and many chose to send movies simultaneously to streaming. In this environment no one was really sure how to judge a movies success or failure. However by the end of the year we have had a clear indication thanks to Spider-Man that people will brave new Covid variants to see something that they are excited for. The trouble is there was a lot out this year that people clearly were not excited for. So what lessons have we learned this year? I think one of the big ones is the benefit of doing fan service in the right way. As we saw last year with “Sonic The Hedgehog” (2020), listening to fan criticism can result in a big win. This time around we have two big examples of doing things the right way.
Note, minor spoilers ahead for things you probably already know by now.
Getting the Band Back Together
The first is “Ghostbusters: Afterlife”, a cautious but heartfelt attempt to correct the many mistakes made by the 2016 franchise reboot and introduce a new generation to the concept of busting ghosts. The movie was made relatively cheaply which likely is why the setting is a small remote town instead of New York and the plot was kept simple, essentially being a rehash of the first movie. But what the movie did right was being a continuation of the classic movies, treating the original with respect (and a lot of love) and giving the surviving OG crew a meaningful reunion. But while doing that it also introduced new characters, provided diversity in the right way (naturally, balanced and without virtue signalling) and set up for the franchises future.
The movie wasn’t perfect, but it managed to leave fans of the original happy and win over new young fans. Despite this the damage done to the franchise by the previous movie meant the opening weekend wasn’t fantastic. However, the strong legs generated by word of mouth saw this film make a healthy profit in the end. One of the things to note here is the difference between how this movie referenced the originals and how the 2016 movie did that. here these elements are all worked directly into the plot and even the clunkiest of references (Stay Puffed) feels like it is actually part of the story. Meanwhile 2016 would pretty much stop the movie to show us an Easter egg and then throw it aside and move on.
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
But following on from that success was the biggest winner of the year: “Spider-Man: No Way Home”. A movie that delivered on many levels, not just in providing fan service but also in providing a great deal of redemption for all three branches of this franchise (past and present). The biggest success though is the phenomenal box office. At the time of writing this, in the movies second week it has crossed the billion dollar mark at the box office. Something many people thought was impossible in a pandemic year and it did it in the winter, with a new variant out and with many theatres having to cope with additional restrictions (or complete lock downs). The movie also currently doesn’t have a China release making it’s global haul even more impressive.
But the danger with this movie is that Hollywood learns the wrong lessons. It wasn’t simply having cameos that made it a success but in the way they were used. The old favourites were treated respectfully and had personalities consistent with their past appearances and their on screen character development in those movies. But at the same time they did not overshadow the movies actual star. That’s not to say the movie did all the cameos perfectly. Doctor Strange definitely got the short straw here, but this wasn’t a Doctor Strange movie and perhaps his own sequel due out next year will provide him some redemption.
The Right Way and the Wrong Way
There is a right and a wrong way to do cameos. Both these movies make for an obvious comparison with Disney’s Star Wars sequels. Those movies deliberately kept Han Solo, Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia apart and minimised their roles so as to not get in the way of the new characters. The movie gave them characters inconsistent with their previous appearances, whereas No Way Home presented past characters consistent with their own character development and provided them further development and redemption for past mistakes. But most importantly it brought them all together and this was a meeting we never even knew we wanted.
Meanwhile Afterlife brought together all the original team, gave them off screen character progression consistent with their established personalities and gave the fans the moment they’ve been looking forward to for decades. Neither of these movies overshadowed the new characters with the old, indeed Afterlife kept the original crew out of the majority of the movie. See you can give the audience want they want, be respectful and consistent with the original and still have your focus on the future.
A good example of a movie that didn’t get the right way to do fan service from 2021 would be Halloween Kills. The movie featured almost a who’s who of characters from the first movie and made endless references to both that movie and Halloween 2, which the previous movie had retconned out of existence. The trouble is none of these characters or references were really meaningful, they were just there and most of them got in the way of the story they were trying to tell. This reminded me a bit of the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot that really felt like they wrote their movie and then went through it and dropped cameos and references in randomly. Both movies felt detached the originals and insincere.
Final Thoughts
Two final thoughts about fan service: It is important to know the difference between what the majority of fans want and what is just a handful of people on social media. When you are talking about respecting the previous instalments and/or source material it is likely the majority. When you are looking at “Shipping” (i.e. romantic relationships between two characters that aren’t currently romantically involved or even hinted at having that kind of connection) or other demands for radical change away from the source material it is probably just a handful of people being very vocal and should be ignored. The Sonic complaints for instant were all about making the character looking more like he did in the games instead of the creepy looking thing that was first put forward. It was safe to assume that the majority of fans agreed.
Finally, you can still create something new while respecting the past, just look at Cobra Kai, that series has been running for a few years now, is radically different to the Karate Kid movies and yet has respectful and consistent portrayals of both the characters and the past events of the movies. They introduce new characters and they let everything evolve on screen. The key thing here is “Show, don’t tell”. Even though a long time had past between seeing Daniel and Johnny in the movies and seeing them in the show their off screen progression was entirely logical and linear from where they left off, but once on screen they were able to take things in new directions. The same is true of Spiderman: No Way Home and to a lesser extent Ghostbusters: Afterlife, but where major events had happened (the team splitting up, it formed really the core of the entire story and really they did the best they could considering they had to explain why no one had been busting ghosts for 30+ years.]
So that’s the end of part one. I hope you enjoyed reading. See you with part two when I look at more of the years hits and misses.
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