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Why We Should All Fear the Wrath of Fans | The Backdrop (Patreon)

Published:
2024-10-15 15:04:00
Imported:
2026-06

Content

This week's episode of The Backdrop is now available!

Files

Why We Should All Fear the Wrath of Fans | The Backdrop

The big movie studios are using fandom focus groups. Uh oh. Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/SecondWindGroup Second Wind Merch Store: https://sharkrobot.com/collections/second-wind

Comments

Cerulean

Looking at your comment section, seems like the #notallfans disclaimer didn't work as well as one might hope. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

damien glenn

Because it's scapegoating. Studios make bad movies then blame fans for not watching them and hyper focus on the ignorant group that use "woke" as a pejorative. Those people suck, they will exist regardless, but the average fan isn't mad at modern star wars because "It had girls and brown people", they're mad because the people who made it had literally no plan for the trilogy and instead treated the fanbase like good little pay pigs. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of star wars pay piggies out there, but those of us that liked the extended universe, thought the prequels generally sucked, and hoped disney would do something with the sequels were frustrated when we saw a ship jump to hyperspace into another object. That's not how the basic physics of the universe work and that became our M&M backstage moment.

MDO

Chiming in here as well as in the video comments because I really think this “fans are to blame for bad media” is being done in bad faith. Why? Because there are so many counter examples of fan reactions being key to good media. If you take any fan property, or really any major film or tv show from the last 30 years and ask “was this a success?” You will need to ask whether or not the fans liked it. There’s a whole genre of films and tv called “cult classics” where fan love kept the films alive despite commercial invisibility. Or even revived properties long gone. Does that excuse the fan backlash to certain fan properties that might be catering to different audiences than is expected? No, but I’d bet it’s worth investigating how clear that “difference” really is, or if the “difference” is just another corporate game to pander for viewers. Have we forgotten how easily rainbows go up and come down from corporate websites during gay pride month? Are we giving corporate entities with billions of dollars more of a fair shake than fans with nothing more than their viewing minutes and subscription dollars? Who is really to blame for modern corporate media not succeeding at its job? I thought corporations were the best most efficient use of resources in getting the job done, Not-Escapist News.

Cerulean

I don't disagree. Hollywood has an executive problem, just like every other industry. The buck stops with the powerful who make the decisions. I didn't take this particular essay as scapegoating, however. Just focusing on a detail of the larger problem. And one his audience can theoretically have some impact on, if they happen to be toxic-fandom adjacent.

Tim Wilson

Man you really hate Deadpool 3. And love waving those red rags to the fan bulls, which I appreciate. I think the “woke” thing is a multi-faceted issue where the far-right see a chance to culture war and recruit disenfranchised losers, as they’ve done since the internet came into being, and a lot of bigots see the same easy target and simple solution to a complex problem they always do. Fan-ship is a weird one, and I honestly don’t think it’s a good thing to be. I try not to see myself as a fan of something, I try and “like or enjoy” it because I found I was getting weird and possessive. In my life I’ve known a lot of people in groups who basically only had one thing in common that was a huge part of their lives, and it inevitably turned weird and toxic eventually. But eventually the properties will stop making money when it alienates all but the weirdos (see Star Wars) and they’ll need to try a new approach later to make it good again. In the meantime, lots of other things to watch and do. As an aside, I have mixed feelings on Harrison Ford as an actor but I find myself respecting his comment of “I don’t know what a Force-Ghost is and I don’t give a shit” more and more as time goes on.

Jason Youngberg

I don't know if "disenfranchised" is the right word. It can technically mean a loss of privilege. They still have privilege, just not as much as before. They're upset that a straight white guy doesn't count for as much as it used to and they have to share the cultural spotlight with people they see as below them.

Jason Youngberg

OTOH you have fans stomping around on McDonalds counters shouting, "I am Pickle Rick!" and sending threats to people who were in a movie because "those" people don't belong in "my" imaginary setting. Fandom can be really good. It can be really bad as well. We have to do a better job of policing ourselves.

Jason Youngberg

Fair points, but the loudest ones get the most attention. And it's tough to offer legit criticism without appearing like you're siding with the "I hate it because it had girls and brown people" crowd. Hollywood is stuck between a rock and a hard place of their own making. They want hit movies and low risk. The "best" way to do that is to keep using the same IPs instead of trying something new. It becomes a numbers game. We can't control that. What we can do, however, is help clean up the toxic fandom so they're not sending death threats. It's a larger society problem. A certain group of people think it's OK to threaten violence if their privilege isn't recognized. It doesn't matter if it's movie casting, delaying a video game, or being an official for an election.

MDO

I suppose, but what you’re talking about is a byproduct of social media, not fantasy or fandom or hype. Para social relationships are nothing new for Korean pop idols—they’ll be forced into isolation so that they don’t date anyone not approved by their fan base. Of course, the corporation who runs the pop idol gooses that fan base for money every earnings cycle, so that’s when you get the controversy, the hype, the fandom. Is it any wonder how we have such CONSISTENTLY regular problems with hype in the fan community? Almost as if the corporation has intended it to be that way? Nobody lost their minds over Deadpool and Wolverine, because it was a good movie. But if it had been a glorified corporate suck fest with awkward attempts to appeal to marginalized groups and hamfisted corporate-approved diversity statements like “do better!” or “everyone is a hero!”, people would have rightly lambasted it. And then the corporate media machine would have called us entitled racists for disapproving of the corporate schlock they gave us. Look—X2: X-Men United was a gay allegory 20 years ago. We don’t need to be shown as accepting of others, because we ARE accepting of others. What we aren’t accepting of is people SAYING we aren’t accepting of others. Especially not when they do their pious moralizing by hamfistedly shoving corporate greed in our mouths and demanding we gulp it down.

Tim Wilson

Idols are normally forbidden from dating by contract to promote either promote an innocent, virginal image, or so that they can be over sexualised and “available” for fans to fantasise about. Neither of these paints their fans in an especially good light. Could it be that nobody lambasted Deadpool because it featured entirely white men as the main protagonists? I almost wish I lived in a world where Wolverine was recast to be a black man (let’s says trans as well for good measure) just to watch from the sidelines as fan aneurysms decreased the population back to 1990’s levels! The video also literally starts with an example of how this started pre-social media, and listening to that fan reaction probably would have made a bad Star Trek film, or at least not one that was as beloved. The important to always ask yourself when you say “we” are being attacked is “who is we” and “why do I feel personally attacked anyway”. If you’re feeling called out when people complain about rabid fans being the issue with something, then maybe that’s a you problem.

Tim Wilson

I just listened to 5 hour podcast on Anders Brevik, I can’t say I care about the nitty gritty of the term haha! As a (pretty much) straight white man, I can tell you it’s still being born into easy mode, there’s not less spotlight anyway. You just have to share on odd occasions but it’s still focused entirely on you.

Cynthia McGarvie

I remember that keenly. Do we really want to be that toxic?

Peter

This video misses the mark by a mile, fan service vs fan anger is not even responsible for 10% of problems in media in 2024. Everybody already pointed many instances where fans were right and listened to => success, ignored => failure, so I won't. But I think for every 3 cases of recent fan vs IP owner controversies I'd say fans were right in 2 of them. Doesn't mean fans are such great movie makers, its the IP owners and people they hire that are doing such terrible job with the franchises, failing to understand the appeal of what they own, that replacing them with majority fan opinion would be an improvement. Borderline religious progressivism in Hollywood that's so easily dismissed (denied?) with it's rules is 50% of the problem for non-progressives and I bet a quarter even for the discerning progressive. I don't think average Christian liked super pandering Christian movies, so it's got to irk even you when you get another serving of the pious slop. You're dismissing it as buzzwords but you can trace each "buzzword" to a specific call to action in XX and then an ideological creative loudly agrees with it, gets promoted in part due to that discourse, then implements it in XXI in her/his work. It's not just out of the blue in 2020 "haters are noticing". It's 2000 "industry - we need to increase X, Y, Z", then they do it (usually do it very badly, on the nose girlbossing), then it's noticed. This goes to all various tropes including those about sex and race. It's seriously insulting to hear that it makes one suspected of racism if he "talks about sex and race" too much, when Amazon has a spreadsheet of specific sex/race requirements, Oscars will reject a movie that doesn't fit woke dogma that also includes these demographics, etc. In 2024 if you want to make a movie say about real life Polish-american dockworkers in Baltimore, even worse all of your 5 main characters happen to be straight family people, the establishment will require inventing non-white roles to fill up their quotas - or will ostracize it. In extreme cases like BBC after years of this religious observances you've got x5 representation for non-Brits in shows about UK (including supposedly historic ones) and x10 representation of homosexuality. Yes, lopsided demographics in itself is not the worst offender, usually other Woke tropes do more damage to the medium, but it is a part of it. So if you talk about it, mention race, you get accused of sounding kinda like a racist? Risk averse studios who won't give enough creative license are maybe 20% of the problem, limping financial model another 20%. Rude extremely emotional fan who screams threats - that's 0%. Ambulance chaser content creators who make selective videos to max the outrage (sorry, but this one I count about as bad as what "haters" make) maybe 5%. They couldn't pull off millions of views if they tried to rally hate on even average quality media, and those videos would not lead to empty theaters.

MDO

You’re missing my point about Korean pop idols—the actual people are just commodities for the corporations that egg on toxic fan behaviors in order to monetize them. Current Disney/Marvel products are a money-making machine whose engine is supposed to be fan branding, fan loyalty, but which has been twisted into fan avoidance or essentially fan outrage. Look at your own comment—you’re basically saying, “I want to take Wolverine from fans and make him trans just to stop them from being fans.” Is that really… REALLY what you want? Because I’m (again) old enough to remember when a lot of white singers took black singers’ songs and made millions of dollars whitewashing rock n roll. I don’t think that was a good thing. I also don’t think that whitewashing in reverse would be a good thing either, because that’s taking a beloved character FROM a fan base and goosing that fan base with toxic positivity. Why do I say toxic positivity? Because I’m pretty sure you aren’t trans and aren’t speaking for the trans community when you weaponize transness against comic book media. That’s just cruel, and I don’t think you mean to be that cruel. So by “transwashing” Wolverine rather than just having a trans character be prominent (like Switch in The Matrix), you’re exposing your true goal—being toxic to the very fans who just spent a billion dollars on a fan movie. Because that’s what’s really at issue here—not that Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman are white, but because they’re beloved. Ryan because he’s such a fan that he even loves the geeky old costumes of the comics, and Hugh because he’s so committed to good acting in the role. I don’t think you’re actually all that interested in being a fan, because you’d rather goose the fan base than choose to empower the most loving and representative parts of the fandom. Also, Blade.

Scott and Sora

I think the most important thing a studio can do to create commercially successful media that respects the source material. The first season of Game of Thrones was amazing because of how closely it followed the book, and while the next couple seasons didn't quite fit everything in, everyone who'd read the books knew what to expect, and they weren't disappointed. Pretty much everyone loved the first season of The Witcher as well. The first season of Wheel of Time was well-tolerated, but from the friends I've spoken to, the second season was broadly seen as even better because they toned back the grimdark and stayed true to the spirit of the books (even though several of the events have been remixed/moved up, to facilitate more of a 7-season show). The first Star Trek film was kind of stupid, perhaps, because it tries to tell a very non-Star-Trek-like story. Even though it may have been written by the creator, he clearly had lost touch with his own series. Which I think is absolutely a thing that happens. The thing about the successful series above that went bad (GoT, Witcher) is that the show stopped respecting the spirit of the source material. So I do think it's important to be able to ignore what fans say they want to happen with their character. But I also think that if your showrunners, writers, directors, etc. aren't keyed in to what makes the source material so good, and learning everything they can about the worlds and characters and politics of the source material... then you're not going to have a good product in the end. I mean... Netflix explicitly had writers on The WItcher who actively disliked the books. And when your star -- who fans see as representing the character perfectly -- is being called confrontational or whatever when he criticizes the story you're writing as not faithful... how do you think that's going to go? I've lost the plot, as I haven't mentioned "woke" criers at all... and maybe that's like... a separate issue and it muddied the main message of this video essay? There exist a group of people who will call things out for being "woke" needlessly, and it may be that the biggest problem with them is how much air they're given by media at all. Someone else mentioned that there are quotas around diversity in studios, and around getting awards and so on. I would love to learn more about that. And I suspect that there's a deep dive there to investigate whether that's making problems simply because of how the quotas are being enforced -- i.e., rather than shoehorning minority people into a story where it doesn't make sense, you could greenlight more stories that reasonably feature minority people. And of course, on the other hand, if people are complaining because their space aliens or fantasy-worlders aren't all white people, well, there should be room to completely ignore those complaints. And also there should be room to allow for people to be wrong about the actual historical diversity of a region and those people can be corrected or ignored; but it would be incorrect to talk about it as being "inclusive" so much as "historically accurate" or even "making up for historically inaccurate period films of the past."

William Alexander

Great (if slightly depressing) video. Though the irony of an angry backlash to this article because it isn't what the viewers wanted is a little too on the nose. Take that, real life! If I were more conspiracy minded I would wonder if studios deliberately add POC stars and directors to franchises that are culturally fracked so that audiences blame them rather than the regurgitated low-quality of those efforts (Barry Jenkins directing the 400th live action Disney remake, DeCosta directing a middling, Black dwaves in the Tolkien appendices show, overedited Marvels sequel, a Latina lead for an uncanny valley Snow White and the eldritch 7 dwarves, etc).

Jeroen Delcour

Wow, the YouTube comments are filled with very vocal people who feel the video is attacking fans, which I don't think was the point of the video at all. The ratio of likes to views is about the same as other Backdrop videos, so it seems most people like it and mostly the loudest crowd critize it, often while misunderstanding it. Ironically, that demonstrates what I understood to be the video's point: that being louder does not make one a better critic or writer, so studios (and YT creators) shouldn't blindly listen to the most vocal feedback. For what it's worth: I like your work, Mr. Mooney, even though - or perhaps, because - I don't always agree. Keep doing what you're doing, I'll be reading/listening.